Rudolf Hess\u2019s flight to Britain during World War Two in a bizarre attempt to secure peace was backed by Adolf Hitler, fresh documents claim.<\/span><\/p>\n History has long recorded that the Nazi number three was acting alone when he piloted a Messerschmitt to Scotland in May 1941.<\/span><\/p>\n He parachuted out over Renfrewshire and was arrested by a farmhand with a pitchfork<\/span><\/p>\n Hess was, apparently, trying to\u00a0 contact the Duke of Hamilton to set peace talks with Winston Churchill in motion under his own initiative.<\/span><\/p>\n Hitler was even supposed to have scrambled aircraft to try to stop Hess, his deputy, from leaving Germany.<\/span><\/p>\n But a 28-page notebook discovered in a Russian archive disputes this\u00a0 theory and indicates that Hitler was in on the mission. It was written in 1948 by Major Karlheinz Pintsch, a long-time adjutant to Hess.<\/span><\/p>\n He was captured by the Soviets and spent years undergoing\u00a0 torture and interrogation at\u00a0 their hands.<\/span><\/p>\n In the notebook he writes that Hitler hoped that an \u2018agreement with the Englishmen would be\u00a0 successful\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n Pintsch notes that Hess\u2019s task \u2013 five weeks before Germany launched its invasion of Russia \u2013 was to \u2018bring about, if not a military alliance of Germany with England against Russia, then to bring about a neutralisation of England\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n Pintsch\u2019s interrogation transcripts found in the same archive in Moscow show that Hitler was not surprised when news came through of Hess\u2019s capture.<\/span><\/p>\n The relevant section reads: \u2018Nor did he rant and rave about what Hess had done. Instead, he replied calmly: \u201cAt this particular moment in the war that could be a most hazardous escapade\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n \u2018Hitler then went on to read a letter that Hess had sent him.<\/span><\/p>\n \u2018He read the following significant passage out aloud: \u201cAnd if this project … ends in failure … it will always be possible for you to deny all responsibility. Simply say I was out of my mind\u201d.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n This is what happened, with both Hitler and Churchill claiming Hess was deranged.<\/span><\/p>\n The allegations surfaced in\u00a0 Der Spiegel magazine in Germany over the weekend.<\/span><\/p>\n Hess survived the war and was tried at Nuremberg for war crimes.<\/span><\/p>\n He was sentenced to life imprisonment and spent more time behind bars than any other Third Reich leaders before taking his own life in Spandau Prison near Berlin in 1987, aged 93.<\/span><\/p>\n At Nuremberg Hess appeared to be the delusional, forgetful,\u00a0 mentally ill figure that Hitler claimed he was after the abortive mission.<\/span><\/p>\n But the Pintsch diary, soon to be delivered to German historians\u00a0 for study, may suggest that this was an act.<\/span><\/p>\n Although an aide to Hess, Pintsch was also a trusted friend and adviser, who would have been privy to his master\u2019s secrets.<\/span><\/p>\n It fell to Pintsch to tell Hitler of the failure of the Hess operation.<\/span><\/p>\n Pintsch was now a dangerous witness and he was arrested and kept in solitary confinement until being sent to the Eastern Front in 1944.<\/span><\/p>\n