Russell Chamberlin in Monocle, February 1992
...The first half [of the book] contains one of the clearest accounts I have ever read as to how a group of pathological misfits took control of one of the great countries of the world. Hess now tends to be dismissed as a fantasist and dreamer at best, a near lunatic at worst. Padfield shows unequivocally that he was a central figure in the Nazi move to power, indeed going as far as implying that much of the philosophy (if so it can be called) behind Mein Kampf was not Hitler's but Hess'.
It is, however, the flight which is central to the story and Padfield blows up sky high the 'official' version that it was the spontaneous and unassisted action of an eccentric man desperately trying to claw his way back into the limelight. The story as Padfield unfolds it is worthy of John le Carre. The plots, counter plots, double crosses are all but impossible to summarise. Put simply, Padfield argues that Hess, far from acting alone did so with the support and encouragement of Hitler in order to deceive Stalin and, far from being unexpected in Britain had, in fact, been lured across by the British secret service as a move to bring Russia into the war. In other words Hess was the pawn - 'the willing pawn' - of both Hitler and Churchill...
E.C.Hodgkin in The Tablet, 14.12.1991
The news that Rudolf Hess, Hitler's deputy, had parachuted into Scotland on 10 May 1941 was just the sort of morale-booster the country needed at a pretty low point in the war. The whole thing was so bizarre...such a confession of uncertainty, of weakness even. To add to our pleasure, this came less than a year after Peter Fleming had published a short funny fantasy, The Flying Visit, about Hitler parachuting into England, nature imitating art. When the shocked Nazis claimed that Hess had long shown 'traces of mental disturbance' and 'was the victim of hallucinations', that seemed a more than probable explanation but did not alter the feeling that his flight was, for us, a sort of victory...
The mysteries do not end with Hess's internment in England or trial as a war criminal at Nuremberg, or with his 40 years in Spandau gaol. Was he really paranoid, or acting a part ? Was his amnesia...genuine ? What did his various suicide attempts signify ? And, finally, did this arthritic 93-year old really commit suicide by strangling himself with a piece of electric light flex, as alleged, or was he murdered, and if so by whom, and why ? So many of the relevant files in this country are closed until 2017 that we shall have to go on guessing and speculating for a long time. Meanwhile , here is this fascinating book, well written, sober, persuasive, and more compulsive reading than 99 per cent of detective novels.
(Peter Padfield comments: since this review, many of the files supposed to remain closed until 2017 have been released to the Public Record Office, including, most recently, the M.I.5 files on the case. These have been incorporated, together with new research, in a new Introduction to the new edition of the book [ Cassell , 2001 ].)
George Malcolm Thomson in Hampstead and Highgate Express, 24.1.1992
...Complex and fascinating were the moves made by one side and the other during those momentous days [of 1941]. They may seem romantic, incredible... But read Padfield's book as he picks his way through that shadowy and sinister world , now happily behind us. It is a tale full of the unexpected, the surprising and the absorbing.
Terry Hamilton in Manchester Evening News, 8.5.1993
A good biography like this one is often as rewarding a book to read as a good novel. The flight of Rudolf Hess...to Scotland in May 1941 remains one of the great unsolved mysteries of the second world war...it makes fascinating reading.
Hugh Trevor-Roper in The Daily Telegraph, 19.10.1991
Mr Padfield is a careful writer who has combed the documents. His use of them is not always critical: some of his sources, in my opinion, are worthless...But his narrative is clean and his observations generally sensible. It is his thesis that seems to me the weakest part of his book. That thesis, that Hess was 'lured' into Britain, rests on no hard evidence at all...
Mr Padfield is aware of this and attempts to save the phenomena by ... speculation. Hess, he concludes, was 'the unwitting pawn of two grand deception schemes', one by Hitler, one by Churchill; and Churchill's machine, of which Hess was the 'victim' was the mysterious section B1A of MI5 and 'Masterman's Double Cross Committees'...To this I will only say that I do not think that Mr. Padfield is well informed of what he calls 'the astounding operations of BIA...
(Peter Padfield comments: Hugh Trevor Roper was correct to doubt MI5 B1A's involvement in the plot to lure Hess to Great Britain. This is made clear in the second edition of the book (Papermac, 1993). New research by John Harris (in Hess:the British Conspiracy, André Deutsch, 1999) throws the spotlight on another British top secret organisation, the Political Warfare Executive - PWE - as likely perpetrator of the deception. This new research is described in the Introduction to the most recent edition of Hess: the Führer's Disciple (Cassell, 2001), where it is stated:
The new Introduction to the 2001 edition also includes descriptions of the recently released MI5 papers on the Hess case. It concludes: