WHEN Wolf Rudiger Hess, or “Buz” as he was widely know passed away on October 24, 2001, the German architect’s death made global headlines.

Wolf was famous for being the only child of Nazi Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess, and found it difficult to escape his father’s shadow.

Yet was Wolf the only child of Hess?

Did the Nazi have a secret son elsewhere who managed to escape the notoriety of both the name and the bloodline and carry his secret to the grave?

Is it conceivable that during his tenure as the “Kaiser of Abergavenny,” Hess had a brief dalliance with a local girl, and the offspring of that brief romance was given up for adoption?

That’s the outlandish, albeit plausible claim being made by a certain Dr. Peter Davies, who told the Chronicle that he not only believes Hess had a secret son but he has met him as well.

Before his death by his own hand in 1987, Hitler’s former second in command had been rotting away in Spandau for forty years.

Although, unlike leading Nazi figureheads such as Hermann Goring and Joachim von Ribbentrop, Hess was cleared of war crimes and crimes against humanity, he was still found guilty of war mongering and given a life sentence.

Before he took his own life, Hess had spent the last 16 years of his captivity in solitary confinement.

During this time, both the British, US, and French governments made repeated requests to the Soviet authorities to free the ageing Nazi on humanitarian grounds.

In 1982, a letter drafted in the name of Margaret Thatcher to the Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev read, “There is to my mind no justification for keeping Hess in prison any longer. He is 88. He has been in prison for 40 years. He has been without the company of other prisoners for over 16 years. Humanitarian reasons demand that no one should be treated this way.”

However, the Soviets were adamant that Hess would be kept under lock and key. It would be, they argued, an insult to the 20 million Soviet war dead to release such a leading light in the Nazi party.

Additionally, they argued that even though other Nazis, such as Albert Speer and Balder von Schirach had been released in 1966, Hess could easily become a rallying point for neo-Nazis if he was given his freedom.

The man who had been in captivity of one form or the other since his doomed flight to Scotland in 1941 to hold peace talks with the Duke of Hamilton, would die in prison.

As age and regret continued to consume him, Hess had plenty of time to reflect on his long life and the murderous regime his name will forever be associated with.

As well as musings on the nature and corrupting influence of the man he had a dog-like devotion to and once described as “always right and will always be right,” were Hess’s memories of Hitler punctuated with his brief three-year interlude in a sleepy part of Wales called Abergavenny?

Did his old and faltering mind, on occasion, wander far from the authoritarian bleakness and corrosive ennui of Spandau to a happier time and place?

Perhaps it found a measure of solace from the horrors of a world gone wrong in the eloquent grounds of White Castle, where he was once allowed to wander and make watercolour paintings of the swans floating serenely on the moat.

Or perhaps he recalled the many pubs that locals to this day swear they saw him drinking in.

Or maybe he looked back fondly on the private residences he was reportedly invited to for drinks and tea, such as Cae Kenfy House on the Monmouth Road?

In Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince’s book, “Double Standards: The Rudolf Hess Cover-Up” they write at the time of Hess’s transfer to Abergavenny, a four-year-old girl from Surrey called Evelyn Criddle was staying in the lodge at the grounds of Cae Kenfy House, which was then the wartime residence of the Herbert family, when she met a man who was supposedly Hess.

Evelyn recalled, “My father put me to bed that night, and he said, ‘In the morning I’m going to show you a man, and probably nobody’s ever going to believe you’ve seen him. When you get older, after the war, I will tell you who he is.’

“The next morning, we stood by the rhododendron bushes, and I can see him now. This very tall man appeared from Cae Kenfy House, flanked on each side by soldiers who only came up to his shoulders. He passed down the path - my father and I were looking at him - and he sort of half-smiled at me. Years after the war, my father told who he was . He was Hess. And he said, ‘Nobody’s ever going to believe you.”

In his leisurely wanderings around Abergavenny and the local area, did Hess meet a lady, did something happen that shouldn’t, and was a child given birth to in secret and quickly put up for adoption?

We can only speculate, because as Hess’s body dropped, the noose tightened, the eyes bulged, and all memory and fate were rendered obsolete by the mocking swing of the hangman’s rope, Hess’s story had lost its author and become one of interpretation and what ifs?

And although Dr Davies does not offer any concrete proof that Hess fathered an illegitimate son in Abergavenny, there has been a precedent.

Only last year, the news broke that a man living in the Costa del Sol accidentally found out he was Heinrich Himmler’s grandson after watching a documentary on the Nazi monster.

When couples counsellor and part-time pastor Henrik Lenkeit watched a documentary about Hitler’s henchman, he was intrigued enough to Google Himmler’s name.

His search eventually led him to a photo of Himmler’s mistress, who, to Henrik’s shock, shared the same face and name as his grandmother - Hedwig.

A little more digging revealed that the person he thought was his grandfather growing up was not.

Henrik told The Sun, “I saw this documentary on Himmler, and I thought: ‘Interesting’. I remembered him from my history classes a long time ago, but I didn’t realise how powerful he was. After a while, I thought: ‘Let’s Google him.’

“It said he was married, but it also said that he had a mistress. I saw the photo and thought: ‘She looks like my grandmother’. 

“Then I saw her name was Hedwig – my grandmother’s name.”

Henrik admits the revelation took a while to sink in and explained, “You don’t get it in the moment, that shock of seeing your grandmother on the internet and then finding out she’s got her own Wikipedia… Your brain kind of protects you,” says Henrik.

“Then it said she had children with him, and I saw my uncle’s and my mother’s names. I went: ‘Am I this guy’s grandson?’

“I felt everything and nothing. I felt dizzy.”

Henrik later found out that the Himmler connection was an open secret in his family and he was the last to know.

“Everybody knew. Finding out felt like being the fifth wheel of a car. What more did they have to hide? 

“The strange thing is that my father and my mother spoke about history with us. They spoke about the Second World War, and they spoke about my grandparents on my father’s side, who were Nazis. We even went to see Schindler’s List when I was a bit older. 

“History was always a topic of conversation, as in Germany, especially, we have to deal with our history. 

“But they just didn’t tell me that I was Himmler’s grandson. That little detail was left out. It’s a joke.”

The question is, did Hess also father an illegitimate child? One who was always aware of his real identity, but chose not to share it with the world, just a few close friends, such as Dr Peter Davies?

Peter, who has lived in Nanyuki, Kenya, for the last 23 years, previously lived in the West Midlands, as did the man who would claim to be the son of Hess. A man we shall simply refer to as Tony.

Peter told the Chronicle, “Tony was the adopted son of a couple who moved to the West Midlands from elsewhere. Tony became a close friend of mine in the 1970s. He was a larger-than-life character and used to be the landlord of a pub.

“Tony was a big fan of lock-ins, and as a pub regular, I got to know him very well during our many after-hours conversations together. Anyone who knew Tony will remember him as a very overweight and extravagant character who drove an Aston Martin and was a very talented pianist. But no one would have guessed in a million years he was the son of a leading Nazi.”

Recalling the night Tony made the shock announcement, Peter explained, “Tony lived with his parents at the pub, and he had no physical resemblance to either his mother or father, and I don’t think it was a big secret he was adopted.

“However, one evening back in 1974, we went back to my father’s vicarage for a snifter, and as we sat chatting with my mother, who wasn’t a drinker at all, he made his big announcement.

“He started telling us that he was born illegitimate and later adopted, but his biological father was Rudolf Hess!”

It’s not every day one of your friends lands you with that sort of bombshell, but Peter remembers, although shocked, he wasn’t all that interested back then.

He explained, “In the seventies, the Second World War was still quite fresh in living memory, and so there wasn’t such a sense of history and mystery about that period as there is today. "Tony never mentioned who his real mother was or if she was from Abergavenny, and I never asked. But from what I’ve read subsequently, it’s easy to join the dots.

“It appears Hess was given significant freedom to roam around the Abergavenny area, and he even wined and dined in popular restaurants such as The Walnut Tree.

Peter added, “I have pictures in my mind of Hess parachuting into Scotland and within two years picnicking as a POW on the banks of the Usk with a local girl. Is it really so far beyond the pale to suggest that a romance blossomed and the product of that union was later put up for adoption?”

Strange things happened during the war years. Could this have been one of them?

Although Peter admits he has no concrete proof that Tony, who died in 2009 and left no children of his own, was related to Hess, he believes his old friend’s story.

He said, “There was no reason whatsoever for Tony to lie to me about his biological father’s real identity. He never went public with it, and as far as I know, nor did he tell anyone else. He sought no financial gain or fame because of it. I just think it was a secret he felt he had to share with someone.

“Unfortunately, I have no photographs of Tony to share, but in hindsight, I have to say it was difficult to tell if he looked like Hess because Tony was so overweight and had a very fleshy face, whereas Hess was very lean and quite gaunt. Tony did have very dark hair, though, and a slight Germanic look.”

Peter added, “Tony was something of a drinker, but I still feel his claim was credible. "Curiously, Tony’s great pleasure was the piano and playing Wagner in particular. You’d often find him in the pub with that dreamy, trance-like look pianists often have as they play, as he’d perform piece after piece by the great German composer. It definitely makes you think.”

The Chronicle has been unable to verify Peter’s claim that the man we have referred to as Tony was the illegitimate son of Rudolf Hess. Nor do we claim there is any truth whatsoever in the claim. However, we feel the story is of historic interest in regard to the local area and thus deserving of the oxygen of publicity.

The fact that Hess was housed in Abergavenny during the war years, and allowed such accommodating and generous freedoms is a bit peculiar by any measure, and anything that follows in the wake of that highly unusual fact is worthy of discussion.