Nazi novel isn’t thrilling enough

THE MISSION: A Novel About the Flight of Rudolf Hess, by Jerome Tuccille and Philip Sayetta Jacobs, Donald I. Fine, 228 pages, $18.95.

After Rudolf Hess was found with a cord around his neck at Berlin’s Spandau Prison on the afternoon of Aug. 17, 1987, dead of an apparent suicide, incomplete obituaries teased historians with one of World War II’s foremost mysteries.

Why did Hess, the Deputy Fuhrer of the Third Reich, parachute into Scotland in 1941? Was he there, as he claimed, to sue for a separate peace with the British government? Did he act alone?

Tuccille and Jacobs’ novel imagines Hess having Hitler’s blessings at the outset, but not after the bungled mission becomes an international embarrassment.

The yarn opens on May 10, 1941, when Hess takes off from Augsburg, Germany, in a custom-made aircraft designed to outmaneuver British Spitfires.

He believes his flight will change the course of the war if he can only persuade Britain not to attack Germany’s western flank while Hitler attacks Russia on the east. Hitler, in turn, would stop bombing Britain.

Hours later the 47-year-old pilot loses speed over Scotland and jumps as his plane bursts into flames.

Hess is rushed to a Glasgow infirmary by suspicious Scotsmen who think there’s something peculiar about the beetle-browed German who says in perfect English that his name is Capt. Alfred Horn of the Luftwaffe and that he has business with the Duke of Hamilton.

Hess finally sees Hamilton, whom he met at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Later, the Duke is astounded to learn that Churchill knew of Hess’ plans all along. Hamilton, who agrees with many Britons that Churchill’s enmity toward the Germans is a sure path to self-destruction, finds himself the man in the middle of a game of deception.

The plot widens as the real Hess is hidden in a Welsh safehouse while a look-alike is imprisoned in the Tower of London.

Leave it to a newspaper reporter to gum up the works even more. Journalist Philip Renfield sees through the ploy and doggedly pursues the real Hess and the scoop of his career.

The novel falls apart when Renfield makes too many tiresome visits to the Liverpool flat of Jenny Wilkins, whose husband was Hess’ chauffeur in Wales before the loquacious lieutenant was shipped off to North Africa, where he conveniently died in combat.

The authors don’t give Hess enough to do in Wales. He bides his time by penning his memoirs and sparring with the visiting Lord Chancellor, Sir John Simon. Had they allowed the Nazi to flee Wales in a frantic chase through the British countryside the story might have lived up to its billing as another “Eye of the Needle.”

Richard R. Shaw is the NEWS editorial page assistant.