As WFB sketches the background, it was 1941; France had been conquered, and Hitler and Stalin had signed their non-aggression pact. Suddenly and secretly, Deputy Fuhrer Rudolf Hess flew to Britain and parachuted down, "intending personally to negotiate a peace between England and Germany. For his pains, Hitler sentenced him to death in absentia, Churchill put him in jail, and the Nuremberg court, five years later, sentenced him to life imprisonment." Twenty-four years after that, he remained the only prisoner in Spandau-the next to last having been released in 1966. Today's conversation is halting at times, owing to Wolf Hess's imperfect English, but illuminating on the general question of war crimes, and often moving on the specific case. AM: "I remember your father today as a very straightforward and a very simple man. And I think you'll agree, not a man of tremendous intellect. And I have always believed that it was the planned attack on Russia [by Germany] that completely unbalanced him. And he then searched back in his memory; he quite wrongly thought the Duke of Hamilton, whom he had met skiing ... before the war, was an important figure in England. As you know, dukes aren't, but your father thought he was, and he flew to Scotland in a brave, rash attempt to contact the Duke of Hamilton and negotiate a peace."