The phoney peace
From Dr David Stafford Sir: Peter Padfield's assertion (Letters, 19 January) that in 1941 Hitler was prepared to withdraw from 'the whole of western Europe', that this formed part of the socalled Hess peace package, and that no trace of it can be found in the Public Record Office both defies credibility and raises an immediate question: namely, how then does Mr Padfield know all about it?
I have just edited a book on Hess's flight to Scotland, Flight from Reality, written by a team of serious scholars. This book reveals that conspiracy theories about the Hess mission can be attributed mostly to a deliberate British campaign of deception designed to take advantage of the flight for diplomatic purposes and targeted at the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, others have been caught in its net, including many subsequent writers. No wonder the crucial documents never show up; they never existed.
David Stafford
Centre for Second World War Studies. University of Edinburgh, Scotland
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