The Grand Alliance (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1950). Volume 3 of Churchill’s magnificent history of World War II, full of not just the author’s recollections but also his directives, telegrams, and other documents that illuminate the British government’s pursuit of the war .

Ilse Hess,

(London: Britons Publishing Co., 1954). Hess’s letters to his wife and son from England, Nuremberg, and Spandau Prison .

James Douglas-Hamilton,

Motive for a Mission (London: Macmillan, 1971). As the son of the Duke of Hamilton, Douglas-Hamilton grew up immersed in the Hess mystery. Surprisingly, though, his book is more about Haushofer than either Hamilton or Hess. Haushofer emerges as a fascinating and tragic figure: with ties to both the Nazis and the resistance, he ended up despising himself and welcoming his death at the hands of the Gestapo .

W. Hugh Thomas,

Hess: A Tale of Two Murders (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1988). Thomas, a British surgeon who examined Spandau’s inmate, discovered to his amazement that he had none of the scars that should have remained from Hess’s World War I injuries. Thomas concluded that the man who died in prison in 1987 couldn’t have been Hess. His theory was that Himmler shot down the real Hess over the North Sea, then sent his carefully schooled double to England. Thomas’s 1979 book

The Murder of Rudolf Hess

makes many of the same arguments. A 1989 Scotland Yard report reasonably concluded otherwise .

John Costello,

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