HESS Rudolf Hess was born into the house of a prosperous German import-export merchant in the Egyptian seaport of Alexandria in 1894 .sx The firm , Hess & Co. , had been founded almost thirty years earlier by his grandfather , a self-made man who had married well .sx His father , Fritz Hess , ran the business and his family with the punctilious formality and sternness natural to the age .sx The household revolved around his convenience .sx For Rudolf and his brother , Alfred , born three years after him in 1897 , he was an inhibiting , frightening presence who seldom showed affection ; it was only later that Rudolf Hess discovered his father's real fondness for them .sx Fritz's circle of acquaintance and his outlook were narrowly German and business-orientated ; Hanfstaengl , meeting him in later years , described his conversation as banal , his mentality that of a bowling club member , an estimate that seems borne out by the few anecdotes Rudolf Hess told about his father .sx So Rudolf was sent first to a one-room school serving the small German community , and then , from the age of twelve , taught at home by his mother and tutors .sx It was accepted that he would follow his father into the family firm .sx All the pleasantest memories of childhood which returned to him in later years were connected with his mother and the beauty of sky and sea , garden and desert shared with her .sx When he read the names of stars , they evoked her image under the shining Egyptian night as she pointed them out and identified them .sx Exceptionally beautiful sunsets recalled the blazing colours he had watched with her from the roof garden of their substantial villa in the coastal suburb of Ibrahimieh .sx " What a paradise it was in our garden at the edge of the desert , " he reminded her in 1951 .sx " Do you remember how we would gather violets together and how glorious they smelled .sx ..? " From confinement in Landsberg he wrote to Ilse Pr o hl :sx " One's whole youth is incorporated in one's mother .sx She is part of one's being , one's own original essence - even today .sx .. without her one would have become someone else .sx " .sx Every summer from 1900 Fritz Hess took his family 'home' to Germany to holiday in a large house he had had built in Art Nouveau style below the hamlet of Reicholdsgr u n in the Fichtel mountains of northern Bavaria .sx It was not far from the village of Wunsiedel , where his father's forbears had been master shoemakers .sx No doubt this and the isolated position in hilly country so different from the low coastal plain of Egypt recommended the place ; it could not have been desire for society , nor it seems for culture .sx It was not until Rudolf was fourteen and placed in a boarding school in Bad Godesberg on the Rhine that he developed a love of music , particularly Beethoven , which lasted throughout his life .sx Hanfstaengl recalled that the only time he ever established brief personal , as opposed to professional , contact with Rudolf Hess was during a social get-together at Hess's house in 1933 :sx Hess asked him to play Beethoven and told him how he had discovered his love for the great man's works while a pupil at the Evangelical School at Godesberg .sx As a man , Hess was withdrawn and difficult to know ; his adjutant Leitgen described him as coming out of his shell only in the small circle of his brother and parents .sx His wife Ilse said that he had difficulty in opening up to others .sx He was also highly sensitive .sx Projecting these traits back to his schooldays and remembering the sheltered life he had lived until then in the restricted family circle , it can be assumed that things were not easy for him as a boarder at Bad Godesberg .sx He was known there as " the Egyptian " , partly perhaps because of his dark hair and complexion ; it was an epithet which stuck to him throughout his years in the Nazi Party .sx In class he proved well above average in maths and the sciences , and his teachers suggested he should study engineering or physics at university .sx This accorded with his own inclinations and lack of any desire to follow his father into the family business , but Fritz Hess would not hear of it .sx As the future head of the firm , he was to have a commercial training .sx Thus , after three years at Bad Godesberg , the seventeen-year-old was sent to the Ecole Sup e rieur de Commerce at Neuch a-circ tel , Switzerland , and , after a disinterested year there , he was apprenticed to a firm in Hamburg to learn the practical side of trading .sx War came as a personal , emotional release for him .sx Strong as he was in mathematical and practical abilities , he was also a dreaming idealist with fervent emotional drives which became visible on occasions in his deep-set greenish eyes .sx The coming of war at the end of July 1914 was surely one such .sx It found him at the villa at Reicholdsgr u n on holiday with his family - now augmented by a little sister , Margarete ( Grete ) , born long after the boys in 1908 .sx For years , like all Germans , he had been exposed to an insistent chorus of triumphal expansionist aspiration .sx It was proclaimed from every organ of Government and State , from press and lectern , led by the Kaiser , Wilhelm II himself , who called for a German " place in the sun " alongside ( more practically at the expense of ) the older colonial empires as metaphorically he brandished the " mailed fist " that would assure this world power .sx 'Weltpolitik' was the name of the exercise - 'world policy' as opposed to the traditional Prusso-German continental policy .sx It was supported by big business and finance and more reluctantly by the Prussian ruling class of soldiers and officials who leant their agreement in the hope that it would divert internal social and , as it was believed , pre-revolutionary pressures caused by the rapid industrialisation of the country , thus enabling them to preserve their power and status beside the Kaiser at the head of the empire .sx The policy was also supported by the Navy , a parvenu service which had hardly existed in the previous century and then only as the coastal arm of the Prussian Army .sx The means used to bring the claims of the Navy before an essentially land - orientated nation gathered terrific momentum until the inspiration and creator of the new German fleet , Admiral Tirpitz , had become a major political force .sx Rudolf Hess was one of the thousands enthused by the naval propaganda .sx Whether this was because he was working in the commercial port of Hamburg , whether it had something to do with his Egyptian background , childhood glimpses of British battle squadrons or the ever - present impression of the power of the sea empire which held this cross - roads between east and west , or whether perhaps it was simply caused by his need to find something more inspiring to feed his idealism than trade and ledgers is unclear .sx Whatever the reasons , he had developed an interest in warships and naval history which he was never to lose .sx Some years later he told his brother that it started while he was working in Hamburg :sx he had learnt K o hler's Fleet Calendar by heart and knew the vital statistics of all the principal German warships .sx It was also during this time immediately prior to the war that the German architects of Weltpolitik in the Foreign Ministry and in the Kaiser's cabinets , and powerful backers like the shipping magnate Albert Ballin were confronted with the contradictions inherent from the first , namely that the propaganda needed to awaken the German people to their world mission and the huge naval building programmes required to support it first alarmed Great Britain , whose world position rested on her unchallengeable fleet , then forced her into a hostile alliance with France and Russia .sx The German Chancellor , Bethmann-Hollweg , and his Foreign Minister made great efforts to curb Tirpitz and smooth British feathers ; indeed , they were sufficiently successful that , by July 1914 , when they provoked what they believed to be the inevitable showdown with Russia and France , they still hoped that the pacifist wing of the British Government would prevail and keep the island empire out of their continental war .sx As the crisis broke , Bethmann sent Albert Ballin to London to sound out the reaction .sx Returning to Berlin , he reported that no British cabinet minister had stated unequivocally that the British Government would support France if she were attacked ; and , misled by the strong pacifist sentiment of several ministers and a general feeling in the country that what happened in the Balkans - seat of the Austro-German pretext for war - was none of their concern , Ballin was able to conclude that the British decision would turn on Germany's intentions towards France .sx Thereupon Bethmann called in the British Ambassador :sx Germany had no desire to " crush " France in any conflict which might arise and , " provided that the neutrality of Britain were certain , every assurance would be given to the British Government that the Imperial [German] Government aimed at no territorial expansion at the expense of France " .sx The British Foreign Secretary , Sir Edward Grey , read this note of the conversation with despair :sx that anyone should propose a bargain which would reflect such discredit not only on Great Britain's honour but also on her common sense and instinct for self-preservation .sx .. He replied that His Majesty's Government could not entertain the proposal ; it would be a disgrace from which the good name of the country would never recover .sx Rudolf Hess could not have known of these exchanges or the delusions prevailing among the Kaiser's ministers as they braced themselves for the leap into the dark of European war , but twenty-five years later , as Hitler's deputy , preparing to follow his F u hrer into a second European war , he was animated by the same illusions about the exigencies of Britain's honour and self-preservation - illusions which continued to shimmer in his imagination long after England had once again been forced into the hostile camp .sx At the end of July 1914 the young Hess , a few months past his twentieth birthday , was concerned only with enlisting for the front .sx A skilfully managed press campaign had convinced Germans that they were encircled by an envious coalition jealous of their success and determined to invade and crush the Fatherland .sx Even the Socialists , who had been appealing the previous week for international workers' solidarity and " Down with War " , were swept up in ardent nationalism .sx When the Kaiser proclaimed , " I no longer know parties - only Germans , " they rallied behind him .sx " Brilliant mood , " the chief of his naval cabinet wrote in his diary , " the Government has succeeded very well in making us appear the attacked .sx " .sx Everywhere the call to arms was greeted with enthusiasm .sx In Munich , Adolf Hitler , living a lonely , rootless existence as a view-card painter and copier joined the cheering multitudes in the Odeonsplatz and , eyes shining , waved his hat high to 'deliverance' from the aimlessness and frustration , " from the vexatious moods of my youth " .sx Similar emotions gripped Rudolf Hess in Reicholdsgr u n. Rebelling openly for the first time against his father's determination to make him a businessman , he sped off to Munich to volunteer as a trooper in the cavalry , " firmly resolved " , as he wrote to his parents on 3 August , " to play my part in giving these barbarians and international criminals the thrashing they deserve " .sx He added that he had just read that enemy aircraft had been buzzing across the borders before the outbreak of war and that the French in Metz had attempted to sow cholera bacilli in the wells .sx " It makes one's hair stand on end just to think of it .sx " .sx Both his parents replied with their blessing , his father ending his letter , " now farewell , dear Rudi , acquit yourself well , we all embrace you heartily and send you most affectionate greetings and kisses .sx Your Papa .sx " .sx The regiment Hess applied to join was over-subscribed , but on 20 August he enrolled as a private in the 7th Bavarian Field Artillery , then transferred for some reason a month later to the 1st Reserve Battalion of the e lite 1st Bavarian Foot ; " Rejoice with me , " he wrote home , " I am an infantryman .sx "