Kohl Appeals to World War II Allies to Release Ailing Hess, 92

West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl has made a personal appeal to the present leaders of the World War II Allies in another effort to secure the freedom of imprisoned 92-year-old Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s former deputy and the last surviving major figure of the Nazi Era, it was disclosed Friday..

“I urgently appeal to you to mercifully release the prisoner into the bosom of his family,” Kohl wrote in identical letters sent July 21 to President Reagan, French President Francois Mitterrand, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev. “I believe that a pardon for Rudolf Hess is a dictate of humanity,” Kohl wrote.

Hess is the sole inmate of Spandau prison in West Berlin, guarded by troops of the four Allied powers. The Soviet Union has repeatedly vetoed appeals by the other three nations for Hess’ release on grounds that to do so would condone Nazism.

Unanimous approval by the World War II victors is needed to grant a pardon to the ailing prisoner, who has spent nearly four decades of a life sentence in the 19th-Century prison, the last 20 of them as its only inmate.

Kohl said Hess, a comrade of the Nazi dictator since the 1920s and his deputy in the Nazi Third Reich, is now an old and sick man whose life is near its end.

Hospitalized 6 Days

Hess was hospitalized for six days earlier this month for circulation problems but later sent back to his cell at Spandau and declared in “satisfactory” condition.

Kohl’s letter noted that the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal set up by the Allies after the war had convicted Hess in 1946 of crimes against peace and plotting a war of aggression.

But he stressed that Hess was acquitted on the capital charge of crimes against humanity and war crimes.

His sentence had long outlasted any reasonable punishment, and he deserved a humanitarian pardon, Kohl said.

Government spokesman Friedhelm Ost told a news conference Friday that Kohl had received no replies so far to his appeal, and he refused to speculate on the chances of what, in view of Hess’s age and fragility, could be the last formal German appeal for his release.

Hess’ lone flight to wartime Scotland in May, 1941, remains one of the lasting enigmas of the 20th Century.

Whether it was made with Hitler’s approval, to sue for peace, or to persuade the Allies to betray Moscow are points still argued by historians, and Hess is the personification of the mystery.

The doomed Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union began just weeks after Hess was captured in Britain, where he sat out the rest of the war undergoing interrogation, which is secret to this day and will remain classified until 2017.