The National Archives in Washington DC, together with its partners, has launched a new international online database making millions of records related to Nazi-era cultural property available online for the first time. Over 2.3 million pages of documents created or received by the US Government during and after the Second World War as part of its investigations into cultural assets that were looted or lost during the war, are now available through the portal. It is hoped that the new database will enable families and institutions to research their losses, and historians to study newly accessible materials on the history of this period. In related news, the UK’s National Archives has been working with the Commission for Looted Art in Europe to catalogue and digitise over 950 files from its collection.
A 67-year-old man from Rothesay has described how his father pulled Adolf Hitler’s deputy Rudolf Hess from his plane after it crashed on a farm to the south of Glasgow in May 1941. Hess had flown solo for nearly 1,000 miles from Bavaria in a Messerschmitt Bf 110, apparently on a peace mission before Germany’s invasion of Russia. According to George McKenzie, his father, Jack, took Hess to his farmhouse after Hess had surrendered his pistol, and then alerted the authorities. Hess was later sentenced to life imprisonment at the Nuremberg trials in 1945 and died at Spandau prison in 1987.