Rudolf Hess

Rudolf Hess—yeah, that guy. He started out as one of Hitler’s right-hand men, basically his deputy, which, let’s be real, was not exactly a position you’d want to brag about at family gatherings. Climbing up the Nazi Party ranks, he was right there in the thick of it when the whole mess kicked off. But then, in 1941, Hess pulled one of the weirdest moves in WWII history: he just hopped in a plane and flew solo all the way to Scotland. No, not for a vacation or some epic sightseeing—he was trying to negotiate peace with Britain. Spoiler alert: the Brits weren’t having it. So, he crash-lands, gets caught, and that’s pretty much the end of his political career. The Nazis were like, “Yeah, we don’t know this dude,” and the Allies threw him in prison. Fast forward to the Nuremberg Trials, and Hess is in the hot seat, getting convicted for crimes against peace. Life sentence, no parole, locked up in Spandau Prison. He outlived almost everyone else from Hitler’s inner circle, stuck in that cell for decades, becoming this weird, ghostly relic of a crumbling regime. In 1987, after years of isolation, he died by suicide—still behind bars. Hess’s story is just bizarre—part fanatic, part mystery, and totally tragic.