Researchers from the Military Medical Center. Walter Reed and the University of Salzburg performed DNA analysis from the only surviving blood sample of the mysterious "Prisoner 7". This man spent 40 years in the Spandau prison in the strictest secrecy, and his identity is reliably unknown to this day. Today, 70 years later, history has come to an end - with a probability of 99, 99% of the sample's DNA is the DNA of the Nazi Rudolf Hess.
On May 10, 1941, the combat Messerschmitt Bf-110 secretly takes off from Augsburg-Hounstetten airport in Germany, boldly passes the British air defense lines and flies deep into England. It was a one-way trip, the pilot jumped out with a parachute and surrendered to the authorities. He brought a secret treaty to London - the Nazi leadership wanted to conclude peace with the British in order to free their hands on the Eastern Front. But the deal did not take place, and Rudolf Hess, as the envoy was called, was tried at the Nuremberg Tribunal and ended his days in Spandau prison.
Around this story from the very beginning, rumors, secrets and conjectures were constantly floating around. Did Germany really need peace with the British, and why did they reject the generous offer at their most difficult hour? The secret services of different countries accused each other of manipulating details, and the fact that the GDR, under a direct decree of the Kremlin, prohibited contacts with "Prisoner No. 7" until the moment of his controversial death, gave rise to the myth of the substitution of Hess for a double. Indeed, there were enough people from all sides of the conflict who wanted to eliminate the messenger, to hide the ends.
In 1982, a prison doctor took routine tests from inmates at Spandau, and a carefully sealed blood sample from "Prisoner # 7" was sent to the archives. The details of the entire detective story can no longer be found, but today researchers have managed to get this sample, as well as find Hess's direct relatives and take DNA from them for study. The gene coincidence turned out to be ideal from the standpoint of modern knowledge in this area - the mysterious "Prisoner # 7" was indeed Rudolf Hess.