Body of Hitler's deputy Hess exhumed, grave to be destroyed

The remains of Adolf Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess have been exhumed and his grave will be destroyed, the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung reported Wednesday.

In recent years Hess' grave, in the northern Bavarian town of Wunsiedel, has become a pilgrimage site for neo-Nazis, with skinheads marching through the city of 9,500 residents, performing Nazi salutes and laying wreaths of flowers on the grave.

After citizens and local politicians asked the church responsible for the cemetery to stop the demonstrations, a church board voted to terminate the lease on the grave.

Hess' relatives resisted the ruling, and according to Süddeutsche Zeitung, one of his family members even filed a lawsuit to renew the lease. After intense negotations between the church board and Hess' family, however, the decision was made to exhume his remains.

Rudolf Hess committed suicide in a Berlin prison in 1987. During his career, he was one of Hitler's closest aides and was eventually promoted as the dictator's right-hand man. He eventually found himself marginalized within the Nazi ranks, however, and in 1941 he flew to Scotland in a bid to broker a peace deal with Great Britain, where he was arrested. At the end of World War II Hess was handed a life sentence at Nuremberg.

Hess' remains will now be cremated and scattered at sea.