Duckers & Diving: Rudolph the red-nosed Nazi

THIS week our historically-curious correspondent ponders the big question: Did Hitler’s deputy live in Birmingham and drink in a Hall Green boozer?

So the German market has arrived in Birmingham.

I like the German market – it’s different and sort of symbolises the start of Christmas.

But this year it comes, coincidentally, amidst a wonderful mystery. Did Adolf Hitler’s deputy Rudolph Hess ever live in Birmingham?

And was he a frequenter of The Shaftmoor pub in Hall Green between the wars? Have I gone mad? Probably.

And if there are similarities to the story about whether Hitler resided in Liverpool for a few months when a failing painter, there is some flimsy evidence for the Hess in Hall green theory.

And the story has an impeccable source – or someone who served the sauce to be more exact. It is a former Shaftmoor barmaid of about 25 years ago.

Her assertion, as told to me, is that some of the older regulars – they would have had to have been in their 70s at the time – swore blind that Hess used to drink in the hostelry.

There are musings that there could have been some relationship with long disappeared industrial conglomerate Lucas which was based nearby.

Perhaps a look-a-like, I hear you say.

But a strange sort of claim if there was no substance to it at all. And, of course, Hess was an Anglophile.

After all, in 1941 he undertook a remarkable mission, flying solo to Scotland in an attempt to negotiate peace with the UK. The aim was to contact Douglas Douglas-Hamilton, 14th Duke of Hamilton, with whom Hess had a tenuous connection.

He was arrested and became a prisoner of war, tried at Nuremberg and sentenced to life imprisonment, which he served at Spandau Prison, Berlin, where he died in 1987.

No record that I can find of him living for a spell in England.

Oh well, another Duckers shaggy Nazi story goes the way of many before it.

But an hour or two spent in the company of a barmaid can never be called wasted time!