Letter: Tell the truth about Hess

Phillip Knightley is right to call on the Government to release the Hess files ("Surely it's time for the truth", 24 August). That should get to the bottom of the suspicions, still held, that sections of the British ruling class advocated a deal with Hitler in 1940/41 that would have given him a free hand with Russia while "saving" the Empire.

The Cabinet might also wish to release files on Britain's use in 1945/46 of the atom scientists Werner Heisenberg and Otto Hahn, and, notoriously, the pursuit after 1945 of the Nazis' lethal alternative to nuclear power, hydrogen peroxide - including the employment by Vickers at Barrow, and elsewhere, of various specialists and technicians associated with the Third Reich.

Simon Matthews

Sen Mac Mathna

London E5