During the inter-war period he served as a judge before being forced out of office after the passing of the Nuremberg Laws by the Nazis in 1935, as he was classified as a "full-blooded Jew" due to his mother being Jewish, even though he was baptised a Protestant.

He emigrated with his family to Bolzano in Italy to escape Nazi persecution but was eventually forced to move back to Germany, though as a former war comrade of Hitler's he was granted protection and some privileges for a while.

However, his privileges were removed in 1941 and he spent the rest of the war as a forced labourer; his sister was murdered in Auschwitz but his mother managed to escape to Switzerland in 1945.

Following the war he began a new career in railway management and was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for his services to the Deutsche Bundesbahn.

[citation needed] On the outbreak of war he enlisted as an officer in the 2nd Royal Bavarian Reserve Infantry and was posted to the front line in Flanders, where he suffered a serious wound in October 1914.

[1] The Frontkämpferprivileg was instituted after Reichspräsident Paul von Hindenburg protested to Hitler that Jewish war veterans were being dismissed from state employment.

He moved with his family to Wuppertal, then in October 1937 emigrated to Bolzano in the German-speaking South Tyrol region of Italy, where he could continue the education in German of his 11-year-old daughter.

[2] Hess sought to lessen the impact of his racial classification by petitioning Hitler to make an exemption for himself and his daughter, who was classified as a "Mischling (crossbreed) 1st degree".

[2] Although Hitler turned down Hess's petition, a number of concessions were nonetheless made; Hess was allowed to continue receiving his pension, although at a reduced rate, he was exempted from the obligation to adopt the middle name "Israel" identifying himself as a Jew, and he was able to acquire a new passport that was not stamped with a red "J", enabling him to travel abroad—a privilege that Jews no longer possessed by this time.

Attempts to emigrate to Switzerland or Brazil failed, so they moved briefly back to Düsseldorf before resettling in Unterwössen, a small village in the district of Traunstein in the far south-east of Bavaria, where his daughter attended the Landschulheim Marquartstein, a local gymnasium and boarding school.

[citation needed] A follow-up letter was sent by Lammers in November 1940, informing Hess that "it is, however, the Führer's wish that you should not be subject to any further restrictions because of your ancestry beyond those required by law."

His wife Margarete remained in Unterwössen, where she lived with her parents, but his teenage daughter Ursula was forced to work in an electrical firm in Munich.

However, when their case was reviewed in 1942, Adolf Eichmann of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Security Main Office) personally ordered their deportation to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in Czechoslovakia.