Hess's solo flight

One of the most unexpected and absurd turnings in the development of the Second World War:

On May 10, 1941, German official Rudolf Hess made an unauthorized visit to Britain. He was arrested after he broke his ankle in a parachute jump from his Messerschmitt, which crashed just south of Glasgow, Scotland. Hess, whose German title of deputy Führer put him in charge of the Nazi Party apparatus, was on a solo mission. He said he wanted to negotiate a peace in which Britain would be safe from attack if it gave Nazi Germany a free hand in Europe. Dismissed as insane by the British and Adolf Hitler, Hess remained in Allied imprisonment until his death in 1987.

According to the memoirs of Albert Speer, Hitler's main architect, Hitler was quite shocked by the betrayal of the second man in command Hess. Speer described it as one of the hardest blows to the plans of Hitler, as it laid open the internal struggles between the top Nazis.

Howstuffworks "United States Enacts the Lend-Lease Bill: January 1941-June 1941"