The remains of Adolf Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess, have been removed from a graveyard in a small Bavarian town, after the site became a shrine for Neo-Nazis.

The remains were removed early Wednesday from a cemetery in Wunsiedel. The remains were cremated and the ashes were to be scattered in an unidentified body of water.

Hess's relatives and Lutheran church authorities in the town both agreed to the solution after his gravesite became a pilgrimage site.

Hess was captured in 1941 when he parachuted into Scotland on an apparent peace mission without Hitler's approval. He was captured and imprisoned for the remainder of the war. He was sentenced to life imprisonment at the Nuremberg trials in 1946.

He was imprisoned in Berlin's Spandau Prison until he hanged himself in 1987 at the age of 93.