November 3, 2025 • 57 mins
The film NUREMBERG, to be released November 7th, 2025 is an American drama written, co-produced and edited by James Vanderbilt. It is based on the 2013 book, THE NAZI AND THE PSYCHIATRIST by Jack El Hai..
In 1945, after his capture at the end of the Second World War, Hermann Göring arrived at an American-run detention center in war-torn Luxembourg, accompanied by sixteen suitcases and a red hatbox. The suitcases contained all manner of paraphernalia: medals, gems, two cigar cutters, silk underwear, a hot water bottle, and the equivalent of 1 million in cash. Hidden in a coffee can, a set of brass vials housed glass capsules containing a clear liquid and a white precipitate: potassium cyanide. Joining Göring in the detention center were the elite of the captured Nazi regime. Grand Admiral Dönitz; armed forces commander Wilhelm Keitel and his deputy Alfred Jodl; the mentally unstable Robert Ley; the suicidal Hans Frank; the pornographic propagandist Julius Streicher. Fifty-two senior Nazis in all, of whom the dominant figure was Göring.
To ensure that the villainous captives were fit for trial at Nuremberg, the US army sent an ambitious army psychiatrist, Captain Douglas M. Kelley, to supervise their mental well-being during their detention. Kelley realized he was being offered the professional opportunity of a lifetime: to discover a distinguishing trait among these arch-criminals that would mark them as psychologically different from the rest of humanity. So began a remarkable relationship between Kelley and his captors, told here for the first time with unique access to Kelley's long-hidden papers and medical records.
Kelley's was a hazardous quest, dangerous because against all his expectations he began to appreciate and understand some of the Nazi captives, none more so than the former Reichsmarshall, Hermann Göring. Evil had its charms.
Joining me to discuss, NUREMBERG and the book the film is based on THE NAZI AND THE PSYCHIATRIST: Hermann Goring, Dr. Douglas M. Kelley, and a Fatal Meeting of Minds at the End of WWll—Jack El-Hai
In 1945, after his capture at the end of the Second World War, Hermann Göring arrived at an American-run detention center in war-torn Luxembourg, accompanied by sixteen suitcases and a red hatbox. The suitcases contained all manner of paraphernalia: medals, gems, two cigar cutters, silk underwear, a hot water bottle, and the equivalent of 1 million in cash. Hidden in a coffee can, a set of brass vials housed glass capsules containing a clear liquid and a white precipitate: potassium cyanide. Joining Göring in the detention center were the elite of the captured Nazi regime. Grand Admiral Dönitz; armed forces commander Wilhelm Keitel and his deputy Alfred Jodl; the mentally unstable Robert Ley; the suicidal Hans Frank; the pornographic propagandist Julius Streicher. Fifty-two senior Nazis in all, of whom the dominant figure was Göring.
To ensure that the villainous captives were fit for trial at Nuremberg, the US army sent an ambitious army psychiatrist, Captain Douglas M. Kelley, to supervise their mental well-being during their detention. Kelley realized he was being offered the professional opportunity of a lifetime: to discover a distinguishing trait among these arch-criminals that would mark them as psychologically different from the rest of humanity. So began a remarkable relationship between Kelley and his captors, told here for the first time with unique access to Kelley's long-hidden papers and medical records.
Kelley's was a hazardous quest, dangerous because against all his expectations he began to appreciate and understand some of the Nazi captives, none more so than the former Reichsmarshall, Hermann Göring. Evil had its charms.
Joining me to discuss, NUREMBERG and the book the film is based on THE NAZI AND THE PSYCHIATRIST: Hermann Goring, Dr. Douglas M. Kelley, and a Fatal Meeting of Minds at the End of WWll—Jack El-Hai
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking
killers in True crime History and the authors that have
written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK. Every
week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
(00:30):
journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Good Evening. The film Nuremberg, to be released November seventh,
twenty twenty five, is an American drama written, co produced,
and directed by James Vanderbilt. It is based on the
twenty thirteen book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist by Jack L. High.
(01:01):
In nineteen forty five, after his capture at the end
of the Second World War, Hermann Gering arrived at an
American run detention center in war torn Luxembourg, accompanied by
sixteen suitcases and a red hat box. The suitcases contained
all manner of paraphernalia, medals, gems, two cigar cutters, silk underwear,
(01:25):
and the equivalent of one million dollars in cash. Hidden
in a coffee can, a set of brass vials housed
glass capsules containing a clear liquid and a white precipitate
potassium cyanide. Joining Gehring in a detention center were the
elite of the captured Nazi regime, Grand Amirald Doughnuts, Armed
(01:49):
Forces commander Wilhelm Kitel and his deputy Alfred Jodell, the
mentally unstable Robert Lay, the suicidal Hans Frank, and the
port propagandist Julius Stryker, fifty two Nazis in all whom
the dominant figure was gearing to ensure the villainous captives
(02:11):
were fit for trial in Nuremberg, the U. S Army
sent an ambitious army psychiatrist, Captain Douglas M. Kelly, to
supervise their mental well being during their detention. Kelly realized
he was being offered the professional opportunity of a lifetime
to discover a distinguishing trait among these arch criminals that
(02:34):
would mark them as psychologically different from the rest of humanity.
So began a remarkable relationship between Kelly and his captors,
told here for the first time with unique access to
Kelly's long hidden papers and medical records. Kelly's was a
hazardous quest, dangerous because, against all his expectations, he began
(02:58):
to appreciate understand some of the Nazi captives, none more
so than the former Reich Marshall Herman Gering. Evil had
its charms. This evening, we will discuss the upcoming film
Nuremberg and the book. The film is based on the
Nazi and the psychiatrist Herman Gering, doctor Douglas m kelly,
(03:23):
and a fatal meeting of the minds at the end
of World War Two, with my special guest, journalist and
author Jack el High. Welcome back to the program, and
thank you very much for this interview. Jack el High.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Thank you for having me here. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Thank you so much, and congratulations on your role as
executive producer in the upcoming film Nuremberg.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Thanks Dan, It's been a long, long journey in the
making of this movie, but I'm glad it's time his
and I hope it'll have an influence and an effect
on the people who watch it.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
You write right in the beginning of the book that
without the help of Doug Kelly, the oldest son of
your subject, Douglas m Kelly, you would not have attempted
to write this book, and you tracked him down in
two thousand and eight.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
Right I had learned about his father, doctor Douglas M. Kelly.
A few years earlier when I was researching my earlier book,
The Lobotomist, and doctor Kelly's name came up in that
research and it stuck in my mind. So after a
(04:39):
couple of years after The Lobotomist was published, I decided
to return to my old notes and to try and
track down any evidence of doctor Kelly's work. I had
heard that he was a psychiatrist working among the German
defendants at Nuremberg. That was very intriguing. I had heard
(05:01):
that he met his own end in an interesting and
sad way. So I found out that the usual archival
places that I would think would have papers of somebody
like doctor Kelly didn't, and then I set out to
find members of his family. It was difficult, but I
(05:24):
did track Doug the Sun Down in two thousand and
eight and asked him do you have anything of your
father's and he said yes and invited me to come
visit him where he was living in northern California at
the time. I did, hoping that I would get a
scrap book to look at, or maybe some file folders photographs,
(05:47):
But as it turned out, Doug had pulled up from
his basement, fifteen boxes of stock that had belonged to
his father, much of it papers and documents and medical
records and artifacts that he had brought back from Nuremberg
in nineteen forty six. So that really was the foundation
(06:10):
of my book, The Nazi and the Psychiatrist, And I
also leaned heavily on Doug's memories and interpretations of the
career of his father. That was very important.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
You right, also that you were very fortunate to interview
the men who maybe were the last living people who
worked at Mondorff and Nuremberg, with Douglas Kelly, John Dolubois
and Howard Trieste.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Yes, I didn't expect to be able to interview them.
They were quite old by the time I got to them,
and Howard Triest in particular plays an important, very important
role in the movie Nuremberg. But John Doliboy was very
important too. They both served as translators in the Nuremberg prison,
(07:02):
translating conversations between the top twenty two defendants in that
first trial, the International Military Tribunal, and various people who
wanted to talk to them, including doctor Kelly, but many
other people as well.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
This film is based on your book. You had the
world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival September seventh.
Can you tell us about the focus of this film
and Hermann Gering.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
My book covers forty five years of doctor Douglas Kelly's
life before, during, and after the time he spent with
the German defendants at Nuremberg. The movie covers about one
year of that span, so it really focuses on the
(07:56):
time in Nuremberg Kelly. Kelly was brought to work among
these defendants by the International Tribunal because they wanted a
psychiatrist's opinion on whether the defendants were mentally fit to
stand trial. So that's really a simple determination for a
(08:21):
skilled psychiatrist like doctor Kelly, determining whether they can they
know the difference between right and wrong and can understand
the charges against them. Doctor Kelly was very ambitious. He
was in He was already in the US military. He
was serving in various military hospitals in Western Europe, treating
(08:44):
soldiers who had had to leave the battlefield. My book,
The Nazi and the Psychiatrist covers forty five years in
the life of doctor Douglas M. Kelly, But the movie
Urnberg examines a one year long slice of that the
(09:05):
time that doctor Kelly was in Nuremberg with the assignment
of examining the twenty two members of the German High
Command who were defendants in this first Nuremberg trial to
determine whether they were mentally fit to stand trial. And
(09:26):
for a skilled psychiatrist like Kelly, that was a pretty
easy determination to make. He simply had to find out
whether they understood the charges against them and were capable
of knowing the difference between right and wrong. He was
a very ambitious man. He had been serving in the
(09:51):
US Army in military hospitals in Western Europe during the war,
helping service members who had been pulled out of duty
because they were suffering what today we would call PTSD,
but at that time he was called battle fatigue and
shell shock, terms like that. So he was around and
(10:13):
available and highly skilled. So he was ambitious, and he
wanted a more challenging task for himself. Given this wonderful
opportunity to spend time with the arch criminals of the
twentieth century, the leaders of the German government and military,
(10:36):
and so he decided to try to find out whether
these Germans in captivity shared any common psychiatric disorder or
what Kelly called a Nazi virus, and so much of
his time there was involved in trying to find that out.
(10:56):
He came to some interesting and frightening inclusions. And the
movie carries doctor Kelly through his entire time at Nuremberg
and then into the early weeks of his discharge and
returned to the US in nineteen forty six.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Now Russell Crowe, the actor, plays Hermann Gering, and Hermann
Gering emerges as unofficial leader of the twenty two Nazis.
Can you tell us about Hermann Gering? And right in
the beginning of the book, you talk about when the
(11:36):
Allies liberated the prisoners at the concentration camps, where Hermann
Gering's and his behavior. Right at the time that the
Allies liberated the prisoners.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
Herman Gearing was the highest ranking of all the German
leaders in captivity and that the Allies wanted to get
ready for try and initially, Gurring and several of the
other assumed to be defendants in the trial were held
in a town in Luxembourg called Mondorf, in a recommissioned
(12:13):
former hotel, and that's where doctor Kelly first traveled and
met with them, and Guring was immediately intriguing to Kelly
because not only because of his high rank he had
a multitude of positions in the German government, but he
(12:36):
was from most of the war had been designated Hitler's successor,
and Guring, Kelly found out, was charming, had a good
sense of humor. Everybody in the prison liked him in
a sense, but also Gurring. Kelly was not blind at
(12:58):
all to Gurring's dark side. He was ruthless, cold blooded
when it came to dealing with people when he had
been in power, and really not empathetic at all except
when it came to his own family, his wife and daughter.
(13:18):
So Kelly was drawn to during this prize specimen in
a sense, and they developed an interesting relationship. It was
not at all of friendship, but there was an affinity.
They were both similar in many ways, both had wrong egos,
(13:42):
both highly intelligent, both believed in their rightness most of
the time, and both were hard workers and determined to
get done whatever it was they set out to do.
And I think they recognized this, and even more important,
they were both master manipulators, and they set about manipulating
(14:06):
each other and being aware of the other's manipulations but
tolerating it because it helped them get what they wanted.
Kelly wanted insights into Gerngh's personality. He hoped to write
a book after his time in Nurberg, and in fact
did end up writing it. And Gering wanted some privileges
(14:29):
extended to his wife and daughter. They were both imprisoned
for a time, and he wanted to prepare himself to
use the trial, the forthcoming trial as a platform to
really give his defense of the Nazi government and to
(14:49):
justify the loyalty of he and his fellow defendants, loyalty
for Hitler and their cause.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
Right away, Kelly notes Gerring's addiction to opiates. What does
he do in this regard to wean him off these drugs.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
Kelly had seen that Guring arrived in captivity having cornered
nearly the world's entire supply of a particular narcotic called paracodine,
And this was a painkiller type drug that Guring had
(15:33):
begun taking that had gotten addicted to in the nineteen
thirties after some dental work and also after some earlier
gunshot wounds he had received to his leg and so
the allies above all wanted their prisoners to be healthy
(15:53):
for the upcoming trial. So Kelly immediately set about weaning
Guring off of the paracodine and succeeded in doing that.
He also wanted during to lose weight because Guring had
some heart problems, and the last thing anybody wanted was
(16:15):
for Gurring to die of a heart attack before the
trial began. So he was a psychiatrist, but he was
attending to the health like any physician would of these prisoners.
And this brought up some conflicts. Who was Kelly responsible
(16:37):
to Was it the US military? He was an officer
in the US Army. Was it the international Tribunal that
had brought him to Luxembourg and later Nuremberg to spend
time with these men to assess them. Or was it
these men who were in his charge, often as patients.
So these were some of the conflicts that Kelly fae
(17:00):
while he was meeting with and assessing Gurring and the
other prisoners.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
What was Gering's initial attitude towards this prosecution and the
upcoming tribunal?
Speaker 3 (17:15):
Gering knew that a judgment like that was inevitable. He
knew that he and the others would probably be tried.
And as he told Kelly in as it's recounted both
in my book and in the film Nurmberg, the way
Guring thought of it was, you won, we lost. That's
(17:41):
why we are on trial. And we won and you lost.
Your top leaders would be on trial, and that he
would not give the Allies any kind of moral, higher
standing or superiority in the matter to try him. But
he knew it was coming, and that's why he wanted
(18:03):
to prepare for his defense of the Nazi regime. He
and the other defendants also knew that for many of
them not all, execution was likely, and they did not
want to be executed in the way that they anticipated
the Allies would do it by hanging. To them, that
(18:26):
was type of capital punishment given to highway thieves and
common criminals. They would rather have been shot by firing squad.
That did not happen, and in the end Gouring even
cheated the hangman.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
In Kelly's looking for a Nazi personality, what tools psychological
tools did he utilize in that pursuit.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
He had a lot of tools at his disposal. The
one he relied on the most was a type of
test called the ink blot test. A lot of people
have seen these ink blot images and are familiar with
this test. There are ink blots on standardized cards that
(19:15):
show abstract images. There's nothing representational in them, but the
subject is asked to describe what he sees in the images.
And Kelly had been working with the Rushok test for
years before he arrived in Nuremberg and was considered one
(19:36):
of America's most gifted interpreters of Rorshoch results. So that
was one and then there was another test called the
thematic app perception test, similar to the Rushock in that
the subjects are look at a card and are asked
to give their interpretations, but this time the card did
(19:59):
show a representational photo that might have appeared in a
magazine or something like that. And he also gave all
members of the group IQ tests. They all tested average
or above. And he relied too, on many, many hours
of one on one interviews in the cells with the
(20:23):
German defendants, especially with Gurring. He spent countless hours talking
with Gurring, trying to understand this man's mind and in
the case of all of them, trying to see if
they had points in common that would indicate why they
committed the heinous crimes they had, crimes against humanity, war crimes, genocide,
(20:47):
all of that. So the one on one conversations and
the transcripts of those conversations were very important to Kelly,
also to me once I found them among the boxes
that Doug Kelly brought up from his basement.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Let's Jesus as an opportunity to stop to hear these messages. Now,
with the Rorschach tests, what was his overall impression of
the twenty two Nazis? What did he get, especially from Gearing?
In these tests.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
The results varied quite a bit from person to person,
but in Gerring's case and several of the others, he
found highly narcissistic personalities, people whose worlds revolved around themselves
and their own quests in life for what they wanted.
(21:41):
In the case of Gurring, who Kelly considered a supreme opportunist,
it was a quest for power over the lives of others.
And even in their discussions, Guring talked about this and
probably would not have disagreed with the label of a
(22:02):
narcissist because what Guring told Kelly and everything Gerring said
has to be taken with big, big grains of salt.
The ideology of the Nazis, the anti Semitism and other
aspects of their ideology, was not that important to Gurring.
(22:23):
What was important to Gurring when he initially joined the
Nazi Party in the early nineteen twenties was that it
was small, that to him meant he could rise to
the top faster, and that much of its support came
from veteran German veterans of World War One, and he
believed those people would be necessary, It would be necessary
(22:48):
to have their support if any effort could be made
to topple the Weimar, the Democratic Weimar government in power
during the twenties. So Kelly also through the Rorshach testing
that Guring was highly imaginative. His responses to the images
(23:09):
he saw on the cards were more imaginative than most
of the other respondents there in Nuremberg, and that indicated
intelligence and what we would call today emotional IQ things
like that. So he Kelly believed that Guring was an
(23:30):
exceptional person, but that he had used his talents in
all the wrong ways.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
You write about that. The In preparation for the tribunal,
these prisoners were taken from Mondorf relative comfort of Mondorf
to Nuremberg and then under the commander andres So tell
us about the move to Nuremberg and what signaled that
with the prison.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
When I went in the spring of twenty twenty four
to visit the shooting of Nuremberg in Hungary, the first
scene I saw shot was the transport of the German
defendants from Luxembourg to Nuremberg aboard transport, a military transport plane,
(24:23):
so that the interior of that plane had been built
on the set. And what was wondrous to me was
here are all the defendants in one confined space together.
The scene played out in the movie exactly as I
had imagined it based on the research that I did,
(24:46):
and the film skillfully gives doctor Kelly in that scene
the opportunity to interact with the prisoners by performing a
magic trick them. Doctor Kelly from his childhood had been
interested in stage magic and had even made money for
(25:08):
a time as a magician at parties and things like that.
The prisoners, many of them, didn't know where they were
going when they were aboard this plane, but as the
plane flew low over Nuremberg and they saw how bombed
out it had been, and there are many recognizable buildings
(25:32):
to them. They knew where they were going, and that's
when it sank in to many of the prisoners that
there was going to be a trial and that this
was going to be a really difficult time for them.
Once in Nuremberg, their conditions were harsher. They were in
a prison run by Andrews, who is the commandant of
(25:56):
the Nuremberg Prison, which held not only these men, but
hundreds of other people. And he was a disciplinarian. He
had definite likes and dislikes among the prisoners, and he's
an important figure in the story. And fortunately, fortunately he
(26:16):
recorded his own account. He wrote a book about his
experience as the Nuremberg jailer, and that was a rich
source of material for me too.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
You write about the indictments that are officially given to
the defendants one by one, very vivid scene, and the
reaction from the defendants as well.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
Some of the defendants were stoic as they heard these
indictments that were read to them, and others were emotionally
reactive to it. They didn't like it, they protested it,
they lost their tempers. Robert Lay in particular, was one
(27:01):
who reacted violently to hearing the charges against him, And
that scene is shown in the film Nuremberg, and it
was a telling moment because it showed the defendants that
they're now passed the point of no return. They were
going to be charged pride, and from what they knew
(27:27):
themselves of their own experience as leaders in the Nazi government,
most likely convicted.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
Now, Kelly's job was to assess their mental fitness to
stand trial on the verge of this trial, and he
did his best to do that. And what was his
assessment at When he said he was finally finished with
that assessment.
Speaker 3 (27:51):
He made a report to the military tribunal saying that
all of the twenty two defendants were mentally metha llegal
standard of mental fitness to stand trial, with the one
possible exception of Robert Lay, who had been involved in
(28:13):
an air crash during or just after World War One
and had suffered brain damage afterwards. And Kelly believed that
this brain damage might have left him not fit, but
it was a moot point because Ley committed suicide before
the trial even began. So once Kelly had made that
(28:37):
determination of the prisoners, that's when he set out to
give the prisoners, his barrage of tests and assessment and
intensive interviewing that he did with him.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
At the same time that Gerring emerges as the trying
to rally the rest of the twenty two defendants or
twenty one defendants to defend themselves properly and not waiver
and present a unified front.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
Right, Guring really took that role seriously. In his own mind.
He was the de facto leader of what remained of
the German government, and so he had the opportunity to
talk with the other prisoners when during meals which they
(29:29):
usually ate together, and he tried to pull them to
the principle of remaining strong during the trial, not admitting
any doubt about their loyalty to Hitler or the rightness
of their government's cause. Not everyone accepted that. One who
(29:52):
made a bit of a show of not accepting Guring's
leadership was Albert Speer, who was the government architect and
in charge of the building of munitions. Speier was one
of the only ones who at times expressed remorse, but
Kelly came to believe that this was false remorse, and
(30:16):
in fact he detested Spear more than almost all of
the other prisoners.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
Can you tell us introduce Gustav Mark Gilbert, a psychologist,
why he had come to Nuremberg.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
Gustav Gilbert was a PhD psychologist with an academic background,
unlike Kelly, who had a clinical background as a psychiatrist,
and he arrived in Nuberg to work among the prisoners
a couple of months, maybe three months, even after Kelly
had arrived, and Gilbert's presence was there simply to Kelly
(31:01):
in his assessments, but the two men did not get along.
They both had the same interest in writing books after
their time with these prisoners, and at first they thought
they might collaborate on a book, but then their personality
(31:22):
differences watched that idea and they ended up writing books separately,
books that came out within a few weeks of each
other after Nuremberg. They were very different in temperament and
personality and circumstance. Doctor Gilbert was a native speaker of German.
(31:43):
His parents spoke German and he had learned it from them.
And he was Jewish, which Kelly was not, and so
he developed closer affiliations with a different group of prisoners
than Kelly had. Kelly was very outgoing, gregarious and did
(32:04):
not speak German and relied on the work of the
translators provided to him. And he had a circle, if
that's the right word, of prisoners that included Gouring, Alfred Rosenberg,
and some others who he talked with the most, who
(32:25):
just reacted to his personality better. And anti Semitism against
Gilbert may have played a role in that too, So
they were different. Gilbert remained in Nuremberg after Kelly had left.
I think he remained there throughout the trial. In his book,
Gilbert came to much different conclusions than Kelly had. Kelly's conclusion,
(32:50):
and this is very important in determining how Kelly led
his life after Nuremberg, was that there was no Nazi virus.
All of these men psychologically fell within a normal range.
They did not suffer from serious psychoses, in particular any
(33:12):
psychoses that they shared, and that because of that, Kelly
had reason to believe there's more of them around us
all the time, in every place and in every era,
and that they are dangerous people because of their opportunism.
They don't all go into government or military work, some
(33:33):
go into business, some go into every human endeavor, but
that they are willing to crush a large number of
their fellow citizens to gain control over their fellow citizens.
And so Kelly, right after his time in Nuremberg, devoted
(33:56):
several years to lecturing against the dangers of these kinds
of people who he felt certain existed in the US.
He could even identify them in the US. These were
opportunists who used racial tensions and who advocated segregation of
the races in the South and to prey on the
(34:20):
emotions of voters to climb onto the top. Many of
them became governors and senators. And Kelly believed that there
was this threat of incipient fascism that ran through US history,
and he even laid out a program for how to
(34:40):
stop it.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
Let Jesus as an opportunity to stop to hear these messages.
Now you talk about Kelly's conclusions after all of this
interaction with the defendants at Nuremberg. But Gilbert had a
different take, and he regarded than that see defendants as psychopathic, didn't.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
He Yes, he thought they were. Gilbert thought they were aberrant,
that they were psychologically disordered, and not all of them,
but many of them, and not normal. If you believe this,
as doctor Gilbert did, then your perspective is different, because
(35:25):
if you believe they suffer from psychiatric illness, that there
are in a sense monsters, and their behavior comes out
of their monstrousness or illness, then you're less likely, I think,
to hold them personally responsible, to think that they made
(35:45):
choices that led to all of these crimes that they
were charged with. That was very different from doctor Kelly, who,
I think it's fair to say, did not believe in
that kind of monster. He believed that they were more normal,
or at least representative of the human race as a whole,
(36:09):
and that the war was not going to end these
kinds of crimes by defeating them, that the trial was
not going to end these kinds of crimes by convicting them,
and that our only recourse was to prepare for more
of people like them in the future, and in by extension, forever.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
You write that Kelly's book was not well accepted. He
had a hard time even getting published and settled on
a pretty meager contract. His book was out of print
by nineteen forty seven. However, Gilbert's book was influential to
psychologists later on and was much better accepted, and he
(36:59):
fought called up with a book called the Psychology of
Dictatorship in nineteen fifty.
Speaker 3 (37:05):
Yes, well, Gilbert's perspective and his belief that these men
were deviant was a belief that went down very well
with the public at the time. After all, this long,
horrible war had just ended. Nobody wanted to even think
(37:26):
about fighting another war against people like this in the future.
We had a new United Nations that offered the hope
of preventing conflicts like this in the future. So people
just wanted to close the door on this kind of
(37:46):
fascism and authoritarianism that led to the genocide of the
Jews and all these other terrible crimes that the Nazis committed.
Kelly's book, on the other hand, left the or open
to a future when more genocides might happen, when more
rhymes against humanity might happen, and he urged people to
(38:09):
prepare for it, and that was not a message people
wanted to hear at that time.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
You write in this book too, about gearing at trial,
a twelve hour tirade espousing the virtues of Nazism. Very much.
This book captures so much of what Gering felt was true,
and his very strange, unusual and charismatic behavior right.
Speaker 3 (38:44):
And this is an area that the movie Nuremberg covers
in more detail than my book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist.
So in fact, by the time Gering got to the
witness stand in the spring of nineteen forty six, Kelly
was gone. He had already returned back to the States.
(39:08):
And for dramatic purposes, the movie has Kelly remaining a
little longer to be present in the courtroom when Gurring
is going on his defensive rant. And the movie also
pays more attention than does my book to Robert Jackson,
(39:29):
the US Supreme Court justice who Truman had named as
the chief prosecutor at this international military tribunal. And after
giving this very widely praised and powerful opening statement by
the prosecution, Jackson then fell into a trap of letting
(39:53):
Gouring say his stuff from the witness stand, and for
a time Gurring seemed to hold the power in the court.
He was giving all his defenses the Nazis were simply
being patriotic, loyal to their country, loyal to Hitler, And
(40:13):
it took a while for Jackson to regain his footing
and to present this gigantic volume of evidence that the
Allies had gathered against Gurring and the others, which showed
definitively that they had. They all, one way or another,
(40:34):
had a role in the Holocaust. Gurring in particular knew
of it, signed off on it, and helped it happen.
And that's when Guring's fortunes changed in the courtroom, once
he was faced with this mountain of evidence against him.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
A very vivid scene in your book is when a
trial everything seemed to be going well that day, Gearing commented,
but then they showed the film of the Allies going
into the concentration camps and all of that horror, and
even Garring knew that the tide had turned against them.
Speaker 3 (41:15):
Yes, that showing of the films from the death camps
was early in the trial, in December nineteen forty five,
so Kelly was still there, and it was a real
mood setter in the trial. Many of us now have
seen newsreels and films that show scenes like this, but
(41:38):
at the time no one had seen them yet, and
when it was shown in the courtroom, everyone was completely aghast,
including some of the defendants. And the defendants afterwards, after
the showing of those films had arguments in the prison
(41:59):
about who is responsible? You know, was this really representative
of what was happening in the camps, etc. Of course
Goering knew that it was. And it's also a very
powerful scene in the film Nuremberg. Seven minutes of the
movie is devoted to showing those very same black and
(42:22):
white films that were shown in the courtroom to the
moviegoing audience. And I've heard from many people who have
seen the film that it's so powerful, and I think
especially among younger viewers of the movie who may be
less familiar with what happened at the trial in Nuremberg
(42:43):
and even what happened in the death camps. It's a
very sobering moment.
Speaker 2 (42:50):
Absolutely. You right that Kelly was not surprised at the sentences,
and he was not so concerned with that sentencing, but overall,
what was his conclusion.
Speaker 3 (43:04):
In the end, most of the twenty two defendants, most
of them were convicted, not all, but most, and many
of them received death sentences as they anticipated. No, that
did not surprise Kelly, because he believed in their guilt
and believed in the terrible nature of their crimes. What
(43:31):
did surprise Kelly, And by this time he was back
in the US was the news he heard like everybody
else by reading it in the newspaper that on the
night before the scheduled executions, Herman Gering had taken took
a cyanide capsule that he had managed to hide in
(43:53):
his cell. He took his own life and thus cheated
the hangman and made a big impression on Kelly. Kelly
believed that this was Gerring's last and supreme act of
defiance against the Allied authorities. He was going to go
out his way not be hanged, and it remained in
(44:19):
his mind for years afterwards, and it was strongly in
his mind. Most likely, no one knows for sure when
Kelly decided in nineteen fifty eight to take his own
life using that same method cyanide.
Speaker 2 (44:41):
Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear
these messages. After Kelly came back from Nuremberg, he accepted
consulting work with the Winston Salem Police Force, and he
refined his use of narco hypnotic drugs. Also, in nineteen
forty seven, Kelly and his wife hat Dookie, had Doug
(45:05):
Kelly jor.
Speaker 3 (45:08):
Yes. The time he spent in Winston Salem really was
revealing of the changes that Nuremberg had made on doctor Kelly.
So in determining that the German defendants were not psychiatrically
(45:28):
disordered or ill in a serious manner, that made him wonder,
if psychiatry cannot explain the behavior of these men, what could.
And over the remainder of his life, Kelly made a
turn to criminology as a discipline that could perhaps account
(45:51):
for this kind of behavior. And so with that in mind,
he began working for police forces, first in Winston Salem,
and then when he took a teaching position in criminology
at UC Berkeley, he worked with the Berkeley Police Department.
So Doug the son grew up in a family and
(46:13):
in most of his memories are from the Berkeley era
in which there was a lot of discord in the
Kelly household. Doctor Kelly had developed a bad drinking problem,
the Duchie and Douglas had a troubled marriage. And also
doctor Kelly was really demanding as a father, intellectually demanding
(46:37):
of Doug and his siblings. And it was tough, and
that's why. And then when doctor Kelly decided to take
his own life on New Year's Day in nineteen fifty eight.
He did it in front of his family, and Doug
witnessed that at the age of ten. That's why I
consider Doug the Son to be the hero of the book,
(47:02):
because he survived all of that, came out of it intact,
really engaging, warm human being. I felt like I have
developed a friendship with him since the book came out.
We talk often, and I'm really in admiration of Doug.
So there's lots of threads to this story. The movie
(47:28):
presents one very important thread doctor Kelly's work in Nuremberg,
but there are others as well.
Speaker 2 (47:37):
Why do you think the doctor chose cyanide to commit
suicide very much like herman gering? And why did Doug
think his father committed suicide?
Speaker 3 (47:52):
Well, I'm with Doug on this. I mentioned earlier the
difficulties in doctor Kelly's life after he reached turned back
to the States, a professional crisis, what's more effective psychiatry
or criminology, marriage problems, drinking problems, and also he began
(48:14):
to feel constantly worried that the US government was targeting
him in the McCarthy era of the nineteen fifties, so
he was under a lot of press, a lot of pressure,
a lot of anxiety, and by the end he was
feeling that everybody was against him. His death was precipitated
(48:39):
by an argument he had with his wife. So doctor
Kelly went upstairs into his home office and laboratory brought
down this container of cyanide he had I think he
had it on hand for a variety of scientific, professional purposes,
(49:01):
and took a pension put it in his mouth on
the landing of the stairs in their home, in front
of everybody present. And I think it was an act
of defiance like Gurrings. In a sense. He was saying, Okay,
nobody cares him about me, I'll show you. And that
(49:22):
was similar to Gurring's approach to suicide. This is because
they are similar men. They were had strong men, They
wanted to make a bold statement at at the end
of each of their lives, and I think this is
what accounts for the similarity in how they decided to
(49:45):
kill themselves. It was not that Kelly was thinking, I'm
going to do it like herman Gurring, but because they
were similar types of men, the same route to suicide
appeal to each of them.
Speaker 2 (50:02):
Tell us about your work on this film and the
kind of scene we just spoke about this film.
Speaker 3 (50:11):
Its roots go way back to twenty eleven. Even before
I had written the book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist,
I had initially published an article same title in a
magazine called Scientific American Mind, which was at the time
Scientific Americans Neuroscience behavioral science magazine. I sent a link
(50:36):
to this story to the people in a production company
called Mythology, because they had earlier optioned my book The Lobotomist,
and I thought this might be of interest to them,
And it was especially to James Vanderbilt, who was involved
in that production company. And he has told me that
(50:58):
he read the article and never has it occurred to
him more quickly that this is a story that should
be a movie. And he was really intrigued by the
mouse game that During and Kelly had played and the
strange affiliation between them. And so James began working on
(51:23):
a screenplay, and over the years I saw three draft
of the screenplay. It kept getting better each time, and
I made my comments. I didn't see my role as
a defender of historical accuracy in this screenplay. It is
fundamentally accurate in a historical sense, but there are deviations
(51:46):
for dramatic purposes, but I saw myself as someone looking
at the screenplays and thinking, Okay, in the context of
a movie, does this story make sense? And is it effective?
Is it emotionally evolving and powerful? And I thought it
was definitely was. By the end. You mentioned my role
(52:10):
as executive producer. That's really not a job in a movie,
but more of a title one gets for services rendered,
and I think maybe my work with the screenplay was
what qualified me for that title. And so now that
(52:30):
the movie is out out there in the world, I'm
really pleased that I feel like I can honestly recommend
it the people that it is a powerful movie that
gets people thinking not only about what happened in the past,
but what's happening today and what we can do to
(52:52):
fight the forces of extremism and authoritarianism and fascism that
exists not just in our country but in many parts
of the world.
Speaker 2 (53:08):
You talk about this film being powerful as you viewed it.
September seventh, it debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival
and it had a resounding standing ovation for four minutes
afterwards that.
Speaker 3 (53:23):
Was remarkable to be in and to see the crowd
cheer for so long, and to give such a warm
welcome to James Vanderbilt, the director, and most of the
cast when they came on to the stage at the
end of the screening. This was a big crowd in
(53:46):
a huge two thousand seat theater that was full. So
it was an overwhelming and gratifying experience for me because
I want to see this story better known, and I
want the messages that the story carries to be out
there among more people. And there's no question that many
(54:09):
times more people will see this movie then will read
my book. They're different experiences, and powerful movie is not
the same thing as a powerful book. They're different things.
They try and serve different purposes. A movie is for entertainment.
(54:30):
A book should be entertaining. A nonfiction book should be entertaining,
but it should also be very informative. The film is
informative too, but in a different kind of way. It's
about emotional response. The premiere in Toronto in September was
really a wonderful experience, not just for me, but for
(54:53):
my family too. We were all there.
Speaker 2 (54:58):
Tell us about the release. When the Sony Pictures release
of Nuremberg.
Speaker 3 (55:04):
In the United States, Nuremberg will be released in I
think twelve hundred theaters around the country on November seventh.
In the UK it will be released on November fourteenth,
and then in about forty other countries. It'll have various
release times in November and December, so it will be
(55:28):
seen around the world by a large number of audiences
and I'm very happy about that.
Speaker 2 (55:36):
Yes, congratulations, It certainly Nuremberg will bring attention to your
extraordinary and very informative book, The Nazi and the Psychiatrist.
I want to thank you so much for coming on
and talking about The Nazi and the Psychiatrist and the
upcoming book based or movie based on your book, Nuremberg
(55:56):
November seventh release. Thank you so much for this interview
for people that might want to find out more about
this book. Do you have a website or do any
social media.
Speaker 3 (56:07):
I do have a website and there's certainly information about
the book on there. The url is l high dot com.
That's el hyphen Hai dot com. I am active on
social media too, on Twitter or x and blue Sky
and threads, and I also publish a monthly, free monthly
(56:34):
history newsletter called Damn History, and it's for readers and
writers of popular history, which is the category that I
think my work falls into. And anyone interested in the
newsletter can subscribe on my website.
Speaker 2 (56:49):
That sounds fantastic. Thank you so much, Jack L. High
for the Nazi and the psychiatrist. It's been a fantastic interview.
Thank you so much, and you have a great evening
and good night.
Speaker 3 (57:01):
Thank you, Dan, thanks for the invitation. Thank you
You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking
killers in True crime History and the authors that have
written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK. Every
week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
(00:30):
journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Good Evening. The film Nuremberg, to be released November seventh,
twenty twenty five, is an American drama written, co produced,
and directed by James Vanderbilt. It is based on the
twenty thirteen book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist by Jack L. High.
(01:01):
In nineteen forty five, after his capture at the end
of the Second World War, Hermann Gering arrived at an
American run detention center in war torn Luxembourg, accompanied by
sixteen suitcases and a red hat box. The suitcases contained
all manner of paraphernalia, medals, gems, two cigar cutters, silk underwear,
(01:25):
and the equivalent of one million dollars in cash. Hidden
in a coffee can, a set of brass vials housed
glass capsules containing a clear liquid and a white precipitate
potassium cyanide. Joining Gehring in a detention center were the
elite of the captured Nazi regime, Grand Amirald Doughnuts, Armed
(01:49):
Forces commander Wilhelm Kitel and his deputy Alfred Jodell, the
mentally unstable Robert Lay, the suicidal Hans Frank, and the
port propagandist Julius Stryker, fifty two Nazis in all whom
the dominant figure was gearing to ensure the villainous captives
(02:11):
were fit for trial in Nuremberg, the U. S Army
sent an ambitious army psychiatrist, Captain Douglas M. Kelly, to
supervise their mental well being during their detention. Kelly realized
he was being offered the professional opportunity of a lifetime
to discover a distinguishing trait among these arch criminals that
(02:34):
would mark them as psychologically different from the rest of humanity.
So began a remarkable relationship between Kelly and his captors,
told here for the first time with unique access to
Kelly's long hidden papers and medical records. Kelly's was a
hazardous quest, dangerous because, against all his expectations, he began
(02:58):
to appreciate understand some of the Nazi captives, none more
so than the former Reich Marshall Herman Gering. Evil had
its charms. This evening, we will discuss the upcoming film
Nuremberg and the book. The film is based on the
Nazi and the psychiatrist Herman Gering, doctor Douglas m kelly,
(03:23):
and a fatal meeting of the minds at the end
of World War Two, with my special guest, journalist and
author Jack el High. Welcome back to the program, and
thank you very much for this interview. Jack el High.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Thank you for having me here. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Thank you so much, and congratulations on your role as
executive producer in the upcoming film Nuremberg.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Thanks Dan, It's been a long, long journey in the
making of this movie, but I'm glad it's time his
and I hope it'll have an influence and an effect
on the people who watch it.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
You write right in the beginning of the book that
without the help of Doug Kelly, the oldest son of
your subject, Douglas m Kelly, you would not have attempted
to write this book, and you tracked him down in
two thousand and eight.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
Right I had learned about his father, doctor Douglas M. Kelly.
A few years earlier when I was researching my earlier book,
The Lobotomist, and doctor Kelly's name came up in that
research and it stuck in my mind. So after a
(04:39):
couple of years after The Lobotomist was published, I decided
to return to my old notes and to try and
track down any evidence of doctor Kelly's work. I had
heard that he was a psychiatrist working among the German
defendants at Nuremberg. That was very intriguing. I had heard
(05:01):
that he met his own end in an interesting and
sad way. So I found out that the usual archival
places that I would think would have papers of somebody
like doctor Kelly didn't, and then I set out to
find members of his family. It was difficult, but I
(05:24):
did track Doug the Sun Down in two thousand and
eight and asked him do you have anything of your
father's and he said yes and invited me to come
visit him where he was living in northern California at
the time. I did, hoping that I would get a
scrap book to look at, or maybe some file folders photographs,
(05:47):
But as it turned out, Doug had pulled up from
his basement, fifteen boxes of stock that had belonged to
his father, much of it papers and documents and medical
records and artifacts that he had brought back from Nuremberg
in nineteen forty six. So that really was the foundation
(06:10):
of my book, The Nazi and the Psychiatrist, And I
also leaned heavily on Doug's memories and interpretations of the
career of his father. That was very important.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
You right, also that you were very fortunate to interview
the men who maybe were the last living people who
worked at Mondorff and Nuremberg, with Douglas Kelly, John Dolubois
and Howard Trieste.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Yes, I didn't expect to be able to interview them.
They were quite old by the time I got to them,
and Howard Triest in particular plays an important, very important
role in the movie Nuremberg. But John Doliboy was very
important too. They both served as translators in the Nuremberg prison,
(07:02):
translating conversations between the top twenty two defendants in that
first trial, the International Military Tribunal, and various people who
wanted to talk to them, including doctor Kelly, but many
other people as well.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
This film is based on your book. You had the
world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival September seventh.
Can you tell us about the focus of this film
and Hermann Gering.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
My book covers forty five years of doctor Douglas Kelly's
life before, during, and after the time he spent with
the German defendants at Nuremberg. The movie covers about one
year of that span, so it really focuses on the
(07:56):
time in Nuremberg Kelly. Kelly was brought to work among
these defendants by the International Tribunal because they wanted a
psychiatrist's opinion on whether the defendants were mentally fit to
stand trial. So that's really a simple determination for a
(08:21):
skilled psychiatrist like doctor Kelly, determining whether they can they
know the difference between right and wrong and can understand
the charges against them. Doctor Kelly was very ambitious. He
was in He was already in the US military. He
was serving in various military hospitals in Western Europe, treating
(08:44):
soldiers who had had to leave the battlefield. My book,
The Nazi and the Psychiatrist covers forty five years in
the life of doctor Douglas M. Kelly, But the movie
Urnberg examines a one year long slice of that the
(09:05):
time that doctor Kelly was in Nuremberg with the assignment
of examining the twenty two members of the German High
Command who were defendants in this first Nuremberg trial to
determine whether they were mentally fit to stand trial. And
(09:26):
for a skilled psychiatrist like Kelly, that was a pretty
easy determination to make. He simply had to find out
whether they understood the charges against them and were capable
of knowing the difference between right and wrong. He was
a very ambitious man. He had been serving in the
(09:51):
US Army in military hospitals in Western Europe during the war,
helping service members who had been pulled out of duty
because they were suffering what today we would call PTSD,
but at that time he was called battle fatigue and
shell shock, terms like that. So he was around and
(10:13):
available and highly skilled. So he was ambitious, and he
wanted a more challenging task for himself. Given this wonderful
opportunity to spend time with the arch criminals of the
twentieth century, the leaders of the German government and military,
(10:36):
and so he decided to try to find out whether
these Germans in captivity shared any common psychiatric disorder or
what Kelly called a Nazi virus, and so much of
his time there was involved in trying to find that out.
(10:56):
He came to some interesting and frightening inclusions. And the
movie carries doctor Kelly through his entire time at Nuremberg
and then into the early weeks of his discharge and
returned to the US in nineteen forty six.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Now Russell Crowe, the actor, plays Hermann Gering, and Hermann
Gering emerges as unofficial leader of the twenty two Nazis.
Can you tell us about Hermann Gering? And right in
the beginning of the book, you talk about when the
(11:36):
Allies liberated the prisoners at the concentration camps, where Hermann
Gering's and his behavior. Right at the time that the
Allies liberated the prisoners.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
Herman Gearing was the highest ranking of all the German
leaders in captivity and that the Allies wanted to get
ready for try and initially, Gurring and several of the
other assumed to be defendants in the trial were held
in a town in Luxembourg called Mondorf, in a recommissioned
(12:13):
former hotel, and that's where doctor Kelly first traveled and
met with them, and Guring was immediately intriguing to Kelly
because not only because of his high rank he had
a multitude of positions in the German government, but he
(12:36):
was from most of the war had been designated Hitler's successor,
and Guring, Kelly found out, was charming, had a good
sense of humor. Everybody in the prison liked him in
a sense, but also Gurring. Kelly was not blind at
(12:58):
all to Gurring's dark side. He was ruthless, cold blooded
when it came to dealing with people when he had
been in power, and really not empathetic at all except
when it came to his own family, his wife and daughter.
(13:18):
So Kelly was drawn to during this prize specimen in
a sense, and they developed an interesting relationship. It was
not at all of friendship, but there was an affinity.
They were both similar in many ways, both had wrong egos,
(13:42):
both highly intelligent, both believed in their rightness most of
the time, and both were hard workers and determined to
get done whatever it was they set out to do.
And I think they recognized this, and even more important,
they were both master manipulators, and they set about manipulating
(14:06):
each other and being aware of the other's manipulations but
tolerating it because it helped them get what they wanted.
Kelly wanted insights into Gerngh's personality. He hoped to write
a book after his time in Nurberg, and in fact
did end up writing it. And Gering wanted some privileges
(14:29):
extended to his wife and daughter. They were both imprisoned
for a time, and he wanted to prepare himself to
use the trial, the forthcoming trial as a platform to
really give his defense of the Nazi government and to
(14:49):
justify the loyalty of he and his fellow defendants, loyalty
for Hitler and their cause.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
Right away, Kelly notes Gerring's addiction to opiates. What does
he do in this regard to wean him off these drugs.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
Kelly had seen that Guring arrived in captivity having cornered
nearly the world's entire supply of a particular narcotic called paracodine,
And this was a painkiller type drug that Guring had
(15:33):
begun taking that had gotten addicted to in the nineteen
thirties after some dental work and also after some earlier
gunshot wounds he had received to his leg and so
the allies above all wanted their prisoners to be healthy
(15:53):
for the upcoming trial. So Kelly immediately set about weaning
Guring off of the paracodine and succeeded in doing that.
He also wanted during to lose weight because Guring had
some heart problems, and the last thing anybody wanted was
(16:15):
for Gurring to die of a heart attack before the
trial began. So he was a psychiatrist, but he was
attending to the health like any physician would of these prisoners.
And this brought up some conflicts. Who was Kelly responsible
(16:37):
to Was it the US military? He was an officer
in the US Army. Was it the international Tribunal that
had brought him to Luxembourg and later Nuremberg to spend
time with these men to assess them. Or was it
these men who were in his charge, often as patients.
So these were some of the conflicts that Kelly fae
(17:00):
while he was meeting with and assessing Gurring and the
other prisoners.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
What was Gering's initial attitude towards this prosecution and the
upcoming tribunal?
Speaker 3 (17:15):
Gering knew that a judgment like that was inevitable. He
knew that he and the others would probably be tried.
And as he told Kelly in as it's recounted both
in my book and in the film Nurmberg, the way
Guring thought of it was, you won, we lost. That's
(17:41):
why we are on trial. And we won and you lost.
Your top leaders would be on trial, and that he
would not give the Allies any kind of moral, higher
standing or superiority in the matter to try him. But
he knew it was coming, and that's why he wanted
(18:03):
to prepare for his defense of the Nazi regime. He
and the other defendants also knew that for many of
them not all, execution was likely, and they did not
want to be executed in the way that they anticipated
the Allies would do it by hanging. To them, that
(18:26):
was type of capital punishment given to highway thieves and
common criminals. They would rather have been shot by firing squad.
That did not happen, and in the end Gouring even
cheated the hangman.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
In Kelly's looking for a Nazi personality, what tools psychological
tools did he utilize in that pursuit.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
He had a lot of tools at his disposal. The
one he relied on the most was a type of
test called the ink blot test. A lot of people
have seen these ink blot images and are familiar with
this test. There are ink blots on standardized cards that
(19:15):
show abstract images. There's nothing representational in them, but the
subject is asked to describe what he sees in the images.
And Kelly had been working with the Rushok test for
years before he arrived in Nuremberg and was considered one
(19:36):
of America's most gifted interpreters of Rorshoch results. So that
was one and then there was another test called the
thematic app perception test, similar to the Rushock in that
the subjects are look at a card and are asked
to give their interpretations, but this time the card did
(19:59):
show a representational photo that might have appeared in a
magazine or something like that. And he also gave all
members of the group IQ tests. They all tested average
or above. And he relied too, on many, many hours
of one on one interviews in the cells with the
(20:23):
German defendants, especially with Gurring. He spent countless hours talking
with Gurring, trying to understand this man's mind and in
the case of all of them, trying to see if
they had points in common that would indicate why they
committed the heinous crimes they had, crimes against humanity, war crimes, genocide,
(20:47):
all of that. So the one on one conversations and
the transcripts of those conversations were very important to Kelly,
also to me once I found them among the boxes
that Doug Kelly brought up from his basement.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Let's Jesus as an opportunity to stop to hear these messages. Now,
with the Rorschach tests, what was his overall impression of
the twenty two Nazis? What did he get, especially from Gearing?
In these tests.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
The results varied quite a bit from person to person,
but in Gerring's case and several of the others, he
found highly narcissistic personalities, people whose worlds revolved around themselves
and their own quests in life for what they wanted.
(21:41):
In the case of Gurring, who Kelly considered a supreme opportunist,
it was a quest for power over the lives of others.
And even in their discussions, Guring talked about this and
probably would not have disagreed with the label of a
(22:02):
narcissist because what Guring told Kelly and everything Gerring said
has to be taken with big, big grains of salt.
The ideology of the Nazis, the anti Semitism and other
aspects of their ideology, was not that important to Gurring.
(22:23):
What was important to Gurring when he initially joined the
Nazi Party in the early nineteen twenties was that it
was small, that to him meant he could rise to
the top faster, and that much of its support came
from veteran German veterans of World War One, and he
believed those people would be necessary, It would be necessary
(22:48):
to have their support if any effort could be made
to topple the Weimar, the Democratic Weimar government in power
during the twenties. So Kelly also through the Rorshach testing
that Guring was highly imaginative. His responses to the images
(23:09):
he saw on the cards were more imaginative than most
of the other respondents there in Nuremberg, and that indicated
intelligence and what we would call today emotional IQ things
like that. So he Kelly believed that Guring was an
(23:30):
exceptional person, but that he had used his talents in
all the wrong ways.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
You write about that. The In preparation for the tribunal,
these prisoners were taken from Mondorf relative comfort of Mondorf
to Nuremberg and then under the commander andres So tell
us about the move to Nuremberg and what signaled that
with the prison.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
When I went in the spring of twenty twenty four
to visit the shooting of Nuremberg in Hungary, the first
scene I saw shot was the transport of the German
defendants from Luxembourg to Nuremberg aboard transport, a military transport plane,
(24:23):
so that the interior of that plane had been built
on the set. And what was wondrous to me was
here are all the defendants in one confined space together.
The scene played out in the movie exactly as I
had imagined it based on the research that I did,
(24:46):
and the film skillfully gives doctor Kelly in that scene
the opportunity to interact with the prisoners by performing a
magic trick them. Doctor Kelly from his childhood had been
interested in stage magic and had even made money for
(25:08):
a time as a magician at parties and things like that.
The prisoners, many of them, didn't know where they were
going when they were aboard this plane, but as the
plane flew low over Nuremberg and they saw how bombed
out it had been, and there are many recognizable buildings
(25:32):
to them. They knew where they were going, and that's
when it sank in to many of the prisoners that
there was going to be a trial and that this
was going to be a really difficult time for them.
Once in Nuremberg, their conditions were harsher. They were in
a prison run by Andrews, who is the commandant of
(25:56):
the Nuremberg Prison, which held not only these men, but
hundreds of other people. And he was a disciplinarian. He
had definite likes and dislikes among the prisoners, and he's
an important figure in the story. And fortunately, fortunately he
(26:16):
recorded his own account. He wrote a book about his
experience as the Nuremberg jailer, and that was a rich
source of material for me too.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
You write about the indictments that are officially given to
the defendants one by one, very vivid scene, and the
reaction from the defendants as well.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
Some of the defendants were stoic as they heard these
indictments that were read to them, and others were emotionally
reactive to it. They didn't like it, they protested it,
they lost their tempers. Robert Lay in particular, was one
(27:01):
who reacted violently to hearing the charges against him, And
that scene is shown in the film Nuremberg, and it
was a telling moment because it showed the defendants that
they're now passed the point of no return. They were
going to be charged pride, and from what they knew
(27:27):
themselves of their own experience as leaders in the Nazi government,
most likely convicted.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
Now, Kelly's job was to assess their mental fitness to
stand trial on the verge of this trial, and he
did his best to do that. And what was his
assessment at When he said he was finally finished with
that assessment.
Speaker 3 (27:51):
He made a report to the military tribunal saying that
all of the twenty two defendants were mentally metha llegal
standard of mental fitness to stand trial, with the one
possible exception of Robert Lay, who had been involved in
(28:13):
an air crash during or just after World War One
and had suffered brain damage afterwards. And Kelly believed that
this brain damage might have left him not fit, but
it was a moot point because Ley committed suicide before
the trial even began. So once Kelly had made that
(28:37):
determination of the prisoners, that's when he set out to
give the prisoners, his barrage of tests and assessment and
intensive interviewing that he did with him.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
At the same time that Gerring emerges as the trying
to rally the rest of the twenty two defendants or
twenty one defendants to defend themselves properly and not waiver
and present a unified front.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
Right, Guring really took that role seriously. In his own mind.
He was the de facto leader of what remained of
the German government, and so he had the opportunity to
talk with the other prisoners when during meals which they
(29:29):
usually ate together, and he tried to pull them to
the principle of remaining strong during the trial, not admitting
any doubt about their loyalty to Hitler or the rightness
of their government's cause. Not everyone accepted that. One who
(29:52):
made a bit of a show of not accepting Guring's
leadership was Albert Speer, who was the government architect and
in charge of the building of munitions. Speier was one
of the only ones who at times expressed remorse, but
Kelly came to believe that this was false remorse, and
(30:16):
in fact he detested Spear more than almost all of
the other prisoners.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
Can you tell us introduce Gustav Mark Gilbert, a psychologist,
why he had come to Nuremberg.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
Gustav Gilbert was a PhD psychologist with an academic background,
unlike Kelly, who had a clinical background as a psychiatrist,
and he arrived in Nuberg to work among the prisoners
a couple of months, maybe three months, even after Kelly
had arrived, and Gilbert's presence was there simply to Kelly
(31:01):
in his assessments, but the two men did not get along.
They both had the same interest in writing books after
their time with these prisoners, and at first they thought
they might collaborate on a book, but then their personality
(31:22):
differences watched that idea and they ended up writing books separately,
books that came out within a few weeks of each
other after Nuremberg. They were very different in temperament and
personality and circumstance. Doctor Gilbert was a native speaker of German.
(31:43):
His parents spoke German and he had learned it from them.
And he was Jewish, which Kelly was not, and so
he developed closer affiliations with a different group of prisoners
than Kelly had. Kelly was very outgoing, gregarious and did
(32:04):
not speak German and relied on the work of the
translators provided to him. And he had a circle, if
that's the right word, of prisoners that included Gouring, Alfred Rosenberg,
and some others who he talked with the most, who
(32:25):
just reacted to his personality better. And anti Semitism against
Gilbert may have played a role in that too, So
they were different. Gilbert remained in Nuremberg after Kelly had left.
I think he remained there throughout the trial. In his book,
Gilbert came to much different conclusions than Kelly had. Kelly's conclusion,
(32:50):
and this is very important in determining how Kelly led
his life after Nuremberg, was that there was no Nazi virus.
All of these men psychologically fell within a normal range.
They did not suffer from serious psychoses, in particular any
(33:12):
psychoses that they shared, and that because of that, Kelly
had reason to believe there's more of them around us
all the time, in every place and in every era,
and that they are dangerous people because of their opportunism.
They don't all go into government or military work, some
(33:33):
go into business, some go into every human endeavor, but
that they are willing to crush a large number of
their fellow citizens to gain control over their fellow citizens.
And so Kelly, right after his time in Nuremberg, devoted
(33:56):
several years to lecturing against the dangers of these kinds
of people who he felt certain existed in the US.
He could even identify them in the US. These were
opportunists who used racial tensions and who advocated segregation of
the races in the South and to prey on the
(34:20):
emotions of voters to climb onto the top. Many of
them became governors and senators. And Kelly believed that there
was this threat of incipient fascism that ran through US history,
and he even laid out a program for how to
(34:40):
stop it.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
Let Jesus as an opportunity to stop to hear these messages.
Now you talk about Kelly's conclusions after all of this
interaction with the defendants at Nuremberg. But Gilbert had a
different take, and he regarded than that see defendants as psychopathic, didn't.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
He Yes, he thought they were. Gilbert thought they were aberrant,
that they were psychologically disordered, and not all of them,
but many of them, and not normal. If you believe this,
as doctor Gilbert did, then your perspective is different, because
(35:25):
if you believe they suffer from psychiatric illness, that there
are in a sense monsters, and their behavior comes out
of their monstrousness or illness, then you're less likely, I think,
to hold them personally responsible, to think that they made
(35:45):
choices that led to all of these crimes that they
were charged with. That was very different from doctor Kelly, who,
I think it's fair to say, did not believe in
that kind of monster. He believed that they were more normal,
or at least representative of the human race as a whole,
(36:09):
and that the war was not going to end these
kinds of crimes by defeating them, that the trial was
not going to end these kinds of crimes by convicting them,
and that our only recourse was to prepare for more
of people like them in the future, and in by extension, forever.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
You write that Kelly's book was not well accepted. He
had a hard time even getting published and settled on
a pretty meager contract. His book was out of print
by nineteen forty seven. However, Gilbert's book was influential to
psychologists later on and was much better accepted, and he
(36:59):
fought called up with a book called the Psychology of
Dictatorship in nineteen fifty.
Speaker 3 (37:05):
Yes, well, Gilbert's perspective and his belief that these men
were deviant was a belief that went down very well
with the public at the time. After all, this long,
horrible war had just ended. Nobody wanted to even think
(37:26):
about fighting another war against people like this in the future.
We had a new United Nations that offered the hope
of preventing conflicts like this in the future. So people
just wanted to close the door on this kind of
(37:46):
fascism and authoritarianism that led to the genocide of the
Jews and all these other terrible crimes that the Nazis committed.
Kelly's book, on the other hand, left the or open
to a future when more genocides might happen, when more
rhymes against humanity might happen, and he urged people to
(38:09):
prepare for it, and that was not a message people
wanted to hear at that time.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
You write in this book too, about gearing at trial,
a twelve hour tirade espousing the virtues of Nazism. Very much.
This book captures so much of what Gering felt was true,
and his very strange, unusual and charismatic behavior right.
Speaker 3 (38:44):
And this is an area that the movie Nuremberg covers
in more detail than my book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist.
So in fact, by the time Gering got to the
witness stand in the spring of nineteen forty six, Kelly
was gone. He had already returned back to the States.
(39:08):
And for dramatic purposes, the movie has Kelly remaining a
little longer to be present in the courtroom when Gurring
is going on his defensive rant. And the movie also
pays more attention than does my book to Robert Jackson,
(39:29):
the US Supreme Court justice who Truman had named as
the chief prosecutor at this international military tribunal. And after
giving this very widely praised and powerful opening statement by
the prosecution, Jackson then fell into a trap of letting
(39:53):
Gouring say his stuff from the witness stand, and for
a time Gurring seemed to hold the power in the court.
He was giving all his defenses the Nazis were simply
being patriotic, loyal to their country, loyal to Hitler, And
(40:13):
it took a while for Jackson to regain his footing
and to present this gigantic volume of evidence that the
Allies had gathered against Gurring and the others, which showed
definitively that they had. They all, one way or another,
(40:34):
had a role in the Holocaust. Gurring in particular knew
of it, signed off on it, and helped it happen.
And that's when Guring's fortunes changed in the courtroom, once
he was faced with this mountain of evidence against him.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
A very vivid scene in your book is when a
trial everything seemed to be going well that day, Gearing commented,
but then they showed the film of the Allies going
into the concentration camps and all of that horror, and
even Garring knew that the tide had turned against them.
Speaker 3 (41:15):
Yes, that showing of the films from the death camps
was early in the trial, in December nineteen forty five,
so Kelly was still there, and it was a real
mood setter in the trial. Many of us now have
seen newsreels and films that show scenes like this, but
(41:38):
at the time no one had seen them yet, and
when it was shown in the courtroom, everyone was completely aghast,
including some of the defendants. And the defendants afterwards, after
the showing of those films had arguments in the prison
(41:59):
about who is responsible? You know, was this really representative
of what was happening in the camps, etc. Of course
Goering knew that it was. And it's also a very
powerful scene in the film Nuremberg. Seven minutes of the
movie is devoted to showing those very same black and
(42:22):
white films that were shown in the courtroom to the
moviegoing audience. And I've heard from many people who have
seen the film that it's so powerful, and I think
especially among younger viewers of the movie who may be
less familiar with what happened at the trial in Nuremberg
(42:43):
and even what happened in the death camps. It's a
very sobering moment.
Speaker 2 (42:50):
Absolutely. You right that Kelly was not surprised at the sentences,
and he was not so concerned with that sentencing, but overall,
what was his conclusion.
Speaker 3 (43:04):
In the end, most of the twenty two defendants, most
of them were convicted, not all, but most, and many
of them received death sentences as they anticipated. No, that
did not surprise Kelly, because he believed in their guilt
and believed in the terrible nature of their crimes. What
(43:31):
did surprise Kelly, And by this time he was back
in the US was the news he heard like everybody
else by reading it in the newspaper that on the
night before the scheduled executions, Herman Gering had taken took
a cyanide capsule that he had managed to hide in
(43:53):
his cell. He took his own life and thus cheated
the hangman and made a big impression on Kelly. Kelly
believed that this was Gerring's last and supreme act of
defiance against the Allied authorities. He was going to go
out his way not be hanged, and it remained in
(44:19):
his mind for years afterwards, and it was strongly in
his mind. Most likely, no one knows for sure when
Kelly decided in nineteen fifty eight to take his own
life using that same method cyanide.
Speaker 2 (44:41):
Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear
these messages. After Kelly came back from Nuremberg, he accepted
consulting work with the Winston Salem Police Force, and he
refined his use of narco hypnotic drugs. Also, in nineteen
forty seven, Kelly and his wife hat Dookie, had Doug
(45:05):
Kelly jor.
Speaker 3 (45:08):
Yes. The time he spent in Winston Salem really was
revealing of the changes that Nuremberg had made on doctor Kelly.
So in determining that the German defendants were not psychiatrically
(45:28):
disordered or ill in a serious manner, that made him wonder,
if psychiatry cannot explain the behavior of these men, what could.
And over the remainder of his life, Kelly made a
turn to criminology as a discipline that could perhaps account
(45:51):
for this kind of behavior. And so with that in mind,
he began working for police forces, first in Winston Salem,
and then when he took a teaching position in criminology
at UC Berkeley, he worked with the Berkeley Police Department.
So Doug the son grew up in a family and
(46:13):
in most of his memories are from the Berkeley era
in which there was a lot of discord in the
Kelly household. Doctor Kelly had developed a bad drinking problem,
the Duchie and Douglas had a troubled marriage. And also
doctor Kelly was really demanding as a father, intellectually demanding
(46:37):
of Doug and his siblings. And it was tough, and
that's why. And then when doctor Kelly decided to take
his own life on New Year's Day in nineteen fifty eight.
He did it in front of his family, and Doug
witnessed that at the age of ten. That's why I
consider Doug the Son to be the hero of the book,
(47:02):
because he survived all of that, came out of it intact,
really engaging, warm human being. I felt like I have
developed a friendship with him since the book came out.
We talk often, and I'm really in admiration of Doug.
So there's lots of threads to this story. The movie
(47:28):
presents one very important thread doctor Kelly's work in Nuremberg,
but there are others as well.
Speaker 2 (47:37):
Why do you think the doctor chose cyanide to commit
suicide very much like herman gering? And why did Doug
think his father committed suicide?
Speaker 3 (47:52):
Well, I'm with Doug on this. I mentioned earlier the
difficulties in doctor Kelly's life after he reached turned back
to the States, a professional crisis, what's more effective psychiatry
or criminology, marriage problems, drinking problems, and also he began
(48:14):
to feel constantly worried that the US government was targeting
him in the McCarthy era of the nineteen fifties, so
he was under a lot of press, a lot of pressure,
a lot of anxiety, and by the end he was
feeling that everybody was against him. His death was precipitated
(48:39):
by an argument he had with his wife. So doctor
Kelly went upstairs into his home office and laboratory brought
down this container of cyanide he had I think he
had it on hand for a variety of scientific, professional purposes,
(49:01):
and took a pension put it in his mouth on
the landing of the stairs in their home, in front
of everybody present. And I think it was an act
of defiance like Gurrings. In a sense. He was saying, Okay,
nobody cares him about me, I'll show you. And that
(49:22):
was similar to Gurring's approach to suicide. This is because
they are similar men. They were had strong men, They
wanted to make a bold statement at at the end
of each of their lives, and I think this is
what accounts for the similarity in how they decided to
(49:45):
kill themselves. It was not that Kelly was thinking, I'm
going to do it like herman Gurring, but because they
were similar types of men, the same route to suicide
appeal to each of them.
Speaker 2 (50:02):
Tell us about your work on this film and the
kind of scene we just spoke about this film.
Speaker 3 (50:11):
Its roots go way back to twenty eleven. Even before
I had written the book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist,
I had initially published an article same title in a
magazine called Scientific American Mind, which was at the time
Scientific Americans Neuroscience behavioral science magazine. I sent a link
(50:36):
to this story to the people in a production company
called Mythology, because they had earlier optioned my book The Lobotomist,
and I thought this might be of interest to them,
And it was especially to James Vanderbilt, who was involved
in that production company. And he has told me that
(50:58):
he read the article and never has it occurred to
him more quickly that this is a story that should
be a movie. And he was really intrigued by the
mouse game that During and Kelly had played and the
strange affiliation between them. And so James began working on
(51:23):
a screenplay, and over the years I saw three draft
of the screenplay. It kept getting better each time, and
I made my comments. I didn't see my role as
a defender of historical accuracy in this screenplay. It is
fundamentally accurate in a historical sense, but there are deviations
(51:46):
for dramatic purposes, but I saw myself as someone looking
at the screenplays and thinking, Okay, in the context of
a movie, does this story make sense? And is it effective?
Is it emotionally evolving and powerful? And I thought it
was definitely was. By the end. You mentioned my role
(52:10):
as executive producer. That's really not a job in a movie,
but more of a title one gets for services rendered,
and I think maybe my work with the screenplay was
what qualified me for that title. And so now that
(52:30):
the movie is out out there in the world, I'm
really pleased that I feel like I can honestly recommend
it the people that it is a powerful movie that
gets people thinking not only about what happened in the past,
but what's happening today and what we can do to
(52:52):
fight the forces of extremism and authoritarianism and fascism that
exists not just in our country but in many parts
of the world.
Speaker 2 (53:08):
You talk about this film being powerful as you viewed it.
September seventh, it debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival
and it had a resounding standing ovation for four minutes
afterwards that.
Speaker 3 (53:23):
Was remarkable to be in and to see the crowd
cheer for so long, and to give such a warm
welcome to James Vanderbilt, the director, and most of the
cast when they came on to the stage at the
end of the screening. This was a big crowd in
(53:46):
a huge two thousand seat theater that was full. So
it was an overwhelming and gratifying experience for me because
I want to see this story better known, and I
want the messages that the story carries to be out
there among more people. And there's no question that many
(54:09):
times more people will see this movie then will read
my book. They're different experiences, and powerful movie is not
the same thing as a powerful book. They're different things.
They try and serve different purposes. A movie is for entertainment.
(54:30):
A book should be entertaining. A nonfiction book should be entertaining,
but it should also be very informative. The film is
informative too, but in a different kind of way. It's
about emotional response. The premiere in Toronto in September was
really a wonderful experience, not just for me, but for
(54:53):
my family too. We were all there.
Speaker 2 (54:58):
Tell us about the release. When the Sony Pictures release
of Nuremberg.
Speaker 3 (55:04):
In the United States, Nuremberg will be released in I
think twelve hundred theaters around the country on November seventh.
In the UK it will be released on November fourteenth,
and then in about forty other countries. It'll have various
release times in November and December, so it will be
(55:28):
seen around the world by a large number of audiences
and I'm very happy about that.
Speaker 2 (55:36):
Yes, congratulations, It certainly Nuremberg will bring attention to your
extraordinary and very informative book, The Nazi and the Psychiatrist.
I want to thank you so much for coming on
and talking about The Nazi and the Psychiatrist and the
upcoming book based or movie based on your book, Nuremberg
(55:56):
November seventh release. Thank you so much for this interview
for people that might want to find out more about
this book. Do you have a website or do any
social media.
Speaker 3 (56:07):
I do have a website and there's certainly information about
the book on there. The url is l high dot com.
That's el hyphen Hai dot com. I am active on
social media too, on Twitter or x and blue Sky
and threads, and I also publish a monthly, free monthly
(56:34):
history newsletter called Damn History, and it's for readers and
writers of popular history, which is the category that I
think my work falls into. And anyone interested in the
newsletter can subscribe on my website.
Speaker 2 (56:49):
That sounds fantastic. Thank you so much, Jack L. High
for the Nazi and the psychiatrist. It's been a fantastic interview.
Thank you so much, and you have a great evening
and good night.
Speaker 3 (57:01):
Thank you, Dan, thanks for the invitation. Thank you
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