The Nazi and The Psychiatrist with Jack El-Hai - the book upon which the movie Nuremberg was based

Disclaimer: Unedited AI Transcription

Larry (00:07):

You are listening to specifically for Seniors, a podcast designed for a vibrant and diverse senior community. I'm your host, Dr. Larry Barsh Join me in a lineup of experts as we discuss a wide variety of topics that will empower, inform, entertain, and inspire as we celebrate the richness and wisdom of this incredible stage of life.

Larry (00:40):

On today's episode, I am thrilled to be joined by Jack L High. I'm acclaimed author, journalist whose work explores some of the most fascinating and disturbing intersections of medicine, psychology, and history. Jack is the author of the Nazi and the psychiatrist, Herman Goring, Dr. Douglas M. Kelly, and a fatal meeting of the minds at the end of World War ii, a riveting account that takes us inside the Nuremberg trials and into the psychological battle between one of his history's most notorious war criminals, and the brilliant American psychiatrist tasked with understanding him. Jack's other works include the phlebotomist and nonstop, a turbulent history of Northwest Airlines. He's also contributed more than 500 articles for prestigious publications, one numerous honors for his work. He teaches creative nonfiction writing at Augsburg College in Minneapolis with the recent film Nuremberg, based on Jack's book, this story has found a new audience grappling with questions about accountability, power, and the fragility of democracy. We'll talk about all of that on today's show. Jack, welcome to specifically for seniors,

Jack El-Hai (02:23):

Larry. Thank you. I'm so happy to be here with you to talk about those things.

Larry (02:28):

There's so much to talk about, but let's start with, with talking about something For listeners who are acquainted, probably lived through World War ii, but perhaps have not yet gotten acquainted with your book, could you introduce us to the central narrative of the Nazi and the psychiatrist?

Jack El-Hai (02:52):

Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. Sure. The Nazi and the psychiatrist is primarily about a US Army psychiatrist named Douglas Kelly, who at the start of World War ii was sent to work in field hospitals, military field hospitals in Western Europe, treating soldiers who had experienced what we would today call PTSD. And then at the end of the war, he was still in Europe, and he was called to go to Luxembourg, first and later Nuremberg, to work among the top 22 German defendants who were being held for trial in the International Military Tribunal, judging them on, on crimes such as crimes against humanity, crimes against Peace, war crimes, and others. And it was a remarkable opportunity for a young psychiatrist at this time. There were probably hundreds of psychiatrists who would've traded places with Dr. Kelly to be among these arch criminals of the 20th century.

Jack El-Hai (04:16):

And so Dr. Kelly's mission official mission in Nuremberg was simply to ex evaluate these defendants to see if they were, if they were mentally fit to stand trial, meaning did they understand the charges against them? Could they participate in their own defense, et cetera. This is a easy task for somebody like Dr. Kelly. So, given the opportunity he had, he set out to embark on a more ambitious project for himself, which was to determine whether these men suffered from a, a shared psychosis that could explain their horrendous crimes and heinous behaviors before and during World War ii. And so the, the book that's the center of the book and the movie as well. And, but my book also covers Dr. Kelly was greatly affected by this experience, covers his later years to the end of his life.

Larry (05:26):

So that was the initial question that drove your research.

Jack El-Hai (05:32):

There were two questions that drove my research. The first was, what did Dr. Kelly find out about these defendants and what did it mean? And then the second question had more to do with Dr. Kelly's death in 1958. He took his own life using the exact same method poisoning by cyanide that one of the that the top ranking German defendant Herman Goring, had used in 1946 on the eve of his scheduled execution. So I wanted to find out what was the connection between those two suicides done in a identical way, and and what did it mean that they had taken their own lives in this particular way,

Larry (06:27):

And you had access to previously unexamined archival material, 15 boxes.

Jack El-Hai (06:35):

I was very lucky. When I became interested in Dr. Kelly's career, I set out to look for any remaining papers, collections, anything about him. And that trail led me eventually to the doorstep of his oldest son, Doug who invited me to look at materials he had, that he had inherited from his mother who had retained them from Dr. Kelly. So Doug brought up from his basement in his home, 15 boxes, as you said, that Kelly had brought back with him to the States from Nuremberg. And it was a incredible, remarkable collection of materials that had not been seen outside the Kelly family since the end of the war. And as I went through it, I was dumbstruck and overwhelmed by what was there, because it included not only medical records of all the defendants autobiographies that Kelly had, each of them right there were also memos to, between the court and Dr. Kelly his own personal notes and journals.

Jack El-Hai (07:56):

But there were artifacts, too. One of the first things I looked at that I pulled out of one of those boxes was a glass vial filled with red pills, and it was labeled Herman Goring's Peric Codeine. So, as I eventually learned at the time of his capture, Herman Goring was addicted to a narcotic peric codeine. And one of the first things Kelly did when he began working with the defendants was to end ING's dependence on this narcotic. So it opened up a whole new world. You know, I thought I knew something about the Nuremberg Trials, but through this research I learned much more. That was new to me

Larry (08:46):

Much. How did, how did finding all of this affect you?

Jack El-Hai (08:53):

In a, a couple of ways. It, it's dark material, and it was hard for me to immerse myself in it. I made many return trips to Doug's home so I could go through all of it. I, at first I had to set myself at a bit of remove from the content of what I was reading, which included the defendant's justifications for the crimes they had committed what they were like as, as personalities, that kind of thing. But eventually, I saw that keeping myself at a remove wasn't helping me as a writer. So I let those feelings in, and I think it, it did help. But then the other aspect of the way it affected me was that it had to do with Doug, the son himself. And he's an important part of this story, not, not of the film but he's an important part of my book because I saw many of the events in Dr. Kelly's life through his through Doug's childlike eyes. And to me, Doug, the son, is the hero of the story because he survived it and grew up to be this wonderful you know, emotionally expressive, very intelligent person. And I've kept in touch with him. The book was published in 2013, but in the years since, I've kept in touch with Doug, and I often speak with him, and we've talked about the movie and all of that. So it's had a big effect on me.

Larry (10:41):

You documented through your research and unusual relationship between Dr. Kelly and ing mm-hmm <affirmative>. Can you describe what that was like?

Jack El-Hai (10:56):

Yes. When Dr. Kelly arrived in the prison in Luxembourg, where many of these defendants were first being held, he immediately recognized that Herman Goring was in lots of ways from the perspective of a psychiatrist, the most interesting of, of the group. And that's because of ING's qualities. He was highly intelligent. He was clever and charming, told jokes. People liked to be around him. And he could be reflective to, honestly reflective to a certain degree. All the while Kelly did not lose sight of ING's dark qualities during lacked con, a conscience lacked remorse about what had happened in the Holocaust and in the other abominable events of World War ii. And during was highly manipulative. But Kelly also shared some of those qualities. Kelly was highly manipulative as a psychiatrist, and he also was highly intelligent, clever and charming, had a good sense of humor.

Jack El-Hai (12:30):

And so these men got along because of, of their similarities, but never did it develop into what I would call a friendship. They were comfortable around each other because they saw in the other person a, a known quantity. And they got into deep discussions, not just about goring's mental state, but about the events of the war and before. And so I would say that certainly for patient and doctor, they became very close. But even if you disregard that relationship, they grew close as people conversing with each other, will when they talk about personal things. And so that I think that sums up their relationship. They, so they, my main point is they were not friends. They were not even allies, but they admired each other.

Larry (13:40):

That's strange to hear. It, it, it was, it's strange to hear a discussion like what went on in Berg between two people displaying a sense of humor.

Jack El-Hai (13:59):

Mm-Hmm <affirmative>.

Larry (14:01):

It, it, it just doesn't ring true.

Jack El-Hai (14:06):

Well, Herman Goring did not rise to the top of the Nazi party by being an unpleasant person. In terms of his outward personality, he rose to the top because of his charm, and because he got along with a lot of different kinds of fellow Nazis and others and he was at the same time brutal and dangerous. I think it's important to remember that what Kelly discovered about these men was not that they shared some kind of common psychosis, but that they were many of them were of a normal personality type, but a type which is an opportunist, taking advantage of circumstances around them to to rise to power and to exercise power over others. So it, it, it, after the war, during the war, and after the war, it was common for people in the allied countries, the us, uk France, et cetera, to think of the German leadership as monsters.

Jack El-Hai (15:29):

These mentally misshapen and diabolical figures who wreaked havoc on the world, and they undeniably wreaked havoc. But it was not because they were monsters, it was because they were of a personality type that we have all around us. We, we know every one of us knows somebody like this who will take advantage of opportunities and is focused on personal gain, regardless of the consequences for other people. And that's the main thing, you know, reduced to its essence of what Kelly learned during his 18 months or so among those defendants.

Larry (16:20):

So he didn't find that they were basically evil people.

Jack El-Hai (16:27):

He definitely believed they did evil deeds. Yeah. But he didn't really make a judgment. He, as a psychiatrist, he was not concerned about whether they were evil or good, what concerned him was whether they were ill or normal. And he determined that they were normal or at, at least within a normal range. And I have become persuaded of that myself. And to me, it's a relief in a way to believe that while on one hand it's frightening to believe that there are still today always people around us like that the relief part comes from understanding that monsters are not responsible for what they do. Monsters will be monsters. A dragon will open its mouth and burn down a house. And can you blame a dragon for doing that? But it's only when you recognize that these men made choices and followed their course of action, of their own free will, that we can hold them responsible. And to me, that's a good thing to know that they were responsible and not born or made into something that is beyond the pale of humanity.

Larry (18:11):

This is beginning to sound disturbingly familiar in today's political world, but let's come back to that in a in a minute. I mentioned that a lot of the listeners to this podcast live through the memory of World War ii. What do you hope that these people will gain from reading the book?

Jack El-Hai (18:43):

I think people among us who have memories of World War II also retain memories of the perceptions that were common back then. For instance, as we just discussed, that the Nazi leaders were monsters or even comical in a way. Herman Goring was often portrayed in the Western Alli, in the allied press as a comical figure who strutted around in these fancy uniforms and loved metals and jewelry and that kind of thing. And that really underestimates how dangerous Herman Goring was as a national leader in Germany. And then another perception that people who lived through the war, and remember it might have, is the belief that when the war ended, and even when the Nuremberg trials, there were 13 of them in total, when that series of trials ended, and the people, the Nazis were prosecuted and punished, that that would put an end to fascism, authoritarianism, all of that. And of course, that has not happened. So I hope my book will o open those reader's eyes to the fact that the perceptions that were common back then at the end of the war can be updated now. And we have more lots distance of 80 years now. And there are new things still to be learned about the Nazis and about the whole project to bring them to justice.

Larry (20:41):

And the way we the media then responded to this.

Jack El-Hai (20:50):

Yes. as I said, the, the media often portrayed the German leadership inaccurately. Also the media I'm talking mainly about newspapers and radio reporters back then lost interest in the Nuremberg Trials after the first one, the one that I wrote about. But there were a whole series of other trials that were not nearly as carefully reported on. And I, I don't blame the reporters for that. I think the public was tired of it and wanted to put put the whole experience behind them. And that ties into other aspects of my story that maybe we'll talk about. But it's looking back at events from an 80 year vantage point really changes how we see them and how we think about them.

Larry (21:54):

And there's a difference between those of us who lived through that time as young as we were, or as old as we were at the time and those that don't have a lived experience.

Jack El-Hai (22:13):

Oh, definitely. One of the things that I'm happiest about with my book, and even more so with the movie Nuremberg, is that it's bringing this story to audiences who didn't know much at all about it, who didn't know that there were trials held after the war to judge the the Germans. And by extension, the Japanese, too. There were trials for that as well. So there was a period, you know, probably in the 1970s eighties, when school children were almost always taught something about the Holocaust and the devastating human consequences of World War ii. I think it's less common now, and even if school students are still learning about the Holocaust, they may not know anybody who has a memory of those years. And so it's, it's receding and becoming more faded and distant. And I hope my book and the movie brings it more into focus.

Larry (23:31):

Did the filmmakers follow the book? Appropriately.

Jack El-Hai (23:39):

Appropriately, yes. But I think it's important to remember that a movie is not a book. And the way a story is told in a movie is not the way it's told in a narrative nonfiction book like mine. So there, there were changes made to increase the entertainment value of the movie, and and the audience's ability to follow it as a movie. One of those differences is that the movie Nuremberg covers about 18 months of time. My book covers 45 years or more of time. So chronological in terms of time, it's just the movie is a slice. But when people ask me, you know, do, do I think the movie is historically accurate, I always respond that I think it's essentially accurate, meaning that it's mostly accurate, accurate enough to put over the messages that, that are in my book and are in the movie that I think are important. And so I'm, I'm happy with the movie. I'm, I'm relieved that I can honestly recommend it to friends and others who ask me about it.

Larry (25:09):

You mentioned earlier that part of your book was about Doug mm-hmm <affirmative>. I would assume that Doug doesn't make it into the movie,

Jack El-Hai (25:20):

Right? Doug, the son is not in the movie because all of the movie takes place before Doug was born. And in fact in the movie, Dr. Kelly's wife, Dukey doesn't exist. He's shown, the doctor is shown in the movie to be I assume a bachelor. He's flirting with another, with a female character in the movie. And, you know, she's just not in the, the wife is just not in the picture. But Doug, Doug doesn't figure into the movie part of the story. He figures importantly into the book part of the story.

Larry (26:06):

Kelly, in a way, predicted some of the future in regard to authoritarian movements and warned that they could emerge in America. How were these warnings accepted at the time?

Jack El-Hai (26:31):

Kelly came back to the states from Nuremberg with changed eyes. He had spent all these months with the German defendants, heard how they think and their justifications and their defense, et cetera. And when he returned to the us he saw the US differently and in those terms. So his attention immediately focused on the state of the South in the us at that time. So this is 1946, those states were dominated by politicians who had racist segregationist politics. And Dr. Kelly saw many similarities between that kind of governance and what had happened in Germany. So he began speaking about it, public lectures and things like that. And he began talking about his his notion that that fascism Nazism was not distinctively German. It was not the product of mental disorder. It was had been brought about by men who fell within a normal range of personality.

Jack El-Hai (27:53):

So he started issuing warnings. It was not well received. Dr. Kelly wrote a book in 1947. It was published, called 22 Cells in Nuremberg. And it was kind of a roundup of his appraisals of all of the defendants plus Hitler. And it, it flopped didn't sell well. And this is understandable. The reading public had just gone through this long and bloody and horrible, devastating war. The trials were ongoing. And who wanted to think that even after all this, people like Hitler could arise again anywhere. People were much more comfortable thinking that the war had put an end to, to that kind of thinking, at least for a long time. But that's not what Kelly was saying. So his book flopped. People, by and large, didn't pay attention to him or his plan that he developed to preserve democracy and hold off authoritarianism. And it made him unhappy, and also it turned him upside down professionally to it, and it set him on a downward spiral that he never recovered from.

Larry (29:19):

One of the really disturbing things that he found was that this horrendous behavior of the Nazis was not linked to a mental disorder. You are calling it normal, which I find frightening.

Jack El-Hai (29:38):

Yes. And, and normal doesn't mean admirable, it simply means that there is always a presence of it within the, the part of the, of any population, any country that is not psychiatrically ill. So he, Kelly was not saying that everybody is capable of committing these deeds. He's saying that there are always some people around us who are, and that is frightening, and that should get our attention then. And now,

Larry (30:18):

You teach in Minneapolis, and, and I brought that up specifically in the introduction. I assume you live in the area as well, so you are living some of the psychological and structural themes you explored in the book.

Jack El-Hai (30:37):

Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. Yes. I live in the city of Minneapolis, and we have had for months now, a very strong presence of ice immigration enforcers in the city. A group that, even with a recent reduction, outnumbers our local police. And they have brought chaos and upheaval. Some people outside in other parts of the country seem to believe that the widespread spread protests that have arisen are in defense of criminally inclined people who are here in this country illegally. That's not what the protests are about. The protests are about the enforcement efforts and programs of the ice agents. And I have heard people say you cannot compare ice to the Gestapo, because look at what the Gestapo ultimately did, was responsible for uncounted murders, Holocaust, genocide. And I is certainly not involved in that kind of thing yet.

Jack El-Hai (32:06):

The Gestapo did not start as that kind of organization. It started as a organization opposing people who were political opponents of the Nazi regime. And only gradually did it build up into all of those horrendous crimes and activities that it became involved in. So many people do see what's going on here as similar to the Gestapo in its early times. And no one that I've heard believes that the ice agents are monsters. But they are doing things that are disruptive and intended to disrupt the, the social life, political life here in Minneapolis. So I think that's, that's the connection with things happening in my city at this moment,

Larry (33:13):

Just following orders.

Jack El-Hai (33:16):

Right. Many of them have said, we're just doing our job, things like that, that as the trials in Nuremberg established, that's not a defense.

Larry (33:30):

How has, what's going on in Minneapolis or has it affected the way you view your book historically and its value today?

Jack El-Hai (33:44):

Well, that's a, that's been a very interesting question to me, because I wrote the book, it was published in 20 13, 12, 13 years ago. And when I wrote the book, it was in the middle of the second Obama ad administration. And at that time, you know, I was writing about what, what makes people authoritarians? What did Kelly think about that? And right wing authoritarian extremism in 2013 seemed to me to be on the fringes of American political discourse. Now, years later, it's, it feels very different to me. It's at the center of American political discourse, which makes Dr. Kelly's observations, his findings, but also his prescriptions for society more resonant and more relative than I imagined when I wrote the book. So I think if d Dr. Kelly were still with us, he died in 1958, that he would be looking at all this and saying something like, I told you so he was the kind of guy who would say, I told you so, but but I think he would accurately be saying, I told you so.

Larry (35:14):

So we have now certain personality types that are reminiscent of what Kelly figured were normal personality types, but with a tendency toward authoritarianism.

Jack El-Hai (35:39):

Yeah. I'm, I'm not a psychiatrist or a psychologist, so I don't feel competent to diagnose people or, or or even to try and categorize public figures into personality types. But but it's clear that what we've been experiencing recently is the, the kind of succession of events that Dr. Kelly feared and warned about, and and that the advice he threw out there, which was largely ignored at the time, would be helpful to us. Now, one of his pieces of advice, which I think is relevant to your question is that Dr. Kelly believed that all candidates for political office should have to undergo mandatory psychiatric evaluations. I, I don't know if that's a good idea, because it raises the question who evaluates? Who decides whether someone is on the basis of an evaluation is eligible to run for office and who isn't?

Jack El-Hai (37:03):

I think there's a potential for abuse there. But his other suggestions, I think, are relevant and would help Now, one was that he wanted changes to our educational system from kindergarten all the way through higher learning to stress the teaching of critical thinking. So that is thinking based on evidence and reason, consideration of evidence from many different kinds of sources before coming to a conclusion. And without critical thinking, what you're left with is emotional, real reasoning, which mean, which opens people to being manipulated by propagandists and liars. And so I think that would've helped us had we paid attention to it back then, is still not too late. I think it's unlikely that we'll see in our educational systems a new emphasis on critical thinking, but it would certainly help. And then the other thing he suggested, which is certainly relevant today, is that is that voting in elections should be made easier, not harder for eligible voters.

Jack El-Hai (38:32):

And we've seen much legislation recently about voter ID and mail-in ballots and things like that, that for people who are eligible to vote and entitled to vote, makes the process more difficult. And I think by make that, that means, it doesn't mean that ineligible voters, people who are citizens of other countries or other reasons not eligible, should be allowed to vote. But there should not be things holding eligible voters back from voting. And that is something more easily attained through legislation that than other things Kelly suggested. And I think we should pay attention to that immediately,

Larry (39:25):

And we're seeing tax on higher education and what can and cannot be taught.

Jack El-Hai (39:34):

Yes. I have friends who teach at colleges and universities who feel a, a lot of constraints on what they can teach from a, a lot of different directions coming in and even attacks on tenure even 10. So even tenured professors feel those constraints, and that's not in keeping with developing critical thinking. The purpose of teaching critical thinking is to allow students to make those decisions and to separate the wheat from the chaff in what they've learned and, and seen as evidence and not to censor it. So yep, that's, that's another problem we're facing right now.

Larry (40:32):

I'll take it out of the medical psychiatric environment, but do you see parallels between leadership archetypes that Kelly identified and figures in con contemporary political power?

Jack El-Hai (40:53):

Yes. especially in the ways in which say the current presidential administration, the Trump administration handles information. So much of the thing, many of the things that President Trump, as well as his cabinet officers and others in the administration say, are objectively not true. And and this was especially reinforced to me when cabinet officials made comments about what was happening here in Minneapolis, clearly not true in the experience of people who live here. And so using information manipulatively and issuing false propaganda is part of the game plan that Kelly observed or, or absorbed from the defendants he worked with at Nuremberg. And it was, it's what he saw in the segregationist south when he came back, he also saw the restrictions on voting in the segregationist south. So there are significant parallels then and now.

Larry (42:17):

And it took an extreme personal toll on him.

Jack El-Hai (42:21):

It did. He, his world was really turned upside down by what he experienced in Nuremberg. He came to believe that since psychiatry was not able to explain people like the German leaders, then then it was psychiatry was lacking in some way. And over time, Kelly gradually turned to another discipline, criminology more of a social science than a medical science to try to try and explain criminal behavior and, and murderous thinking. So that was part of it. And Kelly also with the failure of his book began to believe that he was not, he was not believed that people were not paying attention. And that weighed upon him as well, because he saw it as a certainty that at some point in the future, authoritarianism would rise in the US

Larry (43:33):

And there were some distinct objections to his work by other psychiatrists.

Jack El-Hai (43:41):

There was a psychologist who was with Dr. Kelly at Nuremberg. His name is Gustav Gilbert, who worked with the same men and used many of the same tests evaluative tools as Kelly did, and also interviewed the same people that Kelly did, who came to different conclusions. He believed that some of the Nazi leaders did suffer from serious psychosis, and that that at least for those men, provided an explanation for how they acted and what they did. So it's, it's, there's the Kelly side and the Gilbert side. But as events have shown since the end of the war when we've seen war crimes plenty, we've seen crimes against peace, we've seen genocides I think hi history sides more with Kelly than with the other camp,

Larry (44:48):

But the Gilbert side is more comforting.

Jack El-Hai (44:53):

Yeah. It's, it's more comforting in in the aspect that it offers an explanation that's more easily acceptable. But I think that explanation doesn't accord with how history has played out since the war.

Larry (45:15):

Is there anything we haven't touched on that you'd like to bring up? <Laugh>?

Jack El-Hai (45:22):

Well, two things come to mind. One is when I give talks about my book and it, sometimes I attend screenings in different parts of the country and then answer questions afterwards, screenings of Nuremberg. People often come up to me and tell me that they're appreciative that I wrote a book like this, but especially that they're appreciative that their book, that my book calls attention to what's happening now. And of course, that was not my intent when I wrote the book. I didn't know what would be happening now. But I'm glad that a book, that my book has a an afterlife of that kind and can have that kind of influence. And then, though I should mention that I've just finished an another book. I've written three books since the Nazi and the Psychiatrist, and this book is called The Case of the Autographed Corpse.

Jack El-Hai (46:28):

It'll be coming out in October, 2026. And there are no Nazis in it, no psychiatrists in it, but it's about iJust legal injustices on Apache reservations of the US southwest, primarily Arizona in the middle decades of the 20th century, and how those played out. It focuses on an Apache medicine man named Silas, John Edwards, who was wrongfully convicted of murdering his wife in 1933 on one of the reservations served 20 years in prison before his partnership with a famous American author of the time, Earl Earl Stanley Gardner, who wrote all the Perry Mason. Right. Got, Gardner got involved, and together they Reinvestigated Edward's case and got him out. So it's a different kind of book, but book very important to me, and I've been interested in this story for a long time.

Larry (47:35):

Jack, thank you so much for coming on specifically for seniors and sharing the story behind the Nazi and the psychiatrist. It's vital for insights into what's happening now here in the United States, which a lot of us probably couldn't have predicted.

Jack El-Hai (48:05):

Right. And, and thank you, Larry, for your perceptive questions that brought out those things. I appreciate it.

Larry (48:13):

Thanks for coming on specifically for seeing you.

Jack El-Hai (48:17):

My pleasure.

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