The Nazi and the Psychiatrist, by Jack El-Hai

I am not alone in wondering where the evil of the Nazis came from. As a culture, we’ve been pondering the question of how Hitler was voted into power and the German people (with exceptions) either actively built the Nazi regime or allowed it to happen ever since the 1930s. The Nazi and the Psychiatrist: Hermann Göring, Dr. Douglas Kelley, and a Fatal Meeting of the Minds at the End of World War II, by Jack El-Hai, tells the story of one man who was similarly fascinated with the question. Douglas Kelley was one of the psychological team assigned to the members of the Nazi high command who were captured by the Allies at the end of the war. His job was to monitor their psychological status and determine if they were mentally fit to stand trial, were insane, or were suicide risks. Kelley used his time with the Nazis, especially Göring to try and answer his question.

With a few biographical sections bracketing the ends of this narrative, most of The Nazi and the Psychiatrist focuses on the months before and during the Nuremburg Trials. Dr. Douglas Kelley, a California psychiatrist with a good record for treating American soldiers suffering from what we now call post-traumatic stress disorder, was assigned to keep a professional eye on 22 members of the Nazi high command. While under Kelley’s “care,” the Nazis were given IQ tests, the Rorschach test, the Thematic Apperception Test, and other psychological tests. (Kelley was particularly fond of the Rorschach.) All of these tests were meant to see if there was such a thing as the “Nazi mind.” Was there a mental illness or personality disorder that could explain why people became Nazis and committed (or abetted) the atrocities of the Holocaust and the second World War?*

After all those tests and hours spent interviewing the Nazis, Kelley was unable to identify any such thing as a “Nazi mind.” Kelley’s colleague, Dr. Gustave Gilbert, disagreed. Gilbert found the Nazis to be sociopaths, essentially. Kelley thought that, while most of the men were quite intelligent, the men on trial at Nuremberg were so different from each other that it was impossible to find much in common in their psyches. Rudolph Hess, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and Robert Ley were the most disturbed of the group. Others, like Karl Dönitz and Göring, all appeared quite sane. For my part (keeping in mind that I am not any kind of a mental health professional), I thought I saw that many if not all of the Nazis displayed a strong sense of entitlement undercut by inferiority complexes, paranoia, and a complete lack of empathy and ethics.

Kelley’s ultimate conclusions about the Nazi psyche (or lack there of) came shortly after he resigned his post at Nuremberg to return to civilian life. Because he was unable to find anything like a Nazi mental disorder (and possibly because he had empathized quite a bit with the incarcerated Nazis), Kelley later argued that:

“[Nazis] are not unique people…They are people who exist in every country of the world. Their personality patterns are not obscure. But they are people who have peculiar drives, people who want to be in power…I would say that I am quite certain that there are people even in America who would willingly climb over the corpses of half of the American public if they could gain control of the other half, and these are people who today are just talking–who are utilizing the rights of democracy in anti-democratic fashion.” (162**)

Kelley said these words during a lecture in 1946. Given the rise of Trumpism over the last year, I was chilled to read Kelley talking about American Nazis. Gilbert’s diagnosis of the Nazis is comforting. By assigning their actions to mental illness or personality disorders, we can keep them separate. They’re not part of normal society. I side more with Kelley, however, in thinking that anyone could become a Nazi (or whatever name some group happens to be) if their sense of entitlement and lack of ethics and/or empathy is thwarted.

When I picked up The Nazi and the Psychiatrist from the library, I was expecting a psychological history of the Nazis on trial at Nuremberg and the people who studied them. What I found was a deeply disquieting argument that Nazis could (do) lurk in every society. There’s no one type to watch out for. Instead, we have to be on guard for seemingly ordinary people who are more than willing to, as Kelley said, climb over the corpses of others just so that they can be the one at the top of the heap.

* In a curious bit of serendipity, I recently read Dorothy Thompson’s 1941 Harper’s Bazaar article about spotting Nazis, people who might become Nazis, and those who would never “go Nazi” at parties.
** Quote is from the 2013 hardcover edition by MJF Books.