The Nazi and the Psychiatrist

Starred review from October 21, 2013
Journalist El-Haiâs (The Lobotomist) haunting historical account raises questions about the human capacity to cause harm. Focusing on two charismatic but delusional menâGoring, who was in captivity, and Kelley, his interlocutor, El-Hai presents an engrossing case study on the nature of evil. Kelley, an American psychiatrist overseeing the U.S. Armyâs psychiatric services during World War II, was called upon to assess war criminalsâ ability to stand trial. His true ambition was to understand whether shared personality traits drove the horrors of the Nazi regime, and took the opportunity to study his subjectsâmost of whom were high-ranking Nazi officers. He did so with indifference to their culpability and little intention of treating them. One of his primary subjects was Goring, the designated successor to Hitler. Kelleyâs fascination with the human mind was perhaps as boundless as the delusional optimism of Goring, who believed his contributions to the Nazi Party would be celebrated and memorialized. In this thoroughly engaging story of the jocular master war criminal and the driven, self-aware psychiatrist, El-Hai finds no simple binary.

October 15, 2013

An outgoing, ambitious U.S. Army psychiatrist, Dr. Douglas M. Kelley was assigned to "maintain the mental fitness" of Nazi war criminals before the Nuremberg Trials. While interviewing and testing the accused leaders, Kelley developed a close relationship with Hermann Goring, Hitler's right-hand man. Helping the charismatic Goring lose weight and overcome his addiction to painkillers, Kelley remained aware of the Reichsmarschall's evil but was still shocked when Goring committed suicide via cyanide. Through his extensive research, Kelley came to believe that the qualities that led Nazi leaders to commit acts of horror were not unique to Nazi Germany, and this deeply troubled him over the years. Journalist El-Hai (The Lobotomist: A Maverick Medical Genius and His Tragic Quest To Rid the World of Mental Illness ) explores not only the mental states of the Nazi war criminals but also that of the overworked, distressed Kelley, who surprisingly committed suicide himself, also with cyanide, during a domestic dispute in 1958. Although more dramatic, this book is equally as well researched and well written as Eric Jaffe's A Curious Madness, reviewed below, which details the Tokyo war crimes and the army psychiatrist assigned to assess the sanity of one of its key defendants. VERDICT Recommended for those interested in the Nuremberg Trials, the Nazi criminal mind, or stories of human instability.--Leslie Lewis, Duquesne Univ. Lib., Pittsburgh

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 1, 2013
Ace reportage on the unique relationship between a prison physician and one of the Third Reich's highest ranking officials. Profoundly expanded from an original article in Scientific American, science and historical journalist El-Hai's (Creative Writing/Augsburg Coll.; The Lobotomist: A Maverick Medical Genius and His Tragic Quest to Rid the World of Mental Illness, 2005) dark exploration begins at the end: with the suicide of prominent U.S. Army psychiatrist Capt. Douglas Kelley. The author examines the origins of his depressive internal crisis: his professional association with one of the most powerful Nazi leaders, Hermann Goring. Unfussy and compelling, El-Hai's chronicle details the intensive intercourse between the two men. Kelley was called in to perform physical and mental evaluations on the top Nazi officials awaiting arraignment in the Nuremberg tribunals, yet zeroed in on Goring. Hitler's right-hand man presented at Nuremberg as an arrogant, plump, cutthroat "master manipulator" addicted to paracodeine. Stripped of his diamond-embossed ivory baton (a gift from Hitler), oversize gemstone rings and manifold honorifics, the prideful and charming Goring acquiesced to the general orthodoxy of Kelley's medical assessments, including inkblot testing and apperception analyses. As suicide increasingly became a destiny of choice for several other Nazi captives, the doctor became increasingly enraptured by the domineering Goring, delving intensively into his fearlessness during his conviction and further exploring the unshakable allegiance of the Nazi personality. This obsessive research would negatively manifest itself in Kelley's psyche for decades, ultimately facilitating his undoing. El-Hai's spadework involved scouring Kelley's trove of private documents, letters and clinical journals, all graciously provided by the doctor's oldest son. Recently slated for both film and stage adaptations, El-Hai's gripping account turns a chilling page in American history and provides an unsettling meditation on the machinations of evil.

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