In Brief
- In the aftermath of World War II, American psychiatrist Douglas M. Kelley worked closely with captured Nazis as their general physician and psychiatric evaluator.
- Despite Kelley’s abhorrence of Nazi crimes, he formed a close relationship with the highest-ranking prisoner, Hermann Goering, who impressed Kelley with his intelligence, tenacity, and dedication to his country, family and friends.
- The balancing act Kelley performed—as he tried to remain loyal to his superiors as well as dedicated to his patients’ health and wellness—is echoed in the modern dilemmas faced by doctors and psychologists in situations such as the prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
In the early summer of 1945 a 52-year-old prisoner arrived at Mondorf-les-Bains, a town in Luxembourg that included an American detention center for suspected war criminals. The prisoner, dragging 49 suitcases, gem-encrusted jewelry, gold cigarette cases, precious watches and nearly the entire world’s supply of the narcotic paracodeine, had surrendered to Allied officials several weeks earlier. After a dozen years in which he held nearly unchecked power and could demand anything he desired, he now occupied a small cell furnished only with a toilet, bed, chair and table. The bloody collapse of the Third Reich, whose Nazi government he now represented as the highest-ranking captive, had left him a leader without followers, a commander without fighters, anda prisoner accused of murdering millions and committing other crimes against humanity. He acknowledged the right of the victors of World War II to punish the Nazi leadership, but he planned a vigorous defense of his actions at his forthcoming war crimes trial.
This was the situation of Hermann Goering, formerly deputy of Adolf Hitler, president of the Reichstag, commander in chief of the German air force, member of the Secret Cabinet Council and Reich Marshal (along with a slew of other official titles), when a 32-year-old American psychiatrist named Douglas M. Kelley entered his cell for the first of many meetings. Kelley was among the few people—along with other medical personnel, lawyers and guards—allowed access to Goering. During the next six months the prisoner and the psychiatrist would hash over the outcome of the war, the fate of Goering’s family and the Reich Marshal’s legacy.
This article was originally published with the title The Nazi and the Psychiatrist.
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30 Comments
Add CommentGiven the fact that both Goering and Kelley committed suicide by cyanide capsule, I found it curious that this article speculated that Goering's capsule was smuggled to him by a "sympathetic jailer." Wouldn't Kelley be a prime suspect in the smuggling, especially in light of his abrupt withdrawal from his publishing agreement and return to the U.S. just months before the verdict?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisExcellent article about a dark page in world history. Stunning story - it gave me chill bumps.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThree thoughts.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1. I spent many years interviewing people who had been accused of, and/or convicted of crimes. It is beyond question that a few, an intelligent few, will go to quite odd lengths to cajole, flatter, threaten, bluster, control, ingratiate, seduce. It appears to me that Kelley fell for this combination in ways that were grossly amateurish. Kelley's psychoanalytic background would have made this very much more likely.
2. I had a friend called John Irwin who was present, as a BBC radio producer, to record the Nuremberg trial. He told me that Goering was - as has been said by others - a very powerful presence. John described him as very compelling, and sleazy, indeed. His metaphor was that it was like having a huge and very evil spider in the room.
3. In the 1970s, my then wife talked with a woman who said she was Goering's daughter. She may not have been; I cannot disprove it; all I can say is that the facts seemed to fit, and there was no obvious discrepancy. She had said in conversation, in a matter-of-fact way, that she went with her mother to deliver the poison to her father. I have never seen the record of visits; this may be nothing but a fantasy, even if she was in fact Goering's daughter.
I generally found that inmates had, as a group, a far larger share of likability than my fellow officers. Or psychiatrists, now that I think about it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGoering was among the last in a lineage of leaders in Europe bred to that way of thinking (it was his religion). The Japanese military killed roughly 37,000,000 people in SE Asia before reaching Pearl Harbour in 1941 (their religion). Most city people could not kill an animal, cook it, and eat it for dinner. Yet they shop for meat everyday. In the American South, 80 - 100 years ago, devout church-going folk would attend lynchings of an African-American and then make their way peacefully to work Monday morning (railway schedules were often changed to accommodate the crowds at the lynching). Even today, a dictator in a foreign land can kill his way to power, kill his own people (even gassing women and children), invade another country, destroy the oil well infrastructure upon retreat from that country, break the terms of his surrender, harbour a known terrorist, pay the families of suicide bombers outside his own country, and groom his sons to succeed him - yet when the US Congress funds a war to remove him from power roughly half the population of that country denounces the President of that country (seemingly forgetting who agreed to remove the dictator from power in the first place). And you ask about responsibility, allegiance and the nature of evil?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisForgive me. But I have to clear up an urban legend. There is a black anthropologist (don't remember his name but you will find him) that studied the history of lynchings in all 48 contiguous states in early American history. It is not true that white church goers would lynch black men for sport. It has no basis in fact. The KKK did behave quite shamefully and murder black men. Generally, lynching was a form of capital punishment used in a very rudimentary legal system. In some states the lynchings of whites to blacks was 20-1. Clearly not an indication of racism. One legend that has floated through our culture is that the origin of the word picnic was derived from the phrase pick-a-ni---r. As though whites randomly selected blacks to hang for fun. The actual origin of the word is the French "Pique-Nique" which means "little snack." Urban legends are very damaging as those who were perceived to be the source of racism were often the impetus to it's solution. I trust this will be received with all due respect.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs Robert Hare has demonstrated, many psychopaths display great charm and intelligence.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJudging and condemnation are manifestations of the railing of the politically and intellectually paralyzed who can take a step neither right nor left, front nor back, to change their perspective to broaden or alter their view. Recent history is littered with those termed to be "mad men" and "evil monsters".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Walk a mile in my shoes" .. still has merit.
I suspect you just created an urban legend. Useful information on the history of lynching in the United States, here:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/shipp/lynchstats.html
Lynching statistics, 1882-1968, indicate that in the vast majority of lynchings occurred in southern states, and in those states the victims were overwhelmingly black, e.g., Alabama, 229 blacks & 48 whites; Louisiana, 335 & 56; Mississippi, 559 & 42; South Carolina, 156 & 4.
Dan
To crunch the numbers DBuck provided via the link above, about 1017 lynchings happened outside of the south from 1882-1968, vs. 3726 in the Southern states including Texas and Kentucky (but not West Virginia). About 3/4 of the lynchings, in other words, happened in the south. There were midwestern and western states where it was 50/50 or even overwhelmingly whites who were lynched, and significant numbers of people died in those places (unlike the Northeast, where lynching was extremely rare), but there is no denying that lynching was worse in the South and that blacks were lynched far disproportionately to their numbers in the population (to say nothing of their status as second class citizens, etc. etc.)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInteresting perspective. I particularly like the way you gloss over the vast bulk of the real situation involved in the U.S. invasion of Iraq in order to try and make G.W. Bush look like an actual man. Not many people are going to fall for it though.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI grew up in a KKK family and actually there is a very real basis in fact. The KKK would torment and murder people, not limited to blacks, and then go to church. Sometimes they were the ministers or elders of said church. This is not urban legend. I don't know anything about the word picnic so I'll take your word on that one but the KKK did in very real fact mix murder with supposed Christianity. The KKK were not the only lynchers so your statistics are very much irrelevant in regards to the activities of the KKK.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo what is your point? You need to be a bit more direct for people like me.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe prisoner, dragging 49 suitcases, gem-encrusted jewelry, gold cigarette cases, precious watches and nearly the entire world’s supply of the narcotic paracodeine.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLeft out as part of the varied contents dragged around in the 49 suitcases,was a vial of cyanide pills, used by
Goering to kill himself the night before his scheduled execution, many considering Goering having escaped justice. Goering had a guard retrieve the pills kept among the items in storage, allegedly in exchange for one of his pearl-handled pistols. How the exchange was supposed to take place is a detail I am not privy to.
To rmyatt:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm a 75 year old white woman who grew up in the Midwest and South, lived in the South about a third of my life, but fortunately got to experience wonderful places like Hawaii and New England during my 12 years in the Navy. What a relief to finally live in the America I'd always believed in.
Yes, I know some decent, caring Southern white men, but they don't present silly statistics to defend evil. After the terror of being arrested in 1956 in North Florida with my church youth group, for sitting at a table (furnished by the church on its church lawn) to circulate a legal civil rights petition--simply hearing a whiny white So'thn drawl or seeing a Dixie Police State cop still makes me nauseous.
Reading rmyatt's nonsensical statistics encourages me to get out and march against every single NeoCon in the land--which I will be doing all day tomorrow, protesting their wars in the Middle East, which are based on lies and deviousness.
Don't let this guy fool you, folks. NeoCon REALLY stands for "NeoConfederate." These haters and baiters are hardly conservatives! (I'm a real conservative--struggling to conserve what's left of the shredded Bill of Rights, the 14th Amendment, our jobs, air and water--and I hope most of you are also.)
Far too many self-styled "conservatives" are radical snake-oil salesmen and terrorists who, like Goering in Germany, love to seduce. They've spent 30 years wrecking the rest of the country with their selfish anti-Christian, anti-compassion, materialistic "religion". Remember Oklahoma City? Such callous murderers of the Far Right are the real terrorists who ought to be on everyone's subversive list. Like Goering.
I knew Dave Patterson, who was an Army enlisted security guard assigned to guard the personal Nazi psychiatrist of Hitler's inner circle. The prisoner's name was Reisling. He bought his freedom and a new identity as a French citizen...with a file cabinet filled with the psychological files of all the Nazi high command members... and the special drawer that held the most carefully guarded secrets gleaned from prisoners subjected to torture. Dave was trained as an architect and was the chief architect designer of what was once the largest laminated wood dome used to house the athletic field at Northern Arizona University. He spent the last part of his life as a missionary to the Navahos in Northern Arizona. He told me of his experience guarding the Nazi doctor at the end of WWII when he was assigned to Patton's company as they entered the concentration camps of Poland and Germany. He said the doctor needed to talk and so he talked to his guard. Though the contents of the file cabinet were/still are confidential, Dave recollected quite a lot of what the prisoner told him... Dave now is dead. I however recall quite a bit of what Dave told me... The prisoner was still alive in France at an advanced age in 1988...with a new name and identity.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGoering probably gave him oral to mitigate the anxiety assumed by the risk of discovery for obtaining contraband for the VIP prisoner. Its an assumption Goering took the cyanide without 'assistance'...though his hubris was well known and his pride could not endure public humiliation under cross examination.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI rode a greyhound bus from Atlanta to San Diego and shared a seat with an elderly white woman who told me about witnessing a hanging of a negro from an oak in the town square in front of the town protestant church on Sunday after worship service. She carefully described the event as it was a church picnic. The finale was the hanging of a twelve year old boy and his 'crime' was that he had kissed the parson's daughter. The old woman was let off at the bus station in Brownville, Texas. Everyone looked across the town square to the old oak that still stood. The old black woman in the seat across the aisle told me THAT old white woman had been the daughter kissed by the black boy who was executed. It was a chilling story I shall never forget...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPerhaps it is a hidden qualification that those who exhibit traits of charm and intelligence also run for public office and enjoy careers in politics are nonetheless psychopaths as well in their conduct when disposing of votes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt appears this string is now off topic as it has abandoned Goering for the issue of racism and the injustice of lynchings of black persons in history as sport.
I commend you for your admission of your family's history and what I think is your effort to leave such travesties behind.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn regards to murderous actions by those professing to be devout Christians (not to ignore others), as I recall, papal armies slaughtered the Cathars, men women and children. Then there was the Crusades and the Inquisitions...
What made Goering so Dangerous as well as Hitler was their ability to inspire followers. It would make sense just in the case of Manson or any other psychopath that they could manipulate some one into doing their dirty work. So getting poison into prison to cheat the hangman's noose would be easy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have worked with and known people who are and were just the same kind . They walk the street in our towns and given the right ground they will create the same situation.
Nazi Germany was a state where people were brain washed into a dark and dangerous following. It seemed right no one questioned it. Corporations agreed government officials surcomed and followed until it was too late. That sad part is it can happen here or any where.
Did anybody make a criminal test to the last 10 presidents of Usa, his advisors and generals?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDid anybody ever made a research of the necessity for the winners to justify and describe the loosers as criminals?
Psycho analysis of criminals is a political and propaganda necessity of modern regimes.
Anyone interested in more details about the nazi officers detention in France and Nuremburg should read "I was the Nuremberg Jailer" by Col. Burton C. Andrus.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt has details regarding the lengths the prisoners went to smuggle in cyanide, among other things.
Though Hitler was charismatic, psychological historians have also shown that child-rearing techniques taught in Germany in the late 1800 and early 1900's had an influence as well. Many children of that era were raised in blind obedience, as educators instructed their parents. They were taught in no uncertain terms from early childhood that they were to always do as they were told and never question adults or authorities.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"How fortunate for those of us in power that people do not think." - Adolf Hitler
"We SS men were not supposed to think about these things,” - Rudolf Hess
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this“We were all so trained to obey orders without even thinking that the thought of disobeying an order would never have occurred to anybody.” - Rudolf Hess
It has ALREADY happened in the U.S.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1 of every 3 men in the U.S. is likely a psychopath.
In about 10-15 years, 3 of every 4 men in the U.S. will likely be a psychopath.
50% of U.S. schoolchildren are BULLIES, i.e. psychopaths-in-making.
See my article "The Fall of the U.S.- from "The Land of the Free" to "The Land of the Free-Range Psychopaths" at:
http://www.selfrepresentedfool.org/id81.html
I also thought that Kelley was likely the one who gave a cyanide capsule to Goering.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree with you totally, because to disagree would defy common sense. However, the liberal left wing in my country (Canada) and yours would disagree, believing that you(and I)have been brainwashed into believing that America always has ulterior motives (oil). In my opinion, even if oil was the main motive (which I don't believe), the collateral benefits of removing despots from power far exceed effects of leaving them in control. Look at Afghanistan......Girls are going to school, elections are taking place and people generally feel freer and therefore safer. People tend not to look at the big picture. Remove the most evil and whats left is bound to be better.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPay to read an article? I think not!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs a footnote to the article; GM Gilbert as a psychologist and a captain in the Army also interviewed Goering during the Neurnberg trials and in "Social Causes Contributing to Panic" published in "Panic and Morale" by the New York Academy of Medicine in 1958 had several interesting stories and quotes, from page 156-7:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"He told me how Chamberlain behaved at the Munich Pact, just sitting there and twisting his thumbs. He knew that he was selling Czechoslovakia down the river but he did not care. It was perfectly clear to Goering that cynical self interest was the only reality, and in terms of his own ego structure that enabled his to use power with a cynical contempt of the peoples desire for peace."
"Yet even this man experienced a panic reaction and it is rather amazing what brought it about. There was testimony to the effect the way of demoralizing the concentration camp population the Jews themselves were used to exterminate victims. That threw Goering into a sudden panic and could not understand why. He was in his cell, actually sweating and panting. (This was near the end) He said, "My God, I didn't realize it. The Jews are no different from other people. To save themselves they will kill others. We could have made good Nazis out of them. All of this has been of no avail."
"His entire system of values collapsed. He discovered there is no natural ethnic rivalry. People are the same all over. Jews are no worse or better than anybody else. He concluded that the idea of considering them enemies who must be exterminated was a catastrophic miscalculation of the Nazis' own self interest. He stood there panting and sweating and saying, "My God, all of this was unnecessary! Why did Hitler have to do it?"