Nuremberg: The Trial of Göring

Dan Snow's History Hit

History Hit

History

4.7 • 12.9K Ratings

🗓️ 17 November 2025

⏱️ 40 minutes

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Summary

Warning: This episode contains discussion of suicide.

When the Nuremberg Trials began in November 1945, Hermann Göring was the highest-ranking Nazi to face justice for the crimes of the Third Reich. Charismatic, manipulative and unrepentant, he became the central figure of the proceedings. This episode examines Göring’s performance in the courtroom and his unusual relationship with U.S. Army psychiatrist Dr Douglas Kelley, who was tasked with assessing the mental state of the Nazi defendants.

For this, we're joined by Jack El-Hai, author of ‘The Nazi and the Psychiatrist'. Through their exchanges, Jack explains how Göring sought to control his legacy and what his case revealed about the psychology of power and guilt in the aftermath of war.

Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	When the guns finally fell silent in Europe in May 1945, the world was left with a daunting question.
0:09.7	How do you deliver justice for crimes so vast, so organized and so coldly executed that they
0:15.6	defy the imagination? The Nazi regime had collapsed, it had been destroyed. Hitler was dead.
0:24.7	Many of his closest lieutenants had fled or taken their own lives or were now desperately
0:29.6	trying to disappear into the chaos of a defeated Reich. But one of those lieutenants, one man,
0:34.6	once Hitler's chosen successor, the bombastic head of the Luftwaffe,
0:40.2	the charismatic peacocking aristocrat of Nazi Germany, well, he'd chosen a very different path.
0:46.8	Herman Goering surrendered himself in grand style with his large assortment of luggage to the occupying
0:53.8	American troops.
0:55.5	But as soon as he'd taken into Allied custody and realised what lay ahead,
0:59.3	he was already preparing for his next stage, not on the battlefield this time,
1:05.0	but in a courtroom where international law would be reshaped.
1:10.2	Over the next year, in a grey stone palace of justice in Nuremberg,
1:14.6	22 Nazi leaders would stand trial.
1:17.6	It was unprecedented.
1:19.6	Four nations judging those they accused as being the architects of a war
1:24.6	that had cost more than 60 million lives.
1:26.6	It was part legal process,
1:29.0	part public reckoning and part lesson for the future. Lesson for us.
1:39.6	But behind the scenes in the cells adjacent to the courtroom, there was an unusual relationship
1:43.8	unfolding. Between Guring and the American psychiatrist assigned to assess him, Major Douglas
1:49.6	Kelly, he seemed to be expecting a madman, a monster, a caricature of evil. Instead, he found
	...

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