THE NAZI AND THE PSYCHIATRIST-Jack El-Hai

True Murder: The Most Shocking Killers

Dan Zupansky

True Crime, News Commentary, Documentary, News, Society & Culture

4 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 14 November 2013

⏱️ 74 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 1945, after his capture at the end of the Second World War, Hermann Göring arrived at an American-run detention center in war-torn Luxembourg, accompanied by sixteen suitcases and a red hatbox. The suitcases contained all manner of paraphernalia: medals, gems, two cigar cutters, silk underwear, a hot water bottle, and the equivalent of $1 million in cash. Hidden in a coffee can, a set of brass vials housed glass capsules containing a clear liquid and a white precipitate: potassium cyanide. Joining Göring in the detention center were the elite of the captured Nazi regime—Grand Admiral Dönitz; armed forces commander Wilhelm Keitel and his deputy Alfred Jodl; the mentally unstable Robert Ley; the suicidal Hans Frank; the ographic propagandist Julius Streicher—fifty-two senior Nazis in all, of whom the dominant figure was Göring.

To ensure that the villainous captives were fit for trial at Nuremberg, the US army sent an ambitious army psychiatrist, Captain Douglas M. Kelley, to supervise their mental well-being during their detention. Kelley realized he was being offered the professional opportunity of a lifetime: to discover a distinguishing trait among these arch-criminals that would mark them as psychologically different from the rest of humanity. So began a remarkable relationship between Kelley and his captors, told here for the first time with unique access to Kelley’s long-hidden papers and medical records.

Kelley’s was a hazardous quest, dangerous because against all his expectations he began to appreciate and understand some of the Nazi captives, none more so than the former Reichsmarshall, Hermann Göring. Evil had its charms. THE NAZI AND THE PSYCHIATRIST-Jack El-Hai

Transcript

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0:40.2	Good evening. This is your host Dan Zepaski for the program True Murder, the most shocking
0:44.7	killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them.
0:50.4	To ensure that the villainous captives were fit for trial at Nuremberg, the US Army sent an
0:55.3	ambitious army psychiatrist Captain Douglas M. Kelly to supervise their mental well-being
1:01.0	during their detention. Kelly realized he was being offered the professional opportunity of a
1:05.9	lifetime to discover a distinguishing trait among these arch criminals that would mark them
1:12.2	as psychologically different from the rest of humanity. So began a remarkable relationship
1:17.8	between Kelly and his captors told here for the first time with unique access to Kelly's long
1:23.5	hidden tapers and medical records. Kelly's was a hazardous quest, dangerous because
1:29.9	against all his expectations he began to appreciate and understand some of the Nazi captives,
1:36.5	none more so than the former Reichmartial Hermann Goring, evil had its charms.
1:43.0	The book that we're discussing this evening is The Nazi and the Psychiatrist with my special
1:47.9	guest journalist and author, Jack L. Hi. Welcome to the program and thank you for agreeing
1:53.0	this interview. Jack L. Hi. It's my pleasure. Thank you for having me here.
1:59.2	And I did have an opportunity to ask you if that's the way you pronounce your name.
2:04.0	Is that the way properly to pronounce your name, Jack? Absolutely, you got it right.
	...

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