Ep265: Nuremberg - Inside the Nazi Mind

In 1945, a young American psychiatrist named Douglas M. Kelley was given an extraordinary assignment: evaluate the 22 most senior Nazis awaiting trial at Nuremberg and determine whether they were mentally fit to face justice. Among his patients was Hermann Göring, Hitler's second-in-command, who was charismatic, manipulative and utterly unrepentant.

What Kelley discovered shook him to his core. Using Rorschach tests, IQ assessments and hundreds of hours of interviews, he concluded that these architects of the Holocaust were not clinically insane. They were psychologically normal: intelligent, ambitious opportunists who had made deliberate choices to pursue power at any human cost. There was no "Nazi mind." There was no psychiatric explanation that set them apart from the rest of us.

It was a conclusion the post-war world didn't want to hear. And it destroyed the man who reached it.

In this episode, Mat McLachlan talks to Jack El-Hai, author of The Nazi and the Psychiatrist, the book behind the 2025 film Nuremberg starring Russell Crowe and Rami Malek. Jack had unique access to Kelley's hidden personal papers: clinical notes, Rorschach results and private correspondence kept secret by the family for decades. He reveals the complex and ultimately fatal relationship between a brilliant psychiatrist and the most powerful Nazi to stand trial, and asks the question Kelley spent the rest of his short life trying to answer: if the men who built the Third Reich weren't monsters, what does that say about the rest of us?

Episode Length: 40 minutes

Features: Jack El-Hai discusses his research into Douglas Kelley's hidden archive, the psychology of the Nuremberg defendants, the Kelley-Göring relationship, the competing theories of the "Nazi mind" and why Kelley's warnings about authoritarianism went unheard until it was too late.

Presenter: Mat McLachlan

Guest: Jack El-Hai

Producer: Jess Stebnicki

Sail through history with Mat McLachlan! Join a 2027 history cruise: https://battlefields.com.au/history-cruises-2027

Find out everything Mat is doing with books, tours and media at https://linktr.ee/matmclachlan

For more great history content, visit www.LivingHistoryTV.com, or subscribe to our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@MatMcLachlanHistory

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.