← Dan Snow's History Hit
Dan Snow's History Hit
Nuremberg: The Trial of Göring
00:40:03
How Göring sought to control his legacy and what his case revealed about the psychology of power and guilt in the aftermath of war.
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- [00:01]
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- [00:16]
Dan Snow
24.
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- [01:03]
Dan Snow
This episode of Dan Snows History is sponsored by American Historytellers. In the fall of 1620, a battered merchant ship called Mayflower set sail across the Atlantic. It carried 102 men, women and children, risking it all to start again in the new world. Every week on American History, Tellers host Lindsey Graham takes you through the moments that shaped America. In our latest season, we explore the untold story of the Pilgrims, one that goes far beyond the familiar tale of the first Thanksgiving. After landing at Cape Cod, the Pilgrims forged an unlikely alliance with the Wampanoag people. They helped survive the most brutal winter they had ever known, laying the foundation for a powerful national myth. But behind that story lies another one of conflict, betrayal, and brutal violence against the very people who helped them survive. Follow American History Tellers on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcast. You can binge all episodes of American Historytellers the Mayflower early and ad free right now on Wondery. When the guns finally fell silent In Europe in May 1945, the world was left with a daunting question. How do you deliver justice for crimes so vast, so organized and so coldly executed that they. Well, they defy the imagination. The Nazi regime had collapsed. It had been destroyed. Hitler was dead. Many of his closest lieutenants had fled or taken their own lives or were now desperately trying to disappear into the chaos of a defeated Reich. But one of those lieutenants, one man once Hitler's Chosen successor, the bombastic head of the Luftwaffe, the charismatic peacocking aristocrat of Nazi Germany. Well, he'd chosen a very different path. Hermann Goering surrendered himself in grand style with his large assortment of luggage to the occupying American troops. But as soon as he'd taken into Allied custody and realized what lay ahead, he was already preparing for his next stage. Not on the battlefield this time, but in a courtroom where international law would be reshaped. Over the next year, in a grey stone palace of justice in Nuremberg, 22 Nazi leaders would stand trial. It was unprecedented. Four nations judging those they accused as being the architects of a war that had cost more than 60 million lives. It was part legal process, part public reckoning and part lesson for the future lesson for us. But behind the scenes in the cells adjacent to the courtroom, there was an unusual relationship unfold building between Goering and the American psychiatrist assigned to assess him, Major Douglas Kelly. He seemed to be expecting a madman, a monster, a caricature of evil. Instead he found a man who was disturbingly normal, quite charming, really disciplined, razor sharp and frighteningly capable of self justification. The conversations between Goering and Kelly would expose a truth that was really far more unsettling than the idea, the image of a raving Nazi fanatic. It was this. The truth is that even the most prolific criminals can wear a smile, can quote poetry, can crack jokes, can sound reasonable, can be good company. In this episode we go into the courtrooms, the Nuremberg trials. We're going to also explore the psychological duel between the war criminal and the man tasked with with understanding him. We're going to look at how Goering turned that courtroom into his final stage and how the Allies fought to establish a new kind of justice. And also what Goering's relationship with Douglas Kelly can teach us about power and responsibility and evil. A terrifying normality of people that commit extraordinary crimes. We're joined by Jack L. High, author of the book the Nazi and the Psychiatrist, which has just been adapted into a movie and is hitting our cinema screens very, very soon. This is the story of Hermann Goering on trial at Nuremb and its uncomfortable lessons. T minus 10.
- [05:17]
Jack L. High
Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
- [05:19]
Dan Snow
God save the King. No black white unity till there is.
- [05:23]
Jack L. High
First some black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And liftoff.
- [05:29]
Dan Snow
And the shuttle has cleared the tower. When Hermann Goering took his seat in the dock at Nuremberg in late 1945, he, he wasn't just another defendant. He was the most senior surviving architect of Hitler's Third Reich. He was a First World War hero who had turned Nazi Party enforcer. He'd become head of the German Air force. He was an economic czar, and for years he'd been Hitler's chosen heir. But to understand how he got here, how he ended up in Nuremberg, we need to first rewind. Goering was born on 12th January 1893 in Bavaria. He was raised in a world that was steeped in the prestige of old hierarchy of uniform and title and empire. He grew up in a castle, actual castle, called Waldenstein, owned by his godfather and brackets, his mother's lover, who was a wealthy Jewish physician and merchant, named Hermann Epenstein. From an early age, Goering was drawn to a career in uniform.
- [06:31]
Maya and Sim
He.
- [06:32]
Dan Snow
He was rebellious at school, and from 16 onwards, he was sent to one of Germany's most prestigious military academies. He became a professional soldier just as Europe slid towards catastrophe during the First World War, he transferred from the infantry to the air service, and he very quickly made his name as a fighter ace. By 1918, that famed ace of aces, Manfred von Richthofen, or the Red Baron, well, he was dead. And Goering had briefly stepped into his shoes. He'd commanded Richthoen's unit, the famous Flying Circus. He'd won the gallantry award Pour le Mar, the German Empire's highest military order, curiously with a French name, but more on that another time. Defeat in the First World War radicalized Germany. It radicalized Hitler. It radicalized Goering too. After the war, he had a stint of flying commercially in Denmark and Sweden. But he went home in 1922 and he joined Adolf Hitler's National Socialist movement, bringing some celebrity, really, bringing a wartime reputation, but also swagger and connections. As a former military officer of some repute, he was put in charge of the Party's street fighters, the Brown Shirts. He was badly wounded in the groin during the failed beer hall putsch of November 1923, when Hitler tried to seize power. And he was given morphine for the pain. And he developed a serious addiction that would stay with him for the rest of his life. You'll be hearing more about that later on. Immediately after the putsch, he fled into exile as the Party collapsed. But he did return when, foolishly, the government offered amnesties. And the political fortunes shifted. From the late 1920s, Goering was one of the Nazis most effective operators. He was a power broker. He was elected as a Nazi delegate to the Reichstag in 1928. He rose to its presidency in 1932 as the party surged. When Hitler took power in 1933, Goering moved fast. He became Prussian Minister of the Interior. He built up a police state, he purged officials, he empowered loyalists, he created the Gestapo. He opened up the first concentration camp, Oranienburg, where victims of the Nazis were subjected to the euphemistically titled policy of Protective custody, meaning just illegal imprisonment and usually mistreatment and torture. The titles, the honours, they came thick and fast. In 1935, he took command of the newly reconstituted Luftwaffe. In 1936, he became Economic Czar of the Four Year Plan. So he was in charge of overseeing the vast rearmament of the German, well, German armed forces. And he was also placed right at the center of state sanctioned plunder. He seized Jewish businesses, he squeezed newly occupied territories for all their worth, and he funneled immense wealth into his own pockets. Goering had a ridiculous, ostentatious country estate at Carinhal. It became a playground for his ludicrous whims and obsessions. It had a lion cage, it had a 400 square meter train set, complete with model airplanes that could drop little wooden bombs. It was home to his vast private collection of looted artworks, pieces he had confiscated from artists classed as degenerates, and those he stole from museums in cities like Paris and Brussels. As the war in Europe began. At the outbreak of War in 1939, Goering stood firmly as Hitler's designated successor. In 1940, he was elevated to Reichsmarschall, the highest military rank in the Reich, one that had been specially created for him by Hitler. And Goering went on to design his own special uniform. But the arc of that relationship would bend dramatically over time. Early on, Goering was the charming fixer. He was cultivated, he was vain, he was loyal. He helped translate Hitler's ambitions into reality. But the gigantic challenges of the Second World War laid bare his limits. The Luftwaffe failed to defeat the RAF, to break Britain in 1940. His empty boasts about crushing Soviet industry, and then his catastrophic inability to supply the encircled 6th army at Stalingrad in the winter of 1942-1943, really well tarnished his reputation, if not destroyed it in the eyes of the Fuhrer. As the ground war went on and on, Goering's empty promises stacked up and rivals like Himmler and Bormann whispered about his failings. And Hitler was all too keen to listen. By April 1945, with the regime collapsing around them, the Nazi leadership disintegrating, Goering's relationship with Hitler imploded for good. Now let's hear all about that from Jack. Jack Great to talk to you.
- [11:09]
Jack L. High
Thank you so much for having me here.
- [11:12]
Dan Snow
There is a general, absolute meltdown of the Nazi senior leadership as those Soviet tanks got ever closer to Hitler's bunker in Berlin in April and early May 1945. Let's look at Goering in particular. He's actually not in Berlin. What happens to his relationship in that last week or two of the Third Reich? What happens to Goering's relationship with Hitler?
- [11:33]
Jack L. High
It deteriorated quite a bit, Goering thinks, because he had spoken with Hitler about when and whether he should assume the leadership of the government with the collapse of the regime and the war coming to an end. And Hitler didn't take well to those kinds of questions. And he even sicced a group of SS Stormtroopers to go to where Goering was. But Goering talked those guys out of it. Meanwhile, however, Hitler designated the Admiral Donitz to be his successor when the government did fall. And Goering made his escape to Austria as the war wound to its final days.
- [12:22]
Dan Snow
Because Goering, just to get people up to speed, was not in Berlin. Goering was in one of his palaces somewhere, was he Right.
- [12:29]
Jack L. High
And that's where the SS troops went after him. But Goering had spent most of the war as Hitler's successor, so this was quite a change in fortune for him.
- [12:42]
Dan Snow
So he says, hey, just Hitler. Look, I hope it's all going well in Berlin. Just let me know when you want me to take the reins of government. And Hitler goes berserk. Okay. So then he's in his luxury confinement. He makes his way to Austria, does he, in the last hours or even after the armistice. He makes his way. The ceasefire, he makes his way to Austria.
- [13:00]
Jack L. High
And that's because he knew that his surrender would be inevitable and he did not want to have to surrender to Russian troops. And so he went to where there was an American line to surrender to the American army, and he drove his automobile up to where the American line was, got out, told them who he was, and asked if they would unload his luggage.
- [13:29]
Dan Snow
Yeah. And because he is in Bavaria, so he is a few hours away from the Austrian borders. That's not a big mission for him.
- [13:36]
Jack L. High
No, he made that part of the trip easily. But he had the intent in the very last hours of the war and after the war was over, to surrender. He knew he would have to.
- [13:48]
Dan Snow
When you mentioned this luggage that the Americas are supposed to unload, are there a few impressionist painters in there? A few beautiful looted bits of art?
- [13:55]
Jack L. High
No art that I know of, but he did have some other Interesting items with him. By this time, Guring was addicted to a narcotic called pericodine, and he had cornered almost the entire world's supply of pericodine and had thousands of tablets with him. And he also had a lot of luggage and hat boxes full of things to wear and quite a bit of jewelry, rings, things of that sort. So he was coming with a lot of baggage.
- [14:32]
Dan Snow
Well, and he was coming with baggage in all senses. He is the most senior. Well, he's one of the most senior Nazis now in captivity. Is there any debate over how he should be treated, where he should be kept, what he should face amongst the victorious Allies?
- [14:49]
Jack L. High
There had been some earlier debate among the Allies about how the top leaders in general should be treated. Churchill, for instance, at one point thought they should all be lined up and shot. And it took Roosevelt and, interestingly, Stalin to take the opposite position, that there should be a trial and a trial that didn't look like a kangaroo court. But in Goering's case, he arrived thinking himself a possible successor still to Hitler and thinking that there was a chance that he could head a new German government after the war. And he hoped that the Allies would treat him like a head of state, not like a prisoner. But the Allies were not on board with that at all and treated him as a prisoner from the start of his captivity.
- [15:45]
Dan Snow
And in pretty hard. This was not a pampered captivity like the SS had kept him in just at the end of the war. This is pretty harsh.
- [15:51]
Jack L. High
It was not so harsh at the very beginning. He was taken, along with many of the other Nazi leaders, to a former hotel in Mandorf in Luxembourg, which is a resort town. And I'm sure it had been a quite nice hotel, but the rooms had been stripped of all the luxurious furniture and very basic furnishings put in their place. And that's where Goering and his comrades spent the first part of their captivity. They didn't go to Nuremberg until later.
- [16:27]
Dan Snow
So they're all sent to Nuremberg. Why was that city chosen?
- [16:32]
Jack L. High
Mainly because of the facilities available in Nuremberg and the symbolic value of that city as far as as the facilities go. Even though much of the city had been bombed out, there still was an extant palace of justice and prison alongside of it. The palace of justice, which had courtrooms in it, had to be rebuilt quickly in time for the trial. But the symbolic value of Nuremberg was immense because this, of course, was where Hitler had held all of his gigantic Nazi Party rallies at the end of the 1930s. And it was symbolic of this Nazi ambition for great Power. And to hold the trial, there was a show of the fall, of this ambition.
- [17:26]
Dan Snow
So it's the ideal backdrop. It's symbolic. It's also logistically possible. There is a useful place that they can be tried, and there are barracks for all the necessary officers of the court. The trials be presided over by a judge from each of these Allied victorious nations.
- [17:42]
Jack L. High
There are judges from all four of the Allied nations in charge of the trial. So that was the Soviet Union, France, Britain and the us. And Justice Lawrence of the UK was the presiding judge.
- [17:56]
Dan Snow
It's quite a compressed timeline, isn't it? I mean, you're building up a docket of criminality stretching across years, across the continents, including some of the most monstrous crimes ever committed by human beings. How much work was there to get ready for these trials?
- [18:09]
Jack L. High
Oh, it was incredible stressful work for the Allied prosecutors to gather up the evidence. Fortunately, the Germans had left behind a lot of paper evidence, and there was all the evidence in human casualties left behind and still living in the camps. But it was an immense effort, a huge prosecutorial effort to bring all of this material together and to go through it and comprehend it in time for the trial, which was scheduled to begin in November 1945. Guring and many of his colleagues were captured in the spring of 1945. So that just left a small number of months to put it all together.
- [18:56]
Dan Snow
Yeah, very, very quick. We won't get into the trials, we'll quickly sum them up at the end. But the reason I'm talking to you today is because I'm so interested in this relationship between goering and this U.S. army psychologist. So tell me about Douglas Kelly.
- [19:09]
Jack L. High
Douglas Kelly was an MD psychiatrist, who had grown up in California, a beautiful town called Truckee at the north end of Lake Tahoe, and had attended medical school in California and had enlisted in the US military after the war started for America, and he was sent to Western Europe to work in a series of military hospitals there. And his main job during the war was to treat soldiers who had suffered what was then called battle fatigue, or shell shock. We would now call it ptsd. And this. And it's astonishing how many of the casualties from the early years of the war came from PTSD and not from physical wounds. In the North African campaign, for instance, up to 75% of the casualties were psychiatric casualties. So the goal was to take these soldiers and to restore them to mental health so that they could be returned to battle. And that's what Dr. Kelly was working on, along with some of his colleagues there and he had great success. He was considered to be very innovative in developing techniques of treatment for these kinds of soldiers and getting them back onto the battlefield. So when the war ended in the spring of 45, he was close by. He was there. He was relatively high ranking and he went to, first to Luxembourg, then to Nuremberg without really knowing what his job would be among the German prisoners and.
- [20:58]
Dan Snow
What was the job. So he had an official role, which was what? To do a psychiatric evaluation on them.
- [21:04]
Jack L. High
Right. His task was to see that all of the top 22 German defendants were mentally fit to stand trial. And that mentally fit qualification is a low legal barrier. It means that they could understand right from wrong and could understand the charges against them. And so 21 of the 22 in Kelly's judgment did meet that criteria. And he was able to wrap up that kind of examination of the men in short order. But Kelly also recognized that he was the envy of his profession because he was in the presence of this group of men considered the arch criminals of the 20th century, who were at least charged with committing awful, heinous crimes never before seen on a scale like that. And he wanted to do more with them. He wanted to find out if they shared any common psychiatric disorder or what he called a Nazi virus that could account for their behavior. So he made that his mission. And he spent really the rest of his time in Nuremberg until January 46 working on that in coming to his conclusions.
- [22:31]
Dan Snow
You're listening to Dan Snow's history. There's more to come.
- [22:35]
Jack L. High
Foreign.
- [22:43]
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- [24:53]
Dan Snow
So how civilized. The US army just allowed him to take these gentlemen and do a gigantic scientific evaluation on them. A test. One that could have enormous consequences for the future of the race.
- [25:05]
Jack L. High
I don't think the US army knew exactly what he was doing and what his goals were or that his goal was to write a book after he returned back to the States from Nuremberg. But the army did allow him to to subject the defendants to these batteries of tests. Dr. Kelly was a big proponent and considered a gifted interpreter of the Rorschach inkblot test, which many people would recognize as these ink blots on a card that the subjects are supposed to interpret. But he gave them other tests as well in which they had to tell stories. And he gave them IQ tests. Plus he spent many, many hours with each of the defendants in one on one conversations in their cells.
- [25:54]
Dan Snow
And tell me about some of those verbal sparring sessions between him and Goering. We'll say a bit more about Goering. He's a figure of fun to many, but he was obviously an extraordinary charismatic. He was a very decorated war hero from the first World War. He had enormous gifts. How did Kelly find him?
- [26:10]
Jack L. High
Kelly found Hermann Guring in not great physical shape. He was addicted to this narcotic paracodine, and he was overweight and suffering from heart problems. And the last thing the Allies wanted was for Guring, or really any of his co defendants, to suffer some big health setback or to even die before the trial would start. So Dr. Kelly's first task was to wean Guring off the pericodine. And he did that by appealing to Hermann Goering's ego, which was considerable, telling him that throwing off an addiction to a drug like this is very difficult, but that a man of his strength of character could do it. And Guring agreed that he should be able to do it. And he did very successfully. And they got the weight down too. But what Kelly found in terms of personality and psychological makeup in Guring was someone actually quite similar to Dr. Kelly himself. They were both very intelligent men, strongly motivated by powerful egos who rarely thought themselves wrong in any sense of the word. And Kelly saw that Guring had quite a bit of charm. He had a good sense of humor. He told jokes to his jailers about himself and even about Hitler. Kelly, however, was not blind to Guring's darker side. And he also was able to determine that Guring was without remorse, without empathy, quite bloodthirsty in the decisions that he had made and quite cold in judging the effect that his work during the war had had on other people.
- [28:06]
Dan Snow
Did Goering claim ignorance about lots of things that happened to be going on in the bureaucracy and say, well, it was my problem, or was he. Did he double down on things like the anti Semitism, on the Final Solution, on this gigantic war of annihilation against the Soviet Union, for example?
- [28:21]
Jack L. High
Well, interestingly, he did claim some ignorance, but as far as the Nazi ideology went, he claimed that it wasn't important, that he was not a huge believer in the anti Semitism and other ideological points that were a big part of the Nazi movement. And Guring said that his attraction to the Nazi party when he joined in the 1920s, in the early years of the party, was that it was small, which meant he could rise quickly to the top of it, and that its members included many German veterans of World War I. And he believed that group was essential to have in the fold to overturn the Weimar government in the 1920s. So Goering painted himself as not an ideological devotee, but instead as an ambitious, patriotic man, really an opportunist who could use what the Nazis were doing and advance the Nazi program for his own gain.
- [29:30]
Dan Snow
It is one of Kelly's most important conclusions that although he lacks empathy, I mean, so do lots of guys, there is actually nothing particularly psychotic and outlier about Goering. I Mean is, the true horror of the Nazis is actually these people were reasonably normal and yet were able to preside over this empire of evil.
- [29:54]
Jack L. High
That's exactly right. Kelly went into his time with Guring and the other defendants expecting to find grave psychiatric problems in them, disorders. But through all of his testing and his discussions and interviews with him, he did not find that. He never found the Nazi virus that he was looking for, and instead came to the conclusion that all of these men fell within the normal range. And this was quite frightening to Kelly because it meant that if they were in the normal range, then there were many others like them also in the normal range in our society, maybe not necessarily working in government or the military, but working in other endeavors, business, education, everything who have the tendency to want to amass power and walk all over the backs of half the population, as Kelly put it, to gain power over the other half. And this led him to a realization that the end of the war would not stop these war crimes, crimes against humanity, instances of genocide. The trial would. Conclusion of the trial would not stop. Stop any of that. The creation of the United nations would not stop any of that. And we would always be burdened by these people in our society and always have been. And so that it was up to the rest of us to try and develop a plan, programs to combat them in the future.
- [31:34]
Dan Snow
Goering, is he hard to pin down for the prosecutors? Does he put up a good defense? Is he persuasive? Is he charismatic?
- [31:41]
Jack L. High
Goering spent his time in captivity in the early months devising what he would do once he got to the stand. He knew the trial was inevitable. He knew it was inevitable that he would be put on the stand to talk. And he resolved to use that time to mount a defense of everything the Germans had done and that they had done it out of patriotism and loyalty to Hitler. And that's really how everything spooled out during time on the witness stand. In the spring of 46, the trial began with Robert Jackson's very eloquent statement for the prosecution that everybody thought was persuasive and noble and powerful. But then once Gurning got on the stand, he began all of his talk, really propaganda, defending the Nazi regime. And Jackson, who was conducting this cross examination and testimony, was not prepared for that and did poorly under it. And for quite a while, Goering had the upper hand. And Goering's defense didn't crumble until a little later, when the prosecution presented all of this paper evidence against Guring, showing his signatures on orders and commands, enabling the Holocaust and many others that Guring could not dispute where his fortunes turned, and in the end, the justices had no problem convicting him.
- [33:27]
Dan Snow
You listen to Dan Snow's history. Don't go anywhere. There's more to come.
- [33:39]
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- [34:09]
Jack L. High
It's third down.
- [34:12]
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- [34:48]
Dan Snow
He was convicted to death by hanging. That hanging was due to take place on 16th October 1946. What happened just before that?
- [35:00]
Jack L. High
Goering did not want to be hanged. Not just because he didn't want to be killed, but also because hanging was considered a bad form of execution. If you're a former leader of a country, hanging is for in their minds, for highwaymen and common criminals. So Goering did not want this fate. Many of his colleagues in the prison also did not want that fate. But Goering had brought into the prison with him when he first arrived. Among all of the stuff in his luggage, some cyanide capsules. And no one knows for sure how this happened, but most likely one of the Americans guards developed a trading relationship with Hermann Goering in which Guring would provide the guard with valuables, jewelry, rings, gemstones, things like that. And the guard brought to Guring from his stored luggage these capsules of cyanide. So the night before, during scheduled execution by hanging, Guring had in his cell with him in a jar of face cream, cold cream, something like that, one of those capsules, and he put it in his Mouth and broke the capsule and died almost instantly, which was a horrible setback for his American jailers and for the Allies in general.
- [36:36]
Dan Snow
Did Kelly feel in any way responsible because was he partly monitoring them in case they did try and take their own life, to try and head that? Did he get the rap?
- [36:44]
Jack L. High
That was part of Kelly's job in the prison, to try and make sure that the defendants did not kill themselves. And so he had earlier failed in that with one of the defendants named Robert Ley, who was the head of the German Labor Front, a slave labor organization. Lay did kill himself even before the trial began. And Kelly was not in Nuremberg any longer. When Goering took his life, he was back in the States. He received the news of Goering's death like everybody else, by reading the newspaper, and he was surprised, but also a bit in admiration because he realized that Goering was grandstanding. By taking his life in this way, he was showing his defiance to the Allied authorities and not allowing himself to be executed the way they wanted. He was going out his way.
- [37:44]
Dan Snow
Did Kelly come to have a sort of grudging fascination for friendship, with admiration for Goering, do you think?
- [37:50]
Jack L. High
I wouldn't say they ever had a friendship because Kelly was too aware of Goering's bad qualities, but I think they did have an admiration. They were very much alike. I think each of them recognized that they were both master manipulators, and they knew that the other was in the process of doing that manipulation, and so they used each other to get what they wanted during the times they were together. So I think what Kelly was left with after Guring took his own life was the effect of seeing how Goering's suicide made a statement and could show defiance. And that would come into play 12 or so years later when Dr. Kelly himself took his own life in the same way by swallowing cyanide.
- [38:49]
Dan Snow
Are the two related or was it just that that was an obvious way to take your own life in that period? I mean, do you think it was in some way a sort of homage or a copying of Goering?
- [38:58]
Jack L. High
That was one of the central questions. What was the connection between these two men's suicides, which looked so similar? I concluded that it wasn't the case that Kelly, at the end of his life, was thinking, I'm going to do what Herman did. I think it was more like he had in his mind still the effect that Goering's suicide had on everyone else, making this statement and showing defiance. And those were things that Kelly wanted to show, too, at the end of his life because of the circumstances of the last 12 years of his life. His life had gone downhill quite a bit since Nuremberg. A lot of personal problems, marital problems, drinking problems. So I think the effect of a death by cyanide appealed to them both for the same reasons, and that's why they both chose it.
- [39:58]
Dan Snow
Can I just come back to the conclusions that Kelly drew from his time spent with some of the most evil men of the 20th century, if not of recorded history, to emphasize? He didn't think that any of those men demonstrated particularly rare or unusual mental outlooks or personalities. They were reasonably normal guys.
- [40:18]
Jack L. High
He detected some common points among them, but these were things that a lot of people exhibit. All of the German defendants were type A workaholics, so they devoted themselves fully to their work and what they perceived as their mission in their work. Many of them were also lacking in empathy or just simply not interested in knowing what the consequences of their actions were. But again, this is something that a lot of people in our world exhibit. And what I like about Kelly's conclusions, that these men fell within the normal range and were not monsters or unusually deviant, psychologically deviant examples of our species, is that if you call them monsters or deviants, how responsible are they for their actions? You have to ask that. And in Kelly's accounting, in which they fall within a normal range, they are responsible and they made choices that are open to many of us to make, and they chose the course of evil, of hurting millions of people. And that's what I think is appealing about Kelly's conclusions. On the other hand, what frightened him should be frightening to all of us, that fascism and authoritarianism can arise anywhere, anytime. And of course, it has, even very recently in countries with democratic traditions. So I think Kelly's conclusions go a long way to explaining not only just how those men behaved during the war, but how people are behaving now.
- [42:09]
Dan Snow
Jack, thank you so much for coming onto the podcast. You're having a busy fall because your. Your book, the Nazi and the Psychologist Herman Goering, Dr. Douglas M. Kelly and the Fatal Meeting of Minds at the End of World War II. It's been turned into a movie.
- [42:22]
Jack L. High
It has, and I feel good that I can honestly recommend the movie. I've seen it twice now, and I think it's very good. No movie based on history I don't think can be expected to be 100% factual. But this movie is essentially factual, and it delivers the messages from Kelly and Guring's story that I think are important.
- [42:47]
Dan Snow
Well, thank you for helping to transmit those messages to new generations. We are very grateful. Thank you very much also for coming on the podcast.
- [42:54]
Jack L. High
Glad to have been here. Thank you, Dan.
- [42:57]
Dan Snow
In October 1946, the judges at Nuremberg delivered their final verdicts. Hermann Goering, once the second most powerful man in Nazi Germany, was found guilty on all counts conspiracy, crimes against peace, war crimes, crimes against humanity. He was sentenced to hang, but he chose his own ending. He bit down on a cyanide capsule that had been smuggled into his cell. Even in death, he tried to seize the narrative, to deny the court the final word. But the legacy of Nuremberg was never just about one man's punishment. It was about establishing a precedent. And for the first time in history, the architects of a war of annihilation were held publicly and legally to account. In the quiet spaces beneath that courtroom, Douglas Kelly walked away with a conclusion far more unsettling than he had expected. He did not find insanity. He found functionality, charisma, ego, patriotism, all twisted together into cruelty. The kind of reasonably normal personalities that metastasized, given the right conditions, into monsters. In Goering, Kelly recognized something that we don't really want to admit, that the capacity for extraordinary harm doesn't sit at the fringes of humanity, but uncomfortably close to the center. And today, that truth is important. Nuremberg was a warning as much as a reckoning. It taught us that structures, that systems matter, accountability matters, vigilance matters. Because history isn't shaped by villains hiding in the shadows, but by confident people who sound reasonable enough as they dismantle the world around them. Thanks to Jack for joining us. Thank you for listening to this episode. If you found it interesting, please consider sharing it and subscribing to the podcast if you haven't already done that. And if you have any topics you'd like us to cover, you can reach us at the email in the show notes. And who knows, maybe your idea will become an episode on the feed. See you next time.
- [45:17]
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