Douglas Kelley's Warning From Nuremberg

Summary

Podcast Summary: Douglas Kelly's Warning From Nuremberg

Podcast: History As It Happens
Host: Martin Di Caro
Guest: Jack L. High (author of The Nazi and the Psychiatrist)
Date: March 10, 2026

Episode Overview

This episode explores the life and legacy of Dr. Douglas M. Kelley, the American psychiatrist who evaluated Nazi defendants at the Nuremberg Trials. Through an in-depth conversation with author Jack L. High, whose book inspired the new film "Nuremberg," the episode investigates the disturbing normalcy of the war criminals Kelley encountered, the flaws and evolution of psychiatric understanding, and the renewed dangers of authoritarianism in today's world.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Understanding the Nazi Mindset

• Kelley's Assignment at Nuremberg

  • Kelley’s role: Evaluate if Nazi leaders were fit to stand trial (18:14)
  • He relied on contemporary psychiatric methods, particularly the Rorschach test, to assess the defendants (15:00)
  • Found all defendants were legally and psychiatrically "normal," meaning they understood their actions and the consequences (19:54, 20:21)
  • "That was a terrifying finding for him because it meant, first of all, the psychiatry couldn't explain them... if they're normal, then there are other similarly normal people all around us who could do things like this." — Jack L. High (20:21)

• Ordinary People Capable of Evil

  • Kelley concluded that evil acts are a hazard of ordinary human potential, not unique to Nazism (21:31)
  • "He believed that people like this were opportunists who would use the political and social and historical circumstances around them, whatever they were, to rise to the top and to attain power by walking over the backs of many people." — Jack L. High (21:31)
  • It's a mistake to demonize perpetrators as monsters; understanding their humanity is crucial for prevention and accountability (23:08)

Evaluating the Methods and Limits of 1940s Psychiatry

• Tools of the Era
  • Tools like the Rorschach inkblot test—heavily relied upon at the time—would not hold up as credible diagnostics today (15:00)
  • Psychiatry lacked the means to fully explain the roots of authoritarian and genocidal behavior, a deficiency Kelley struggled with professionally and personally (26:06)
  • Kelley's post-Nuremberg book, 22 Cells in Nuremberg, was poorly received and led to years of depression (26:56–27:06)

The Nazi Defendants: Personality and Remorse

• Portraits of Defendants

  • Excerpts from original interviews show the defendants appeared as "intelligent executives," not as crazed ideologues or sadists (04:34)
  • Notable distinctions: Showmen like Goering remained extroverted; military men were formal and dignified (04:34)
  • Goering seen as "highly intelligent, charming, had a great sense of humor, was also the bearer of a dark, dangerous aspect to his personality. He had no remorse, he lacked conscience, and he was highly manipulative." — Jack L. High (28:58)

• Remorse and Denial

  • Only Albert Speer and Hans Frank expressed any remorse, but Kelley considered it insincere (36:17)
  • "He professed to feel this remorse... but he did not acknowledge the worst of what happened..." — Jack L. High on Speer (36:40–36:45)

The Roots and Dangers of Authoritarianism

• Parallels with the Present

  • Kelley warned the American society was not immune to authoritarianism, seeing parallels in Jim Crow and the potential for “push” and control by ruthless individuals (07:57, 28:01)
  • Discussion of modern-day pseudo-democracies: Putin, Erdoğan, Orbán, where systems are “subverted from within” rather than overthrown violently (43:16)
  • "They're working within the system and subverting the system, ignoring aspects of the system, ignoring parts of the Constitution, getting their way that way." — Jack L. High (43:25)

• Kelley's Preventative Advice

  • Emphasized critical thinking and robust education as tools to defend democracies from emotional manipulation and propaganda (34:43)
  • "People who can do that, well, who are good critical thinkers, are not vulnerable to emotional manipulation. And that is what propaganda always seeks to do." — Jack L. High (34:43)

Reflections on Trauma and Legacy

• Kelley's Tragic End

  • Plagued by professional disappointment and personal struggles, Kelley died by suicide, echoing the fate of Goering (37:06)
  • "Killing yourself by cyanide, it's quick, but it's also very painful and very dramatic... His father was trying to make a statement about his misery during those later years and his disappointment." — Jack L. High (37:27)
  • Goering’s escape from execution by cyanide pill remains somewhat mysterious; most agree he bartered for the pill with an American guard (38:42)

• The Dangers of Historical Analogies

  • High cautions against oversimplified analogies between present and past authoritarians, but underscores the value of “voices from the past” for guidance (40:31)

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Memorable Quotes

• On the banality of evil:

  "In general, the prisoners are no different from a group of intelligent executives anywhere. In contradistinction to popular opinion, they are neither crazy nor are they supermen."
  — Dr. Douglas M. Kelley (04:34, original archival interview)

• On accountability:

  "Only when we think of these criminals as humans who made choices to do the evil things they did do we have hope of holding them responsible."
  — Jack L. High (23:08)

• On propaganda and education:

  "People who can do that, well, who are good critical thinkers, are not vulnerable to emotional manipulation. And that is what propaganda always seeks to do."
  — Jack L. High (34:43)

• On modern authoritarianism:

  "They're working within the system and subverting the system, ignoring aspects of the system, ignoring parts of the Constitution, getting their way that way."
  — Jack L. High (43:25)

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Notable Moments & Timestamps

• [01:27] Early framing: The kind of people who pursue power at any cost
• [04:34–07:57] Archival interview: Dr. Kelley's observations about Nazi personalities
• [15:00] Discussion of 1940s psychiatric tools vs. modern standards
• [19:54–21:31] Kelley’s finding that Nazis were "normal" and consequences of that insight
• [23:08] On the dangers of demonizing instead of understanding perpetrators
• [28:58–30:21] Kelley’s assessment of Goering and dynamic of their relationship
• [34:43–35:28] Kelley's prescription for democratic resilience: critical thinking
• [36:17] On the rare (and insincere) remorse among defendants
• [37:06] Kelley's depression, suicide, and its symbolism
• [38:42] Theories about Goering's cyanide capsule
• [40:31] Pitfalls and value of historical analogy
• [43:16–44:23] Modern authoritarianism’s use of democratic facades

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Conclusion

This episode weaves together history, psychology, and urgent sociopolitical lessons. Douglas Kelley’s confrontation with the “normality” of the Nuremberg defendants forces a re-examination of where evil comes from—and how societies must be vigilant, self-critical, and well-educated to prevent its resurgence. Jack L. High’s insights illuminate not only a forgotten figure from the aftermath of World War II, but also the threads connecting past atrocities to contemporary dangers.

Transcript

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[Martin DeCaro]

March 10, 2026 Douglas Kelly's warning from Nuremberg these people are dangerous.

[Arthur Gaith (Interviewer)]

With their brains and physique, with their push, with the background of money guring had, these are the kind of people who will willingly climb over the bodies of half the population if by so

[Martin DeCaro]

doing they can control the other half. The American psychiatrist assigned to evaluate the Nazi defendants at Nuremberg believe they served as a warning for all societies, including the United States. Before Dr. Douglas Kelly was the subject of a new James Vanderbilt film, Nuremberg, author Jack L. High brought Kelly's life and legacy to light in the Nazi and the Psychiatrist, showing how ordinary men travel the road to barbarism without remorse. That's next as we report History as It happens. I'm Martin DeCaro.

[Hermann Goering (Actor/Voice)]

This trial will be a farce in 15 years. Great conquerors are not thought of as murderers. Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great?

[Ad Voice (Various Advertisers)]

You're not Alexander the Great.

[Jack L. High]

What he was trying to find out, ultimately was motivation. If these people are human, and of course they are, unless we know what their motivations are, we can't stop them in the future or even understand them. And that's what Kelly came to be after in his research pursuits. And to me it's comforting. Monsters will be monsters and madmen will do crazy things. But only when we think of these criminals as humans who made choices to do the evil things they did do we have hope of holding them responsible

[Martin DeCaro]

for a moment in time. Dr. Douglas M. Kelly was the envy of the world's psychiatrists. He was assigned to assess whether the first two dozen Nazi defendants at Nuremberg were fit to stand trial. His fame did not ultimately lead to a successful career in psychiatry or to a happy life. His 1947 book, 22 Cells in Nuremberg, was a dud, and his conclusions were contested by other psychiatrists. Kelly said the Nazi leadership, the chief perpetrators of the Holocaust, weren't very different from other people, that the potential for evil existed in all men, including Americans. Now, in James Vanderbilt's film Nuremberg, these ideas came out in the final scene when Kelly, played by Rami Malek, was giving a radio interview sometime after the trial.

[Jack L. High]

There are people in America who would willingly CL over the corpses of half

[Ad Voice (Various Advertisers)]

the American public if they knew they could gain control of the other half.

[Jack L. High]

Doctor, please. They stoke hatred.

[Ad Voice (Various Advertisers)]

It's what Hitler and Goering did.

[Jack L. High]

And it is textbook.

[Hermann Goering (Actor/Voice)]

And if you think the next time it happens, we're gonna recognize it because

[Jack L. High]

they're wearing scary uniforms,

[Hermann Goering (Actor/Voice)]

you're out of your damn mind.

[Martin DeCaro]

Douglas M. Kelly was interviewed during the trial, too. In November 1945, Arthur Gaith of Mutual Broadcasting had Kelly on as his expert guest, the man who had spent months talking to Herman Guring. This clip courtesy the Robert H. Jackson Center.

[Arthur Gaith (Interviewer)]

Here at the microphone Today I have as my guest Dr. Douglas M. Kelly of San Francisco, California, who is the present psychiatrist and knows all the Nazis involved. Dr. Kelly, the mental state of these prisoners is of great interest all during their confinement. What have been your observations? In general, the prisoners are no different from a group of intelligent executives anywhere. In contradistinction to popular opinion, they are neither crazy nor are they supermen. What about the extroverts and the introverts who are the great exhibitionists and who live largely within themselves here in prison? As one would expect, their reactions are essentially the same as in their public life. Guring, Psyker and Ribbenchop are still showmen. The military group and the professional type like Frank, Tyson, Quartz, Spear and Frick are reserved types. Dr. Kelly, from your professional point of view, who are the most interesting characters? Goering is of interest because of his strong personality and his extreme egocentricity. He is a forceful leader without thought of consequence or consideration for others. Stryker is also interesting because of his intense belief in his fanatical ideas. He truly thinks that Jewish people are a special race and can be distinguished by facial characteristics, body configuration, and even by their odor. In spite of his statements, though, Striker himself doesn't do so well on identification. We tested him with an interpreter who is tall and blond and has blue eyes and who escaped from Germany in 1939 because he was a Jew. Stryker accepted him warmly and one day gave him a speech, special documents to be translated and I quote, only by an Aryan, close quote. Apparently, his judgments are only emotional. Well, now, what about the military men? Fellas like Keitel, Yodel, Raider, and Dennett. We talk about Prussian militarism. How does it reveal itself as a group? The military and naval men are much more formal than the others. They keep their selves neater, too, and complain less. At times, though they become very upset when they feel their dignity is being attacked. They make a much better appearance than do the ex salesmen, ex farmers, and ex lawyers. These fellows, some of them at least, seem rather cheerful. Take Goering, for example. A person would think that with their outlook, they would be depressed. How have you found them on the whole? At present, their outlook is cheerful. Since the trial started, a group spirit has begun to develop. This is especially obvious in Guring, who looks on the trial as a type of intellectual combat. Only the other day, Guring said, and I quote, the defendants form a team, close quote. Then he added, in his typical egocentric fashion, and I quote, and naturally, I shall leave them. Well, thank you, Dr. Kelly, for your very enlightening answers.

[Martin DeCaro]

Not quite as dramatic as a movie, but nonetheless fascinating. So, yes, this is the second episode I've produced about the Nuremberg trials in the past month, because I had an opportunity to interview Jack L. High, the author of the Nazi and the Psychiatrist. The first podcast episode was titled the Truth at Nuremberg, and it was published on February 13th. If you'd like to go listen to that one. This issue matters. War crimes, the law holding the powerful to account. Because of Dr. Kelly's warning, American society, in his view, was susceptible to authoritarianism. In his day, Jim Crow, an authoritarian racial order in the South. Today, President Donald Trump, in this age of the imperial presidency, launched a war on Iran without consulting Congress, without seeking any public support, merely his latest, desecration of the Constitution and the rule of law. Trump behaves as if he knows he won't be held accountable, the man who basically got away with inciting a mob to attack Congress on January 6, 2021, and then pardoned his co insurrectionists upon returning to the White House last year, Jack L. High is a magazine writer and nonfiction author who covers history, medicine and crime. Among his many books, the Nazi and the Psychiatrist, Hermann Goering, Dr. Douglas M. Kelly and A Fatal Meeting in the Minds at the End of World War II, which was the basis for the New Nuremberg movie from Sony Pictures Classics with Rami Malek as Douglas M. Kelly and Russell Crowe as Herman Guring.

[Hermann Goering (Actor/Voice)]

Your hypocrisy is stunning.

[Jack L. High]

My hypocrisy?

[Hermann Goering (Actor/Voice)]

You think American bullets and bombs don't kill people, you vaporize 150,000 Japanese at the touch of a button, and you presume to stand in judgment on me for war crimes?

[Martin DeCaro]

We had every right to defend ourselves.

[Hermann Goering (Actor/Voice)]

How do you defend yourself on someone else's soil?

[Ad Voice (Various Advertisers)]

There's a difference between us bombing war factories and civilians dying as collateral damage, and you building 1,200 human slaughterhouses designed to exterminate an entire race.

[Jack L. High]

And you know it.

[Hermann Goering (Actor/Voice)]

What do you think war is?

[Martin DeCaro]

Our conversation next Tap subscribe now in the show Notes for early access, ad free listening and all of our bonus content. Or go to historyasithappens.com and sign up. Supercast will guide you through the easy process.

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[Martin DeCaro]

Jack L. High welcome to the podcast.

[Jack L. High]

Thank you for having me on it. I'm glad to be here.

[Martin DeCaro]

It's an honor to have you as an accomplished author who wrote a book some years ago and probably when you were writing it, did not think it'd be turned into a major motion picture. So congratulations. That'd be a not at all.

[Jack L. High]

And it took many years for that to happen. So it's been a recent big surprise that this happened.

[Martin DeCaro]

Well, you never know who's going to read your book. And James Vanderbilt read your book the Director of Nuremberg.

[Jack L. High]

He also read an article I wrote, same title, in Scientific American Mind magazine that initially got him interested and then the book came a little later.

[Martin DeCaro]

Okay, thank you for that chronology. How did you discover Douglas M. Kelly?

[Jack L. High]

Like many of my other book topics, my discovery of Dr. Kelly happened accidentally. I wrote an earlier book called the Lobotomist and that's about another psychiatrist. And in the course of researching that, I was reading this other psychiatrist's journals and notes and came across a notation he made about a meeting he had with Dr. Kelly with this Dr. Kelly, who was unfamiliar to me then in 1938 and it happened at a conference of the American Psychiatric association, it stuck out in this other psychiatrist's mind and when I read about it, it stuck out in my mind because the other psychiatrist recorded that Dr. Kelly was at the conference not to present a paper or give a talk, but to give a magic show to an audience of psychiatrists, which I thought was strange and brave. Also, psychiatrists must be A tough crowd for a magic show. That's when I began looking more into Dr. Kelly's career and found out about his work among the defendants at Nuremberg.

[Martin DeCaro]

I was not familiar with him personally, but I was aware that the Nazi defendants had undergone a psychiatric or psychological evaluation. But something I've always been curious about because the fields change over time, was how much of the psychiatry of that day. Right. Would hold up today. Like, how valuable is it from our vantage today?

[Jack L. High]

Much of the psychiatric tools, many of them, that Kelly used to evaluate the German defendants would not hold up now. He really relied quite a bit on a test called the Rorschach inkblot test. That test does still exist today and is occasionally used by psychologists and psychiatrists. But Kelly was using it, as many of his contemporaries did in the 1940s, to diagnose psychiatric disorders. And I don't think it is ever used as a diagnostic tool now. So things have moved along.

[Martin DeCaro]

We'll return to the psychiatry or the psychology of the Nazis. I know I'm not supposed to mix up those two terms. My older brother is a psychologist, not a psychiatrist. But the mentality of the Nazis, whether they were crazy, demented, deranged. We'll get back to that. I want to ask you about the movie, so I need to correct something you pointed out to me. I made a mistake in my first podcast episode with my guest Alex Whiting, and that is I stated it was. Or maybe my guest stated that it was fictitious. The movie was fictitious when it showed Dr. Kelly revealing information to the prosecution about how Herman Guring was going to defend himself. Take it up from there.

[Jack L. High]

Yes. In my research, I uncovered documentation that he did reveal information to the prosecution. He did it reluctantly, and he didn't reveal much of great importance, I have to say. And so the movie exaggerates the influence of the information that Dr. Kelly shared with the prosecution. But it was about Guring's plans for his defense. For instance, Guring said he had made efforts in the 1930s with some high members of the British government to discuss peace in the future. So Kelly passed that along, and I don't think it ever came up in the trial, but it showed. Kelly was a psychiatrist with many allegiances in this situation. He may have been the first military psychiatrist ever placed among war crime defendants to evaluate them. He had responsibilities to them as patients. He did treat them as patients at times to the US army, he was an officer to the prosecution and then to the court itself, which had brought him into to evaluate the defendants.

[Martin DeCaro]

He wasn't kicked out of Nuremberg for this, though. That's what the movie says.

[Jack L. High]

No, he was not. He wasn't kicked out of Nuremberg at all.

[Martin DeCaro]

Yeah, he left.

[Jack L. High]

It was his own decision. He was honorably discharged, and before his discharge, he received a promotion in rank. And so none of this had any effect with how the military viewed him.

[Martin DeCaro]

Yeah, I understand why filmmakers want to invent more dramatic tension points. Points, But I don't know, from my perspective, the. The real story is already dramatic enough. It doesn't need those embellishments. But, yeah, Kelly left after two months. He was not there a year later at the end. How did he get chosen for this assignment? He was only 33 years old. And what were his precise orders?

[Jack L. High]

Kelly was already in Western Europe at the close of the war, working in field hospitals, treating soldiers who suffered from what today we would call ptsd. Then they called it shell shock and used some other terms. He and his colleagues in these hospitals were quite successful. Kelly had made a name for himself. He was of relatively high rank, although he was young, only 33. And his presence among the prisoners, first in Luxembourg and later in Nuremberg, was to evaluate them in a simple way to determine whether they met the legal definition of mental fitness. Meaning, do they understand the charges against them? Can they participate in their own defense? And this was a really easy task for Kelly to take on, and he wanted to make more of his opportunity. And he knew that he was the envy of psychiatrists and psychologists around the world because he was there and they weren't among these arch criminals of the 20th century. So he set up for himself a more ambitious project to determine whether these men shared psychiatric disorder that could explain their criminal behavior and other heinous behaviors before and during the war. That's why he was there. And he, although it's true he was only at the. Attended the first six, seven weeks of the trial. He was with the defendants for months before that. So the total amount of time he spent with the defendants was eight or nine months.

[Martin DeCaro]

So there were 24 original defendants, and 22 stood trial. Robert Ley, and this is depicted in the film, committed suicide. Another Gustav Krupp, von Bohlen und Hulbach. His mental and physical condition prevented his being tried. So the others. Kelly determined they were all mentally fit, meaning they understood the consequences of their behavior and that they could. They weren't insane, in other words, in

[Jack L. High]

a legal sense, although by that time he didn't know whether, in a medical sense they were insane or not. He did eventually determine that and came to Believe concluded that they all were not suffering from any psychiatric disorder that would have affected their behavior and that they all fell within the normal range of human personality. That was a terrifying finding for him because it meant, first of all, the psychiatry couldn't explain them. And secondly, that if they're normal, then there are other similarly normal people all around us who could do things like this. And Kelly was very upset by that prospect.

[Martin DeCaro]

Yes, the Nazis were German, and they grew out of specific or particular historical cultural contexts. But as Richard Evans, one of my favorite historians, has written, has argued, among others, within all of us, within all societies, there is this human potential to see others as less human, less deserving of life. Is that what you're getting at there and what Kelly was getting at?

[Jack L. High]

That's a good summation of what Kelly came to believe. And also he believed that people like this were opportunists who would use the political and social and historical circumstances around them, whatever they were, to rise to the top and to attain power by walking over the backs of many people, to take power over the rest of the people.

[Martin DeCaro]

We'll return to the film and Kelly's relationship with Guring in a second. But on this. On this note, you know, when people say to me, well, Hitler was insane, I say, sure, delusional, the whole gamut of adjectives. You can exhaust the thesaurus describing Hitler and his personality, but if you mean he was insane, that he didn't understand the consequences of his actions, then no. The same goes for many of the other, especially the leading Nazis. Were there psychopaths and psychotics among the street fighters? Sure. Were there real sadists? Sure. But many of the top Nazis were highly intelligent. They were people, well rounded people. It sounds like a strange thing to say about such. Well, I was going to say monsters, but, you know, I mentioned Evans before. His most recent book was something called Hitler's People, biographical sketches of some of the top Nazis. And you'd be surprised to learn how some of them were doting parents or had real talents, could play instruments and such. And he raises all these points not to try to soften the reputation of these guys, but just to show us they were humans. They're not monsters. And it's a mistake to demonize even our. The worst criminals in history.

[Jack L. High]

Yes, Kelly was with you on that, because what he was trying to find out ultimately was motivation. If these people are human, and of course they are, unless we know what their motivations are, are we can't stop them in the future or even understand them. And that's what Kelly came to be after in his research pursuits. And to me, it's comforting. Monsters will be monsters and madmen will do crazy things, but only when we think of these criminals as humans who made choices to do the evil things they did do we have hope of holding them responsible.

[Martin DeCaro]

Sure.

[Jack L. High]

And understanding the ones who come along in the future.

[Martin DeCaro]

It's difficult, though, because how can any people be so deranged to believe it's necessary to kill every Jew in the world for their own survival, which was what Nazi ideology demanded.

[Jack L. High]

Kelly came to believe that the ideology was less important than the personal motivations of these guys, which was to attain power and to wield power. And that, yes, the ideology provided the rungs on the ladder for them to rise and to use against others. For many of the defendants, it was personal.

[Martin DeCaro]

Well, how do you think that holds up in light of what we know about the Nazis and decades of scholarship?

[Jack L. High]

I think it holds up. We've seen in authoritarian regimes since then, the end of World War II, all these trials did not end the rise of authoritarians, fascists, Nazis, etc. And among those people, personal gain or personal satisfaction of desires is a large part of what motivates authoritarians to do what they do.

[Martin DeCaro]

You know, it's a mix. I mean, for Hitler, ideology was paramount. His ideology was not sophisticated. It was about race and war and had a biological element to it, seeing the Jews as a biological threat to the survival of the German race. So, you know, ideology was consuming. Anti Semitism was consuming for Hitler. But within that large regime, sure, there were opportunists, you know, from the level of the street fighter people who just wanted to take advantage of a chance to beat other people's heads. In even some of the defendants at other Nuremberg trials, like Otto Ohlendorff, he did not argue for a racial basis for why the Jews had to be exterminated on the Eastern front. He said it was a security concern. Why are you killing children? Well, in his view, which of course is colored by ideology and racism, but in his view, if we allow Jewish children to grow up, they will avenge the murders of their parents. So in that respect, it was a security issue.

[Jack L. High]

Absolutely. There is a lot going on in the minds of people like this. And what Kelly learned and took away from Nuremberg set his professional life upside down because it convinced him that psychiatry was deficient in understanding people like this. And then when Kelly published a book after Nuremberg called 22 cells in Nuremberg and advanced this argument that they were not madmen, they were not monsters, and that we can do things to prevent the rise of people like this in the future. It was really poorly received, and that contributed to decade of depression and unhappiness that Kelly went through after his return home.

[Martin DeCaro]

Did the book sell?

[Jack L. High]

No, it did not.

[Martin DeCaro]

He said it was poorly received. I assume other psychiatrists said this is no good, but it wasn't even popular among ordinary people then.

[Ad Voice (Various Advertisers)]

No.

[Jack L. High]

And it's understandable because Kelly published his book in 1947. And so the memory of the war, of course, was still a very fresh and painful, long, bloody war where millions upon millions of people were killed. Who would want to hear after that and after a series of trials that this isn't going to stop authoritarians because they're with us all the time? And Kelly's eyes were changed when he returned to the US he began to look at America as a place that harbored authoritarians. Also, he looked at the US south, where segregationists enacted Jim Crow laws and severe voting restrictions against black voters and used propaganda to manipulate their electorate. To him, this mirrored what had happened in Germany.

[Martin DeCaro]

He wasn't a major figure to begin with in the field of psychiatry. He was kind of an unknown army officer. Right. Who was also a psychiatrist. I don't know if that acted against him.

[Jack L. High]

It could have. As I said, he was young, and he had done moderately well before the war as a practicing psychiatrist. But his experience in Nuremberg really flung him in a new direction in academia. But it's interesting that he ended his days. He died in 1958 as a professor and at UC Berkeley. Professor not of psychiatry, but of criminology, the social science that he had gravitated toward after realizing that psychiatry couldn't explain so much.

[Martin DeCaro]

So let's talk about Guring then. I mean, what did Kelly conclude about Guring as to why he did what he did? Because there really was no real doubt. Despite the movie adding a little dramatic tension there, there was no doubt that Guring was going to be found guilty.

[Jack L. High]

Right. And Guring knew that as well. Never any doubt in his mind. Kelly used the diagnostic tools available to him, various tests, including the Rorschach and many hours of time spent with Hermann Goering in his cell, talking about not only the man's mental state, but more broadly, why he did what he did before and during the war, and why he was attracted to Nazism. All of that. Kelly concluded that Goering was highly intelligent, charming, had a great sense of humor, was also the bearer of a dark, dangerous aspect to his personality. He had no remorse, he lacked conscience, and he was highly manipulative as Kelly was. So these men were quite evenly matched in some ways. And one of the big sources for me in researching and writing my book was Dr. Kelly's oldest son, Doug, who was still alive and had held many of his father's papers for years and years that I had access to. And whenever Doug and I discuss these jail cell conversations between Kelly and Guring, we refer to it as King Kong versus Godzilla. These were both formidable men and very complicated men.

[Martin DeCaro]

Do you think the movie was accurate in depicting their relationship?

[Jack L. High]

Mostly in the movie, the question arises quite a bit whether they were friends. I think in truth, in Dr. Kelly's mind, there was never a question of friendship because he was always aware of the dangerous aspects of Guring's personality. But there certainly was an affinity or an admiration or something like that, you might call it, because they recognized quite a bit of themselves in the other.

[Martin DeCaro]

One of the moments in the film which is accurate was, even after all of this, would you still follow Hitler? Are you still enamored by Hitler? And the answer was yes. Guring and the others knowing what happened

[Hermann Goering (Actor/Voice)]

to 6 million Jews, I have to ask, Would you still follow the Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler? Yeah, I have. What. Order? Heil Hitler.

[Jack L. High]

And one of the questions that Kelly posed to Goering in their conversations early on was what was behind this attraction of the Nazi leaders and other Germans to Hitler? Initially, Kelly couldn't understand it because he saw Hitler only in terms of Hitler's accomplishments before rising to power, which were not much.

[Martin DeCaro]

Let's talk about about Hitler.

[Hermann Goering (Actor/Voice)]

It is interesting you have not asked me this directly before. I'm curious what the attraction was. He was a failed painter, not a very good soldier, yet he's worshipped and revered. He made us feel German again.

[Martin DeCaro]

How

[Hermann Goering (Actor/Voice)]

best of all had seen Germany crushed. And along comes a man who says, we can reclaim our former glory. Would you not follow a man like this? Depends what else you wanted to do. The first time I saw Hitler talk was 1922, upstairs of a coffee shop for maybe 30 people. This was peace time. But it was a peace without food, jobs, shoes. And he stood up and he said, french bellies are being filled with German pain. And then if you make threats, you need bayonets. Rear down with Versailles. So that night I became a National Socialist.

[Jack L. High]

I think that was a lot of the power. The losing World War I and the devastation of the Versailles. The Treaty of Versailles left many Germans, including many military veterans from the first War, feeling like they were less than what they had been before. The War, restoring this kind of national pride and so called patriotism was a large part of what Hitler was able to accomplish. And I think Kelly believed that was a big part of Hitler's attraction to the others.

[Martin DeCaro]

Demagogues. Right, demagogues. Whether it's Hitler or somebody else, they have a receptive audience in certain conditions that existed at that time. It was mindless, simple, mindless nationalism for a lot of people. It does come down to that. I mean, the Nazis ideological program, the 23 points or whatever it was, no one paid attention to that. I say no one. I don't mean no one, but you know, get my point.

[Jack L. High]

This was another thing that Kelly concluded that one way to stop authoritarians like this is to improve a country's. He was speaking of America at this time. Educational system to emphasize critical thinking, the ability to reach conclusions, draw opinions from a wide range of evidence from many different sources, and to discern what's credible and what's not credible among it all. People who can do that, well, who are good critical thinkers, are not vulnerable to emotional manipulation. And that is what propaganda always seeks to do. Emotionally manipulate.

[Martin DeCaro]

Mass politics is about emotion and grievance. It could be about hope too, positive emotional appeals. But in the Germany of the 1920s and then after the Great Depression, it was about grievance and revenge and other things.

[Jack L. High]

Right. People who fall under the spell of authoritarians, and many of us are susceptible to that, are acting on emotions. And you mentioned grievances. Many of those grievances are perceived only. And Kelly thought we can do something to stop that in the educational systems.

[Martin DeCaro]

Talk about true believers, though. Even after everything that had happened, for these defendants to still swear an oath to Hitler, they had no shame about it at all. They were defiant to the. Until they met the hangman.

[Jack L. High]

Yes. In his conversations with all of the defendants, Kelly found only two of them who expressed any kind of remorse. One of them was Albert Speer, and the other was Hans Frank. Kelly despised these two defendants more than any of the others because he believed their remorse was insincere and hypocritical.

[Martin DeCaro]

Speer rehabilitated his reputation. He was as big an SOB as

[Jack L. High]

any of them, or worse, in Kelly's thinking, at least, because he professed to feel this remorse. He acknowledged that certain things happened, but he did not acknowledge the worst of what happened that he played a part in. And so that's why Kelly branded him a hypocrite.

[Martin DeCaro]

And he had a tragic end. He committed suicide with a cyanide capsule. What happened to him, you Alluded to it earlier that he was broken by his experience and his life wasn't going very well. I know that he became a heavy drinker and was arguing with his spouse. But, you know, a lot of people drink heavily, argue with their spouse and don't kill themselves like this. What happened?

[Jack L. High]

But a lot of people are not of the personality makeup of Douglas Kelly. Kelly was brought up to think very highly of himself for good reason. He was a really smart guy, had notable achievements in his field. But things came crashing down on him professionally and personally over a relatively short amount of time. I learned about a lot of this through the eyes of the son. I mentioned, Doug, who saw it happening even though he was a child when it was happening. And he witnessed his father's suicide. Doug believed that this suicide by cyanide was a statement. Killing yourself by cyanide, it's quick, but it's also very painful and very dramatic. And Doug, the son, came to believe that his father was trying to make a statement about his misery during those later years and his disappointment. He felt that nobody appreciated him for his accomplishments.

[Martin DeCaro]

And I should have mentioned that's how Guring killed himself, by chewing on it or biting down on a cyanide capsule to cheat the hangman. Has anyone ever discovered who gave Goering the cyanide pill?

[Jack L. High]

I don't think anyone knows for sure, but there are theories out there, and one of them in particular, I think is quite good. Goering, along with all of the other high Nazi leaders, were issued cyanide capsules to use. And several of them did use them. And Goering probably brought along more than one capsule with him when he was arrested. They were probably hidden among his stored possessions. I think the best theory is that one of the American guards made a trade with Goering. The guard would get one of the capsules and give it to Goering, and in exchange, Goering would give the guard some valuables. Goering came to Nuremberg with all kinds of jewelry and other memorabilia that would be valuable to someone else. I think that's how it happened.

[Martin DeCaro]

Well, he was a looter of epic proportions. Guring. His wealth was ill gotten.

[Jack L. High]

Absolutely. And not only did he steal art, and he's well known for that, he also stole more than 80,000 bottles of champagne from France and used it to stock his own repository of drinks. Stealing was not something that bothered him at all.

[Martin DeCaro]

Yeah, the Nazis were thieves, among many other things. Looters, thieves. Is there a danger? I'm not saying you've done this. Is there a danger in Overdrawing analogies. Because I know you've given a lot of interviews since the movie came out about your book and I think it's great that your book has helped prevent Douglas Kelly from becoming a forgotten person in history. I think we should know about this man, but about analogies between America's dilemmas today or even the world's problems today with the resurgence of authoritarianism and trying to find answers or guidance to that by going back to interwar Europe and the rise of Nazism. Where do you see the problems there?

[Jack L. High]

Well, I don't personally believe that history repeats itself. What I do believe is that people who have been through particular experiences in history are probably good often at offering advice on how to avoid situations like that in the future. And that's what I think the value is that we can listen to somebody like Kelly who went in depth with men who perpetrated the most horrendous crimes that have ever been described in a courtroom and draw conclusions about people like that and recommend solutions. Kelly did recommend solutions, but was not listened to because of the circumstances of the time. No one wanted to to hear it then, but we're past that now. It's 80 years after Nuremberg and I think we can listen. We're capable of it. Kelly made a three pronged program for combating authoritarianism in democracies. Two of these prongs I think are valuable. I mentioned one critical thinking earlier. The third is kind of ridiculous. But we should listen. I don't think we should expect that history will play itself out exactly as it did before. But we should listen to those voices from the past.

[Martin DeCaro]

Well, something that's been going on now that I find depressing and maybe even surprising is that I just assumed that Americans would want to live in a free society. Yet people run to their tribal corners whenever there's some new outrage making news. For instance, the abuses of ICE in Minnesota or whatever it is Americans. It seems anyway that a lot of Americans don't want to live in a free democratic society. The way I define that, I don't mean to sound naive. I've actually been arguing for a while that American democracy has been a farce. Does the American public support war with Iran? No. Is the United States at war with Iran? Yes. Was any public input sought? No. Was Congress consulted? No. So democracy is broken. But there's something else here about the broader trend in authoritarianism. Jack El Hay that is, today's despots are different than Hitler and Stalin. They're trying to work within the system. So there's a kind of a film or a patina of legitimacy. So whether it's Putin, they still have elections in Russia. These aren't real elections, as we know. Erdogan in Turkey, Orban, one of my guests, often calls it the Orbanization of liberal democracy, where you still maintain a semblance or a fiction of a democratic system while you're being illiberal within it.

[Jack L. High]

That may have begun with Hitler because he was legally elected to power and

[Martin DeCaro]

or appointed by Hindenburg, but yeah, go ahead.

[Jack L. High]

Other authoritarians of the past, as you know, have been leaders of revolutions that overthrew democratic governments in order to install totalitarian governments. But as you say, that's not happening in some of these countries. They're working within the system and subverting the system, ignoring aspects of the system, ignoring parts of the Constitution, getting their way that way. Sure. In our country, for instance, for many Americans, that's easier to swallow. And maybe it's, if you're an authoritarian, a smarter way to make it happen.

[Martin DeCaro]

And you don't need to spill blood all the time either, although there's plenty of that happening. It just happened in Iran. But in a society like China, it's a surveillance state. So there's different methods or I guess, modes of control that a modern authoritarian has at his disposal that past ones did not.

[Jack L. High]

I've often wondered, what would Douglas Kelly think if he were alive today? I don't like to speculate on what someone who, who has been dead for a very long time would think about contemporary situations. I just know from what he did when he was alive that he would be fighting against these trends or speaking out against these trends. We have Douglas Kelly's now. We shouldn't regret that Kelly's not around anymore, because we can do it, and we have people who can do it.

[Martin DeCaro]

On upcoming episodes of History As It Happens, historian Nelson Lichtenstein will return to the show to discuss neoliberalism, and I am working on episodes about Iran, Israel, the United States, the greater Middle East. Make sure to sign up for my weekly newsletter to keep tabs on everything I'm up to here. Just go to Substack and search for History As It Happens.

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