The Nazi and the Psychiatrist: Hermann Göring, Dr. Douglas M. Kelley, and a Fatal Meeting of Minds at the End of WWII

An outgoing, ambitious U.S. Army psychiatrist, Dr. Douglas M. Kelley was assigned to "maintain the mental fitness" of Nazi war criminals before the Nuremberg Trials. While interviewing and testing the accused leaders, Kelley developed a close relationship with Hermann Göring, Hitler's right-hand man. Helping the charismatic Göring lose weight and overcome his addiction to painkillers, Kelley remained aware of the Reichsmarschall's evil but was still shocked when Göring committed suicide via cyanide. Through his extensive research, Kelley came to believe that the qualities that led Nazi leaders to commit acts of horror were not unique to Nazi Germany, and this deeply troubled him over the years. Journalist El-Hai (The Lobotomist: A Maverick Medical Genius and His Tragic Quest To Rid the World of Mental Illness ) explores not only the mental states of the Nazi war criminals but also that of the overworked, distressed Kelley, who surprisingly committed suicide himself, also with cyanide, during a domestic dispute in 1958. Although more dramatic, this book is equally as well researched and well written as Eric Jaffe's A Curious Madness, reviewed below, which details the Tokyo war crimes and the army psychiatrist assigned to assess the sanity of one of its key defendants.