E166 | The Nazi & The Psychiatrist (w/ Jack El-Hai)

Jack El-Hai is an American journalist and author who focuses most of his work on the history of medicine, the history of science, and other historical topics. He is the author of The Nazi and the Psychiatrist (2013) which has since been adapted into the 2025 film Nuremberg starring Russel Crowe. 

Interviewed by Dr. Alex Curmi. Dr. Alex is a consultant psychiatrist and a UKCP registered psychotherapist in-training.

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Transcript

Speaker 3: [00:00:00] Douglas Kelly, he was mm-hmm. The psychiatrist, uh, the military psychiatrist that the International Military Tribunal brought in before this first Nuremberg trial to examine the, the highest ranking representatives of German civilian government and the. Military and on his own. He developed a, an additional project to determine whether these defendants shared any kind of psychiatric disorder that could account for their criminal behavior and the crimes before and during the war.

Many people did not like his conclusions.

Speaker 4: Welcome back everyone. Today is a bit of a special treat for me. I'm obviously super interested in psychology and psychiatry. That's why I have a podcast about it. But I'm also really interested in [00:01:00] history. I rarely get to discuss history on the podcast. Today I do. I'm with the author Jack El High to discuss his book, the Nazi and the Psychiatrist, which you may know because it's recently been adapted and released as a feature film.

Nuremberg starring Russell Crowe. Jack, welcome. Thank you so much for coming on. 

Speaker 3: Thank you, Alex, for having me here. I'm looking forward to it. 

Speaker 4: To start, it would be great to just give the audience a sense of what, what's your previous work, what are the topics that you tend to be most interested in with your work?

Uh. 

Speaker 3: I have written quite a bit about the history of psychiatry. My earlier book, the Phlebotomist, was a biography of Walter Freeman, a psychiatrist and neurologist who advanced and, um. Uh, perfected, if that's the right word. Uh, the technique of lobotomy, the surgical treatment for psychiatric disorders. And I, I know that I tend to gravitate toward [00:02:00] dark topics.

I also like writing about people in pairs. So in the Nazi and the psychiatrist, we have Douglas Kelly. And Herman Goring in the phlebotomist. We, we had, uh, Dr. Freeman and his surgical partner, James Watts, and I find that the, the combination of two characters like that is, is of interest to me. But I also write about, uh, crime history in general and the law.

Those are the range of topics that have interested me the most. 

Speaker 4: Yeah, I definitely resonate with you in terms of that interest in darkness. You know, one of the reasons I specialize in psychiatry is because I was interested in what are, like the dark aspects of what can go on for a person. Uh, not because I would gain any pleasure from it exactly, but because there's something about the darkness that's.

Compelling and which has a truth. You know, I think a lot of modern societies trying to pave over some of the [00:03:00] darker aspects of human nature, which we will talk about today. And so there's something refreshingly, grounding and honest when you do go into those darker aspects of what it is to be a person.

Speaker 3: Yes. Um, I, I agree. And I, I'm not a psychiatrist or psychologist. I'm a a nonfiction writer who writes narratives about, um, mainly events from the past and, um. I think that the, the dark stories, uh, their life and death stories often, which are dramatic and good to write about and read about, and they illuminate, um, corners of our experience that are intriguing and important.

So that, that's why I like to go there. 

Speaker 4: How did you come to write this book? The Nazi and the psychiatrist? 

Speaker 3: It came about directly through the work on that earlier book, the phlebotomist. Uh, as I was researching Dr. Freeman's life, I [00:04:00] came across, you know, many of his. Private writings, journal entries, uh, things like that.

And I saw that Dr. Freeman mentioned meeting this other psychiatrist, Douglas Kelly in 1938 at a conference of the American Psychiatric Association. And what was striking about that meeting was that Dr. Kelly was at the conference not to present a paper or to give a talk, but to give a magic show. Before his psychiatric colleagues, and that struck me as really, uh, odd and brave.

Um, psychiatrist must be a tough crowd for a magic show. And, uh, then, uh, after taking note of that and remembering it, I looked into Dr. Kelly's career a little bit and found out that he was mm-hmm the psychiatrist, uh, the military psychiatrist that the International Military Tribunal brought in. Uh, before this [00:05:00] first Nuremberg trial to examine the, uh, German defendants and these men were the, um, the highest ranking representatives of a German civilian government and the military.

And, uh, I thought, wow. Uh, what a situation to be in. And that's when I started researching Dr. Kelly's life in earnest. 

Speaker 4: Yeah, I can imagine being in the opposition, you know, you've just written or you're writing a book about psychiatry and you learn about the psychiatrist who's gonna examine the top ranking Nazis, and you're like.

That's, that's what I'm gonna write about next. 

Speaker 3: Yes. Um, and my, my way of doing it is usually to try it out first as a magazine article. So I did write a magazine article also titled The Nazi and the psychiatrist for a magazine, uh, called Scientific American Mind. And, uh, that. Went well and it's actually what the [00:06:00] filmmaker James Vanderbilt initially saw and what made him interested in making Nuremberg, adapting the article into the movie.

And then, um, then I came out with a book a couple of years later. So it's, it, that part of the story has been very long in happening. And the book itself was quite long and happening. It took me many years of research and coming across a, an archive of Dr. Kelly's materials that had not been seen outside of his family for more than 50 years.

Speaker 4: Were you surprised that this, that Douglas Kelly and his work in relation to the Newberg prisoners hadn't been written about before? 

Speaker 3: Yes. Um, surprised and pleased because that left in the opening for me. Uh, Dr. Kelly himself had written about it. He published a book in 1947 titled. 22 cells in Nuremberg, [00:07:00] and it's a well-written book, uh, but it, it doesn't really present a narrative.

It's, he takes the Nuremberg defendants that he worked with one by one and goes through, uh, what he learned about them and concluded about them. So, um. It wasn't really a book written to, to please or interest large numbers of readers. So I was surprised. Um, and I thought that Dr. Kelly's work and also, uh.

Not just his research and conclusions, but also the circumstances of his own life were worthy of covering too. 

Speaker 4: I, I had read about 22 cells in researching for this, and I saw it didn't really have a wide readership and I, I suppose it's for the reasons he described that it's maybe a bit too technical. It wasn't written in a narrative form for a white audience appeal.

Speaker 3: Yes. And another reason why Dr. Kelly's book [00:08:00] didn't go very far, um, in reaching readers was that many people did not like his conclusions and. Um, because of how people were feeling after World War II and after the Berg Trials, um, Dr. Kelly's conclusions struck an unwelcome court. We can go into that later if you'd like to.

Speaker 4: Maybe first we could set the scene. Um, not everyone will know a huge amount about World War ii. But what was Germany like in the immediate aftermath of this war? 

Speaker 3: So the, the war in Europe was ending in the spring of 1945, and as the allied armies were entering, uh, Germany, um, various leaders. Of the Nazi regime were being arrested and held.

Uh, some of the leaders, uh, also committed suicide, uh, before that [00:09:00] happened, including Hitler and Bels and, and some others. Uh. Uh, but the allies did, um, collect an impressive high ranking assortment of prisoners who would soon be defendants in the trial that was being planned. Um, that would start in the end of 1945 and go for about 10 months.

Um, and then there would be 12 other Nuremberg trials that followed, uh, into 1949. But the first trial, uh, was the one that drew the most attention from the public and the press, and that the, uh, allies were counting on to, um, use to present this mass of evidence that they were collecting incriminating the German government and military and war crimes, crimes against humanity, crimes against peace, all of the things that these men were charged.

So, uh, [00:10:00] Dr. Kelly as it happened, was not far off, uh, not far away at the war's end, he was working in field hospitals in Western Europe, um, treating soldiers who suffered from what today we would call PTSD. And he and his colleagues were quite, quite good at it, given the little amount that was known at the time about this disorder.

And so Kelly was. Who was at hand, uh, he was highly thought of and relatively high in military rank. Although he was quite young, he was only 33. And, uh, so the court asked him to come to be among the, the defendants to assess their mental fitness to stand trial. So to look at the legal, not the medical definition of mental fitness, uh, which is quite a low bar.

It, it means that the men, um. [00:11:00] Uh, uh, understand the charges against them and can participate in their own defense. And, uh, that that was a relatively easy thing for someone like Dr. Kelly to take care of. And he knew, uh, how unique his position was among these men. He may have been the first military psychiatrist ever brought in among war crimes.

Um, suspects. And so he wanted to make more of this opportunity. And on his own, he developed a, an additional project to determine whether these defendants shared any kind of psychiatric disorder that could account for their criminal behavior and, um, the crimes before. And during the war. So that's what he set out to do That was under the radar?

Uh, he didn't, 

Speaker 4: yeah. So his superiors didn't know about that? 

Speaker 3: No, not initially, no. 

Speaker 4: And do you think it was a [00:12:00] foregone conclusion that trials were going to take place or. In your view, could it have been that they, the allies might have circumvented trials in favor of just the swift imprisonment or execution?

Speaker 3: That was a topic of a lot of discussion before the trial started. Um, and, uh, some of the allies, um, were, uh, not in favor of conducting a trial. They thought it would be just a pulpit for the Germans to spew their propaganda, but, um. Some others thought it was, it was, uh, that, uh, lining these men up before a wall and and shooting them would present a lost opportunity to show the public what the evidence was against them and might also.

Create martyrs out of them, uh, that might enable the rise of a similar, uh, author authoritarian movement [00:13:00] in the years to come. So fortunately, uh, the, the Allies advocating for a trial did prevail and, uh, I think it worked. Pretty much as they hoped that the evidence presented did convince the public, I should say, the publics, because this was a worldwide audience that, um, that these men were, uh, uniquely, uh.

Criminal and guilty and, uh, not all of them. Some were acquitted, but most were found guilty. And, uh, it, it, and that the, uh, trial, it was imperfect. Uh, there were flaws in how it was conducted, but it was not a. Kangaroo court, um, or a show trial in the sense that such trials had been before, 

Speaker 4: how did they, how did they make, what efforts did they make to make it not a kangaroo court, not a show trial?

How could they evidence that, 

Speaker 3: uh, the, uh, all of the defendants were given the [00:14:00] opportunity to engage their own, uh, defense lawyers and to mount a defense? And they did. Um. Um, uh, a big part of the movie Nuremberg Concerns, uh, Herman Goring's defense Goring was the highest ranking of the defendants. He was for almost all of World War ii Hitler's, uh, designated successor.

And, um, and so, uh, a very intelligent and shrewd man also. And so he mounted a defense, um, uh, that, um. Tried to cast the atrocities and war crimes as expressions of patriotism and nationalism, national pride. And uh, other defendants had various other defenses, but the main difference was they could present a defense and it was not a foreign foregone conclusion that where they would be convicted.

And [00:15:00] indeed, three of the defendants were acquitted. 

Speaker 4: They were actually able to articulate in, in their own words, you know, why do I not feel I'm guilty? And I guess my understanding is one of the things that the Nuremberg trials showed is how un repent unrepentant. Actually, most of the Nazis were 

Speaker 3: yes, unrepentant.

Lacking in remorse. Lacking in conscience. That impressed. That made an impression on many of the people who attended the trial and worked in it. 

Speaker 4: Are the full Nuremberg trial tapes, are they available to watch? Can anyone watch them? 

Speaker 3: Uh, there's an, there were an extensive films made of the proceedings in the court for this first trial, and many of those are available on YouTube.

Um, also the complete. Transcripts have been available for a long time, and there are various sources. Uh, if you do a search, you'll [00:16:00] find them in, that's thousands and thousands of pages. 

Speaker 4: Let's talk a bit more about, uh, Douglas Kelly. What was he like as a personality? 

Speaker 3: He, like many of the defendants, was highly intelligent, um, genial, um, good sense of humor.

Uh, he had grown up in a really unusual family background. He was born in a, uh, northern California town called Truckee. Truckee is situated in a. Beautiful place at the north end of Lake Tahoe in the, in the, uh, foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. But, uh, that area was the site of one of the iconic American tragedies of the 19th century, and that was the.

Deaf and, and terrible fate of the Donner Party. This was [00:17:00] an overland group of people making their way west to California, who got caught in the mountains in a, in blizzards and horrible winter conditions, and had to spend that terrible winter in the mountains and ended up cannibalizing the corpses of those who died.

And so, um, uh, Dr. Killes. Grandfather, Charles McGlashan, uh, was the first historian of the Donner Party, and also collected, uh, artifacts for a private museum that he had about the Donner experience. And this included, uh, bones, um, and other things that he had collected from the party's ca uh, campsites. And, um, uh, Dr.

Kelly's mother, uh, Mr. Chen's. Daughter, uh, also had a, a dark view of humanity. She was very accomplished. [00:18:00] One of the first women, uh, attorneys to practice in California. Very smart, but she. She viewed the activities of humans as adversarial, and she imparted this view to her son Douglas, who grew up, um, attended medical school in California, began practicing psychiatry.

He was initially interested in becoming a surgeon, but somebody told him that his hands were too small. Um, and so he went into psychiatry and was doing quite well. Um, when the US entered World War ii, uh, after 1941, and so he joined the military and that's what brought him to those military hospitals I spoke of earlier.

Uh, he was, um, considered a, an unusually talented interpreter and proponent of the Rorschach. BLO [00:19:00] assessment, which back in those days, Kelly and his colleagues used to diagnose psychiatric disorders. Um, it, uh, it's not used that way now, and in fact, I think it's used much less than it was in the middle of the 20th century, but that, that Rach assessment was part of, um.

A group of psychiatric assessment tools that Dr. Kelly brought with him to Nuremberg when he started studying the defendants. Um, he used another test called the thematic Apperception Test. He measured their IQs, but he really based a lot of his conclusions on extensive interviewing that he did among the.

Defendants hundreds of hours that he spent with them and he spent the most time with Herman Ging because Ging was intriguing to Kelly. Um, ging was an interesting mix of, uh, these positive qualities, [00:20:00] intelligence, great sense of humor, charm, et cetera. And some dark, dangerous qualities. Lack of conscience.

Lack of remorse, and. Uh, manipulative skills. Um, Dr. Kelly was quite good in that department himself, and so they were, uh, uh, a good match for one another and they said about manipulating one another, uh, to, to get what? They felt they needed from the other. 

Speaker 4: And I guess so Kelly wanted to, was his goal to understand Garing as best as he can to get as an honest take on his own inner experience as possible.

Do you think that was his goal? 

Speaker 3: Yes to, to understand ING's motivations and the circumstances, uh, in which he rose to power within the Nazi party. And Kelly was interested in those questions for all of the defendants, but Goring was, [00:21:00] uh, different. From the rest because he was influential among them. The other defendants deferred to him and he assumed, uh, he, he accepted this deference as natural, um, because of his high rank.

And, um, and they. Got on well together. I would never say they became friends, uh, but they, I think they admired each other and, um, enjoyed the conversations that they had with each other. Uh. Kelly did not question Goring only, uh, uh, to access, uh, his, the, the psychiatric workings of Goring's might. He also asked ging a lot of questions about things that happened during the war, and, uh, you know, why Goring, for instance, fought so little of breaking treaties that Germany had made with other countries, that kind of thing.

And so their conversations were wide [00:22:00] ranging and allowed. Kelly to come to the conclusions that he did. 

Speaker 4: When, uh, when you read 22 says, do you get the sense that Kelly had a particular hypothesis? Did he have. Uh, I, a hypothesis in mind about the Nazis that perhaps they were uniquely evil or had some sort of disorder or condition, which predisposed them to acting in the way that they did.

Speaker 3: I think he came into his time with the defendants, uh, hypothesizing or believing that they probably shared. A common disorder, um, that accounted for what they did. Uh, his studies of them though, um, convinced him that that was not the case. That these men did not share what he called a Nazi virus. Uh, they shared some other traits but not traits that would, um.

Would lead him to [00:23:00] conclude they had a serious disorder. 

Speaker 4: What? What were the common traits that they did show? 

Speaker 3: Kelly believed that most of them, if not all of them, were opportunists, that they were primarily motivated by personal gain. Personal power, exercising power over others. Um, most of them also were type A, what today we would call Type A workaholics.

They worked very hard. And, um, that they were able to separate their careers, um, often crime riddled careers from their personal lives, family lives, and, um, and that they, um. They did not think a lot about, uh, they were not, um, masters of empathy. They did not think a lot about the consequences of their [00:24:00] decisions on other people.

It was all about what it did for them or what it did for their regime. 

Speaker 4: Something I got from the book about Gehring in particular was it's like he was able to be. Or perhaps display what you could think of as empathy in some circumstances, like with regards to his family or to animals. Things like that, but then was able to compartmentalize that when it came to, uh, Eastern Europeans for example, or Jewish people, he was able to just shut off any empathy that he did have.

In other context, 

Speaker 3: Goering was a leading advocate for animal rights, um, and he held positions in the German government that allowed him. To push through laws that protected the rights of animals far in advance of what was happening in other countries. And during, you know, as it happened, uh, considered animal rights much more than he considered human rights.

And, um, did not have [00:25:00] qualms about, uh, violating the rights, ending the lives, threatening the lives of humans. Whereas, uh, he was very concerned about animals. Um. So these are complex men. And Kelly, uh, began, um, moving away from thinking of them as monsters, uh, as. Evil people and instead, uh, began thinking of them as men who were basically within the normal range of, uh, of mental health personality, and which was.

Frightening to him because that meant that people within that normal range were capable of doing what the German leaders had done, and it led Kelly to make a leap in thought that. If they're normal, that means there must be others like them around us, [00:26:00] living among us now and always, and this concerned Kelly a great deal.

Speaker 4: It means, I guess his conclusions mean to some extent the Nazi problem is in something that can be just laid at their feet. It's a human problem that we all need to think about and account for. And, uh, be aware of we're all vulnerable under the right context to going down this very, very dark path. 

Speaker 3: Yes.

Uh, he insisted that fascism authoritarianism was not a German thing. It was not an Italian or Japanese thing. It was a, as you said, a human thing. And, uh, I don't think Kelly believed. Uh, that all of us are capable of such evils, but he did believe that there are. Uh, a substantial number of people, a, around us who are, uh, I also don't think that had he heard the expression, the [00:27:00] banality of evil, it came some years after he was doing all this.

But had he heard that, I don't think he would've agreed with it necessarily. Uh, haah a. Coined that term to describe people like Adolf Eichman who were quite colorless, uh, murderous paper pushers, uh, functionaries. Uh, but the men that Geering was dealing with were not colorless, uh, they were not functionaries, they were leaders.

They were people giving orders, and many of them, like her were quite. Colorful and unforgettable in their personality traits. So it's a complex situation that Kelly found himself in. 

Speaker 4: And I guess Kelly's conclusions make intuitive sense to me because there must have been. So many Germans who would have either known about or be in some way directly connected to bad, you know, horrific things that were happening in Germany at that time.

Uh, most of [00:28:00] whom wouldn't have had any, had any kind of diagnosable mental health condition. Many of these people were ordinary citizens. Uh, and so to me it makes sense that rather than. Psychiatric condition. What we're dealing with is like a human vulnerability perhaps to ideology, perhaps to group think, perhaps to authoritarianism, you know, things like that.

Speaker 3: Yes. Or self-interest. But I think that's, that's well put. Um, that, that is what Kelly came to belief 

Speaker 4: and if I'm not mistaken, weren't the milligram experiments also designed to try and understand how it was that. The Germans could do what they do at that time. For those who don't know, the milligram experiment, you can look it up on YouTube, uh, is about someone a, a psychological subject being told to administer electric shocks to someone behind the screen.

Obviously, unbeknownst to them, there's no one really behind the screen or they're an actor, and, and most subjects will continue to administer. Electric shocks, uh, as long [00:29:00] as the authority behind them tells them to continue doing so, I'm not actually sure how well that experiment is replicated, but if I'm not mistaken, that's why that replica, that, uh, experiment was designed in the first space was just to prove this.

Speaker 3: Yes. And, uh, if Dr. Kelly had had the chance to examine followers rather than leaders, I think he would've been very interested in that. But as it happened, he, he, because of his circumstances and who he was working with in the prison, he was only, uh, connecting and studying, uh, connecting with and studying.

The leaders, the people giving the orders, not the people following the orders. But I think he would've found, uh, studies like the Milgram experiments. Very interesting. 

Speaker 4: Did Kelly get in trouble after the Nuremberg trials for kind of going above and beyond what he was officially tasked with doing in terms of trying to collect.

Information about the Nazi psychological profiles [00:30:00] as opposed to just making sure they were fit to stand trial. 

Speaker 3: Surprisingly, no, he did not get in trouble for that. What he did get in trouble for was in passing information about the, the defendants to reporters who were in Berg covering the trial. So he was scolded for doing that, but, um.

But aside from that, his time in Nuremberg was quite trouble free, and he left, um, and returned to the States in the, in January, 1946, in good standing. He was honorably discharged. He even received a promotion in rank just before his discharge. So, um, uh, the fact that he. Undertook this study, uh, on his own and, uh, took with him, uh, when he left Nuremberg boxes and boxes of materials [00:31:00] that may have belonged to the court or to the, uh, military, um, or even to a.

Colleague of his in Nuremberg, Gustav Gilbert, who was a PhD psychologist also doing similar studies, uh, that, that never really caught up with him or caused him any trouble. 

Speaker 4: 1946 was a different time. I feel like you get away with so much more back then. 

Speaker 3: Yes, and it um, that's a great point because one way in which it was a very different time was that.

Kelly was, um, in Nuremberg working for several different masters, and these caused him confusion at times and ethical quandaries. So he was there as a physician. Um, he was treating. The, the defendants for medical problems at times. So were they his patients, was he bound to them in the same way that he was bound to his patients at home, but he was also an officer in the US Army.

[00:32:00] So he had military responsibilities. He was there at the behest of the court. He had responsibilities to the court. And then finally, um. Towards the end of his stay, he began passing along information from his interviews with the defendants to the prosecution. So he had forged a bond with the prosecution, so all kinds of, uh, duties pulling him in different directions.

And I think had he. To follow this course today, he would have gotten into a lot of trouble, but, um, there were no precedents then. And I don't blame him too much for his confusion. 

Speaker 4: Well, what happens then to Kelly after the war? 

Speaker 3: Uh, Kelly returned to the US in 1946 with his, um. His, uh, views on politics and authoritarianism much changed.

Um, so he, when he came back to the us he saw the [00:33:00] US quite differently than he did when he had left. For instance, he looked at, uh, the politics and government in the southern states of the us. Saw, uh, these segregationist politicians, people who are denying voting rights to black citizens, people who are using propaganda, uh, to manipulate the electorate.

People who are, uh, politicians who are making it hard, di more difficult for everyone to vote. And he saw echoes of. What he had learned about the Nazis in Germany, and he came to the belief that authoritarianism not only was possible in the US but it had happened, um, and would be, uh, inev inevitable that it would spread.

To other areas of the country. So he began issuing these warnings [00:34:00] about that, gave a lot of public talks, was interviewed in, uh, newspapers and magazines. But his professionally, he was quite shook up also because his experiences with the defendants taught him, uh, in his interpretation that psychiatry couldn't account for the behavior of these men if psychiatry couldn't.

Then what could, and he began a gradual, uh, move movement during the rest of his career toward criminology. So one of the social sciences. And when he died in 1958, he was teaching at the University of California, not as a professor of psychiatry, but as a professor of criminology. Uh, but all of this, um, happening in his life was augmented by personal, uh, problems.

Um, he began drinking heavily problems arose in his marriage. Uh, he was a. [00:35:00] Really difficult father for his three children. And he began to believe, uh, because of the failure of his book, 22 Cells, that he, he did not have the professional esteem that he thought he deserved. And so through the 1950s, he became very depressed and all of that led to his own suicide.

Um, in 1958. 

Speaker 4: Yeah, it's quite tragic because you think if there's one thing that's great to have in the aftermath of World War II is someone who can give an in-depth psychological perspective on the guys behind the Nazis, you know, uh, and how valuable that was. And it's clear he was trying his best to communicate the dangers of that.

Uh, to the public, and such a shame that it was so that it fell on deaf ears, 

Speaker 3: especially in the US and the uk. Uh, the after that bloody war so long, so many tens of millions of people killed, people didn't, did not want to hear [00:36:00] that all this massive effort and bloodshed wouldn't end fascism or authoritarianism.

That it was, that it would arise again as Kelly. Believed so, um, um, his, his message really fell on deaf ears and his book sold very poorly. 

Speaker 4: People weren't ready for that message, I guess psychologically themselves. People, I guess, uh, the, the, the kind of us and them narrative is so much easier to swallow than, uh.

You know, the line between good and evil runs to the heart, human heart narrative. 

Speaker 3: Well, and even today it's a common belief. I think that the Nazi perpetrators were, were monsters. Um, uh, and, um. Uh, I, I personally don't like that characterization because I think it absolves them of responsibility that what Mons will do, monstrous things, uh, they can't help it in a sense, [00:37:00] but people who, who make choices and, and choose to commit crimes, do evil things, they can be held responsible and that's.

Much more comforting to me. It's also what Dr. Kelly believed. 

Speaker 4: Yeah, I guess people are resistant to the idea of someone like a Nazi not being labeled as a monster because in some way that could be seen as like an approval of the things they've done. But of course, it's possible to hold two things and our heads at the same time.

They, the Nazis could not be monsters, but they could have done horrendous things, which they absolutely shouldn't have, 

Speaker 3: and be taken to account 

Speaker 4: and be taken to account, and in fact be taken to account more as you said. Because they're not necessarily inherently endemically monstrous, but they're human beings just like you or I.

And I think a few more books have been published kind of along this theme. I guess Ordinary Men is the one that speaks to mind, that comes to mind. 

Speaker 3: Yes. And that, and that book, you know, which was very influential, was about, um, uh, the [00:38:00] Germans in the, uh, in the armed forces and other groups who carried out the orders and, you know, questioning why did they do things that were contrary to their upbringing, religious beliefs, ethics, all of that.

Speaker 4: What was the, what was it like when the book was released for you? I believe that was in 2013. Right. And, and what was the reception to the book at the time? 

Speaker 3: Yeah, this is very interesting to me. Um, it, and it's amazing, uh, how different 2013 was from what we have now. So, um. When I wrote, uh, published the book in 2013, I saw far right extremism, um, authoritarians beliefs as being on the fringes of political discourse in my country and in most other countries.

Um, now it's different. Um, [00:39:00] now that, that kind of discussion, uh, is, is more at the center of political discourse. My book, um, when it was real first released, didn't get a whole lot of attention. It was reviewed only in one publication that had a national readership in the us and, uh, that, uh, was a. Magazine called Science News, so it not exactly a, a lit part of the literary vanguard.

Um. And, uh, the book did better in its various translations in Europe than it did in the us but the, um, release of the movie in 20 Nuremberg in 2025 has changed that quite a bit. And the book, as a result, has gotten a lot of attention, uh, and it's felt to resonate and be, um. [00:40:00] Uh, you know, Dr. Kelly's conclusions are thought to be prescient and, um, uh, so it's seen quite differently.

That's fascinating 

too. 

Speaker 4: Yes. Uh, and do you think there are lots of lessons from that book and from 22 cells? We can draw on to see what's happening now in the US politically in terms of the Trump administration, but even trends that we see in the uk, the rise of, uh, the popularity of people like Nigel Farage and the Reform Party and phenomena like that.

Speaker 3: Yes. Um, I think there are lessons and in fact, Dr. Kelly, um, laid out some principles that he thought would help democracies as they, um. Grappled with authoritarian uprisings or upwellings in their society. And there were three principles. I think two of them are very good that we should pay attention to.

Now. One has to do with education and it's, uh, Kelly believed [00:41:00] that, uh, to make. The Citi citizenry resistant to authoritarianism, people who should be taught to exercise critical thinking, and he found that to be deficient in the 1940s. It's still deficient now, if not more so. And, um, uh, learning how to assess, uh, form opinions based on assessed evidence from a variety of sources.

Judging whether a source is, is worthy of, um, worthy of attention and consideration. All of that, um, can help avoid people making decisions and forming opinions based on emotion and, uh, perceived grievances and things like that. And then a second point that Dr. Kelly made was that. It had to do with voting rights.

He believed that voting should be made [00:42:00] easier for anyone eligible to cast a ballot. And uh, uh uh, and he was thinking then of the voting restrictions on black voters in the us. Um, but we're seeing it in the US now and in other places that there are, uh, voter ID laws, uh, other restrictions that are preventing clearly eligible voters from casting ballots.

And the third, um, part of Dr. Kelly's program. Um, was one that I think is a little silly and he believed that candidates for political office should be subjected to mandatory psychiatric examinations before they could run. And, uh, I don't like that. Um, uh, because it suggests, first of all, uh, that. That a psychiatric disorder just on the face of it is disqualifying [00:43:00] for holding, uh, an office, but also who, who examines, who judges.

Uh, it seems to me there's too many pitfalls there. 

Speaker 4: Do you think this would be fair, I mean, having looked at the history of fascism as much depth as you have, do you think it's fair to say that? Aspects of the current, uh, US government are explicitly fascistic. Do you think that's a fair statement? 

Speaker 3: Yes.

Particularly in, um, the current Trump administration's treatment of, um. Putting out information and manipulating, uh, its, its target audiences and in ignoring the safety rails that are, that have been established by the US Constitution. So yes, I think it's definite move towards authoritarianism in that administration.

Speaker 4: Actually, I found when I was researching fascism, it's quite a [00:44:00] difficult word to define. And fascism has taken, has taken, has manifested in many different kind of kinds of governments. You know, Japan and World War Two, Italy and World War two, Germany, Spain at some point. Do you have a, what are a few principles someone can use to understand if, if a government is fascistic.

Speaker 3: I'm not an expert on fascism, um, uh, except as it pertains to this little slice of history that I wrote about in my book. But, uh, in general I would say that anything that seems, feels, appears to be anti-democratic is. Potentially fascistic. Um, and that it involves, uh, concentrating power in a small number of people who also hold power over the institutions of a government, like, uh, the military or, or police forces or legislatures.

And that a lot of it has to do with the [00:45:00] concentration of power. 

Speaker 4: Yes. And I guess one trend that I've noticed is a kind of a huge focus on, on state as opposed to an individual that everything is centered around the state. Like if you think of MAGA as an example, it's Make America Great again. The state is put in almost a position as a deity.

I. 

Speaker 3: Yes. And nationalism in general based on, uh, ethnicity, race, religion, uh, and these other qualifications almost always in the long run leads to trouble for other people. And so that's often, as you said, uh, a big part of fascist administrations. 

Speaker 4: What was it like for you to see your work being adapted into a film like this with such huge media attention, such star power?

What was that like for you? 

Speaker 3: It was, uh, unearthly at first. Um. Still is. Um, I've seen Nuremberg five times now. Uh, not [00:46:00] because, um, you know, I had wanted to necessarily, but because I have participated in programs where it was screened and, um, uh, some of the scenes, uh, um, look. Exactly like I had imagined them.

In my mind's eyes, some are different. Um, but what I really like the best about Nuremberg is that, uh. In a, in an essentially factual, uh, presentation of the story. Not a hundred percent factual, but factual enough, it, uh, Carrie, it, it conveys the messages that I think are important from my book about the normality of authoritarians and the potential for authoritarian danger anywhere at any time.

Speaker 4: Uh, what I got from [00:47:00] the film, obviously for me, Russell Crowe's performance really stood out and I really got how many layers of depth there were to Garing, how he could be on one, the one hand, so gregarious and manipulative and charming, but then underneath a very shrewd, calculating character who's always kind of vying for control.

Is always vying to hopefully have the last laugh or have the last word in 

Speaker 3: formidable and dangerous. And that goes against the popular image at the time of goring in the press in the UK and the us. Uh, and the press at that time portrayed him. Clownish Lee, you know, as a man who loved to dress up in fancy uniforms and, um, wear all kinds of metals on his chest and he on his estate in, in, um, Germany had wild animals prowling the grounds.

Uh, the press made a lot of fun of Gring and of Hitler's that, right? Well, [00:48:00] Hitler was paradi a lot. Um. I don't think the press in the US and the UK could really understand, uh, what the attraction was to Hitler. In fact, this is something that Kelly asked during what. Uh, what was that all about? Why revere this man so much who had failed, uh, in other endeavors earlier in his life?

And ING's answer, it's in the film, is that his lear made us feel German again, which I think is astute and, uh, gets right to, it 

Speaker 4: gets right to that point we were talking about earlier that. People have certain needs and we all have kind of the same needs. So like the need to belong or the need to feel significant or the need to feel okay in some sense psychologically.

And sometimes human beings go down the path, dark parts in order to meet those needs. So if there's one thing that's definitely universal, it's the needs that we [00:49:00] have that we all share. And if someone can sufficiently tap into those needs. To achieve whatever their own outcomes are, even if they're cruel, sadistic, uh, and un net negative people can still be swept up in a movement like that.

Speaker 3: That's the definition of manipulation, right? 

Speaker 4: We have a lot of people who listen, who are interested in embarking on a creative career. You know, a lot of our listeners want to write or start a podcast or something like that. And I'm wondering if you have any advice for listeners who are thinking of trying to embark on a creative career.

Speaker 3: Two things come to mind. One is that, um. I think it's important to follow your own true interests and not what you think may be the interests of other people or, or of the reading public trying to, for instance, to write a bestseller is an exercise in futility because, uh, it takes two or three years to write a book.[00:50:00] 

Nobody knows what the environment will be like then. Um, so that's one thing. And then, um, at least in writing. Um, I think the value and importance of writing talent is much overstated. That there are many brilliant writers who don't accomplish what they want to because they don't have the stamina and persistence and stubbornness to see it through.

So, um. For instance, this story that we've been talking about, uh, the Nazi and the psychiatrist took many, many years to develop. All of my stories took years and years, and I stayed with it because it was interesting to me and seemed important to me. And of course I hoped it would to other people, but I wasn't basing my efforts, uh, on what I [00:51:00] thought the audience would.

Come away with or, or believe from it. 

Speaker 4: When I've, uh, studied like the history of different writers, it seems like they fall into broadly two camps. There are writers who seem to have a very rigid process. They need to be by themselves. They need to write at a certain time of day. Everything needs to be just so.

And then there seems to be some writers who are like, it's not about any of that. You just show up and get the work done. 

Speaker 3: Right. 

Speaker 4: Uh, do do you have a specific process that you follow? I, 

Speaker 3: I think I'm probably somewhere in between those two because I don't have a regimented routine. I generally like to write in the morning, but it doesn't always happen that way.

Um. But where I am regimented is in, uh, my information gathering process. So writing narrative nonfiction as I do, there's a lot of information to [00:52:00] wrangle and to, to try and get your arms around and. To be able to try to be able to access when you need it. So I, over the years, I have developed processes for that, for, for my, when I'm researching, I use databases, um, and I tag information and in various ways.

And I have a process of. Indexing my notes. That helps me. It's time consuming, but it helps me later on when I need to find what I need to find. And then, uh, the final stage writing, um, I usually try and put out. Close to a thousand words a day, but it sometimes it's not. And uh, if it's not, there's usually a reason why it's not.

And I try and roll with all of that. Um, um, I am regimented in another sense that I work. Monday through Friday, [00:53:00] nine to five pretty much, and I avoid work working nights, and I avoid working weekends because I like to do other things then. So for me, it helps to keep the writing life separate from the personal life.

Speaker 4: Yeah. I'm in a position where I could work whatever hours I want to now, and I really need. I find, you know, you come out of a nine to five structure and you think, wow, I can work whenever I want. It's so great. But then you just end up working all the time and it's really lovely to have like a five day a week.

Actually, there's a reason why there's a Monday to Friday structure with a weekend. There was some thought behind that. 

Speaker 3: And many people who work for themselves. I wonder if you fall into this category, are harder task masters of themselves than any boss would've been when they, uh, had an employer.

Speaker 4: Arguably. I think the only improvement though is at least you're trying to achieve your own goals as opposed to the ends of someone else, which as we've talked about today, can even lead into very dark direction. 

Speaker 3: Yes. 

Speaker 4: [00:54:00] Um, Jack, it's been so lovely having you on. Where can people go to find out more about your work?

Speaker 3: Well, the best place is my website. It's. el.com, that's ELHA i.com. And people, if they want, can also find me on social media, on um, on uh, blue Sky X and Instagram. And, um, I'm active on those. So, um, any of those places. 

Speaker 4: Wonderful. And is there anything you're working on now that you'd care to share? 

Speaker 3: Oh, uh, I have a new book that will be coming out later this year in October.

It's titled The Case of The Autographed Corpse, and it's a historical true crime. A book about injustices on, um, Apache Indian reservations in the US Southwest in the middle years of the 20th century, focusing on an Apache medicine man who was [00:55:00] wrongfully convicted of murdering his wife in the 1930s. 

Speaker 4: Oh, wow.

Amazing. Okay, so we'll keep a lookout for that. Jack, thank you so much for joining me today. 

Speaker 3: Oh, I enjoyed it, Alex. Thank you.