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The Nazi and the Psychiatrist: Hermann Göring, Dr. Douglas M. Kelley, and a Fatal Meeting of Minds at the End of WWII Audiobook
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In 1945, after his capture at the end of the Second World War, Hermann Göring arrived at an American-run detention center in war-torn Luxembourg, accompanied by sixteen suitcases and a red hatbox.
The suitcases contained all manner of paraphernalia: medals, gems, two cigar cutters, silk underwear, a hot-water bottle, and the equivalent of $1 million in cash. Hidden in a coffee can, a set of brass vials housed glass capsules containing a clear liquid and a white precipitate: potassium cyanide. Joining Göring in the detention center were the elite of the captured Nazi regime—Grand Admiral Dönitz, armed forces commander Wilhelm Keitel and his deputy Alfred Jodl, the mentally unstable Robert Ley, the suicidal Hans Frank, the pornographic propagandist Julius Streicher—fifty-two senior Nazis in all, of whom the dominant figure was Göring.
To ensure that the villainous captives were fit for trial at Nuremberg, the US Army sent an ambitious Army psychiatrist, Captain Douglas M. Kelley, to supervise their mental well-being during their detention. Kelley realized he was being offered the professional opportunity of a lifetime: to discover a distinguishing trait among these archcriminals that would mark them as psychologically different from the rest of humanity.
So began a remarkable relationship between Kelley and his captors, told here for the first time with unique access to Kelley's long-hidden papers and medical records.
Kelley's was a hazardous quest, dangerous because against all his expectations he began to appreciate and understand some of the Nazi captives, none more so than the former Reichsmarschall, Hermann Göring. Evil had its charms.
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“This intimate and insightful portrait of two intersecting, outsized personalities—one an exemplar of public service and the other an avatar of evil—is as suspenseful as a classic Hitchcock film that hinges on an eerie psychological secret.”
— Andrew Solomon, National Book Award-winning author
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“El-Hai’s gripping account turns a chilling page in American history and provides an unsettling meditation on the machinations of evil.”
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review) -
“An engrossing case study on the nature of evil…[A] thoroughly engaging story of the jocular master war criminal and the driven, self-aware psychiatrist.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred review) -
“El-Hai weaves a harrowing narrative that brilliantly probes the depths of evil…An utterly fascinating book.”
— Gilbert King, Pulitzer Prize–winning author -
“A fast-paced, deeply researched psychodrama…The story of their terrible, intertwined fates opens a fascinating window into both the criminal minds of the Nazis and the nature of evil itself.”
— Debby Applegate, Pulitzer Prize–winning author
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About Jack El-Hai
Jack El-Hai is a Minneapolis author of several nonfiction books, including The Lobotomist, The Lost Brothers, and The Nazi and the Psychiatrist, among others. His writing has been published in The Atlantic, Wired, GQ, Discover, Scientific American Mind, and Minnesota Monthly. He has received two Minnesota Book Awards, the June Roth Memorial Award for Medical Journalism, and fellowships and grants from the McKnight Foundation and the Jerome Foundation.
About Arthur Morey
Arthur Morey has won three AudioFile Magazine “Best Of” Awards, and his work has garnered numerous AudioFile Earphones Awards and placed him as a finalist for two Audie Awards. He has acted in a number of productions, both off Broadway in New York and off Loop in Chicago. He graduated from Harvard and did graduate work at the University of Chicago. He has won awards for his fiction and drama, worked as an editor with several book publishers, and taught literature and writing at Northwestern University. His plays and songs have been produced in New York, Chicago, and Milan, where he has also performed.