The Nazi and the Psychiatrist (18 page)

Kelley’s reaction to Ley’s death equally lacked empathy. He called the suicide a fortunate turn of events because Ley “
could never have successfully been tried. . . . He was too far gone for that. So Robert Ley did the world a favor when he hung [
sic
] himself—did me personally a particular favor, because his was the one brain that I suspected would have organic damage.”

And Kelley was after that brain, which, tongue-in-cheek, the psychiatrist said Ley had “
kindly made. . . available for post mortem examination.” Hoping that a study of the organ would confirm his Rorschach-inspired diagnosis of organic damage and shed light on Ley’s deterioration, Kelley found an army colleague, pathologist Najeeb Klan, who agreed to remove the dead man’s brain in the Nuremberg morgue. Kelley then sent it on a strange journey. A GI bearing a square wooden case, labeled “spices,” soon appeared at Army Post Office 124. The soldier wanted it shipped registered airmail to the Office of the Surgeon General in Washington, DC. The postal workers thought that a very expensive way to send a box of spices. “Robert Ley’s brain,” the soldier tersely confided, as quoted in an article published by a US military newspaper, a clip of which Kelley sent to Webb Haymaker, a neuropathologist working at the Army Institute of Pathology.

Haymaker was the recipient of the disguised package. His examination of the brain showed a “
long-standing degenerative process of the frontal lobes” in the region that Kelley had predicted was injured,
a finding that microscopic study confirmed. The pathologist’s report on Ley’s brain exhilarated Kelley. “I shall be everlastingly grateful to Robert Ley for giving it to me,” he said.

Kelley’s rejoicing was premature. In 1947 Haymaker sent specimens of Ley’s brain to pathologists at the Langley Porter Clinic in San Francisco for another opinion. The examination there produced no clear findings of organic damage. Haymaker passed the news to Kelley in a letter that December: Ley’s brain abnormalities “
were of a lesser scope than we had at first believed. Personally, I think maybe we had better let the whole thing lie buried, as the degree of change [in the brain] could be subject to a difference of opinion.”

Gilbert had learned how to administer the Rorschach test at Columbia but was not much interested in the assessment. He understood its value, however, and introduced the inkblots to the Nazis Kelley had not yet tested and retested others. Gilbert’s repeat of the Rorschach test with Göring arrived at a different interpretation than Kelley’s. Gilbert determined that Göring’s results “betrayed the qualitative mediocrity of his intellect.” Although the Reichsmarschall described plenty of human and animal activity in the inkblots, Gilbert found a lack of originality in Göring’s responses that “revealed his superficial and pedestrian realism, rather than brilliantly creative intelligence.” In other words, Göring was smart and cynical but no genius. Gilbert also labeled Göring depressed and depraved.

Two Rorschach evaluators, two very different interpretations: Why? Kelley read imagination, power, and boldness into Göring’s responses, probably because the psychiatrist had formed an unusual bond with him during their months of almost daily contact. In such qualities as self-confidence, stubbornness, dedication to work, and focus on one’s self, the two men
were alike. They both were high climbers in their fields and adept manipulators of others. Without knowing it, Kelley identified with Göring. Gilbert felt none of that rapport and viewed his subject more coolly.

Gilbert retested Hess with the Rorschach as well, finding a shortage of emotion, empathy, and maturity in Hess’s meager responses. The prisoner never saw living creatures of any kind in the blots, described little motion, and perceived “lifeless details” in the images. “
All of this bespeaks impotence and lack of vitality in his mental resources,” Gilbert concluded, and he noted Hess’s “severely constricted personality with a most tenuous grip on reality.”

The psychologist embarked on another series of tests of the prisoners using a German translation of the Wechsler-Bellevue Adult IQ tool, a battery of memory, verbal, mathematical, and conceptual examinations. These tests gave the Nazis such tasks as assembling jigsaw puzzles, finding the missing parts of pictures, and swapping numerical digits for symbols. Göring eagerly accepted the challenge, “behaving like a bright and egotistical schoolboy who was anxious to show off before the teacher,” Gilbert remembered. When Göring failed to recall a nine-digit series of numbers after sailing through previous memory challenges, he struck his cot with his fist and cried, “Ach, come on, give me another one—I can do it!” When the Reichsmarschall succeeded on the retry, to Gilbert’s visible amazement, Göring “could hardly contain himself for pride and joy.” Göring praised American psychological examinations as “
much better than the stuff our psychologists were fooling around with.” (
Keitel similarly complained to Gilbert of the “silly nonsense” German military psychologists resorted to during evaluations of Wehrmacht members; he had eliminated their testing after his own son flunked an officer candidate evaluation.) Like Kelley, Gilbert quickly learned that appealing to the prisoner’s vanity and craving to impress bought Göring’s hard work and enthusiasm.

Using a scoring formula that took account of the gradual failing of brain function that he thought likely came with aging, Gilbert came up with IQ results that placed many of the top Nazis well above average in mental acuity. The banker Schacht topped the group with a score of 143, followed
by Artur Seyss-Inquart at 141, Göring and Dönitz at 138, Papen at 134, Frank and Schirach at 130, Ribbentrop at 129, Rosenberg at 127, Hess at about 120, and Streicher trailing the pack at 106. Predictably, Göring was disappointed that he had not emerged on top. Streicher’s lackluster performance surprised no one.

Gilbert tried some other psychological assessments, including a test that asked the prisoners to form a coherent comic strip out of images on a series of cards (which none of the Nazis could figure out), the Thematic Apperception Test (to which Hess responded with variations on “
I can’t tell” and “It only makes me sleepy looking at it”), and exercises in making change for imaginary purchases of postage stamps, which befuddled Streicher and, amazingly, Schacht. “
Any financial wizard who is good at arithmetic is probably a swindler,” Schacht said, brushing off his blunders. Gilbert ultimately concluded that successful people in any realm of activity—including the management of a fascist regime—were likely to possess above-average intelligence. Although he thought these men were all smart enough to have known better than to authorize war crimes and atrocities, Gilbert also knew that “
IQ dictates nothing but the mere intellectual efficiency of the mind, and has nothing to do with character or morals, nor the various other considerations that go into an evaluation of personality.” Not impressed by the high IQ scores, Andrus judged the Nazis not even particularly smart: “
From what I’ve seen of them as intellects and characters, I wouldn’t let one of these supermen be a buck sergeant in my outfit,” he said.

Although Kelley, a major, outranked Gilbert, a lieutenant, the latter roamed the prison, examined the defendants, and managed his tasks largely independently of the psychiatrist. They sometimes did not share their data and appear to have rarely consulted with one another. At some point, however, Kelley broached with Gilbert the possibility of taking advantage of their unique access to the prisoners to collaborate on a book about the workings of the Nazi mind. The prestige associated with introducing the world to this information would be immense, both men believed, and they agreed to share the glory in a single volume. The partnership would not go as they planned.

Differences in personality and approach made some prisoners prefer Gilbert to Kelley and vice versa. Gilbert’s Jewishness set some of the Nazis on edge. Others preferred his more demonstrative helpfulness and energetic personality. After his IQ examination with Gilbert, Hans Fritzsche confided to the psychologist his certainty that he would end up on the gallows. “
It wouldn’t be too bad if one could feel he was dying an honorable death, as a sacrifice to protect Germany’s honor,” Fritzsche said. “But to die in shame, with the contempt of the whole world on one’s head—
pfin teufel
! It’s bitter!” Gilbert recorded that he listened without replying, noticing the graying of the Nazi’s hair. Franz von Papen, the former German vice chancellor, disliked both Kelley and Gilbert and complained of “
gentlemen who called themselves psychiatrists [and psychologists];. . . few of them gave the impression of having any genuine scientific qualifications.”

Göring, on the other hand, greatly preferred Kelley’s straightforward professionalism to what he perceived as Gilbert’s manipulative hostility. To many of his interrogators and members of the prison staff
he expressed his dissatisfaction with the legality and morality of the International Tribunal, although he eventually chose a defense attorney, Otto Stahmer, a former German judge
who professed certainty that Göring was completely innocent of all charges. To Kelley, however, Göring confessed other concerns.
Five days after Kelley’s last letter-carrying mission to her, Göring’s wife
Emmy had been arrested at her residence in Veldenstein, suspected of complicity in her husband’s art thefts. She was confined to a civilian internee camp at Straubling, near Regensburg.
His daughter Edda was separated from her mother and relocated with her nanny to a residence in Neuhaus, managed by Catholic nuns, with about ten miles separating them and no contact allowed. Emmy referred to this occurrence as “
one of the darkest days of my life. I was forced to be separated from my child without even knowing where she would be sleeping that night.” On her way to Straubling, Emmy popped a peppermint candy into her mouth, causing the American officers in charge of her to panic. They thought she had taken poison.

The fracture of the family outraged Göring, who again raised the promise that his family would be well cared for.
A separation of mother and daughter was not good care, the Reichsmarschall insisted. Separation from her daughter tormented Emmy, and
seven weeks passed before she had any news of Edda. Kelley reported this breaking of promises to Andrus, and his intervention worked. Göring’s anxiety over his family was damaging “
his mental and physical health,” Andrus wrote to the commanding general of the Third US Army, which had detained Emmy. Weeks later, on November 24, the director of Emmy’s camp walked into her room and announced, “Edda is here.” They shed tears of happiness at their reunion, but Edda was now her mother’s cell mate.
A former Luftwaffe officer scrounged up a straw mattress for the girl. Göring was grateful and gladdened when he heard the news. He had somehow managed to get one of his letters smuggled out of the Nuremberg prison and into Emmy’s hands,
secretly passed to her by the inmate worker who brought her meals. However he managed it, it was a sign, entirely missed by his guards, that Nuremberg’s prison walls were permeable.

Göring continued to share reminiscences with Kelley, including franker admissions about his relationships with Hitler and the other defendants. When Hitler had named Göring his official successor during the early years of the war, “
I was pleased for myself, though it was only what I expected,” Göring said. “But I was furious that Hitler should name that nincompoop Hess to be my successor. I told Hitler so, too, and made a big fuss.” Göring paused in his story to lean forward on his cot, set his hands on his knees, and face Kelley. “Do you know what Hitler said?” he continued. “He said, ‘Now, Hermann, be sensible. Rudolf has always been loyal, a hard worker. I must reward him, so I give him this public recognition. But, Hermann, when you become Führer of the Reich—poof! You can throw Hess out and appoint your own successor.’” Göring’s eyes glowed at the end of the anecdote, his excitement about the prospect of exercising power rekindling despite his incarceration.

During another conversation, Göring gave Kelley an account of his decision to join the Nazi Party after the end of World War I. Göring claimed to have carefully examined the numerous right-wing groups then sprouting
up in Germany and allied himself with the National Socialists because of their appeal to military veterans who were dissatisfied with the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. With those veterans among its membership, the Nazi Party controlled enough bodies to mount a putsch, which it did in Munich in 1923. The anti-Semitism of the Nazis struck Göring as useful bait for potential adherents with gripes more emotionally rooted than the mere imposition of an offensive peace treaty. “
You see, I was right,” Göring told Kelley. “The people flocked to us, the old soldiers swore by us—and I became head of the nation.” Then the Reichsmarschall seemed to remember that his assumption of the Führership never really happened and nearly cost him his life. “Too late you would say?” he went on. “But perhaps not. Anyway, I made it.”