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

Copyright 2013 by Jack El-Hai.

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Book Design by Timm Bryson

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

El-Hai, Jack.

The Nazi and the psychiatrist : Hermann Gring, Dr. Douglas M. Kelley, and a fatal meeting of minds at the end of WWII / Jack El-Hai.First Edition.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-61039-157-3 (e-book)

1. Gring, Hermann, 18931946Psychology. 2. Kelley, Douglas M. (Douglas McGlashan), 19121958. 3. NazisPsychology. 4. War criminalsGermanyPsychology. 5. Nuremberg Trial of Major German War Criminals, Nuremberg, Germany, 19451946. 6. Nuremberg War Crime Trials, Nuremberg, Germany, 19461949. 7. NazisGermanyBiography. 8. PsychiatristsUnited StatesBiography. I. Title.

DD247.G67E4 2014

341.6'90268dc23

2013010730

First Edition

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

TO ESTELLE EL-HAI AND DR. ARNOLD E. ARONSON

with my love and gratitude

NUREMBERG JAIL STAFF

Col. Burton Andrus, commandant

Capt. John Dolibois, welfare officer

Lt. Gustave Gilbert, psychologist

Maj. Douglas McGlashan Kelley, psychiatrist

Howard Triest, translator

NUREMBERG DEFENDANTS

Karl Dnitz, admiral and Hitlers designated successor

Hans Frank, governor-general of Nazi-occupied Poland

Wilhelm Frick, head of the radio division, German Propaganda Ministry

Walther Funk, minister of economics

Hermann Gring, Reichsmarschall and Luftwaffe chief

Rudolf Hess, deputy to the Fhrer

Alfred Jodl, chief of operations for the German High Command

Ernst Kaltenbrunner, chief of security police

Wilhelm Keitel, chief of staff of the German High Command

Robert Ley, head of the German Labor Front

Konstantin von Neurath, minister of foreign affairs (until 1938)

Franz von Papen, German vice chancellor

Erich Raeder, commander in chief of the German navy

Joachim von Ribbentrop, foreign minister

Alfred Rosenberg, Nazi party philosopher and Reichsminister for the Eastern Occupied Territories

Fritz Sauckel, chief of slave labor recruitment

Hjalmar Schacht, Reichsbank president and minister of economics (until 1937)

Baldur von Schirach, Hitler Youth leader

Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Austrian chancellor and Reich commissioner for the Netherlands

Albert Speer, Reichsminister for armaments and munitions

Julius Streicher, editor of Der Strmer

INTERNATIONAL MILITARY TRIBUNAL OFFICIALS

William Wild Bill Donovan, special assistant to the chief prosecutor

Robert Jackson, US chief of counsel for the prosecution

Judge Geoffrey Lawrence, president of the court

FAMILY OF DOUGLAS MCGLASHAN KELLEY

Charles McGlashan, grandfather

June McGlashan Kelley, mother

George Doc Kelley, father

Alice Vivienne Dukie Hill Kelley, wife

Doug, Alicia, and Allen Kelley, children

T he Kelleys lived in a sprawling, Mediterranean-style villa on Highgate Road in the hills of Kensington, north of Berkeley, California. Its red-tiled roof rose high above the distant, drifting waters of the bay, but closer, beyond the yards four terraces and stone walks and down a slope of redwood and fruit trees, stood the headstones of Sunset View Cemetery.

A little merry-go-round and a childrens swimming pool sat in the center courtyard of the Kelleys U-shaped house. The front door opened onto a hallway with the kitchen to the left, where the doctor made the familys meals using a large oven, a fast-food griddle, and a meat grinder. The kitchen connected to a pantry with a freezer. The oldest son once sat atop the humming appliance and contemplated killing his father with an ax.

The entry hallway led to a bathroom on the rightthe site of a gruesome scene that played out on the first day of 1958and beyond that to the living room, which contained a fireplace, a long sofa, and the doctors own green leather chair. The room was carpeted, with the furniture pushed against the walls to open space for guests. Sometimes Dr. Kelley would play a game there with his oldest son. The boy had to leave the room, and in his absence the doctor would move a pencil on the coffee table. When the boy returned, he had to figure out what had changed.

Beyond the living room was Dr. Kelley and Dukies bedroom, overlooking the rear of the half-acre lot. In a small closet that the children sneaked into through a hallway, they could overhear their parents fights.

From the living room, black-stained stairs rose to the second level. Up there a bullet hole, hidden beneath a rug, scarred the wooden floor of a hallway drenched with sunlight from tall windows. Before terminating at Dr. Kelleys office, the hallway ran past a closet concealing the magic tricks and props for his shows.

The view from the office window presented a glorious panorama of the Golden Gate bay and the prison tower of Alcatraz Island. When Dr. Kelley turned his desk chair to face the view, he may have settled his gaze on Alcatraz and remembered his months working in another prison, in Nuremberg. His desk was orderly. In cabinets and a small laboratory he kept bone saws, a lab table, mortars, alcohol burners, graduated cylinders and beakers, collections of crystals, botanical samples mounted on glass slides, two human skulls, and a large assortment of chemicals, many of them toxic.

The children slept in the basement bedrooms. They dreaded the unpredictability of Dr. Kelleys goodnight visits. When they heard the creak of his weight on the stairs, they had a few seconds to brace themselves for whatever mood he was in.

The last argument began in the kitchen. Often when Dr. Kelley and Dukie fought, she would pack her purse and leave for the day. This time Dr. Kelley burst out of the kitchen howling and stormed up the stairs to his office. He slammed the door, toppling a porcelain doorstop, its fragments raining down the steps. After a couple of minutes he emerged, concealing something in his hand. He came down the stairs and stopped on the landing, which commanded the living room like a stage. He shouted a statement that terrified and bewildered his wife, father, and children. Then he put something in his mouth and swallowed.

T he airplane, a little Piper L-4, couldnt budge. Its sole passenger, Hermann Gringformer World War I ace, chief of the once fearsome Luftwaffe, and highest-ranking official of the Third Reich left aliveweighed too much for a safe takeoff.

This was an unaccustomed lull for Gring. For weeks he had been in a state of continual movement, uncertainty, and danger. He had evacuated his beloved hunting retreat and party estate, Carinhall. He had endured forced confinement at Adolf Hitlers order after offering, heroically in his view, to take control of the Nazi government. Soon afterward Gring learned of Martin Bormanns command to German forces to murder him, and he scrambled away from the custody of the Schutzstaffel (SS).