THE NAZI DOCTOR'S TRIAL

The Nazi Doctor's trial

The Nazi Doctor's trial

In the early summer of 1945 a 52-year-old prisoner arrived at Mondorf-les-Bains, a town in Luxembourg that included an American detention center for suspected war criminals. The prisoner, dragging 49 suitcases, gem-encrusted jewelry, gold cigarette cases, precious watches and nearly the entire world's supply of the narcotic paracodeine, had surrendered to Allied officials several weeks earlier. After a dozen years in which he held nearly unchecked power and could demand anything he desired, he now occupied a small cell furnished only with a toilet, bed, chair and table. The bloody collapse of the Third Reich, whose Nazi government he now represented as the highest-ranking captive, had left him a leader without followers, a commander without fighters, and a prisoner accused of murdering millions and committing other crimes against humanity. He acknowledged the right of the victors of World War II to punish the Nazi leadership, but he planned a vigorous defense of his actions at his forthcoming war crimes trial.

For the prisoner, this talk relieved the stress of incarceration. For Kelley, a major in the U.S. Medical Corps from northern California and chief psychiatrist in the U.S. Army's European Theater of Operations, the stakes were higher. The meetings offered an incomparable look into the mind of one of history's most infamous criminals and an opportunity to analyze the personalities of the high-ranking Nazis being held at Mondorf-les-Bains. After the horror of the war, Kelley wrote, "the near destruction of modern culture will have gone for naught if we do not draw the right conclusions about the forces that produced such chaos. We must learn the why of the Nazi success so we can take steps to prevent the recurrence of such evil." In addition, Goering was the last man standing after the ...