The Nazi and the Psychiatrist Read Online Free Page A

Army. His responsibility at Mondorf, as Andrussoon explained to him, was to maintain the mental fitness of Göring and the other Nazi inmates until their disposition was determined.
    After settling in, Kelley spent time with all the high-ranking Nazis at Mondorf, but he met with Göring first to make a medical examination. Göring must have noticed that this new psychiatrist did not have the distant and scholarly demeanor that he was perhaps expecting. Kelley spoke loudly and directly, and he often moved his bushy eyebrows up and down for emphasis. He began his initial examinations gently, first probing the Nazi’s medical history. Kelley did not know what to expect from his infamous patient. He had heard Göring called everything“from a Machiavellian villain to a fat, harmless eunuch, the general tendency having been to identify him as a mere satellite of Hitler, who spent his days seeking medals, glory, and riches,” Kelley later wrote.
    One Mondorf staff member who already knew the prison’s most infamous inmate was John Dolibois, an honest-faced and amiable Luxembourg native and US citizen and Army officer working in intelligence.As a boy he had visited the Grand Hotel during its glory years, before his family emigrated to Akron, Ohio. Working at the prison since May 1945, he tried to protect his relatives in Germany by telling the detainees that his name was John Gillen. Dolibois cultivated a reputation as something of a “soft touch” among the prisoners, and he assumed the duties of a welfare officer—helping with their problems and needs and often lending a sympathetic ear to their complaints—in pursuit of valuable information to pass to the military interrogators who regularly interviewed the captives. Many of the Nazis spoke quite freely, believing they would never face trial for their crimes.“We didn’t have to use artificial devices to get our prisoners to talk,” Dolibois remembered. “We sometimes had trouble getting them to shut up. Almost all of the men in Ashcan were eager to talk. They felt neglected if they hadn’t been interrogated by someone for several days.” Dolibois’s fluency in German as well as his degree in psychology from Miami University made him an ideal translator for Kelley, who had only a weak knowledge of the language.
    A gregarious man, Göring was starved of social stimulation. He welcomed the physician’s attention and in one of their first encounters boasted to Kelley that he paid close attention to his own body. The Reichsmarschall, in fact, declared that he had the most admirable physique in all of Germany. He described “in minute detail every scar and blemish on his skin,” wrote Kelley, who began sketching a medical history:
12 lbs at birth. Not fat—slender as a child—started to gain in 1923.
1916—16 Nov. Shot down—bullet in rt flank—metal splinters and upholstery. Hosp. to Jan. 1917—16 cm scar. . . .
Was shot in upper thigh—in 1923 at Munich—9th Nov. ’23 to March ’24.
At that time given morph. self. by injections. After he left hospital took injection and by mouth for ½ to 3/years.
    Kelley grew curious about the mountain of possessions that arrived at Ashcan with Göring.The prisoner’s collection of toiletries and accessories impressed the psychiatrist, who noted lotion and body powder among the supplies, but not makeup, as had been rumored. What really drew Kelley’s attention were the three rings among the Nazi’s treasures. They were“truly massive baubles,” Kelley wrote, one crowned by a huge ruby, another set with a blue diamond, and the third carrying an emerald. Until his captivity, Göring “always carried these rings so as to be able to select each day the color which best suited his mood,” he told Kelley. The psychiatrist also took special note of the massive emerald stored among Göring’s belongings.
    Göring spoke proudly to Kelley about his well-being, strength, and prowess as a sportsman. “I have always been