80 years ago, the world struggled to comprehend the scale of the tragedy of World War II.
The horrors of the concentration camps through which the Nazi regime attempted to exterminate Jews, Roma, homosexuals, and political opponents have come to light.
How were people capable of such cruelty?
Humanity expected answers from the International Military Tribunal established by the victors of the war in the German city of Nuremberg.
On November 20, 1945, the trial of 24 leaders of the fallen Third Reich began.
However, many legal and technical issues had to be resolved, such as deciding which crimes they would be charged with, who would try them, and what procedure would be followed to ensure a fair trial for the accused.
But above all, one question had to be answered: were those in the dock mentally healthy enough to stand trial?
That task was entrusted to American psychiatrist Dr. Douglas M. Kelly.
The primacy of mental health
"If someone does not act of their own free will, but rather due to mental illness or disorder, democratic criminal law exempts them from liability or at least reduces it," explains Carlos Ayala Corrao, president of the International Council of Jurists.
And that's why the conclusion reached by Kelly, a psychiatrist from the University of California, had to, by definition, affect the fate of the accused.
He enlisted in the US Army, reaching the rank of lieutenant colonel, and treated Allied soldiers in Europe for "battle exhaustion or war shock."
Today, this would be called post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Kelly spent about eight months with the Nazi leaders, mostly in the Luxembourg hotel where they were held, and used a mix of psychiatric techniques, American journalist Jack El-Hai told the BBC.
El-Hai studied Kelly's work for his book Nazis and the psychiatrist, which inspired the film Nuremberg.
He examined 15 boxes of documents, reports and notes made by Dr. Kelly and kept by his family for decades, in which he recorded his studies on the Nazis.
Dr. Kelly interviewed the defendants, but also gave them a series of psychological tests, such as the Rorschach test, asking them to describe what they saw in abstract images, El-Hai said.
He also gave them a Thematic Perception Test, similar to the Rorschach, but with the help of photographs and drawings, where participants were asked to construct a story.
In addition, he gave them intelligence tests that showed that they were all average or above average intelligent, El-Hai explained.
Watch a video about the Nuremberg Trials
Close relationship with Göring
During the investigation, Dr. Kelly took a particular interest in one of the defendants: Hermann Göring, Adolf Hitler's intended successor and commander of the German air force, the Luftwaffe.
"Göring was the highest-ranking officer of all the prisoners and intrigued Kelly, partly because the two of them had some common traits: they were both intelligent, charismatic, self-centered and somewhat narcissistic," El-Hai said.
"Kelly never ignored Göring's cruelty and cold decisions during the war, but the two developed a relationship that implied a certain mutual respect, though not friendship," he added.
"Goering could be charming when he wanted to be: he possessed extraordinary intelligence, a brilliant imagination, a lot of energy and a sense of humor," Dr. Kelly wrote, according to manuscripts kept at the United States Holocaust Museum.
"Every day when I came to his cell, he would get up from his chair, greet me with a big smile and an outstretched hand, lead me to his bed, and pat his middle: 'Good morning, doctor. I am very glad you have come to see me, please sit down.'"
"He would then place the large body next to me, ready to answer my questions," Dr. Kelly recounted in one of his documents.
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Dr. Kelly not only assessed Göring's mental health, but also his physical health, attempting to cure his obesity and codeine addiction.
And so he convinced Göring to go on a diet and gradually reduced the dose of drugs he was using to cope with the pain from the wounds he had received in the war.
But the connection Dr. Kelly formed with the patient led him to "cross boundaries that are not crossed," which damaged his reputation for life, El-Hai said.
"Kelly agreed to be a courier and deliver letters that Göring wrote to his wife Emma."
"The tribunal was not authorized by any allied government, but he agreed to do it," El-Hai wrote.
However, there was still a sign of trust that Göring showed to the psychiatrist.
"Goering asked Kelly to adopt his daughter and raise her in the United States if he or his wife did not survive."
"Kelly discussed the idea with his wife, who was against it," El-Hai said.
Fear of what he discovered
At the beginning of his investigations, Dr Kelly was guided by the theory that Nazi leaders were infected with a disease that led them to plan and order the atrocities for which they were tried, El-Hai told the BBC.
"But when he concluded that they were not mentally ill and that their behavior was within the bounds of normality, and could not be attributed to any psychiatric illness, Kelly was terrified."
"These findings indicated that there are many people like them (Nazi leaders) among us, in every country and at every time," he added.
"They were practically normal people, who had fallen under the influence of deception and bureaucracy. Creatures shaped by their environment, individuals who could find themselves at large office desks anywhere in the world," concluded Dr. Kelly, according to the book. Anatomy of Malice: The Enigma of War Criminals American psychiatrist Joel Dimmesdale.
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Upon his return to the United States in 1946, the psychiatrist gave a series of lectures and wrote articles warning of the risks that fascism could pose to that country, as had previously happened in Germany, Italy, Spain, and other European countries.
"At that time, many countries were ruled by politicians who defended racial segregation and used techniques similar to those used by the Nazis to manipulate voters," El-Hai pointed out.
And Dr. Kelly has also begun a new professional chapter.
“The time he spent with the Nazis changed Kelly's way of thinking about the nature of mental illness and whether psychiatry was a viable specialty for treating people like these criminals.
“And he concluded that it wasn’t,” says El-Hai.
"If these people were normal, how can psychiatry explain what they did?"
"That's why, in the last years of his life, he devoted himself to criminology, thinking that perhaps he would find answers there," he said.
Copying a patient?
Some say that what happened to Dr. Kelly on January 1, 1958, was definitive proof that his contacts with Goering had left an indelible mark on him.
Dr. Kelly had problems with alcoholism and depression after his work in Nuremberg, and that day he got into a heated argument with his wife.
Suddenly, in what seemed like an extremely impulsive move, he swallowed a cyanide capsule that killed him instantly.
Twelve years earlier, Goering had ended his life in the same way, just hours before he was to be hanged for, among other things, crimes against humanity.
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Bonus video:
