David Piper is a retired judge and regular contributor. He lives in Kenwood.
From his home in East Isles, author Jack ElHai has spent decades exploring the shadowed intersection of medicine, morality and power. His 2013 book, “The Nazi and the Psychologist,” inspired the 2025 film Nuremberg, a tense psychological drama set against one of history’s most consequential war crimes trials.
The book examines the unlikely and unsettling relationship between Douglas Kelley, a young American military psychiatrist, and Hermann Göring, one of Adolf Hitler’s closest lieutenants. Kelley was tasked with evaluating captured Nazi leaders ahead of the 1945–46 tribunal, an assignment that would shake his faith in psychiatry and haunt him for the rest of his life.
The film Nuremberg has received strong reviews for its performances and historical grounding. It focuses on Kelley’s encounters with Göring and the moral ambiguities of studying evil up close. I recently saw the film and was struck by one scene in particular: the prosecution calls Göring, the defendant, as a primary witness. In the United States, the right to remain silent has long applied in criminal cases and has applied in military tribunals since the 1950s.
I was also surprised to learn, both from the book and the film, that Kelley did not diagnose Göring as a psychopath. Today the term would likely fall under antisocial personality disorder. Göring was, after all, one of the architects of the Holocaust.
I interviewed El-Hai at his home early in December. The family cat, Vivian, watched intently from a nearby chair, one paw neatly resting atop the other.
El-Hai and his wife, Ann, have lived in the neighborhood for 30 years and have two adult daughters. He said they have no plans to move.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What led you to become a writer, and what is your next book?
I was interested in writing as early as junior high school. I grew up in Los Angeles and sold my first article at 17. After graduating from Carleton, I wrote short stories for literary magazines but wasn’t making much money. A friend at Minneapolis St. Paul Magazine invited me to write short pieces, and that grew into feature writing for Minneapolis St. Paul Magazine, Minnesota Monthly, City Pages and eventually national publications.
Over the years, I’ve written around 600 articles and several books. One of them, “The Lobotomist: A Maverick Medical Genius and His Tragic Quest to Rid the World of Mental Illness,” explores the life of Dr. Walter Freeman, the physician who popularized lobotomies.
I just finished a book called “The Case of the Autographed Corpse.” It will be out in about a year. It centers on Silas Edwards, an Apache medicine man wrongfully convicted on flimsy evidence by an all-white jury of murdering his wife in 1933. His case was later reinvestigated by Erle Stanley Gardner, the trial lawyer who created Perry Mason, through his Court of Last Resort, an early version of the Innocence Project. The book looks at their partnership and the flaws built into the justice system. A condensed version of the story appeared in the December 2020 issue of Smithsonian Magazine.
What drew you to figures like Kelley and Freeman, whom you have described as renegade scientists?
I was drawn to medical stories and dark stories. Medical narratives are rich. They involve conflict, ethical dilemmas, life-and-death stakes and the relationship between doctor and patient. I’ve also always been interested in darker material.
I came to love the research process of nonfiction. You’re always deciding which story to tell and which details matter most.
Only one of my books has a happy ending, my 2025 book “Face in the Mirror.” It’s about the first successful face transplant at the Mayo Clinic.
How satisfied are you with the film Nuremberg?
I’m happy with it and relieved that I can recommend it to my friends. No historical film is perfectly factual, but Nuremberg is essentially factual. It delivers the core messages that mattered to me.
The film focuses more on Justice Robert Jackson and on Göring’s testimony than my book does and it compresses decades of Kelley’s life. But it’s faithful where it counts. I’ve seen it three times and still think it’s a strong film.
Do you think the film serves as a warning about authoritarian-leaning regimes?
I don’t see how you could watch it and not think about current politics. When I wrote the book in 2013, extremist ideologies were still at the fringes. That’s no longer true.
None of that was planned by me or the director. It’s simply the direction the world has moved.
In the film, Kelley and Göring appear to manipulate each other. How accurate is that?
Both were masterful manipulators. Kelley was 33 and Göring was 53. Kelley wanted access to Göring’s reasoning, motivations and worldview. He hoped to determine whether the defendants shared a common psychiatric disorder. He ultimately concluded they did not.
That conclusion shook his faith in psychiatry. If psychiatry could not explain men like that, what could?
The film does not clearly explain whether Kelley was evaluating Göring or treating him. If he was evaluating him, their conversations would not be privileged. If he was treating him, they would be protected by doctor-patient confidentiality.
Their relationship was deeply complicated. Kelley never forgot the frightening aspects of Göring’s personality. Göring had no conscience or empathy and sought power above all else. Kelley treated him medically while also reporting conversations to the prosecution without telling him. He was torn between his duties to his patient, the U.S. Army and the court.
Was Göring a psychopath?
I don’t think so. The first major study on psychopathy was published in 1941 and I’m not sure Kelley had read it by the time of the trial. He read it later. I saw a copy of the study in his library when I visited his son.
Kelley never used terms like psychopath or sociopath. He relied heavily on the Rorschach test, which we wouldn’t do today. He did describe Göring, and possibly others, as narcissistic personalities but he did not consider that an illness. It’s a trait many people have.
Most narcissists are not mass murderers.
