In August 1945, an Army major named Douglas Kelley was handed one of the most sought-after assignments in his profession: examining the most prominent Nazis who’d been taken prisoner of war. Kelley, a psychiatrist trained at Berkeley and Columbia, had been treating American soldiers in Europe for combat stress. He saw his new job as a chance to “learn the why of the Nazi success,” he later wrote in his book 22 Cells in Nuremberg, “so we can take steps to prevent the recurrence of such evil.”
Before the historic war-crimes trials in Nuremberg, Kelley spent five months interviewing the 22 captive defendants at length, giving them Rorschach and other tests and collecting possessions they’d surrendered. He particularly enjoyed matching wits with Hermann Goering, Hitler’s second in command, whom he treated for an addiction to paracodeine.
It was at the Nuremberg prison that Kelley interviewed Rudolf Hess, beginning in October 1945. Hess was a special case. Once Adolf Hitler’s deputy and designated successor, he’d been in custody for more than four years, far longer than the others. When Kelley talked to him, Hess would shuffle around his cell, slip into and out of amnesia and stare into space. But when Kelley asked why he’d made his ill-fated solo flight to England in the spring of 1941, Hess was clear: The British and the Germans should not be fighting each other, but presenting a united front against the Soviets. He had come to broker a peace.
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