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This book is an exploration of the relationship between an American army psychiatrist and the Nazi inmates in the immediate post-WWII period and lead up to the Nuremberg trials. It focuses particularly on the close relationship the psychiatrist formed with Hermann Göring and explores the impact of this relationship in the psychiatrist's later life.
The book suffers somewhat and is rather uneven, primarily because the titular Nazi is the more interesting character of the two. Once Göring is gone from the narrative, we explore the rest of the life of psychiatrist Kelley, including his own mysterious death by suicide through – as Göring did – "a cyanide capsule".
While the interdisciplinary arguments about the fundamental nature of the top Nazis - were they relatively ordinary men shaped by a certain culture or environment, or perhaps 'mad', 'bad' and inherently 'evil' individuals - are interesting, I'm not certain that El-Hai has got the balance in terms of storytelling quite right in this book. It remains worth a look though.
The book suffers somewhat and is rather uneven, primarily because the titular Nazi is the more interesting character of the two. Once Göring is gone from the narrative, we explore the rest of the life of psychiatrist Kelley, including his own mysterious death by suicide through – as Göring did – "a cyanide capsule".
While the interdisciplinary arguments about the fundamental nature of the top Nazis - were they relatively ordinary men shaped by a certain culture or environment, or perhaps 'mad', 'bad' and inherently 'evil' individuals - are interesting, I'm not certain that El-Hai has got the balance in terms of storytelling quite right in this book. It remains worth a look though.