Two things first opened my mind as a teenager to the
possibility of becoming a lawyer: the incomparable Rumpole of the Bailey, John
Mortimer’s Falstaffian defender of freedom, lost causes and the Timson clan and
the Nuremberg war trials, which formed the subject of my History O-level
project.
The Nuremberg trials, as well as being fascinating from a
legal point of view, given the novelty of both the idea of such a trial and
some of the charges with which the defendants were charged, were a
crystallising moment in history, a period where the crimes of Hitler’s Germany
were first brought to the attention of the world and were documented in
forensic detail. To those of us now accustomed
to seeing archive footage of the concentration camps and other atrocities, it
may be difficult to grasp the shock and impact of this but the showing of film
of the camps at the trial formed one of its most dramatic events – a moment
where some of the chief architects of Nazi Germany were confronted with their
most obscene ‘achievements’.
Douglas Kelley was a US Army psychiatrist assigned the task
of maintaining the mental health of the defendants before and during the
trial. A driven achiever with a complex
family background, he also assigned himself the task of analysing the
defendants to try and determine whether the leading Nazis were mentally
abnormal, implying that the Nazi regime was a unique historical phenomenon, or whether
they were, in fact, normal, raising the chilling conclusion that, given the
correct conditions, regimes similar to Nazi Germany could arise almost
anywhere.
Jack El-Hai’s The Nazi
and the Psychiatrist deals admirably with this argument, whilst also
containing a biography of Kelley who, in an eerie echo, was to commit suicide
by cyanide, the same method as his chief patient at Nuremberg, Hermann Goering,
had used to cheat the gallows.
Given that Kelley’s personal background and life was so full
and complex, and that his tenure at Nuremberg and interactions with the Nazis
could itself have filled a book, it should come as no surprise that The Nazi and the Psychiatrist is, whilst
an excellent read, slightly unsatisfying, falling somewhere between a number of stools, being part-biography,
part reportage and part analysis.
Everyone who reads The
Nazi and the Psychiatrist will find something of interest, whether in
Kelley’s life, his relationships with Goering and Hess or the conclusions he
draws. I was less interested in Kelley’s
personal life than in an objective account of his work at Nuremberg. In particular, having read both his account
of his time there and the account written by his colleague and rival, Gustave
Gilbert, I was most interested in the account of their rivalry and the
different conclusions they reached about the defendants. Gilbert viewed the chief Nazis as psychotic
and abnormal, giving a comforting message to America that Nazi Germany was
unique. Kelley concluded the opposite
and spent much time lecturing and speaking on how similar things could happen in
America and elsewhere. El-Hai’s synopsis
of the controversy and its development over the years is excellent.
By contrast, A Curious
Madness, sticks more closely to the personal. Its author, Eric Jaffe, is the grandson of US
Army neuropsychiatrist, Daniel Jaffe.
After having served in Germany during the final months of WWII, Jaffe
was posted to Tokyo, where he was asked to determine whether Okawa Shumei, a
leading Japanese nationalist thinker, was mentally fit to stand trial at the Tokyo
war crimes trial, the ‘other Nuremberg’ about which we in the UK at any rate,
know far less. Although initially
indicted, Shumei’s behaviour in custody had been erratic and, when, during the
first days of the trial, he slapped former Prime Minister Tojo on the head, the
President of the Court ordered a psychiatric evaluation.
Jaffe determined that Okawa was unfit to stand trial and he
was transferred to hospital, where he completed a Japanese translation of the
Koran and made a seemingly miraculous recovery.
Re-examined by two psychiatrists who came to different views on his
mental state, there has always been a school of thought that believes Okawa was
feigning madness and fooled Jaffe.
The starting point of the book is Jaffe’s attempt both to
find out more about his grandfather and finally to answer the question of
whether his grandfather’s assessment had been correct. A
Curious Madness develops into the interwoven biographies of both Daniel
Jaffe and Okawa Shumei and touches on many broader and fascinating subjects
such as the early days of psychiatric engagement by the US military and its
theories on the treatment of combat fatigue and the development of Japanese
conservative nationalist thought in the period up to WWII. Jaffe’s focus is clearly on his grandfather
which enables him to maintain the balance of A Curious Madness towards the biographical.
If I’m perfectly honest, I preferred The Nazi and Psychiatrist to A
Curious Madness (although both are well worth reading). In part this is because I am so much more
familiar with the Nuremberg trials and the personalities of the former – I may
have enjoyed the latter more had I read more on the Tokyo war crimes trial
first. I was also less interested in the
personal biographies of the psychiatrists and more interested in their work and
conclusions – readers with more of a biographical bent may have a different
view. Consequently, although I believe
Eric Jaffe does a better job of focusing his story, I found El-Hai’s book more
to my taste.
For those interested in World War Two or the development of
criminal psychiatry, these books are well worth reading and thoroughly
recommended. For the more general
reader, they may be a little specialised and off-beat, although they are still
good reads and should also appeal to the general lover of biographies.
I would like to thank Scribner and Perseus Book Group for
allowing me to read A Curious Madness and
The Nazi and the Psychiatrist
respectively via NetGalley.
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