378: Nuremberg with Jack El-Hai

00:00:02:06 – 00:00:28:21
Dan LeFebvre
Hello and welcome to Based on a True Story, the podcast that compares your favorite Hollywood movies with history. Today we’ll be learning about the new movie called Nuremberg, directed by James Vanderbilt. Nuremberg is set during the Nuremberg trials in the wake of World War Two. In the movie, we see Michael Shannon’s version of justice Robert Jackson as a main driver behind the trial in an attempt to force the Nazi leadership to answer for their crimes during the war.

00:00:28:24 – 00:00:47:17
Dan LeFebvre
The movie focuses mostly on Russell Crowe’s version of Hermann Goering, who was one of the most powerful figures in the Nazi Party. And that brings us to one of the other main characters in the movie. Rami Malik’s version of Doctor Douglas Kelly. In the movie, Doctor Kelly is tasked with assessing the mental competence of Goering and other Nazis to stand trial.

00:00:47:20 – 00:01:04:20
Dan LeFebvre
To help us unravel the true story behind the movie today we’ll be talking with none other than Jack ally. Jack is the author of the book that they used as a basis for the movie. That book is called The Nazi and the psychiatrist. And you can find a link in the show notes to pick up your own copy right now.

00:01:04:23 – 00:01:23:11
Dan LeFebvre
But before we dive in, just a quick heads up. As of this recording, Nuremberg is still playing in the theaters and if you’ve listened to any based on a true story episodes before, you know that we can’t really dig into the historical accuracy without getting into the movie’s plot. So consider this your spoiler alert. Okay, now let’s set up our game for this episode.

00:01:23:12 – 00:01:39:12
Dan LeFebvre
Now, if you are new to the show, since based on a true story is all about separating fact from fiction in the movies, you’ll get to practice your skills at separating fact from fiction in this podcast episode with a game of two truths and a lie. So I’m about to give you three things that we’re going to talk about at some point throughout this episode.

00:01:39:14 – 00:02:00:12
Dan LeFebvre
Two of those are true, and one of them is just a lie. And your task is to see if you can figure out which one is the lie. Are you ready? Okay, here they are. Number one, Doctor Kelly was fired for talking to a newspaper reporter in Nuremberg. Number two, Doctor Kelly delivered letters from Hermann Goering to his family.

00:02:00:12 – 00:02:18:23
Dan LeFebvre
Like we see in the movie. Number three Doctor Kelly talked to growing more than any of the other Nazi prisoners in Nuremberg. Got them. Okay. Now, if you’re watching the video version of this, you can see I’m holding up an envelope. And this envelope has the answer inside. So we’ll open this up at the end of the episode to see if you got it right.

00:02:18:26 – 00:02:34:22
Dan LeFebvre
Okay. Now it’s time to connect with Jack ally about the historical accuracy of Nuremberg.

00:02:34:24 – 00:02:57:10
Dan LeFebvre
My audience knows movies aren’t expected to be 100% factual, but some movies do better at adhering to history than others for a wide range of reasons. So I always like to start off by getting an overall sense for how well, movie does from a historical perspective. So with that in mind, what letter grade would you give the movie Nuremberg for its historical accuracy?

00:02:57:12 – 00:03:00:05
Jack El-Hai
I would give it an A minus eight.

00:03:00:12 – 00:03:01:24
Dan LeFebvre
That’s very good.

00:03:01:26 – 00:03:31:04
Jack El-Hai
It is very good, I think. I feel good about recommending Nuremberg to my friends because it is mostly historically accurate. There are a few variations from fact, but they’re mostly, unimportant points. The the main way in which Nuremberg differs from my book, The Nazi and the psychiatrist is in its focus. The movie Nuremberg covers about one year of time.

00:03:31:05 – 00:03:35:09
Jack El-Hai
My book covers about 45 years.

00:03:35:12 – 00:03:45:11
Dan LeFebvre
Well, that makes sense. I mean, especially, you know, in a movie, it just being a different format, different medium. There’s only so much you can do before really confusing the audience.

00:03:45:13 – 00:03:47:24
Jack El-Hai
Exactly, exactly.

00:03:47:26 – 00:04:09:01
Dan LeFebvre
Well, at the beginning of the movie, it it sets up the situation. It says it’s May 7th, 1945, the last day of war in Europe. Adolf Hitler is dead. The Nazi high command is in disarray. 70 million people are died across the globe. And then in the opening sequence of the movie, we see, black Mercedes with Nazi flags honking to get what appear to be refugees along the road to move out of the way.

00:04:09:03 – 00:04:33:21
Dan LeFebvre
And then some American soldiers nearby immediately jump to high alert when they see the car. They have their guns pointed at the car and it just stops. And the movie is very careful to not show the face of the people inside. Quite. Yet he just. The man in the back of the car tears off a white piece of cloth from a woman’s dress next to him, hands it to the driver, shows it to the soldiers, and then as he gets out from the backseat, the American soldiers recognize who it is.

00:04:33:22 – 00:04:43:27
Dan LeFebvre
Russell Crowe’s version of Hermann Goering, and he seems to just kind of drive up and surrender himself and his family to the Americans. Is that really how Goering was captured by the allies?

00:04:43:29 – 00:05:12:18
Jack El-Hai
Yes. That’s almost exactly how he was captured. He surrendered to American troops. And that very scene is in my book, although it’s not at the beginning of my book. And, I was really happy to see that scene in the book because it even includes, a joke. When Goering asks the American soldiers to unload his luggage, that did actually happen as well.

00:05:12:18 – 00:05:16:26
Jack El-Hai
And that was kept in the in the screenplay.

00:05:16:28 – 00:05:38:13
Dan LeFebvre
What would the soldiers have known him? I mean, assuming that I mean, just the car itself kind of lends itself to being an officer or something like that. But the soldiers immediately recognized him in the movie. I’m assuming then Goering was well known enough among just. I’m assuming those are just average soldiers.

00:05:38:15 – 00:06:01:01
Jack El-Hai
One of the soldiers recognizes him in the movie, and I, my impression from watching that scene in the film is that the others didn’t necessarily know who he was, so one, one was enough. And but I think that Goering was quite recognizable to people who, had been, following the ups and downs of the war.

00:06:01:01 – 00:06:09:05
Jack El-Hai
But that doesn’t mean, perhaps all U.S. soldiers were that aware of who the German leadership was.

00:06:09:08 – 00:06:33:12
Dan LeFebvre
Soon after, during his capture in the movie, were introduced to Justice Robert Jackson. He’s played by Michael Shannon, and according to the movie, Jackson is pushing for putting the Nazis on trial for their war crimes. But the problem with that, according to the movie, is that would require an international tribunal requiring judges from the four main allies the United States, France, Great Britain and the USSR.

00:06:33:14 – 00:06:51:24
Dan LeFebvre
And that’s never been done before. Looking back on the events of World War two through a historical lens, I think we can all agree that it’s pretty obvious the Nazis committed countless crimes against humanity. And so it would seem obvious that if the Nazis were put on trial, they’d be found guilty at least looking at it through a historical lens.

00:06:51:29 – 00:07:09:11
Dan LeFebvre
But the impression that I got while I was watching the movie was that a lot of the evidence that we know about now is only because it was made public during the trials. So before the trials began, it seems like nobody really knew which way they would go. There seem that could be a chance the Nazis might actually be set free.

00:07:09:13 – 00:07:23:00
Dan LeFebvre
Goring himself in the movie, he suggested that in years to come, people would look back on the trial as a farce. Can you give a little more historical context around what people thought of the authenticity of the trial at Nuremberg at that time?

00:07:23:03 – 00:07:58:12
Jack El-Hai
This kind of trial had never been attempted before. So it was an international tribunal. The four largest Allied powers, U.S., USSR, France and Great Britain, got together to to hold these men accountable and responsible for their crimes. Not all of those countries, as he suggested, were, initially on board. Winston Churchill in particular, thought that the German leaders should be lined up and shot without a trial.

00:07:58:19 – 00:08:33:21
Jack El-Hai
But interestingly, it was FDR and Joseph Stalin who convinced him otherwise, and they wanted a trial that would present all of the evidence. So that, they feared that if the German leaders were simply shot without a trial, no one would really know the extent of their crimes and their legacy could live on. And that goering’s dream that there would be statues of them all over Germany in 15 or 20 years would come true.

00:08:33:23 – 00:09:03:24
Jack El-Hai
So, and, in the course of, developing this trial, the prosecution team, which was very large, unearthed in a very short amount of time, huge masses of evidence, the as much as the, German government tried to cover its tracks and destroy, paper materials. They couldn’t there was so much they could not get at all or even come close.

00:09:03:27 – 00:09:58:08
Jack El-Hai
So there was, a gigantic amount of evidence against them. And, this part of the film, Nuremberg is where there is a deviation from my book, The Nazi in the psychiatrist’s. It’s not that this part giving the background to the trial is not factual. It it is largely. But, I didn’t cover it as extensively as other parts, other areas of the story that I was more interested in and in in particular, I did not follow the adventures of Justice Robert Jackson because, in my book, because his big moments, came after Douglas Kelly, a psychiatrist, had actually left Nuremberg, even though in the film he’s shown to be there.

00:09:58:10 – 00:10:16:28
Dan LeFebvre
I mean, that sounds like that could be a whole book by itself. Just talking about Jackson and that the way the trial is all set up and everything like that. But it sounds like they wanted to get a lot of it was to get the evidence out there was one of the big drivers for for doing the trial.

00:10:17:01 – 00:10:45:21
Jack El-Hai
Get it out there, not just among the people who would be attending the trial or listening to it on the radio or watching in newsreels, but, into the wider world for years and years so that the, the real legacy of the Nazi regime would not be mistaken and, and nullified. So that was a big part of the purpose of the trial.

00:10:45:23 – 00:11:03:25
Dan LeFebvre
That makes sense. And I would say that it work that we definitely got to learn what they were actually about. You mentioned his name. If we go back to the movie, Remy Malik’s version of Doctor Douglas Kelly enters the picture. Around this time, he’s tasked with inspecting the mental health of the Nazi prisoners in anticipation of the trial.

00:11:03:27 – 00:11:29:06
Dan LeFebvre
But according to the movie, it’s not just Goering, but the movie really kind of focuses on Goering and then three others doctor Robert Ley, he’s the chief of the German Labor Front, who spearheaded the Nazi slave labor program. Great Admiral Carl Donitz, the German Navy commander in chief, architect of the U-boat attacks. And then Julia Streicher, the, movie, says he’s Hitler’s director of propaganda and publisher of the national anti-Semitic paper called Der Sturmer.

00:11:29:09 – 00:11:49:23
Dan LeFebvre
Not to get too far ahead of the timeline in the movie, but then later on, the movie does mention, I think, 22 Nazis going on trial. So it seems like there’s more that the movie just doesn’t show. And the true story. Did Kelly focus on the main characters, those four main characters that the movie shows us, or was he tasked with inspecting all the Nazis going on trial at Nuremberg?

00:11:49:25 – 00:12:19:29
Jack El-Hai
Well, yes and no. Kelly examined and interviewed the entire group. So that was 22 members of the Nazi high command, and, he found Hermann Goering to be the most intriguing of the bunch. And so he spent more time with Goering then with any of the others. And in fact, he spent more time with Goering than with several of the others combined.

00:12:20:02 – 00:12:48:11
Jack El-Hai
So, the three that, you mentioned that are also shown in the movie, and there’s another one, too, Rudolf Hess, is given some playtime in the movie. These were important figures in the trial, but there were many other important figures that Kelly dealt with and maybe here, it might be a good time for me to mention that because you addressed his role, Kelly’s role there.

00:12:48:13 – 00:13:17:20
Jack El-Hai
He was, brought in by the tribunal to ensure that the defendants were mentally fit to stand trial in. This is a very low bar of fitness, mental fitness. So it means can they understand the charges? Do they know the difference between right and wrong? Can they participate in their own defense? And in Kelly’s opinion, all of them satisfied that requirement.

00:13:17:22 – 00:13:47:15
Jack El-Hai
But he was there among these men who were considered the arch criminals of the 20th century, all in one place together. And he saw it as a wonderful opportunity to do more. So he set up for himself a more ambitious project to determine whether they shared a common psychiatric disorder or what Kelly like to call a Nazi virus that, could account for their behavior.

00:13:47:17 – 00:13:54:21
Dan LeFebvre
Okay. Yeah. So he’s going above and beyond to take advantage of all of them being in one location. It sounds like.

00:13:54:23 – 00:13:56:04
Jack El-Hai
That’s right.

00:13:56:06 – 00:14:13:21
Dan LeFebvre
What? You mentioned his name, and Rudolf Hess does end up coming in. He I think he arrived at the prison a little bit later, but the movie briefly mentioned his story. It talks about how he flew a plane to Scotland in 1941, tried to negotiate a truce with Britain and Germany so they could both team up to defeat the Soviet Union.

00:14:13:24 – 00:14:41:12
Dan LeFebvre
That doesn’t work. Hess was then in prison and then conveniently got hit with amnesia, where he couldn’t remember anything for years. Then, in February of 1945, he said that he was faking his amnesia the whole time. Then after I think the movie mentioned in July of 1945, after Germany collapsed, the amnesia returned. So now in the movie, Kelly tries to get Goring to help, to get Hess to talk, and Goering agrees to do this in exchange for Kelly getting letters to his wife and daughter.

00:14:41:12 – 00:14:49:12
Dan LeFebvre
And we’ll talk about those letters in a moment. But is the movie correct to set up this scenario of Goering helping Doctor Kelly to try to get has to talk?

00:14:49:15 – 00:15:19:01
Jack El-Hai
Absolutely. Goering was offended by Hess’s behavior because Hess, he probably was not suffering from amnesia. So Hess was pretending not to recognize Goering. And, during found this offensive. And during did assist with Kelly’s efforts to determine whether has really had amnesia or not, I think.

00:15:19:03 – 00:15:32:11
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, I think in the movie, when they first he first sees him, Hess does the Nazi salute and then later, Russell Crowe’s version of Goering points that out and he’s like, yeah, he’s faking because he recognized me the moment that he saw me.

00:15:32:13 – 00:15:37:15
Jack El-Hai
That’s right. And I believe that event also. Did that truly occur?

00:15:37:17 – 00:15:42:00
Dan LeFebvre
Wow, wow. Even little details like that. That’s it. Yeah. Makes for the A minus.

00:15:42:03 – 00:15:42:28
Jack El-Hai

00:15:43:00 – 00:16:03:12
Dan LeFebvre
Well I’m assuming that the Nazis who were helping Doctor Kelley with other Nazis like with Hess were only doing that to get something out of it themselves. Kind of like we see with, you know, Goering getting Kelly’s help with the personal letters. Were there any other scenarios of the other Nazis helping the allies interrogate other Nazis, or was Goring the only one?

00:16:03:15 – 00:16:37:24
Jack El-Hai
Not that I can recall. Goering was the only one who who provided substantive help, in that way. And there were some, like you mentioned, Admiral Donuts, who resisted, being of any help at all. So, enduring was amenable at least to doing this one thing to, try and figure out what was going on with Hess, because during wanted something in return.

00:16:37:26 – 00:17:00:25
Jack El-Hai
And, maybe we’re jumping the gun here a little bit, but, it would Goring wanted was a closer connection with his, family, his wife and daughter, who were outside of the prison, living on their own for a while. And then there was a time when Mrs. Goering was imprisoned and her daughter, was being kept in a convent.

00:17:00:25 – 00:17:09:17
Jack El-Hai
And during was very upset about all of this and wanted to open a line of communication with them.

00:17:09:19 – 00:17:27:17
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah. No, that makes sense. So that’s what the movie shows. I was actually going to be my next question about those letters because, we see in the movie, Doctor Kelly is delivering letters from going to his wife, Emmy Goring, and their young daughter Edda. And throughout the movie, we see Kelly taking multiple trips to the Goering household.

00:17:27:17 – 00:17:48:28
Dan LeFebvre
He’s even invited into the home to watch Edda play the piano, which then he recounts back to Hermann when they get back to prison, and as this happens, it seems, according to the movie, that that Kelly is forming a bond with the Goring family. And then later in the movie you mentioned, getting arrested. We see or we don’t really see it happen necessarily, but we see the aftermath of Emmy and Eddie getting arrested.

00:17:49:03 – 00:18:03:11
Dan LeFebvre
And then Colonel Andrews asks Kelly how he knew where they’re hiding out. And that, to me, implies that these were not really sanctioned trips. So is it true that one of the ways Kelly got through to Hermann Goering was by secretly delivering these letters to his family?

00:18:03:13 – 00:18:34:15
Jack El-Hai
Yes, he he several times delivered letters to Emmy and Edda, and they they were not sanctioned. And the prison administration did not know that he was doing this. And the reason why I know these these letters were passed along is that copies of them exist, and they were among the trove of Douglas Kelly papers that I found.

00:18:34:17 – 00:18:42:14
Jack El-Hai
About 15 boxes of stuff that that led to me being interested in writing about this story.

00:18:42:17 – 00:18:55:26
Dan LeFebvre
Do we know if that was something that, I mean, I’m assuming Goehring kind of initiated that and then Doctor Kelly going along with it. I mean, I assume he would get in trouble if he was found out.

00:18:55:28 – 00:19:19:09
Jack El-Hai
Goering definitely initiated it. It didn’t occur to Kelly to try something like that. And if he had been caught doing it, he probably would have gotten into trouble. How serious a trouble? I’m not sure. He certainly would have been scolded, but I don’t think it would have been a huge blot on his military record.

00:19:19:12 – 00:19:42:06
Dan LeFebvre
Well, that speaks to the trust, I guess, would be that the word between Goering and Kelly. Because at least according to the movie, it seems like the allies don’t know where his family is. And once they find out, that’s when they arrest them. So I’m assuming then Goering knew that they would be in trouble or have potentially be arrested.

00:19:42:06 – 00:19:46:28
Dan LeFebvre
If Kelly gave up that information and trusted that he wouldn’t.

00:19:47:01 – 00:20:10:18
Jack El-Hai
Yes it would. Goring was preoccupied by the worry that his family was vulnerable to all kinds of hazards and dangers. And, Goring was a man of action, and for him to be confined in prison and unable to do anything to help was immensely frustrating to him.

00:20:10:21 – 00:20:27:01
Dan LeFebvre
That makes me wonder, because he he surrendered himself, did he assume that his position would be that he would be able to keep in contact with them and everything? And then all of a sudden he’s put in prison and obviously not able to.

00:20:27:03 – 00:21:07:28
Jack El-Hai
When Goering surrendered, he had a vision of how things would go after that. He was the, last living very top dog among the German leaders. Hitler, Himmler and gerbils had committed suicide and, during envisioned a time when he would, he saw himself as the statesman. So he would, resume the leadership of the German government and negotiate with the allies and lead Germany through this very difficult postwar time.

00:21:08:01 – 00:21:31:26
Jack El-Hai
But that plan, was nothing like what the allies were expecting to happen. And when, General Eisenhower, who was in charge in Europe in that time, heard about Goering’s expectation that he would be treated like a statesman, he said no way. And Goering was summarily shipped to prison.

00:21:31:28 – 00:21:52:11
Dan LeFebvre
Well, throughout the movie, we see numerous mentions of Remy Malik’s version of Doctor Kelly, saying that he believes Hermann Goering is an extreme narcissist. For example, there’s one scene when he’s talking to Justice Jackson and a JAG lawyer, Colonel John. Amen. I believe. And Kelly tells him that, above all things, the only thing that Hermann Goering cares about is Hermann Goering.

00:21:52:14 – 00:22:13:01
Dan LeFebvre
He doesn’t care about the Jews. He also doesn’t care if they die as Russell Crowe’s version of Goering says in the movie, the anti-Semitism helped gather followers, focus their emotions and give them someone to blame. So as I was watching that, the way I interpreted the movie was that basically during was willing to do anything and everything to rise to power himself.

00:22:13:07 – 00:22:23:24
Dan LeFebvre
You know, if that meant lying about his beliefs about Jews and murdering millions of people in the process. How old do you think the movie does showing Doctor Kelly’s analysis of growing?

00:22:23:26 – 00:22:56:24
Jack El-Hai
I think it does a great job of showing the ambiguity of Kelly’s position regarding Goering. You know, anything Goering said had to be taken with a huge block of salt because he was in prison. He was. He knew his life was at risk. But the film does accurately show what Goering told Kelly. How much Kelly believed it all.

00:22:56:27 – 00:23:27:12
Jack El-Hai
It is open to question. So I don’t think in in the evidence presented later at the trial shows that Goring was much more involved in the very harsh, overt anti-Semitic acts of the Nazi regime. And, it would be hard, after looking at that evidence, to say, well, this is just something that Hermann played along with so that he could take the opportunity to grasp power.

00:23:27:14 – 00:23:47:02
Jack El-Hai
So I don’t accept Hermann Goering’s explanation in that sense. And I have a feeling that Douglas Kelly didn’t either. So I guess that’s a long way of saying that. What’s shown in the movie is a simplified version of of what Goering said. But there is more behind it.

00:23:47:04 – 00:24:15:12
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah. Which speaks to how difficult of a job it must have been for, for Kelly to unravel these things of what somebody is telling you may not be the truth, and probably likely is not the truth. I mean, I mean, beyond just, you know, being politicians or things like that, but, you know, these people in a position where their life is at stake and they’re not really used to that.

00:24:15:15 – 00:24:17:12
Jack El-Hai
Absolutely.

00:24:17:14 – 00:24:36:27
Dan LeFebvre
There’s another story I wanted to ask you about from the movie that it comes from a discussion with Doctor Kelly alone in his cell with going I’m sorry in Goering cell not, not in, in doctor Kelly’s. No. But they’re alone together and and going tells the story from his childhood and the Jewish man that he was named after Hermann von Stein.

00:24:36:29 – 00:25:11:13
Dan LeFebvre
And according to the movie, Epstein was was Goering’s father’s best friend. And then Epstein was also extremely rich and let the growing family move in with him at the castle that he own goes to lend itself to how rich he was. He owns a castle, and he goes on to tell Doctor Kelly that living in the castle, the child, he started to realize just how rich, quote unquote, Uncle Herman was, so rich that he could move the Goering family into his castle, so rich that he could make Goering’s father live in a bedroom on the ground floor, while his mother lived in a bedroom just down the hall from Epstein’s own bedroom, and so rich

00:25:11:13 – 00:25:27:29
Dan LeFebvre
that whenever he wanted, he could walk down the hall and enjoy. Goering’s mother in the movie going, uses that story to tell Doctor Kelly that just because someone is your ally doesn’t mean they’re on your side. But how much of that story from Hermann Goering’s childhood really happened?

00:25:28:01 – 00:25:42:12
Jack El-Hai
I think all of it. I think that story is factually correct. And Goring did tell Kelly about it during their in the prison interviews.

00:25:42:14 – 00:25:46:15
Dan LeFebvre
Wow. Wow. I mean, that’s really.

00:25:46:17 – 00:25:53:05
Dan LeFebvre
It’s a peek into Goering’s mind, you know, childhood and.

00:25:53:07 – 00:26:09:27
Dan LeFebvre
How he I guess the way that it was still on his mind. But then using that manipulation. It sounds like he’s trying to manipulate Kelly in the movie using, you know, this, using this nugget of truth and using it to manipulate. I mean, that’s in there.

00:26:09:27 – 00:26:53:11
Jack El-Hai
That’s an important thing to remember about both of these men. They were master manipulators. Both of them. One of my big sources when I was researching the book was I had tracked down Doctor Kelly’s son, Doug. And, so he had all of his memories of his families. Plus he provided me with those boxes of documents. And when I have talked with Doug about this meeting of Goehring and Kelly, we always refer to them as King Kong versus Godzilla because they were both highly intelligent, both, the Egotists, both absolutely sure of their own opinions, stubborn.

00:26:53:13 – 00:27:29:04
Jack El-Hai
And so that were those similarities were part of the basis of their affinity. I won’t call it a friendship. Because Kelly, the entire time was very aware of Hermann Goering’s dark side. The his ruthlessness, lack of conscience, lack of empathy, all of that and would never, considered during a friend. But they did develop a bond just from spending all of those hours together and and sharing so much about their, their pasts.

00:27:29:06 – 00:27:32:29
Jack El-Hai
So that that is a big part of this story.

00:27:33:01 – 00:28:04:06
Dan LeFebvre
Well, that leads right into my next question, because if we go back to the movie’s timeline, the trial is beginning. And something that the movie focuses on is film of the Nazi concentration camps that they play at the trial. Those are just horrible images from the Holocaust, and I’m sure many of us have seen by now. But afterwards, when Kelly talks to Goering in his cell, Kelly is understandably shaken by what he just saw, and he flat out asks Goering how he could be the second in command in Nazi Germany and not know about this.

00:28:04:08 – 00:28:23:14
Dan LeFebvre
And Granger says, oh, Himmler was in charge of the camps. And then Kelly points out that it wasn’t Himmler who was second in command behind Hitler. It was Goering. And then Goering says, oh, well, the films were faked and, you know, comes up with more excuses. And then Goering uses another excuse. He says, you know, Americans bombed Japan, killing 150,000 Japanese.

00:28:23:14 – 00:28:52:08
Dan LeFebvre
That included civilians. And that’s when in the movie, Kelly just blows up at Goering and says, there’s a difference between bombing war factories and civilians dying as collateral damage, and Goering’s Nazi Party building 1200 camps designed to exterminate an entire race. So if were to believe the movie’s version of events, this kind of seems to be a turning point between Kelly and Goering, where I won’t call it a friendship, but they have this this connection going on.

00:28:52:08 – 00:29:06:03
Dan LeFebvre
And then once Kelly sees the films of the concentration camps in the trial and the reality of what the Nazis did, he kind of snaps back to reality. Was that a turning point in how Doctor Kelly interacted with Goering? Like the movie suggests?

00:29:06:06 – 00:29:50:23
Jack El-Hai
Yes, the movie presents, I would say, a concentrated version of that conversation all happening in one scene. In, in actuality, it happened over several days. And so it happened not exactly as shown in the movie. I think, one thing in the, in this scene that Goering is trying to do and something they actually did struggle with during his imprisonment is, was how is he going to present himself when it is his turn to testify in the forthcoming trial?

00:29:50:25 – 00:30:16:27
Jack El-Hai
And so he was strategizing different ways. And so, I’ve always thought that this denial that he makes at the beginning, you know, he had nothing to do with the camps. And then the films were fakes. These were trial balloons that he was sending up to see how Kelly would receive them. And then maybe Goering could make a determination whether to really use that based on Kelly’s reaction.

00:30:17:00 – 00:30:33:20
Dan LeFebvre
Oh, okay. Yeah. So using Kelly as, a guinea pig, almost of his use of his defense. Wow. Okay. Yeah, that that makes sense. Now that you mention that, I didn’t even think about that. There is a character that we see pop up here and there throughout the movie. We haven’t talked about much yet. And her name is Lila.

00:30:33:21 – 00:30:58:27
Dan LeFebvre
She meets Doctor Kelly on the train before he arrives at Nuremberg. Then, after blowing up at Goering and seeing the footage of the concentration camp, we see Doctor Kelly drinking at the bar, and then she shows up again. And that’s when we find out she’s a reporter. The movie seems to imply his drinking played a part, but in the next scene after that, we see a newspaper article with the headline that says Prison Doc Tells All, and that’s Colonel Andrus is not happy with Doctor Kelly talking to a reporter.

00:30:58:27 – 00:31:05:08
Dan LeFebvre
So he orders Kelly back to the States where he’s going to be discharged. Was that really how Doctor Kelly was effectively fired from the job?

00:31:05:11 – 00:31:37:27
Jack El-Hai
No, there’s that’s one place where the story in the film deviates from fact. The reporter character you mentioned is, as far as I know, the only completely made up person in the in the screenplay and in the film, Doctor Kelly did talk with a reporter and said some things that were probably imprudent for him to say, and it was reported in Stars and Stripes, the military newspaper.

00:31:37:29 – 00:32:08:13
Jack El-Hai
But, again, Kelly only got a scolding for that. He did not get him fired. In fact, Kelly was never fired. He left on his own initiative here and then was honorably discharged from the Army. And so, if if the movie gives the impression that Kelly left under some kind of cloud, then that is inaccurate. And in probably there for drama’s sake.

00:32:08:15 – 00:32:31:13
Dan LeFebvre
I know that. Yeah, that makes sense. Again, it is a movie. There’s a there’s another character that we see throughout the movie that we haven’t talked about much yet, and that’s Leo Whittle’s character, Sergeant Howie Triste. He’s the translator, has been working with Doctor Kelly this whole time. So after Kelly is fired in the movie and he’s about to leave, she stops him at the train station and tells him his own story.

00:32:31:16 – 00:32:50:23
Dan LeFebvre
According the movie, he is a German Jew born in Munich. His family was trying to get out of Germany with the rise of the Nazis and they managed to get exit visas in 1940. But only had enough money for one ticket to the United States. His sister was too young to go alone, so she stayed behind with the parents, and that left Howie alone in America, and he tried to enlist.

00:32:50:23 – 00:33:11:03
Dan LeFebvre
After Pearl Harbor, but he was refused because he wasn’t an American citizen. Then, two years later, he was drafted into service and ended up landing on Omaha Beach on D-Day in 1944. I loved the line in the movie where Treece looks at Kelly and says, four years earlier, I left this country scared and alone in the middle of the night, and I came back with the goddamn army.

00:33:11:05 – 00:33:28:20
Dan LeFebvre
And that’s when he comes back as he finds out, according to the movie, that his sister ended up in Switzerland with relatives, and the records show that his parents arrived in Auschwitz in 1942 and then camp was liberated 1945. And there’s no record of them. All of that ends up being the story after after Kelly is fired, he’s about to leave.

00:33:28:23 – 00:33:42:03
Dan LeFebvre
He hears this story, and he hears the importance of what he’s doing and how he can still help with this case against the Nazis. How well do you think the movie did, recounting the story of Sergeant Harry Treece?

00:33:42:05 – 00:34:16:24
Jack El-Hai
How he traced was a real person. He was one of several translators who worked with Doctor Kelly and others in having conversations with the German defendants. I interviewed him, and, I think the way the movie presents his life story is essentially correct. I, don’t have a record of this myself, but I do recall my phone interview with Howie that he did have a slight German accent when I spoke with him.

00:34:17:01 – 00:34:52:16
Jack El-Hai
And, as, Leo Woodall speaks in the movie, it’s completely, non accented, American English. So there there is maybe one, liberty taken there, but his story is, is as it happened pretty much. And and and he, how he Trieste did write a book of his own experiences, before my book was written.

00:34:52:18 – 00:35:06:27
Jack El-Hai
And I use that as a resource. And that line you mentioned, I came back with the U.S. Army. It sounds familiar to me, and I think it may be from how his own book. I may have used it in my own book. I don’t recall.

00:35:06:29 – 00:35:29:17
Dan LeFebvre
It’s a great line now. Well, after hearing this story, Kelly decides not to leave yet. Instead, we see in the movie, we see him giving all of his research on going to Justice Jackson and fight for justice from Great Britain. He gives him all his private files off the book conversations, everything that he’s gathered to put into his own book that he wanted to write after the war.

00:35:29:17 – 00:35:38:19
Dan LeFebvre
He hands over to the prosecutors to help them build their case. Did Doctor Kelly hand over everything he had on going to the Allied prosecutors the way the movie shows?

00:35:38:21 – 00:36:16:04
Jack El-Hai
No. He took it home with him. And and it ended up in those 15 boxes that that I had a chance to look at. So here, here, events do get a little factually murky here because by the time, Goering was going to appear at the trial and give testimony, Kelly was already long gone from Nuremberg. He left in January 1946, and I believe during made his first appearance on the witness stand in March or April of 1946.

00:36:16:06 – 00:36:52:04
Jack El-Hai
So Kelly did not present this stash of, valuable info to the prosecution and to to Justice Jackson. He did, however, during the months that he was in Nuremberg, provide a stream of information to the prosecution team and this was in the form of memos, that he sent periodically, mainly from his conversations with Goering and a lot of that information was about how Goering planned to conduct his own defense at the trial.

00:36:52:04 – 00:36:57:04
Jack El-Hai
So it’s partly factual part, partly not.

00:36:57:07 – 00:37:31:14
Dan LeFebvre
It sounds like a simplified and condensed for the movie. Did Kelly have a lot of off off the record tape conversations with Goering or and with the manner of his work? Because he was, as you mentioned before, kind of going above and beyond and and not just doing the bare minimum. But he was doing extra. Was that still officially documented or recorded, or is that something that he just kept in his own own stuff and never made it to anybody else?

00:37:31:14 – 00:37:32:02
Dan LeFebvre
Basically.

00:37:32:04 – 00:38:07:17
Jack El-Hai
This was his personal project. The court was not interested in it. And, even had they known it was going on, they wouldn’t have been interested in it. And the prosecution, same thing. Kelly was doing this for his own to satisfy his own professional curiosity and to, enable his own later personal glory, as he imagined it when he published his book in 1947, the book was called 22 Cells in Nuremberg.

00:38:07:17 – 00:38:17:17
Jack El-Hai
It’s really hard to find now, and that’s because it sold poorly at the time, and there were just not that many copies out there.

00:38:17:20 – 00:38:40:09
Dan LeFebvre
Well, that’s fascinating that they wouldn’t have been interested, but I guess they had plenty of other evidence to sift through and the whatever current things that they’re saying, you know, we’re talking about earlier, they might not be truthful anyway, whatever Goering is saying. So stick to the evidence, stick to the facts for the trial. It sounds like it’s basically what they were, right.

00:38:40:09 – 00:39:21:26
Jack El-Hai
And whether or not the, defendants, you know, shared a psychic common psychiatric disorder that really was of no import to the prosecution. They just wanted to know, are these men sane? And is it, you know, are they fit to be tried? This, what Kelly was after was really a of importance to, you know, to history or to he and his fellow psychiatrists and, what he, his what he learned from it all is important, because it affected him for the rest of his life.

00:39:21:28 – 00:40:04:11
Jack El-Hai
And it was that if there was no Nazi virus, that these men did not share a psychiatric disorder. In fact, they were not psychiatrically disordered at all in any way that their personalities fell within the normal range. Meaning not that everyone’s capable of doing what they did, but that there are, in every country, every era, all around us, people like that who, lack conscience, lack empathy, have no concept of public service in or out for their own power and glory, and will trample, many, many other people to get there.

00:40:04:14 – 00:40:25:12
Dan LeFebvre
What? You might have already answered my my next question, but if you go back to the movie’s timeline, it’s there’s another day of trial. And Justice Jackson from the US and five from Great Britain managed to get going to admit something that ends up being his ultimate demise, at least according to the movie. Throughout the whole case, he’d been denying knowledge of what was going on in the concentration camp.

00:40:25:15 – 00:40:45:27
Dan LeFebvre
But then, thanks to Kelly’s tip that Göring would never turn on Adolf Hitler, asks him point blank while Göring is on the stand, even if he didn’t know what was going on in the concentration camps. Now that he does, with the evidence presented to him in court, would he still follow Hitler? And Goering says yes, he would, at least according to the movie, I’m assuming.

00:40:45:29 – 00:40:47:25
Dan LeFebvre
Did that actually happen.

00:40:47:28 – 00:41:20:13
Jack El-Hai
That those, scenes are, were, are a little bit outside of the scope of my book because Kelly was already gone. And, and so, my impression, though, is that it wasn’t just five who helped Jackson out. It was the large prosecution team. It was a team effort. It is true that when Jackson was questioning Goering, Goering was scoring some very good points and making Jackson look bad and making himself look good.

00:41:20:15 – 00:41:44:16
Jack El-Hai
And so it did require, something of a rescue effort by the rest of the prosecution team, but that I think that mainly came in the form of an avalanche of evidence against Goering, contradicting, some of the claims he had made earlier that he didn’t know about the Holocaust. He had nothing to do with death camps, etc..

00:41:44:16 – 00:41:47:24
Jack El-Hai
And the evidence showed that that wasn’t true.

00:41:47:26 – 00:42:07:03
Dan LeFebvre
What after Goering’s fate is sealed along with the other Nazis in the trial, the movie shows Colonel Andrus addressing the men that the executions are scheduled for midnight, but to maintain discipline, the prisoners aren’t going to be told about it until 11:45 p.m., when they’re offered last rites. And while he’s telling his men this, he gets notification that Goring took a cyanide pill.

00:42:07:06 – 00:42:21:12
Dan LeFebvre
So the impression that I got watching the movie was Goering didn’t know that was the night of the execution, because he didn’t tell anybody. But he knew it would be soon. And somehow he managed to get this cyanide pill. Was that what really happened?

00:42:21:14 – 00:42:52:10
Jack El-Hai
Yes, more or less. When Goehring surrendered to the Allied authorities, he had cyanide capsules with him hidden in his luggage and maybe other places. And these were the capsules that, that Himmler and gerbils had used to to take their own lives earlier. And so nobody really knows how Göring got a hold of one of those capsules in his cell.

00:42:52:13 – 00:43:26:18
Jack El-Hai
But the most convincing theory I know, and this isn’t gotten into in the film, is that he made an arrangement with an American guard, and in exchange for the guard receiving some valuables, the during had, jewelry and rings and things like that. The guard provided Goering with access to the most hidden cyanide capsules. I think, aside from the one that Goering did take, to commit suicide, there was another one found in his cell at the same time.

00:43:26:21 – 00:43:46:02
Dan LeFebvre
Oh, wow. Wow. Well, I guess kind of what you’re talking about before, you know, King Kong versus Godzilla. But, you know, a guard is not King Kong or Godzilla or anywhere in that scheme. So I could see how somebody like Goering would be able to manipulate people to kind of do what he wanted.

00:43:46:05 – 00:43:57:26
Jack El-Hai
Absolutely. He was a charmer, and he could turn on the charm when he wanted it. And everybody was bored in prison. And charm could go a long way.

00:43:57:28 – 00:44:15:16
Dan LeFebvre
At the end of the movie, there’s a scene with Doctor Kelly being interviewed by a radio host back in the United States. And when the host mentions the Nazis are a unique people, I want to quote what Raymie Maltz version of Doctor Kelly replies with, because I think the dialog here was extremely well-written. He says, quote, they are not unique people.

00:44:15:16 – 00:44:42:22
Dan LeFebvre
There are people like the Nazis in every country in the world today. And then the host button interrupts them and says, Not in America. And then Doctor Kelly continues, quote, yes, in America, your personality patterns are not obscure. They are people who want to be in power. And while you say they don’t exist here, I would say I’m quite certain there are people in America who would willingly climb over the corpses of half the American public if they knew they could gain control of the other half.

00:44:42:25 – 00:45:05:15
Dan LeFebvre
They stoke hatred. It’s what Hitler and Goring did, and it is textbook. And if you think the next time it happens, we’re going to recognize it because they’re wearing scary uniforms. You’re out of your damn mind. And that’s the end of the quote. Now, even though this is not a political podcast, I do think that’s an important thing to keep in mind, because it seems like these days there’s a lot of hatred being stoked to try and gain control.

00:45:05:18 – 00:45:15:11
Dan LeFebvre
So my final question for you, what lessons do you think we can learn from the true story of Doctor Kelly’s work in the Nuremberg trials?

00:45:15:13 – 00:46:00:13
Jack El-Hai
Those words that that you repeated, that Doctor Kelly says in the movie were absolutely Douglas Kelly’s words. I don’t know if he actually spoke to them in a radio interview, but they’re in his book. And, I think there are two strands of, of contemporary resonance that this story has today. And one is how important it is for people in in positions of leadership, positions of responsibility to be held accountable by the international community, as happened at Nuremberg for crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, genocide, all of it.

00:46:00:16 – 00:46:29:24
Jack El-Hai
And then the other is the threat that we face, in our country, the threat to our democracy from these extremist ideologies. Kelly came back to the US and his perspective had been changed from, spending so much time with these defendants. And he saw, things very close to Nazi ism all around him. So this was in 1946.

00:46:29:26 – 00:47:05:07
Jack El-Hai
It was expressed, mainly in the form of the power grabs made by southern politicians, the racial segregationists who had very high state offices at the time, governors, senator, senators. And, but he made it clear and Kelly made it clear that this did not only apply to those people and that it applied to anyone who would use emotion, try and fight off, critical thinking as a way to make decisions.

00:47:05:10 – 00:47:36:25
Jack El-Hai
People who use, degrading terms. For of other of their opponents based on race, religion, where they’re from, all of that. Kelly saw it around him and was against it, and he even laid out a plan for fighting it. So it’s it’s a message. He was prescient, and it’s a message that I think we need to pay attention, especially now.

00:47:36:27 – 00:47:55:00
Dan LeFebvre
I agree. Thank you so much for coming on to chat about the movie Nuremberg. The movie is based on your fantastic book Nazi and the psychiatrist, which goes into a lot more depth than we ever could on a single podcast episode. So for everyone wanting to learn more about the true story behind the movie, I have a link in the show notes where you can get your own copy of Jack’s book right now while they do that.

00:47:55:00 – 00:48:03:12
Dan LeFebvre
And before I let you go, Jack, can you share one of your favorite stories from the process of making the movie?

00:48:03:15 – 00:48:46:14
Jack El-Hai
Sure. I, was was fortunate to be invited by the film’s director and screenwriter, James Vanderbilt, to come to Hungary. This was the last year in 2024 to, visit this the set. It was actually a gigantic soundstage on the outskirts of Budapest and, see some of the filming. So I got there, and on the first day of shooting that I was witness to the scene that they were shooting that day was a set built to look like a big transport plane, the inside of a big transport plane.

00:48:46:16 – 00:49:20:02
Jack El-Hai
And, this was used in a scene where all of the German defendants are being transported from Luxembourg, where many of them were initially held, to Nuremberg, where the trial would be held. And, I had written this scene in my book and had imagined it a particular way. And when I saw the cast and it was almost everybody crammed into this small space representing the inside of the transport plane.

00:49:20:04 – 00:49:45:13
Jack El-Hai
When I saw that, coming to life before my eyes, I was just dumbfounded because it played out exactly as I imagined it. And, you know, even to the point of the interactions between the defendants and Doctor Kelly, who was also aboard. So that was the first thing I saw. And it has really stayed with me all this time.

00:49:45:16 – 00:49:59:05
Dan LeFebvre
I mean, that’s that’s high praise that they nailed it what you had in your head. And it’s also high praise of what you had in your head, also came out in the book. Obviously, it translated to the other side too, where they were able to see what you had in your head as you wrote.

00:49:59:07 – 00:50:18:24
Jack El-Hai
Yeah. And James Vanderbilt, the screenwriter and director, is, very attuned to history as well as being an excellent screenwriter. And, I think he placed a priority, whenever possible, to make things as historically accurate as possible.

00:50:18:27 – 00:50:21:07
Dan LeFebvre
Well, thank you again so much for your time, Jack.

00:50:21:09 – 00:50:31:15
Jack El-Hai
Thank you. Dan, good to be here.

00:50:31:17 – 00:50:48:02
Dan LeFebvre
This episode is based on a true story was produced by me, Dan the Fed. Thank you once again to Jack ally for sharing his time and expertise to help us separate fact from fiction in the movie Nuremberg. If you want to dig deeper into the true story, I can’t recommend Jack’s book enough. It’s called The Nazi and the psychiatrist.

00:50:48:04 – 00:51:05:17
Dan LeFebvre
And as we learned, this is the book that they based the movie on. I’ve got a link to this in the show notes, so you can pick up your own copy, as well as on the shows home on the web over at based on a True Story podcast.com/378. Okay, now it’s time for the answer to our two truths and a lie game from the beginning of the episode, and it’s a quick refresher.

00:51:05:18 – 00:51:28:08
Dan LeFebvre
Here are the two truths and one lie again. Number one Doctor Kelly was fired for talking to a newspaper reporter in Nuremberg. Number two, Doctor Kelly delivered letters from Hermann Goering to his family like we see in the movie number three. Doctor Kelly talked to growing more than any of the other Nazi prisoners in Nuremberg. Did you figure out which one is a lie?

00:51:28:10 – 00:51:46:10
Dan LeFebvre
I’ve got the envelope here, so let’s open this up. And the lie is number one. As Jack pointed out, the reporter that we see Doctor Kelly talking to in the movie is a fictional character. And we also learned that Doctor Kelly left Nuremberg. I was on a court and he was never fired like we see in the movie.

00:51:46:13 – 00:52:02:01
Dan LeFebvre
Thanks for sticking around to the end. If you are watching the video version here in a moment, you’re going to see the credits roll, and if you want to get your name in the credits for the next video and on the website, you can learn how to become a based on a true story producer using the link in the description or over at based on a True Story podcast.

00:52:02:01 – 00:52:13:17
Dan LeFebvre
E-commerce support once again, that’s based on a true story podcast.com/support. Until next time, thanks so much for spending your time with Jack and I today, and I’ll chat with you again really soon.