The Personality of Evil

0:00people are the most consequential and dangerous forces on earth well personality psychology is about the nature of human nature it's about people and wouldn't that be useful to know it seems to me i can't i can't think of a more important problem you're listening to the science of personality podcast brought to you by hogan assessments the global leader in personality and leadership guided by your hosts hogan chief science officer and world-renowned personality psychologist dr ryan sherman alongside hogan's pr manager and

0:35resident storyteller blake lepp this podcast explores the impact of personality on life leadership and the nature of human nature hello everybody and welcome to the science of personality podcast i'm your host ryan sherman along with my co-host as always blake lepp say hello blake hello everybody and welcome back to the science of personality podcast episode 146 today ryan and i are joined by world-renowned author and journalist jack l high to discuss the personality of evil with a specific focus on the

1:11personalities of authoritarians and fascists this was the focus of his best-selling 2013 book the nazi and the psychiatrist which inspired the 2025 movie nuremberg currently streaming on netflix at the number two position which features not one but two academy award-winning actors in the movie russell crowe plays the part of a nazi world war criminal herman goering and remy malik plays the role of douglas kelly the u.s army psychiatrist assigned to evaluate the personalities and mental capacities of high-ranking nazis

1:46leading up to the nuremberg trials again this was all inspired by jack's book which pulitzer prize winning author gilbert king describes as quote a harrowing narrative that brilliantly probes the depths of evil so that begs the question what is the personality of evil we're going to cover that and so much more in what we think will be one of the most fascinating episodes we've ever released but before we get to our conversation with jack if you wish to give us any ideas for upcoming episodes

2:17or you want to ask ryan or me a question shoot us an email at hello at the science of personality dot com or follow the science of personality on linkedin now let's get to it jack welcome to the podcast is there anything you'd like to share with our audience before we get started just that i'm very happy to be here and thanks for your invitation to bring me on well jack we're really grateful to have here on today's podcast uh given your work in this area but i want to remind our listeners of a number

2:50of uh excellent pieces that you've written over the years mostly around the sort of uh medical sciences but a variety of other topics i'll just point out a few one is the the face in the mirror another one lost minnesota which again is a sort of more on this variety of topics but also uh the lobotomist uh again all all these these books have been uh highly regarded books particularly around the medical community i did see jack and maybe you can stretch some more light on this because i couldn't find enough details on this that you had won an award in 2002 for a from a medical society or a medical

3:26article award can you can you talk more about what what that was about yes that was a an award called the june roth award for medical journalism and that was for the magazine article version of the lobotomist that appeared in the washington post magazine i usually try to test drive my article or excuse me my book ideas as articles in advance to see how well i like the topic and the story and to see how readers

4:00receive it and if there's enough material to support a book so that's what happened in that case that i wrote that article and it won that award ah okay yes well that that would also explain why probably many of our listeners have read uh not if they haven't read your books they've also read articles by you because i do see that you've written more than 500 articles in and outlets like the atlantic smithsonian gq and and some various other uh magazine outlets so uh i'm sure many of our

4:30listeners have read your work even if they've forgotten that they've read your work um and and they would be happy to go back and and and uh take a look at that today so we're super excited to have you on the podcast today so uh thanks for joining us jack it's my pleasure and jack i've i can't help myself i've got to tell the story about how how you got here um because uh i there's actually for the listeners out there you know my favorite podcast is not the one that we host here in fact i i really

5:01listen to the episodes after we release them uh because i hate the sound of my own voice but i was just listening to my favorite podcast about two three weeks ago uh called breaking points which is my news podcast um i'm a premium subscriber to that uh and it's hosted by uh crystal ball and saga and jetty and they always have just great people on to um to interview and discuss these really interesting topics uh that are timely uh you know with what's going on in the news today

5:31and i hear this interview with this gentleman named jack oh hi and i'm like wow this is really a fascinating individual and then we we connected i i think you know your your publicist does a great job um connected the next day uh and she said hey i don't know if you've heard of breaking points and i've i was floored jack i because i mean i'm thinking oh my gosh i'm gonna interview the same person that that crystal and sauger interviewed this is amazing to me so i'm not gonna lie i i was i was

6:06i think my my term was giddy is that i used in the email and i i i stand by that uh i was really excited so this is this is a neat opportunity but um just the the timing i mean the the stars align and we're so glad we're able to make this happen well that's kind of you blake to mention that um that was a fun uh podcast to do earlier but it was it was short and i hope that we have um more time to talk things over right now yeah i believe it's just like 13 and a half minutes so we think we're

6:41gonna have more time than that so uh well jack let's get into this then you know the the premise of your book the nazi and the psychiatrist is an incredibly fascinating topic in and of itself but i think it would be best to start with what got you interested in this topic in the first place and you know what what led you down this path because this is you know you know one could look at it on the surface and be like this is a pretty dark path jack so what what got you interested in this most of my books have taken me along dark paths so i think i must prefer that but uh the nazi and

7:18the psychiatrist came about through serendipity i was uh writing uh an earlier book the lobotomist and that was about another psychiatrist and while going through that other psychiatrist papers and archive i came across a notation he made about meeting this psychiatrist named douglas m kelly in 1938 at a conference of the american psychiatric association and this other psychiatrist was really

7:54taken taken by dr kelly because kelly was at the conference not to present a paper or to give a talk he was there to give a magic show for his colleagues from you know a stage magic show and that lodged in my brain it seemed really unusual courageous too i would think that psychiatrists would be a tough audience for a magic show um and then after looking into dr kelly's career a little

8:26later i learned about his work among the german defendants at the first nuremberg trial and that's what really hooked me uh his his work with those men and the mission he set out for himself and then i went in pursuit of dr kelly's records and archive it was not easy to find but eventually my trail led me to dr kelly's oldest son doug then living in northern california and doug had quite a bit of material

9:03really valuable stuff that had not been seen outside his family for decades and all of those those 15 boxes of materials that doug had um served as the foundation for the nazi and the psychiatrist you know that's really interesting jack because i i know there was a an earlier film uh and i will get the title i won't get it exactly right i know it also had nuremberg in the title i think there was a little something like a nuremberg colon something something in the 1960s um and so what it sounds to me

9:40like what you're saying is that uh that that material uh from from dr kelly's uh you know original notes couldn't have been or weren't you know weren't used to inform that film so that film was sort of informed by i don't know probably just trial records and things like that yes that that that film you're referring to is called judgment at nuremberg and it's it was made in the 19 early 60s had an all-star cast spencer tracy judy garland etc and um it was it's a fictionalization of not the

10:17trial that i wrote about but one of the later nuremberg trials which was nicknamed the judges trial and that was a trial of the nazi judges uh who were active during the nazi regime so it doesn't cover the same material at all a different trial and uh it's a very good movie i would urge anyone who hasn't seen it to take it in because it's excellent so so that i guess the point here is that your

10:51research you're digging into this really opened up to the public for the first time this or maybe the first time in a long time perhaps you know i guess dr kelly shared some of this at times but but did you get into those notes was really a first reveal for the public would that be correct for much of it yes dr kelly did write his own book in 1947 but it sold very poorly and not very many people read it now it's really hard to find and so um for for many readers this will be their their

11:28first chance to have exposure to these records that dr kelly collected in nuremberg and then brought back to the states with him you know for me jack that's really fascinating in part because i was a history major when i was an undergrad and um i didn't know what you know exactly what historians did even though i was majoring in history until very late to my senior year and we had to go do a an autobiography as a project and we had to go find an alumni from our from the school that we

12:01were at and go do it do like an auto or not an autobiography sorry a biography piece on um on one of those alumni and that's when i did the exact that kind of thing right that that this particular alumni that i was working with was no longer alive but i had found their son and they had information they had records and things school records and things from their parents and for me i was that was a really sort of this eye-opening moment in terms of this blend between both history and journalism and to me it seems like that's an area where you've really hit in would you say that's

12:34sort of your strong suit or is that an area where you you like to to play as in this sort of blend between history and journalism yes i don't call myself a historian because i don't have academic training in the study of history and more important my interests don't align with the interests of many many historians in that i'm not so interested in analysis scholarly comparisons etc i'm i am a journalist

13:07by a background and i write about people only and try and shape narratives out of masses of um of the historical record and i don't fictionalize anything it's all as accurate as it is possible to make it but for me it's very satisfying to take a huge chunk of research and for the nazi and the psychiatrist

13:38uh i gathered um more than 2 000 pages of notes and to tell a story from it a story that uh features characters uh real life characters and uh settings and that develops from the beginning to the end well that's interesting um because i think that journalist part of you because i mean that because that is what i was trained to do in college i went the pr route because it's probably just a better fit

14:12and i stand by that still um i was looking and doing a little research in drawing trying to draw the the comparisons and contrasts between you and eric larson um from a from a writing standpoint and what really stuck out um for you was your um the investigative side and i think that's the journalist part of you that really comes out would you agree with that yes i'm trying by investigative

14:46maybe you mean that i'm trying to dredge up material that uh either has been not very well known or nobody knew was out there in developing these stories and eric larson does much of that too but he's usually um focused on stories that at least in the setting and background are better known like his most recent book was about the um it was a civil war book about the attack on fort sumter in south carolina

15:24and you know that's that's an event that is well known but he has found stories within that and i admire his work a lot but uh i think uh there's a you know different shadings between his work and mine yeah i'm staring at the demon of unrest in my in my office right now uh the book you just mentioned but um okay i want to i want to get it i want to explain something for our listeners because when our our loyal listeners um which our audience tends to be i don't know it's it's it's the same people

15:59each time it feels like it stays pretty steady and the same people tune in so when they see the title of this episode the personality of evil they will probably be a little bit confused because normally they only see these titles uh that are like this for episodes were released in october to celebrate spooky season uh so uh in those episodes we're usually talking about supernatural forces or monsters that may many would argue are more fiction than fact but the monsters you write about in this book were very real so before we get to what you uncovered with your research can you describe the

16:34effects your research had on you as a person yes it's the work that i did to write the nazi and the psychiatrist changed my own thinking about uh about these german these high-ranking um defendants in the first nuremberg trial and these were the very highest uh living people in the nazi government and military um and my thinking uh followed the path of dr kelly's in other words i was persuaded

17:12by the conclusions that he drew you used the uh word monsters before um and dr kelly um and i would agree with him wouldn't use the word monsters uh because to say that somebody's a monster or a madman or something like that suggests that they're outside the pale of normal human personality and dr kelly came to the belief that men like these were not outside the range of nor a normal human personality and

17:51that's what's so dangerous and frightening about them that there are people like that all around us uh in every era every place who are capable of evil acts like that of course it doesn't mean that everybody is capable of evil acts but there are some of us in this human race who are and uh to me it it is frightening as it was to dr kelly but it's also comforting in a way because if you're thinking of

18:27monsters and madmen uh these are people who do what they do because of who they are um monsters who will do monstrous things but people who make a choice to do uh an evil thing these are the people who can be held responsible and accountable for their choices and that part of dr kelly's ideas appeals to me yeah i think it's a a really fascinating uh way to think about uh this particular topic and

19:03so i will say that to some extent i think dr kelly's conclusions are a little bit confused i think that not not his conclusion confused but people are somewhat confused by his conclusions i think some people take away the notion that anyone could do this to say like oh that these people aren't uh psychiatrically diagnosable in some way means that any person uh in their situation would have done what they did but i don't think that was his actual conclusion or maybe it was but i i don't get the

19:37sense jack that that was your conclusion uh is that anyone would have done these things uh but but the surprising part is that or maybe the surprising part to some of us is that that uh you know people who you might have considered your friends or neighbors or otherwise regular people might have committed uh these kinds of crimes but that doesn't necessarily mean that anyone in that circumstances would have done this would you agree with that or would you yeah i do i do agree with that dr kelly did not believe that anybody is capable of of acts like these nor do i and i think

20:12people are often led down that direction by the comments of and the writings of hannah erent um who who um created the phrase the banality of evil and she was writing specifically about the nazi war criminal adolf eichmann this was um many years after dr kelly's work and um banality i think is the

20:43problematic word because some people interpret banality to mean um commonness um it it means ordinariness and uh so i think what she was trying to say is that the people uh who commit evil acts like eichmann don't stand out um in how you know how they look behave in other circumstances and that eichmann he was a colorless bureaucrat uh in a homicidal paper pusher but he would not have

21:21stood out in a group that's not true of the nuremberg defendants many of them were colorful uh unforgettable figures no one would call hermann goering banal um in in fact he was in the press at the time he was often mocked for wearing fancy uniforms and all kinds of medals and ornamentation things like that um so uh kelly's position was uh not everyone is capable of horribly evil acts that's

21:59that's a big relief but that it's a condition of the human race that there are always people like that among us a a measurable percentage uh of of our species and that nazism fascism authoritarianism these are not german things they they aren't japanese things italian things um referring to the

22:29axis powers in world war ii they are just human things and we have to learn how to deal with it well okay let's dig into this a little bit more because you even use a word that i'm not sure that you realized our audience a lot of people in our audience might be familiar with that describing growing as colorful um that's actually a scale that we measure on our dark side measure the hogan development survey um so with that let's just dive into the personality side of things because

23:05that's what this podcast is all about and as douglas kelly evaluated these nazi war criminals who were accused and convicted of some of these you know atrocities some of you know history's most evil atrocities i think a lot would would say at least based on their knowledge and what we can see because this is one of the first times we actually had you know a lot of pictures and things like that that came out footage uh what did he learn about their personalities along the way you know were there any similarities among these individuals kelly's expectation going into it or maybe his operating hypothesis

23:43was that he would find what he called a nazi virus uh among them not a not a real physical virus but a psychiatric disorder common to them all that that would explain their criminal behavior and their heinous acts before and during world war ii but as he applied uh to these there were 22 uh german defendants in this first nuremberg trial he um as he uh gave them uh rorschach inkblot tests

24:22he measured their iq he applied another test called the thematic apperception test and and then interviewed them in depth he concluded there was no nazi virus they did not share a common disorder they did share um some traits however that kelly noticed and these um traits included opportunistic opportunistic opportunistic behavior many of them were very interested in acquiring

24:57and and exercising power over others and they looked for opportunities to um to give themselves that chance and uh he and kelly also believed that many of these men were what we would today call type a workaholics they um they worked tirelessly to achieve their ends some of them he thought

25:28like gering were um narcissistic um uh that by and large they lacked remorse and conscience but none of that really added up to a diagnosable disorder and um and gering uh who was the highest ranking of the defendants uh was the most intriguing to kelly because he wrapped up in his own person

25:58a lot of these enigmas gering was um highly intelligent in fact they all were uh intent more intelligent than average as measured by the iq test but gering was also charming had a good sense of humor sometimes self-deprecating in his humor he told jokes about himself and about hitler and um a very good conversationalist but kelly soon also became aware of um some dark and dangerous aspects of gering's

26:34personality uh lacking remorse and conscience and really caring for nobody else outside of his own immediate family his wife and daughter and um this this really intrigued kelly and and that's one of the reasons why kelly spent more time with gering than any of the other 22 defendants yeah so that to me this is fascinating for a couple of reasons first blake mentioned uh one of our personality assessments

27:07here at hogan is called the hogan development survey or the hds and it tries to pick up on these sort of everyday uh behaviors that uh most of the time that they're they're not necessarily problematic but or one way of thinking about is they can be strengths that when overused can become problematic or they become sort of challenges and as it sounds it sounds to me like the description of goring is that what we would refer to as the sort of moving against cluster of traits so this is um lots of

27:41self-confidence overconfidence perhaps even belief in oneself uh lots of charm lots of charisma uh ability to grab other people's attention and to keep it on them typically these strategies in fact actually we see these strategies used by uh people in power often in fact this is the one thing that stands out among executive profile when we look at the profile of today's executives or even ceos in organizations around the world today these characteristics frequently stand

28:16out and it sounds to me like uh there was a lot of commonality there and i think it points to sort of dr kelly's research points to something that that dr hogan's research has also talked about which is that there are these sort of normal functioning sets of behaviors that uh are are not diagnosable right you're you're not clinically diagnosed with some uh clinical disorder or issue but that they can get you into in this case sometimes a whole lot of trouble or cause you to do

28:49a whole lot of things that that are problematic um and you mentioned opportunistic behavior what what that reminds me of jack is we also have done a lot of research here on entrepreneurs and we found a really interesting pattern among our entrepreneurial data sets and also some data sets that we have on convicted criminals and there's a lot of similarity in their personality profiles and i would describe that similarity as opportunistic um and so i wonder

29:24to what extent you know we see that that's what we're seeing here with somebody like goring or also maybe perhaps some of these other uh not nazi war criminals is uh is this opportunism right is this uh desire really strong desire for power really strong desire for authority taking those those chances taking risks willingness to take lots of risk we see that among you know criminals who get themselves in trouble but we also see that among some of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world

29:55do you think that that's a fair conclusion um you know or what would you add to that i think it's a conclusion that's reflected in goring's own personal story and the the stories of some of the other defendants in goring's case um kelly um interviewed him at at length over many months and he used those interviews not only to try and delve into goring's psyche

30:27but also to ask questions about the war uh about the nazi party policies and one line of questioning that kelly began was he asked goring what attracted him initially to adolf hitler and this very small um uh nazi party the national um nazi party the national socialists who are just beginning to get going in 1920 after the end of world war one and goring's answer was that um the nazi party appealed to him

31:08because it was small which meant that someone with um opportunistic inclinations could rise to the top easily and uh he he saw hitler as a leader who would appeal to the large numbers of dissatisfied german veterans of world war one who needed a place to go and the ideology of the nazis was to goring more like

31:41the rungs on the rungs on the ladder instead of the ladder itself um goring professed not to care very much about some of the foundational articles of nazism for instance anti-semitism and uh that it was a means to control uh and influence the german population that has to be taken with a great deal of salt because goring himself was the architect of many of the worst anti-semitic

32:19policies that nazi germany instituted the nuremberg race laws um and and many others and uh it needs to be kept in mind also that as goring was talking with kelly during this time he was within his own mind formulating his own defense he knew he'd be put on trial along with the others and he was um using these conversations with kelly i think to test out various lines of defense so um goring

32:53what goring said about his life history and his reasons for becoming a nazi and and rising to the top of it really accords with uh with the principles of opportunism and thinking of oneself primarily and thinking of a political movement say as an opportunity to climb a ladder well okay so we we know we've talked about some of these shared traits these characteristics you know

33:30with the opportunity opportunistic behavior acquiring power the type a workaholics all that but you know these are things that you kind of have to uncover i think doing a little bit of research because otherwise your work shows that some of these evil actors were you know outside of those those shared uh commonalities were surprisingly ordinary people also um or some of these people you know like you mentioned earlier aren't necessarily monsters and in in you know your day-to-day life

34:00so i'm curious how much we can blame on these individuals personalities versus the situational pressures they faced because i mean it would i mean i think it would be hard to say no to adolf hitler if it was a command was coming directly from him so any thoughts on that yes it will goring address that question directly uh in conversation with kelly kelly asked him why didn't more people um say no um why did why were there so many yes men around hitler and goring's response was that the no men

34:39those who disagreed or voiced objections ended up underground in graves so um uh so goring was saying that the force of hitler's personality was so great that that he could he had the ability to crush and kill opposition and if you wanted to stay alive and you were in a position like goring's in the nazi leadership you agreed with hitler um now you know as we're talking about um

35:19people who have these kinds of traits i think it's important to note that um most of them do not become mass murderers or designers of genocidal systems and um so how do they how how do people who have these traits say who are working in business who are ceos whatever they're doing how do they express themselves and i think it is probably um and kelly wrote a little bit about this

35:51um in amassing power and exercising power um many of them are self-aware enough to know that they can't do they can't commit crimes on the job and get away with it but the opportunism comes in with people like goring and the rest of the defendants who were convicted that they could commit crimes and get away with it and so they took that chance yeah you know to me there there's

36:24this sort of interesting uh dynamic that must have happened here where because you know to your point jack earlier goring was hitler's you know guy this was the number two guy right so you would think these two were really close that you could uh have really honest conversations between the two but it sounds like the answer was or perhaps that that was the case for some period of time but perhaps hitler became so powerful uh that even goring felt like he couldn't have those kind of conversations

37:00with him uh which i think is remarkable because again hitler had named him his successor um i think after the sort of around about the fall of france maybe 39 something like that um and so again you would think that these two you know they could really have this honest conversation with each other but it sounds like even goring felt uh you know fearful about about having that conversation yes goring knew hitler very very well and they had known each other for a long time since the

37:33beginnings of the national socialist party but i think it would be wrong to assume that their relationship was based on friendship or even honesty it wasn't it was based on fulfilling each other's needs and um so uh often uh goring was not terribly honest with hitler and at the very end of the war when he was honest he paid the price um in the final days of world war ii

38:11a goring suggested to hitler i think he sent a telegram saying that he um he was ready to assume the mantle of the german leadership uh if hit hitler had to or wanted to shed it and uh that that outraged hitler and hitler sent out an order to the ss to kill goering and um and fortunately for goering he was able to head off that threat but that was an instance of goering uh trying to assert his

38:49own um needs um honestly and directly without much thought about how it would affect hitler and it really boomeranged on him that's interesting so i mean forgive my ignorance here so who would you consider i mean because i think we see this a lot you know and i'm not talking about the current administration specifically i think you can look at many administrations maybe outside of the bush

39:19cheney um administration but in my lifetime since reagan you know maybe that the the president and vice president of the united states didn't necessarily have that close relationship although that vice president was that designated person to take over should something happen but who was hitler's closest confidant i don't know if he had a close confidant within the party um he uh he had a romantic

39:50connection with a woman named ava brown and um and he may have confided in her but hitler was not a confiding sort of leader he liked to have people around him who agreed with him and could execute his orders and if you wanted to make yourself valuable to adolf hitler that's what you did and i think that's we see that um among other people with authoritarian tendencies who were with us now and have been with us

40:27in the past that um they either ignore or dismiss uh advice um or even observations that are contrary to their worldview and and go ahead and do what they wanted to do regardless of the consequences so um uh you know that may be another defining feature of authoritarians but it's not one that kelly focused on but still

40:59it may be out there yeah and those individuals i'm you know uh hypothetical individuals that you are mentioning maybe are pretty good at getting the people around them to do these things who would otherwise be pretty ordinary people um which is kind of fascinating um there's a book from 1950 that i'm sure you're familiar with titled the authoritarian personality authored by uh theodore adorno i don't want

41:29to butcher that name but it suggests that some people's personalities are predisposed to authoritarianism and fascist fascism so based on your research do modern historical cases support that theory i would say yes um as far as i know kelly didn't use that book it came after his work in nuremberg um and may not even have been familiar with it but the traits that kelly identified in the

42:01in these 22 defendants um had been with them for a long time these were not um recently developed traits and their personalities and maybe even were inborn uh and certainly were influenced by the their upbringings and the environments that they lived in when they were young uh goreng talked about this with kelly as well about how um his experience with a man who was a family friend um a man named

42:38eppenstein um who in goreng's eyes betrayed his family the incident is mentioned in the movie i won't spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it yet um uh how that colored his his perspective on the world and um i think kelly would would say that a lot of these traits were old uh in in these men not recent developments

43:08yeah i mean i i guess what when i think about growing in in particular what i don't see quite so much of that authoritarian personality that adorno talked about particularly among like the sort of follower sort of personality right so follower personality is a sort of high dutiful okay so to some extent you see that in his relationship with hitler but i saw that more out of fear than out of

43:38like a responsibility for for duty um whereas it's one of the dimensions we measure here jack is is called dutiful which is about um you know waiting for orders you know wanting to to follow whatever orders you get which is somewhat related to the concept of authoritarian personality of course on the other side of authoritarian personality is this sort of when you're in charge you get to tell everybody else what to do so perhaps you could see that with growing but i i feel like you see that

44:09more with many of the other uh nazi officers than so much with with goring so i feel like there's a a bit of a disconnect between between those two but part of it i think has to do with the fact that uh it seems like uh goring was just really uh really politically savvy but also quite intelligent as well it seems like a lot of his moves were well calculated uh political moves even uh as you

44:41mentioned the telegram which ended up ultimately sort of backfiring against him it it wasn't uh i didn't get the sense that it was not a smart move to do i think what he was trying to do was smart and just uh he was out manipulated by um by borman uh in that particular case instead but i i i do get the sense that many of the others would have this sort of authoritarian personality where if i'm in charge i tell you what to do when you're in charge i'll be deferential and do whatever you say but but maybe that's the case uh across the board but i also feel like that's part

45:16of it was just part of the military command structure of of the of the the german reich or the or the nazi uh military regime um any thoughts on that jack um i think it was because of the structure of the nazi party and then later part of the structure of the government once the nazis came to power and um i think that's what um many authoritarian regimes try to set up a chain of command that makes it

45:53difficult for followers to disobey orders um the kelly because he was focusing on the german leaders um didn't concern himself with the what may be the traits or personalities of followers but there have been some very good um books like a book called ordinary men about followers who carried out orders and why they did it and um what may have been motivating them fear was certainly part of it but not all of it

46:30and uh i think kelly would have enjoyed um professionally enjoyed having the opportunity to look at that as well but he didn't um so it's complicated because the motivations and psychology of leaders and followers is different and so some in hitler's chain of command were both um they were issuing or issuing orders and also taking orders from hitler or those above them and um it's it's hard to know

47:10or hard for me to know anyway what was happening in those cases uh because kelly didn't focus on it well we don't want to spoil them you know the movie or or any of that for for our audience but i feel like you know we could tell them exactly what happened and they should just tune in for the performances themselves uh because it was you know kelly and gurring were played by two very incredible actors like i've mentioned both academy award award-winning actors so i i feel like we could still dive

47:43into this uh and still the movie will remain very very good uh but dr kelly's conclusions about the motives of uh german defendants were pretty poorly received by the public can you expand on that and kind of why people did not want to believe them it's understandable that the public didn't take to kelly's conclusions and and that as a result his his book 22 cells in nuremberg sold so poorly

48:15uh because when you think about it this long and and his uh historically bloody and murderous war had just ended uh the uh trials were ongoing and would go on until 1949 in nuremberg and nobody wanted to think that there would be more of this ahead that there would there were more people um in the u.s and elsewhere who would try to lead authoritarian movements like this and there

48:54were others um including a psychologist named gustav gilbert who was there at nuremberg the same time kelly was who were advancing different ideas gilbert looked at some of the same um evaluation results and it conducted his own interviews and concluded differently that some of these men he thought did suffer from serious psychiatric disorders that could explain their crimes and behavior

49:25and gilbert's book he wrote one too sold much better than kelly's but um i think history has borne out uh kelly's conclusions because after all since those post-war years we have seen so many instances of the rise of authoritarian regimes war crimes crimes against peace genocides it's all happened all over again and simply uh defeating and bringing to justice one regime isn't going to end it in the rest of the

50:05world and uh that's that's why i put stock in kelly's conclusions but uh it took a very long time for his ideas long after he was dead for those ideas to gain much currency you know jack just thinking about this and thinking about this topic for today made me you know it's sort of a i don't know if it's a truism or what it is people you know sort of have this notion all the time you know that the that the winners of

50:40war write the history and you know i think there's a famous quote i forgot who it was uh who was it uh the the it was the the nazi who was leading the attack on on norway uh ericsson that's who it was ericsson um had a quote that was something to the effect of you know either i will be you know awarded a hero or i'll be court-martialed something along those lines and you know you know i wonder about the extent to which losing the war ultimately in the case of uh of the german reich or nazi germany

51:21um you know has you know created as to what extent that shaped our narrative right had i i quite frankly i don't even know what it would have taken for nazi germany to quote unquote win world war ii is i've watched a lot of historians talk about this and it's unclear what the ultimate objective was anyway um but or you know what would have you know what would a victory actually looked like it's it's hard to say what that what that would have been but to what extent do you think our

51:52views on some of these things are shaped by uh the outcome um you know i think about even today's wars often the leader of a country who quote unquote loses the war is often killed um i i mean i think about uh you know today there is a a war going on in iran if uh the leader of uh our country or the leader of israel that right two of the belligerents in the war were captured i think they would probably

52:23be killed as well or at least tried as war criminals um so to what extent you know is some of our our view of this colored by by the outcome well in the case of world war ii i think it is um our perception of what happened is influenced not just by the defeat of the axis powers i think it's

52:54also influenced by these nuremberg trials after all the allies could have simply executed those leaders like during who who had been arrested but they didn't and they set up these series of trials the the nuremberg trials um were imperfect but they were not kangaroo court show trials um and um the defendants

53:28had an opportunity to mount a defense and some were acquitted in this um first trial of the 22 defendants three were acquitted so um what was important about the this trial the international military tribunal the first nuremberg trial that we're talking about it was that the allies were able to amass a mountain of evidence um documentary evidence mainly documents against the nazis and refuting the claims of the

54:07nazis um and that was the goal of the allies in planning this trial that the public would be influenced by all the evidence against them and if they had simply lined up and shot the german leaders that would have been a missed opportunity to inform the public about all the evidence against them uh-huh yeah no actually now that make that makes a lot of sense and i think that's a a really good

54:39take out it was interesting in thinking about the the trial my understanding was that um you know the well you know dr kelly's book was 22 cells um i don't actually know the total number between the first and the second trial how many uh different different people were on trial but goring had sort of had this perception that a lot of the folks who were being tried were basically sort of nobodies in the organization he didn't know who they were why were they being put

55:12on trial it didn't make any sense to him um i just think it's sort of fascinating again when thinking about the dark side of personality and thinking about you know what we know about goering's personality and his uh sort of flair for the dramatic and his uh overconfidence it almost seems like that stayed with him during the trial and then he said no no no these people they don't have anything to do with this this is really just this is about me i i yeah i don't know this struck me as

55:44interesting as well i think where many people would deflect blame and say no no these are other people involved he didn't do that no not at all um and he tried to cast all of the crimes that happened during the war as um instead of seeing them as you know expressions of racism or hatred or um um out of control animosity he cast them as expressions of patriotism and loyalty but um goering did see

56:21these other figures his colleagues in the trial as subordinates and as not important compared with him which is why he so naturally took a leadership role among them before and during the trial he gathered them together and gave them pep talks and uh asked them about what their defense was going to be and tried to correct them if he thought that they were going in the wrong direction and uh he had a very high

56:54opinion of himself as did douglas kelly and that's part of the reason why they were so evenly and well matched as they were having their conversations in the jail cell when i have talked with doug kelly the son of dr kelly about these encounters in the prison between goering and kelly we always refer to it as king kong versus godzilla because these were two similar evenly matched men duking it out and how it would

57:33turn out was no one could know well jack let's i mean you have warned that you know authoritarianism did not end with the nuremberg trials and that and kelly you know you said had warned that this could this could come up again this is a this is a threat that that we could continue to face so knowing that what early warning signs should people look for from a behavioral or psychological

58:09standpoint that precede the rise of authority of an authoritarian or fascist movement to kelly it wasn't hypothetical um he he wasn't saying um it could happen in america he was saying it is happening in america he returned to the u.s with changed eyes having spent all this time among the defendants and so when he returned to the u.s he looked at um the politicians and political leaders

58:40of the south for instance these were segregationists they were creators and enforcers of jim crow laws they were people actively restricting the voting rights of black voters in the south and he he said he saw this as nazi-like behavior and to him the sign that it was nazi-like was in the manipulative manner in which these southern politicians dealt with their constituency they were issuing propaganda

59:18uh propaganda that appealed to the emotions and to the perceived uh um uh disgruntled disgruntlement of the electorate and so that's one reason why kelly recommended when he came back that to preserve our democracy we need to look at our educational system and to rebuild it to reinforce

59:48critical thinking meaning forming an opinion coming to a conclusion based on evidence from a variety of sources making calls making calls on what sources of evidence are believable and what aren't and not relying on emotions to form opinions if you have a public that's good at critical thinking you have hobbled many of the strongest efforts of authoritarians because the propaganda won't work and uh so um

1:00:26leading and managing through emotionally manipulative propaganda is a to kelly was one of the biggest signs of an authoritarian movement jack and thinking about critical thinking as a topic right this is one that i think is becoming more and more discussed today at least we just recorded a podcast last week blake and i did where we're talking about the importance of critical thinking particularly

1:00:58particularly in an era uh influenced by artificial intelligence of course for at least 20 plus years now we've been heavily influenced by uh the quote-unquote information age right or what i sometimes call the misinformation age because there's so much information it's easy to be confused it seems to me that critical thinking is even more important today than has been in the past what are your thoughts on that it's it i think it's always important but it's more difficult now because uh because of the aspect of

1:01:34critical thinking which involves assessing whether a source of information is credible and um when we receive um when we make uh artificial intelligence sources as one of our sources of information it's it's very hard to um to judge or many people are unable to judge so um i would say the importance remains the same the

1:02:06difficulty has gotten worse yeah i think related to that jack is sort of loss in confidence and institutions uh that we've seen not just in the united states but but across the world in fact over the last say couple of decades right uh a loss of of uh uh uh sort of faith in in in your government loss of faith in your religion loss of faith in in the leaders in those kinds of organizations as well as we've seen this sort of um well i mean you know there are big stories today suggesting that that uh

1:02:43leaders of governments have been involved in a whole number of uh activities that would uh not be very leader-like kind of activities and so i i think that at the same time i think this is also a an issue that's impacting our ability to still fact from fiction because it's not just the amount of misinformation it's also that there there's a loss of trust in in the institutions that we historically could trust even i mean you being a journalist even a loss of trust in in journalists uh as well any

1:03:17thoughts on that well yes um i think what you're saying is true and it is important about the loss of faith in these institutions and what authoritarians try to do is to fill that void um you by saying um the press puts out um puts out fake news uh you can't trust um election officials because the election is rigged etc and instead you believe me and uh that's that's often how it works and has worked for a very long

1:03:57time so it's a combination of those two the loss of faith creates a void the authoritarian tries to fill it well jack this has been an awesome episode um i think you'll see that we have one more question to ask you before before we let you go here i'm actually going to ask two but let's start with the the one that that um you you're already aware of and that's you know given what we learned from history what can individuals and institutions do to make themselves more resistant

1:04:33to authoritarianism and the psychology of evil and then i'll follow up my last question after that uh i to answer that question i would suggest that as kelly suggested people try to become critical in their thinking and anytime they are led to a conclusion or a belief through emotion emotions are important they're a part of our human makeup but when they guide our actions exclusively

1:05:07that's bad news and um to so to try and become aware of when that is happening and when it is happening to question it um the other is um especially in a democracy to stand up for voting rights kelly was observing in the south um that uh there were there was a organized disenfranchisement of black voters um but there are other kinds of disenfranchisement that are not as overt uh such as uh increased

1:05:50id id restrictions on voting which may have the effect of preventing a tiny number of ineligible voters from voting but the bigger effect is to make it more difficult for qualified voters to vote and um so to be aware of all of this and to take that into account when we vote yeah well i mean i think that's really great advice i don't think i can

1:06:24add much more onto that other than say um yeah uh you know i guess it's really interesting i guess when you think about when we talk about critical thinking you might think well remain skeptical be skeptical but i think even that's not necessarily great advice either because sometimes it's that that's skepticism of uh of you know actual factual information skepticism of actual truth that leads to these

1:06:59other kinds of issues that we're talking about as well so i don't even think i would advise people to to remain skeptical either it's sort of um it's somewhere in between there i don't know jack do you have a better way of putting that than i do yeah i agree with you that just um overriding skepticism doesn't help and as a cause of problems so instead um maybe stay open stay open to possibilities and in your openness to possibilities consider a variety of information from a variety of sources

1:07:38okay jack this is my last question um whether it be in your lifetime or or my lifetime or rinds are we ever going to see anything like the nuremberg trials again um well it seems unlikely doesn't it uh because things have really changed uh on the international scene since the end of world war ii back then um uh all of the major allied powers were supportive

1:08:10of this effort to bring the war criminals to justice um but that's not true today uh in fact our own country the united states does not participate in the work of the international criminal court we even sanction judges who come to decisions that that the administration doesn't like and so there isn't that belief in and spirit of international cooperation anymore and one of the key

1:08:44elements to the success of the nuremberg trials was that it was an international effort and its success depended on it being an international effort so um i i think it's unlikely i mean there may be um trials held you know within a country uh to try leaders uh for a variety of crimes that they committed while in power but uh it's hard for me now to imagine an international effort behind that well jack before

1:09:23we get you out of here i do have one more question as well which is what's next for you what what can we expect to hear from you next i have a new book coming out in october 2026 it's titled the case of the autographed corpse it it has no nazis in it it has no psychiatrists in it uh but it's a historical uh true crime non-fiction book about injustices um on apache reservations in eastern arizona in the mid

1:10:01decades of the 20th century focusing on a one particular medicine man silas john edwards who was wrongfully convicted of murdering his wife in 1933 and the long course he followed to find justice so so that's that's what's coming up fascinating it sounds like a an amazing book uh looking forward to having that and and for our listeners they can the best is the best place to grab your books jack on

1:10:33via amazon is that the best place to get copies well i uh usually refer people to bookshop.org but they're they're there and they're on amazon or grab them in person at your independent bookstore near you um all of those work great well thanks again for coming on today jack this is an amazing episode love getting your thoughts on these topics and it's one that um is uh sort of out of the ordinary for us but at the same time really touches on the core issues that we deal with in our

1:11:09organization around personality and leadership so so thanks for joining us today well and i'm glad you stretched your boundaries to include me it's been a lot of fun talking with you yeah jack and consider me intrigued by your next book i am a proud member of the cherokee nation uh so and and not like maybe the new dhs secretary like i'm actually actually church um but uh i digress there but i really appreciate you having you on and hey let's let's let's talk about that hey whenever that comes

1:11:41out if you're interested in coming back on we'd love to have you thank you so much i'd love to do that and that does it for the science of personality podcast episode 146 be sure to join us in two weeks for another fun and informative episode cheers everybody

1:12:00this has been the science of personality podcast brought to you by hogan assessments you can access all episodes on our website thescienceofpersonality.com or on the streaming service of your choice see you next time you