The Pursuit of the Nazi Mind: Hitler, Hess, and the Analysts

368 Pages·2012·3.19 MB·English

by  Daniel Pick

THE PURSUIT OF THE NAZI MIND
By the same author:
Faces of Degeneration: A European Disorder, c. 1848–c. 1918
War Machine: The Rationalisation of Slaughter in the Modern Age
Svengali’s Web: The Alien Enchanter in Modern Culture
Rome or Death: The Obsessions of General Garibaldi
As co-editor, with Lyndal Roper, D reams and History: The Interpretation of Dreams
from Ancient Greece to Modern Psychoanalysis
THE PURSUIT
OF THE NAZI
MIND
hitler, hess, and the analysts
D ANIEL P ICK
1
1

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp
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© Daniel Pick 2012
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2012
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012931194
ISBN 978–0–19–954168–3
‘so plainly mad . . . ’
(Rebecca West, A Train of Powder )
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Contents
List of Plates ix
1. Introduction 1
2. Characters and Causes 2 4
3. ‘The Deputy Madman’ 4 4
4. Getting Through to Hess 6 5
5. Madness and Politics 8 6
6. The OSS 108
7. Hitler’s Mind 128
8. So Plainly Mad? 153
9. Nuremberg: Conspiracy and Confession 166
10. Sane Futures? 1 82
11. Legacies 2 16
12. Afterword 2 59
Appendices 271
Notes 286
Further Reading 338
Acknowledgements 345
Index 347
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List of Plates
1 . Into exile . . . 1938. Sigmund and Anna Freud on
their journey from Vienna to London after the Anschluss (© Hulton-
Deutsch Collection/Corbis)
2 . Picture of Hess and his sister Margarete, as children.
This image was reproduced in T he Case of
Rudolf Hess (1947)
3–5. The Führer as a baby, alongside his parents, Klara Poelzl
and Alois Hitler, recycled in Walter Langer’s T he Mind of
Adolf Hitler (1972) (© Bettman/Corbis; Interfoto/
akg-images; akg-images)
6 . Hitler’s messianic performances (© International
News Photo)
7–9. From a postcard series in the 1920s, ‘Adolf Hitler
Speaks, 6 Photographic Moments’ (© akg-images)
10–12. Stills from Leni Riefenstahl’s T riumph of the Will (1935)
13. A Nuremberg rally, 1934 (© Bettmann/Corbis)
14. Hitler addresses the SA, Dortmund, 1933 (© 2004 TopFoto/
ImageWorks)
15. Walter Langer (Courtesy of The Boston Psychoanalytic
Society and Institute)
16. Henry Dicks (Courtesy of Adrian Dicks)
17. ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan (Courtesy of the Library of Congress)
18. Rebecca West (Cecil Beaton/Vogue, © Condé Nast
Publications Ltd.)
19–21. Scenes from Fritz Lang’s T he Testament of Dr Mabuse (1933)
(Nero-Film AG)
22–3. The hero of Fritz Lang’s M inistry of Fear (1944) discovers
the mysterious Dr Forrester’s tome, T he Psychoanalysis of
Nazidom (© 2011 NBCUniversal, Inc., all rights reserved)
24. Hess at the International Military Tribunal, interviewed
by Col. Amen and other offi cials, 1945 (© akg-images)
25. Hess, Göring, and Ribbentrop in the dock (© De Agostini
Picture Library/akg-images)