Gustave Gilbert

• Name — Gustave Gilbert • Birth Name — Gustave Mark Gilbert • Born — 30 September 1911 • Birthplace — New York City, US • Died — 6 February 1977 • Place of death — Manhasset, New York, US • Spouse — Matilda Gilbert • Children — 3

Gilbert was born in the state of New York in 1911, the son of Jewish-Austrian immigrants. He won a scholarship from the School for Ethical Culture at the College Town Center in New York. He attended the City College of New York where he majored in German before switching to psychology. In 1939, Gilbert obtained his PhD degree in psychology from Columbia University. Gilbert also held a diploma from the American Board of Examiners in professional psychology. During World War II, Gilbert was commissioned with the rank of First Lieutenant. Because of his knowledge of German, he was sent overseas as a translator.

In 1945, after the end of the war, Gilbert was sent to Nuremberg, Germany, as an interpreter for the International Military Tribunal for the trials of the high-ranking World War II German prisoners. Upon arrival, Gilbert was appointed to serve as prison psychologist, with the duty of working with a psychiatrist to evaluate and observe but not to treat the detainees. Before and during the trial process Gilbert, along with psychiatrist Douglas Kelley, became the confidant of Hermann Göring, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Wilhelm Keitel, Hans Frank, Oswald Pohl, Otto Ohlendorf, Rudolf Höss, and Ernst Kaltenbrunner, among others. In all, 22 high-ranking Nazi leaders were held for trial. One of them, Robert Ley, committed suicide before the trial could begin. Gilbert and Kelley administered the Rorschach inkblot test to the 21 surviving Nazi leadership captives prior to the first set of trials. Gilbert also participated in the Nuremberg trials as American Military Chief Psychologist and provided testimony attesting to the sanity of Rudolf Hess. Gilbert also administered IQ tests to the Nazi leadership. Hjalmar Schacht scored highest with 143 points, followed by Arthur Seyss-Inquart and Göring. Julius Streicher scored lowest with 106 points. In 1946, after the trials, Gilbert returned to the United States, where he engaged in teaching, research and writing. In 1947 he published part of his diary, consisting of observations taken during interviews, interrogations, "eavesdropping" and conversations with the German prisoners, under the title Nuremberg Diary. (This diary was reprinted in full in 1961 just before the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem.) Gilbert's work at Nuremberg, especially his tense, rivalrous relationship with Douglas Kelley, is detailed in Jack El-Hai's 2013 book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist, which is also the basis of the 2025 film Nuremberg. In one interview with Göring, Gilbert discussed how national leaders generate popular support for war:

In 1948, as Head Psychologist at the Veterans Hospital at Lyons, NJ, Gilbert treated veterans of World Wars I and II who had suffered nervous breakdowns. In 1950, Gilbert published The Psychology of Dictatorship: Based on an Examination of the Leaders of Nazi Germany. In this book, Gilbert made an attempt to portray a profile of the psychological behavior of Adolf Hitler, based on deductive work from eyewitness reports from Hitler's commanders in prison in Nuremberg. In 1961, when he was the chairman of the psychology department of Long Island University in Brooklyn, Gilbert was summoned to testify in the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Gilbert testified on May 29, 1961, describing how both Ernst Kaltenbrunner and Rudolf Höss tried in their conversations with him to put the responsibility for the extermination of the Jews on each other's doorstep. Nevertheless, Eichmann appeared in the accounts of both men. Then he presented a document, handwritten by Höss, that surveys the process of extermination at Auschwitz and different sums of people gassed there – under Höss as commandant and according to an oral report by Eichmann. The court decided not to accept Gilbert's psychological analyses of the prisoners at Nuremberg as part of his testimony. Gilbert died on 6 February 1977.

• (1947). Nuremberg Diary. Farrar, Straus and Company: New York. • (1948). "Hermann Göring: Amiable Psychopath". Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 43, 211–229. • (1950). The Psychology of Dictatorship: Based on an Examination of the Leaders of Nazi Germany. New York: The Ronald Press Company. • (1951). "Stereotype persistence and change among college students". Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 46, 245–254.

Gustave Gilbert is recorded as psychologist, university teacher, writer and opinion journalist.