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In 1945, as the victorious Allies prepared to put the surviving Nazi leaders on trial, Gustave Gilbert, a young American Intelligence officer with a doctorate in psychology and a good knowledge of German, decided to apply for the job of liaison officer to the defendants, was accepted, and in his function as prison psychologist was given unlimited access to the prisoners. The result was Rorschach records of sixteen of the twenty-two surviving Nazi leaders.
Thirty years later, Florence Miale, an American Rorschach specialist, and Michael Selzer, a political scientist, interpreted these records, mindful of the intensive international debate about the psychology of the Nazi leaders: Were these men—perpetrators of colossal crimes against humanity—extreme specimens of criminal insanity or ordinary people following blindly orders and intents of a monstrous leader in a morally distorted environment? Did they exemplify, in Hannah Arendt's words, the “banality of evil,” or were they all pathological members of a distinctly pathological group? In fifteen out of the sixteen records (the exception is von Neurath's) a variety of findings led to the diagnosis of psychopathic personality.
The following traits were found to be characteristic of this group: