Wikipedia: IQ of Nazi Leaders Talk

Talk page for Nuremberg Trials/IQ of Nazi Leaders at the Nuremberg Trials

Sorry, but, who measured this? Were they all subjected to an IQ test, or are they some bogus numbers as the IQ of Newton, Gauss and others that the one of the creators of the IQ tests made up?

I'm struggling to see what useful purpose this information as it stands serves, to be honest - even without the reservations towards its accuracy. Did anybody ever think the Nazis were stupid? A beastly, cruel, racist, deluded, bunch of thugs who perpetuated one of the worst acts of mass murders in history? Sure. Stupid? Not really. --Robert Merkel

I'd say we should just remove this unless and until we get some kind of confirmation. Even then, it should be placed into historical context. Was it an issue at the trial, etc.

This reminds me of a file that circulates on the net, purporting to be a ranking of the IQs of recent presidents. It's a political jab, but it gets passed around as if based on a real study of some kind. All the Democrats rank high, all the Republicans rank low, with George W the lowest of all, at below-average. It's completely bogus, but that doesn't stop people from circulating it. Perhaps this is the same.

: I second the motion. --AN

A reference to this information can be found here:

[IQs of Nazi Leaders]

The information is supposed to come from this book, which looks more or less legit to me: [amazon]

[ISBN 0306806614 (amazon.com, search)]

It may be that this information is true and perhaps of some historical interest after all. But we need to research it more. --Jimbo

: Done. Content kept here for the moment . . .

Name	IQ
[Hjalmar Schacht]?	143
[Arthur Seyss-Inquar]?	141
Hermann Goering	138
Karl Doenitz	138
[Franz von Papen]?	134
[Eric Raeder]?	134
[Hans Frank]?	130
[Baldur von Schirach]?	130
[Joachim von Ribbentrop]?	129
[Wilhelm Keitel]?	129
Albert Speer	128
[Alfred Jodl]?	127
[Alfred Rosenberg]?	127
[Constantin von Neurath]?	125
[Walther Funk]?	124
[Wilhelm Frick]?	124
Rudolf Hess	120
[Fritz Sauckel]?	118
Ernst Kaltenbrunner	113
[Julius Streicher]?	106

I vaguely remember reading Albert Speer's memoirs about the defendants taking IQ tests during the Nuremberg trials. If my memory is correct, he mentioned that this became a source of competition among the defendants in order to pass the boredom. In any case, it should be an easy matter if anyone has a copy of Inside the Third Reich to read the section on Nuremberg to see if my memory is accurate. -- Chenyu

FWIW, there is a reference to IQ tests being administered at Nuremberg in

http://www.law.syr.edu/academics/nuremberg.pdf

It's a 110 page article on the relationship between hate speech and human rights law, but it contains the paragraph

 Much was made by trial commentators that Streicher ranked
 last in the list of IQ scores of the 21 defendants.81 Although
 ultimately found to be sane, his Nuremberg attorney, Hanns Marx,
 a former Party member, had petitioned the tribunal for a
 psychiatric evaluation, apparently because Streicher's "anti-
 Semitic obsession was so dominant in his behavior that Marx could
 get nowhere with him in preparing a defense, and concluded that
 his client had a 'diseased mind'."82

The footnote (81) says

  Id. at 376. Tests were administered by Dr. G.M. Gilbert, the official prison
  psychologist. Id. at 150. His report on Streicher stated: "No true
  psychiatric diagnosis but this man is of a personality structure which 
  borders on the frankly normal and which brought him into difficulties even 
  in the pathological social environment of the Third Reich." Quoted by  
  ANDRUS, supra note 60 at 105.

-- Chenyu

One more thing, the ANDRUS cited are the memoirs of Burton Andrus, The Commandant of Nuremburg Prison in his book "The Infamous of Nuremberg". We can probably take a few of these independent sources and cite them to make clear that this isn't an "urban legend" -- Chenyu