The Nuremberg IQ Tests: What the Nazi Defendants Scored

Few sets of IQ scores are quoted as often, or explained as rarely, as the ones recorded at Nuremberg. In the weeks before the International Military Tribunal opened on 20 November 1945, an American psychologist sat with the leading surviving figures of the Nazi regime, one by one, in their cells, and gave them an intelligence test. The results were published, they have circulated ever since, and they are still used to argue points they cannot support.

Here is what the tests were, what each defendant scored, what the numbers do and do not mean, and why the most searched-for figure of all, the IQ of Adolf Hitler, does not exist.

Who gave the tests, and which test it was

The tester was Gustave M. Gilbert, a German-speaking US Army psychologist assigned to the Nuremberg prison. The prison psychiatrist, Douglas M. Kelley, oversaw the psychiatric side, and both men also gave the prisoners Rorschach inkblot tests. Gilbert gave the intelligence tests himself between the indictment on 20 October and the opening of the trial a month later. His diary dates Goering's test to 15 November and Keitel's to 17 November.

The instrument was, in Gilbert's words, his own German version of the American Wechsler-Bellevue Adult Intelligence Test. David Wechsler had published it in 1939, and it scored people against others of their own age on a scale with an average of 100 and a standard deviation of about 15. Gilbert used eight subtests: digit span, arithmetic, comprehension, similarities, digit symbol, object assembly, block design and picture completion. He dropped vocabulary and general information because they were too dependent on culture to translate fairly. Our explainer on full-scale IQ and index scores covers how subtests like these combine into one figure.

The scores, all 21 defendants

Gilbert published the table in Nuremberg Diary in 1947. These are his figures, highest to lowest:

• Hjalmar Schacht, Reichsbank president and economics minister: 143
• Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Reich Commissioner for the occupied Netherlands: 141
• Hermann Goering, Reich Marshal and head of the Luftwaffe: 138
• Karl Doenitz, grand admiral and Hitler's successor as head of state: 138
• Franz von Papen, vice-chancellor and ambassador: 134
• Erich Raeder, grand admiral: 134
• Hans Frank, governor-general of occupied Poland: 130
• Hans Fritzsche, radio propaganda chief: 130
• Baldur von Schirach, Hitler Youth leader: 130
• Joachim von Ribbentrop, foreign minister: 129
• Wilhelm Keitel, field marshal and armed forces chief of staff: 129
• Albert Speer, armaments minister: 128
• Alfred Jodl, colonel general and operations chief: 127
• Alfred Rosenberg, party ideologist and minister for the occupied eastern territories: 127
• Constantin von Neurath, foreign minister and Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia: 125
• Walther Funk, economics minister: 124
• Wilhelm Frick, interior minister: 124
• Rudolf Hess, deputy party leader: 120, marked by Gilbert as an estimate
• Fritz Sauckel, head of forced-labour recruitment: 118
• Ernst Kaltenbrunner, head of the Reich Main Security Office: 113
• Julius Streicher, publisher of the antisemitic newspaper Der Stuermer: 106

The 21 scores average exactly 128.0 and the most common score is 130. On the labels Wechsler used at the time, 12 of the men fell in the "very superior" band of 128 and above, and only Streicher in the average range. Hess's figure is an estimate based on a retest, and Gilbert noted that a reliable score could not be given for him.

Why Schacht came top: the age correction

Wechsler-Bellevue IQs are calculated against people of the same age, and the test's norms assumed that average performance declines in later life. A 68-year-old who matches a 30-year-old's raw performance therefore receives a higher IQ. Schacht was 68 when he was tested. Gilbert was open about the effect, writing that the effective intelligence of von Papen, Raeder, Schacht and Streicher was 15 to 20 points lower than the IQs he listed.

The authors of the 1995 reanalysis went further and noted that, without Schacht's age allowance, Goering would not have been first either: Seyss-Inquart would have led. Gilbert's diary records that Goering was told during his own test that he had the highest rating so far, and that he was annoyed when he later learned he did not. Our article on the age at which intelligence peaks explains why age norms are built this way.

Adolf Hitler was never given an IQ test

"What was Hitler's IQ?" is one of the most common questions about intelligence scores online, and it has no answer. Hitler died on 30 April 1945, six months before Gilbert began testing. Heinrich Himmler and Joseph Goebbels also died in 1945 before the tribunal was convened, and neither appears in any of the test records. Of the other men indicted, Robert Ley killed himself in his cell on 25 October 1945, Martin Bormann was tried in his absence, and Gustav Krupp was ruled unfit to stand trial. None has a score.

Numbers for Hitler circulate anyway. Figures of 141, 120, 125, 128 and 134 all appear on websites, and at least one of the sites quoting 141 claims he declined to take the Nuremberg test, which is impossible. None traces to any documented test. They are guesses, or modelled estimates presented as though they were measurements. In his 1950 book The Psychology of Dictatorship, Gilbert himself went no further than inferring that Hitler was not intellectually mediocre, and he gave no number. Our piece on where celebrity IQ numbers come from covers how invented figures like these spread.

What the scores do and do not show

The most important conclusion is the one Gilbert drew himself: IQ "has nothing to do with character or morals". Men who planned a war of aggression, ran occupation regimes and organised forced labour and mass murder scored, on average, around the 97th percentile of the population, as you can confirm for a score of 128 on our IQ percentile calculator. High measured intelligence did not restrain them. Our article on why smart people make bad decisions explains why reasoning ability and rational or moral judgement are different things.

• The men were not a random sample. They were the most senior surviving officials of a state, and above-average scores are expected in any group selected for high office, as Gilbert noted of leaders in any field
• The scores were adjusted for age, which lifted the older defendants, including the top scorer
• The test was a translated, shortened version given in prison cells, not the standard published form
• The norms came from a US sample: Wechsler's standardisation group was drawn mostly from New York City and State, and norms age, as our article on why IQ norms expire explains

The search for a "Nazi personality"

The Rorschach records from the same prison became the subject of a long argument. Kelley concluded in his 1947 book 22 Cells in Nuremberg that insanity was no explanation for the Nazi leaders and that people like them could be found in any country. Gilbert took a more pathological view, publishing a 1948 paper describing Goering as an "amiable psychopath".

In 1976 the psychologist Molly Harrower had ten Rorschach experts rate records from Nazi war criminals mixed with records from a comparison group, without knowing which was which. The experts did not separate the Nazis from the controls. A 1995 book by Eric Zillmer, Molly Harrower, Barry Ritzler and Robert Archer, The Quest for the Nazi Personality, reviewed the full records and concluded there was no single Nazi personality type. The history of how intelligence testing became entangled with politics in the decades before the war is covered in our article on IQ testing and eugenics.

The Nuremberg tests are real, documented and specific, which is rare for any famous IQ figure. They show a group of mostly above-average men whose scores were lifted by age allowances and measured on a translated, shortened test, and who committed some of the worst crimes in history. What they cannot provide is a score for Hitler, or any evidence that intelligence predicts conscience. For a score measured under standard conditions and reported with its percentile, our IQ test shows what a properly reported result looks like, and our overview of the history of intelligence testing places the Wechsler scales in context.

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