May 7, 1945, is not as well-known as other World War II dates such as Pearl Harbor or D-Day. But its significance – that Spring day 80 years ago is when Germany unconditionally surrendered and the War in Europe officially ended – is arguably far greater. As portrayed in the new film Nuremberg, directed by James Vanderbilt (based on the book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist by Jack El-Hai), it’s the day from which everything that followed at the first Nuremberg Trial began, when Hitler’s second in command, Reichsmarshall Hermann Göring, surrendered to the Americans.
On its face, Nuremberg is a courtroom drama, but actually has deeper underpinnings, which Vanderbilt (Zodiac and The Amazing Spider-Man screenwriter), takes great pains to explore in his script. Essentially, the movie is divided into three parts: the lead-up, the developing relationship between the psychiatrist and the prisoner, and finally, the trial. Going into the movie, I realized I didn’t even know the fundamentals about what took place in Nuremberg, and the history that was made as a result of the legal precedents set forth. The Nuremberg trial was the first of its kind: other countries were in the position of deciding the fate of the losing country and the retribution, writing and codifying laws about war crimes that had not existed before. It was truly fascinating to learn about the behind-the-scenes machinations involved in what happened there.
The trial itself is initially not what the authorities (the Americans, British, French, and Russians) want: there are 21 prisoners, chiefly Göring and Hitler deputy Rudolph Hess, and executing them would be the easiest course of action. The effort to force the tide toward an international tribunal is led largely by Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson (Michael Shannon, Knives Out), dispatched to Europe by President Truman. Jackson and those backing a trial understand that simply hanging the prisoners would make martyrs of them to their legions of believers, and that the world must know in full the atrocities for which the Nazis are responsible. The Justice, a frontrunner for Chief Justice, has taken a leave of absence from the court to oversee the many moving parts. (Notably, Jackson had been the US Attorney General and the US Solicitor General before that, the only person in US history to hold that distinction). We see Jackson’s skills in action when he visits the Pope and shames the Catholic Church, which was against the legal maneuverings, and had been one of the first established entities to give legitimacy to the Nazis in 1933, into giving its blessing to the legal proceedings. Other obstacles fall and ultimately, Congress and the Allied Powers sign off on the trial going ahead.
The success of the trial, which will be televised to an international audience, depends on being able to show that the prisoners are mentally fit and kept alive. As Jackson pointedly explains to the psychiatrist, the Americans have tasked with the job, Dr. Kelley (Rami Malek, Bohemian Rhapsody), who’s also a U.S. Army Military Intelligence Corps officer, the job. The U.S. and its friends put Germany down after the first War, and they came back. The Germans have soundly lost a second time, but if the Allies don’t prevail with the trial, which is not seen as a fait accompli, he has grave doubts these world powers would be able to defeat them a third time.
A soldier serving in Europe, Kelley had been the director of the San Francisco City and County Psychopathic Hospital before joining the Army, and seemingly ignorant of the worst of the Nazi’s actions, referring to the “rumors” he’d heard about the camps being more than just for slave labour. Kelley, accompanied by his translator Sgt. Howie Triest (Leo Woodall), spends hours giving IQ tests and psychiatric assessments to the Nazi prisoners, but the focus of his attention (and the movie) is his relationship with Göring (Russell Crowe). Kelley is enthusiastic about his assignment because he opportunistically thinks there will be a book in it for him.
He recognizes Göring’s charm and intelligence, but also his profound narcissism. Kelley trips up Göring (or thinks he has) into revealing that he speaks English. They speak more and more without the need for Triest, creating a different level of trust between the doctor and prisoner. Triest, an American soldier who tells Kelley he learned German because of his mother, is deeply invested in seeing the Nazis brought to justice, and questions where Kelley’s boundaries and loyalties are (Triest has a whole back story I won’t spoil). Göring confidently tells Kelley the Americans won’t succeed in killing him and looks forward to “having his day in court as the Americans say. Triest (and other Army officers) grow increasingly suspicious as Kelley and Göring have one on one meetings, especially as Kelley befriends Göring’s wife and daughter (who are in hiding), becoming a courier of sorts passing letters and news between them, partly in exchange for Göring helping with Rudoph Hess (Andreas Pietschmann), a high-ranking Nazi party officer. Hess had spent most of the War institutionalized, pretending to have amnesia about being a Nazi, and was captured after Germany’s surrender by the Allies and brought to Nuremberg. Kelley, a bit of an amateur magician, uses coin and card tricks that delight Göring’s daughter and Göring, further cementing a connection between doctor and prisoner.
The trial is the briefest section of the 2 ½ hour movie, but it includes six searing minutes from the concentration camp film director John Ford had produced in 1945 (Vanderbilt projected the footage onto a screen for the actors in the scene and asked them not to view it until the day on set). Jackson, who hadn’t been on the prosecution side of the table in some years, proves to be fallible in the courtroom and in need of repeated encouragement from his trusted secretary Elsie Douglas (Wrenn Schmidt) and a critical assist by the British deputy prosecutor, Sir David Maxwell Fyfe (Richard E. Grant) when Göring is on the stand.
Of course, the Allies largely achieved what they came to do, destroying the Nazi party and setting Germany (and to a lesser extent other countries later) on a path that continues today with public acknowledgement, financial reparations, and an intolerance for Fascist groups. In 2024 alone, the German government spent a record $1.5B on Holocaust reparations, and for next year, they have allocated $1.08B just for home care services for aging Survivors. Other than a postscript about some of the figures involved, the movie doesn’t delve further into future events, but there were 11 additional trials in Nuremberg, the last in 1949.
As a courtroom drama, I would have liked to have seen those scenes expanded and more about Jackson and the legal team’s working out how they were going to challenge Göring and the other prisoners’ testimony. I would have also wanted a greater sense of who Jackson was other than the pans to his secretary to show how much he depended on her. The cat-and-mouse games between Kelley and Göring were tautly written and engrossing, in part because neither was ever fully truthful with the other. Malek was restrained, a good listener, which is far less showy but needed in the dance he was doing with Crowe. Kelley, though, was underdeveloped as a character, and I didn’t always understand his motivations and where his empathy was, especially as he got in deeper with Göring’s family. It also seemed suspect that an educated intelligence officer would not have known the true purpose of the concentration camps by the end of the War. It was great to see Russell Crowe again on screen after some years, in something worthy of his talents. He’s skilled at showing Göring in all his layers, as a liar and manipulator, but a charismatic one, a monster as well as a devoted father and husband.
As a historical dramatization of one of the darkest and worst periods in World History, Nuremberg is compelling. As they watch, I imagine most audiences will think about the renewed creep of Fascism across Europe and those leanings in this country’s backyard, as citizens and non-citizens alike are assaulted and detained, to say nothing of the increase in anti-Semitic crimes here and outside of the US. I also think for many viewers, myself included, our understanding of the Nuremberg trials is scant at best, even if people have seen Judgment At Nuremberg, made more than 60 years ago, and that makes Nuremberg a valuable and worthwhile inclusion in the cinematic canon on the Holocaust.
