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Posted on 11/14/2025 2:02:32 PM PST by nickcarraway
A review of the new film and a look at its public health relevance today
Eighty years ago, on November 20, 1945, one of the most unusual and important court trials in history began. The trial was deliberately convened in the bombed out German city of Nuremberg, notorious for huge Nazi party rallies. The new film, "Nuremberg," recounts the trial of Nazi leaders and remains highly relevant for engaging with public health and the politics of today in Germany, the U.S., and many other nations.
On Trial in "Nuremberg"
A few days after the end of World War II, in May 1945, the allied powers commenced discussions about what to do with captured Nazi leaders. Among those leaders were newspaper publisher Julius Streicher, close friend of Hitler and a leading anti-Semitic propagandist for the "Final Solution" to the "Jewish problem"; Wilhelm Frick, Minister of the Interior and co-author of the Nuremberg Race Laws; Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Chief of the Gestapo; Fritz Sauckel, head of labor deployment; and the grand prize, Hitler's number two, Hermann Goring, Reichsmarschall and Commander of the Luftwaffe.
A strong argument was made by Winston Churchill and British military officials for summarily executing all of them. But, as the just released film "Nuremberg" accurately explains, many American and Soviet politicians and legal authorities insisted on a public trial that would demonstrate to the world the rule of law and document the horrific crimes of the Nazi leadership and their followers.
The film does a commendable job laying out the history of what was a complicated and risky prosecution. The crimes were so extensive, murderous, and heinous that an entirely new set of legal charges, including "crimes against humanity" and "crimes against peace," had to be established.
The key vehicle for the movie's narrative is the relationship between Lt. Colonel Douglas Kelley -- a U.S. Army psychiatrist sent to the Nuremberg prison to ascertain the defendants' competency to stand trial -- and the wily, arrogant, manipulative, narcissistic, and seductive Goring.
This relationship was first examined by Jack El-Hai in his 2014 book, The Nazi and the Psychiatrist. The movie follows the book's account closely, with Russell Crowe as Goring and Rami Malek as Kelley bringing the story to life on the big screen. They engage in a complex dance of friendship, frankness, duplicity, and betrayal that ends with Kelley's dismissal from the army for leaking information about Goring to the press, and Goring's death by suicide in his cell shortly before he was to have been executed.
As the horrors of World War II continue to fade from our collective memory, the movie is very much worth a close watch. In fact, if General Dwight D. Eisenhower had not insisted on filming in the concentration camps as they were liberated, the prosecution at Nuremberg might have failed and Holocaust deniers may be even more vociferous than they already are.
A Psychiatrist Evaluates Evil
The movie is also important for the deeper questions it raises -- and doesn't raise -- about the legacy of the racist Nazi regime in the context of the reappearance of white supremacist ideology today.
One of the key reasons Kelley wanted to examine Goring and other defendants was that he hoped to find a common psychiatric condition that would explain the monstrous evil these men had committed. He was unable to achieve this goal.
Instead, the psychiatrist found among the top Nazi leaders: proud men still enormously angry over Germany's loss and humiliation after World War I; some opportunistic, bright, ambitious men eager to seize the chance to quickly advance their careers by aligning with Hitler and the Nazi Party; some men who were just bigots; and others who, in the words of another astute observer of Nazi evil, Hannah Arendt, were simply "ordinary," "banal," and "terrifyingly normal."
It is common in today's culture wars to dismiss the relevance of the Nazi horrors to current events. There is even a name for this supposed fallacy: Godwin's law. This holds that as a heated online discussion grows longer, the probability of invoking Nazis or Hitler approaches one (certainty).
But Godwin's law should not blind us to the reality that some analogies between current events and the history of Nazism are apt. Kelley's failure to find a distinctive psychopathology among the mass murderers he examined is a lesson for what has gone on in the world since. Ordinary, mentally sound people can and do perpetrate unspeakable evil. As do angry people holding deep grudges at perceived slights and mistreatment; people filled with hate fueled by bogus "scientific" theories about race, genetics, and foreigners; careerists and the overly ambitious. And when no one speaks up, the bigots and wily, egomaniacal careerists can lead political parties and sophisticated nations terribly astray.
American, German, and world politics are full of the kinds of dangerous leaders the film portrays. Those who try to expose and criticize them are not misusing what I and others have termed "the Nazi analogy." The staggering evil of Nazism was not perpetrated by obviously mentally ill men. Rather, some human beings did and continue to do monstrously evil things.
Evil Ignored Is Evil Enabled
What the movie does not do is examine the reasons why these Nazi leaders and their followers believed so fervently in their cause. What ethical views led Nazis to sleep well at night while nearby smokestacks continuously spewed human remains, and innocent, peaceful civilians and prisoners of war were starved, enslaved, and tortured in more than 40,000 omnipresent death camps?
The answer is racism, grounded in widely influential and deeply flawed medical and scientific theories. Racism grounded in an enormous fear that Jews, the disabled, homosexuals, the Romani, Slavs, and Black people posed lethal risks to the purity of the genetic stock of the German people. That and revenge against those, especially Jews, who were falsely charged with bringing Germany to economic ruin in the pre-World War II years. This produced a nation of people willing to defend themselves against a perceived massive public health threat and to conquer and punish any nations or groups responsible for their prior financial misery.
When racism, eugenics, immigrant bashing, and white nationalism rear their ugly heads today, the rise of Nazism shows they ought not be ignored; all with a voice must engage and denounce them. When calls to return to a once glorious past, free from "undesirable people," are voiced, they are symptomatic of the morality that underpinned Nazism.
Far too many today counsel silence or compliance when echoes of Nazi ideology enter government, science, or public health. That poor advice is exactly how a score of men wound up on trial at Nuremberg for leading a powerful, sophisticated nation to commit the vilest crimes in human history.
Nuremberg, the movie and the actual trial, make clear that evil ignored is evil enabled.
Arthur Caplan, PhD, is the Drs. William F. and Virginia Connolly Mitty Professor and founding head of the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU Grossman School of Medicine.
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You don’t need to diagnose it; the evil can’t help but brag about it.
Judgement at Nuremberg. A 1961 movie. It has Spencer Traci, an early role by William Shatner and the last movie role for Marlene Dietrich. Burt Lancaster has the best scene in the whole movie.
I am going to see it on Tuesday with a friend.
Those involved in mutilating and grooming children deserve the same fate.
Racism. Immigrant bashing. White nationalism.
This writer is trying to draw parallels with liberal angst today and Nazi Germany?
Next thing you know, someone will say Trump is Hitler.
“I was just following orders” was pointedly not allowed as a defense at Nuremburg.
Maybe, it should not be allowed, at least for high level government types. Ask yourself “how could all those atrocities in Germany occur” and then look at the craziness we’ve seen in America for so many decades now.
People in authority following orders, that’s why. Imagine.
Bfl
True.
Oh Gawd he went there. I have never met a white supremacist in my entire life.... where is this resurgence of white supremacist ideology?
Judgement at Nuremburg was also a Playhouse 90 live TV production in 1959. Maximilian Schell and Werner Klemperer played the same roles in the TV production and the movie.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0675583/?ref_=tttrv_tr
Spencer Tracy did his final 11 minute speech in one take.
Burt Lancaster does not say a word until 2 hours and 15 minutes into the film.
Not a worthwhile endeavor - some people are just evil. Surely anyone who has studied history knows that.
‘Nuremberg’ Cast Reveal Fascinating History Behind the Infamous Nazi Trials
People in authority giving orders and the meek following them.
The Fuhrers of Covid used everything but the smokestacks.
No telling how far they would have gone had not Trump won.
"Unusual" is the best possible description.
25% of the Judges and Prosecutors were appointed by Joseph Stalin, who murdered at least as many people as Adolph Hitler.
How could Americans keep a straight face when Soviets showed up to prosecuted Nazis?
The meek are 65% of the sheeple. The Milgram experiment confirmed it.
The NAZI Party started in a gay bar in Munich called, “Bratwurstgloeckl”, a homosexual innuendo meaning “house of the long sausage”. The men who met there were former German Officers and Enlisted men kicked out of the German Military for buggery. The gay men were “Germany First!”
When I read Roe v Wade and saw the “reasoning” I then and there diagnosed Evil . There was no law in that decision but arrogant dismissal of it aplenty.
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