The trial of a century

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Friday, November 7th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST:And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: a new film that puts evil on the witness stand.

The film Nuremberg hits theaters this weekend, retelling the moment when the victors had to define justice—and live by it.

Here’s WORLD arts and culture editor Collin Garbarino.

COLLIN GARBARINO: Back when I was a history professor, I used to teach the second half of Western Civilization. At the end of the course, I usually asked my students which historical person they would most want to meet and why. A surprising number said Adolf Hitler. These kids weren’t crypto-Nazis. They just wanted to know what had made Hitler so evil. They felt he must have had some deep-seated trauma that turned him bad. I always found it amusing that these 18-year-olds had so much confidence in their own skills of psychoanalysis.

Even so, the question of how the Nazi regime could perpetrate such monstrous evils really does haunt us. During World War II, many people in allied countries couldn’t believe the rumors of atrocities. The reports seemed too horrible. And as the war fades from living memory, some people have forgotten how cruel humans can be to one another.

ANNOUNCER: Dateline Nuremberg. As dark rumors continue to swirl about the true purpose of the Nazi work camps, the legal teams are assembling for what promises to be the trial of the century.

The historical drama Nuremberg reminds us of humanity’s potential for brutality and echoes my students’ question.

KELLEY: What if we could dissect evil? What sets these men apart from all others? What enabled them to commit the crimes that they did?

The film begins on the last day of the war in Europe, with the capture of Hitler’s designated successor in the Nazi chain of command.

OFFICER: Hermann Göring?

GÖRING: I am Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring.

Göring is played by Academy Award–winner Russel Crowe. The Allies are trying to figure out what to do with him. Most of the military brass prefer the idea of simply shooting him, but U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, played by the wonderful Michael Shannon, wants to put Göring and the other captured Nazis on trial.

JACKSON: If we just shoot these men, we make them martyrs. I’m not going to allow that to happen. There will be no statues to them. No songs of praise.

Army psychiatrist Doug Kelley, played by Rami Malek, is tasked with making sure the prisoners stay mentally fit and don’t commit suicide.

COLONEL BURTON C. ANDRUS: The one you’ll have to watch the closest is Göring.

DOUGLAS KELLEY: Göring? As in Hermann Göring?

ANDRUS: That’s the one.

KELLEY: Hermann Göring’s here?

These two storylines—that of the lawyer and the psychiatrist—start to converge toward the film’s climax. The first storyline follows the difficulties Justice Jackson has in prosecuting the Nazi leadership. No one had ever attempted anything like this before.

ELSIE: It can’t be done.

ROBERT H. JACKSON: Give me one good reason why not.

ELSIE: There’s no legal precedent for a trial. There’s no international law to base the charges on.

It wasn’t feasible to try these men in a German court, but what legal authority would an international tribunal have? And if they did get to trial what would they be accused of? The Nazis would be tried in a legal limbo with case law that hadn’t been written yet.

Moreover, putting the Nazis on trial was a bit of a gamble. Would it be possible for them to successfully plead their innocence? In televising the proceedings, were the Allies running the risk of portraying these men as sympathetic victims? Or worse yet, were the Allies giving the Nazis yet another opportunity to infect the world with their anti-Semitic hatred.

The other storyline involves Doug Kelley’s interactions with the Nazi prisoners, especially his relationship with Göring.

HERMANN GÖRING: I will show you a magic trick one day.

KELLEY: What’s that?

GÖRING: I am going to escape the hangman’s noose.

The psychiatrist takes his job as prison doctor seriously, looking after both the physical and mental health of the Nazis. But on some level he starts to become ensnared by Göring’s charisma.

KELLEY: How do you plan on doing that?

GÖRING: If I were to tell you, it would not be a trick.

Kelley hopes to write a book about his experience to gain money and career capital. He wants to psychologically define evil, and he’s essentially asking the same question my students did: What makes these Nazis different from us? Kelley views evil as a pathology that must be explained away.

Göring makes for a fascinating figure, and Crowe hypnotizes us with his performance—his Göring is simultaneously gregarious and malevolent.

Seeing the proud figure humbled in prison elicits sympathy from both Kelley and the audience. But clarity comes when Justice Jackson’s Nuremberg trial cuts through the manipulation and sentimentality.

JACKSON: I’m going to put Hermann Göring on the stand. And I’m going to make him tell the world what he did. So that it can never happen again.

Part of the brilliance of Nuremberg is that it doesn’t merely depict Nazi atrocities. We’ve been confronted with those images in countless films. In fact, the sheer number of World War II movies tends to numb us to the terrible reality. In this film, we see the characters discover for the first time the extent of the horror, their realization that humans could engage in such atrocities, the characters’ reactions to these sickening images arouses a greater reaction in the us than the images might have created on their own.

But what about that nagging question?

KELLEY: What makes the Germans different?

TRIEST: Different?

KELLEY: From us?

Kelley the psychiatrist, and by extension the film, eventually arrives at the Biblical answer. The Nazis aren’t any different from you or me. They were evil because they were human.

ROBERT H. JACKSON: The world needs to know what these men did.

We’re fooling ourselves if we think that 80 years later sin no longer crouches at our own doors.

I’m Collin Garbarino.

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