Nuremberg Puts Evil on the Stand

C an anyone become a Nazi?

That is the central question posed by Nuremberg, director James Vanderbilt’s newest film, which explores the pivotal trials that followed the conclusion of World War II. In this dramatized retelling, terrific acting meets timely themes that will likely be ignored by those who need to hear them most.

The film features typical World War II themes but introduces a wrinkle: the story is told from the perspective of psychiatrist Douglas Kelley, played by Rami Malek. Kelley is tasked with keeping the captured Nazi high command from committing suicide long enough to face judgment. The international trial, set to be the first of its kind, is spearheaded by United States Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, played by Michael Shannon. In Kelley’s endeavor to ensure the well-being of the prisoners, he becomes obsessed with a deeper question: what drove seemingly ordinary men to commit such atrocities?

Kelley’s interactions with Nazi Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring — portrayed impeccably by Russell Crowe — form the heart of the film. Their exchanges probe not only Göring’s psychology but the uncomfortable question of what distinguishes good from evil.

The film uses the events of the Nuremberg trials to explore a deeper question that haunted Douglas Kelley and continues to trouble many Americans today: what makes the United States different from the Third Reich? Through its portrayal of competing personal interests that mirror the geopolitical abuses of the Nazi regime, Nuremberg explores the boundaries of moral objectivity. Is Göring, who seeks to free himself from complicity in Nazi atrocities, that different from Jackson and Kelley? Are the governments of Great Britain or the United States morally superior to Nazi Germany? Throughout the film, these questions are tested, albeit with dialogue that sometimes feels contrived.

While Nuremberg does reinforce the fundamental differences between wartime ethics and systematic genocide, it uses Kelley’s theory of Naziism to give a far more ideological distinction. Kelley completes his research with the determination that there is nothing unique about the psychological makeup of the Nazi high command. In retrospect, Kelley’s view anticipated what Hannah Arendt, reporting on a later high-profile Nazi trial, would famously call “the banality of evil.” In contrast, Kelley’s psychiatric counterpart and competitor, Gustave Gilbert, did find the Nazis to be particularly pathological.

Kelley’s research thus blurs the line between ordinary human nature and extraordinary evil, a tension mirrored in the film by the legal proceedings. The very people trying the Nazis for crimes against humanity bend moral rules to satisfy their own ambitions. Jackson employs questionable tactics to secure a conviction, and, with it, his hoped-for ascent to chief justice of the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, Kelley blurs the line between medical professional and Nazi sympathizer in pursuit of a lucrative tell-all. Through these intertwined personal journeys, the film suggests that when pride and ambition go unchecked, ordinary men can be malevolent, too.

In this way, the film’s ultimate lesson lies not merely in distinguishing wartime acts from murder, but in examining the inner potential for evil that resides within all of us.

In a moving and culturally relevant scene that crystallizes the film’s moral vision, Sergeant Howie Triest, the American translator for the Nazi high command, confirms Kelley’s research through personal revelation. Triest tells Kelley that the Germans were not uniquely monstrous, but frighteningly ordinary, and that they became Nazis simply because “people let it happen.” Viewed psychologically, Triest’s words — echoing Kelley’s theory — suggest that Nazism represents not only a murderous mass movement but a creeping possibility for malice deep in the heart of every person. When that evil is not met with resistance, the consequences are catastrophic. Kelley and Jackson learn this lesson in order to defeat Göring in court — and to keep their footing in the battle of conscience.

Kelley faded into near-total anonymity, a footnote in the dustbin of history. He appears in no previous films about the Nuremberg trials until now. Just as he was ignored then, we risk ignoring him again today.