It is said that history is written
by the victors. The film, Nuremberg
(2025), bears that out. Even though Justice Robert Jackson, the American
prosecutor at the Nuremberg Nazi trial, compromises its integrity and thus
breaches due process by pressuring Douglas Kelley, the psychiatrist assigned to
the Nazi prisoners (most notably Goring), to obtain and pass on the defense’s
strategy to Jackson, which Kelley does, the trial is presented nonetheless as legitimate
and the Nazi prisoners as even deserving an unfair trial. Nevertheless, nations
governed by the rule of law are never justified in putting on corrupt trials,
or skewing them to push a particular ideology. The film itself is skewed to highlight
the Nazi crimes against the Jews at the expense of delving more into the distinctly
war crimes even though those crimes were just as important in the charges in
the actual trial.
Jackson’s questioning of Goring
on whether the Treaty of Versailles justified Germany to take over Austria and
the Sudetenland was brief, and the invasion of other occupied territories, such
as France, was entirely omitted in the film. Instead, Jackson pushed Goring on what
he knew about the concentration camps. Jackson’s reason, which he states in the
film, is that what the Nazi SS did in those camps separates the Germans from
the Americans. In other words, the holocaust singles out the Nazis in world
history. But as of 2025, that statement could not stand, for the holocaustic
genocide of the Palestinian “race” in Gaza meant that the Nazis’ crimes against
humanity were no longer unique. If, as the psychiatrist says in the film, the Nazi
holocaust is “the definition of evil,” then that definition could be
extended beyond the scope of the Nazis in the twenty-first century to include,
ironically, Israel.
What gave rise to World War II
was not the concentration camps. Rather, Germany’s invasions of other sovereign
countries in Europe, especially Poland, was the cause. Hitler’s militarism in
taking over Europe should thus have received most of the screen-time of the
film. If as Jackson argues, Germany could not blame the treaty that ended World
War I as justifying occupying Austria, what of other countries, such as France,
Denmark, and the Netherlands, which were not Germanic culturally? In short, the
filmmakers could have drawn on more material on the war crimes to balance out
the film. That would be consistent with the fact that the Jewish matter was only
the third priority of the Nazis. The first priority—and why Hindenburg
appointed Hitler as Chancellor—was to get rid of the Communist Party. The
second priority was to create living space in Europe beyond Germany for the
German people.
Also receiving too little
attention in the film was Jackson’s questioning of Goring on why the Nazis got
rid of political opposition, and thus democracy. Goring’s answer that democracy
had produced weak leaders could have been explored, especially as the Nazis came
into power in 1933 by democratic means. The party held enough of the Bundestag
for Hitler to have a legitimate democratic claim as a possible chancellor. Such
inconvenient facts are arguably more interesting than simply reminding the
viewers of the holocaust. The irony is that emphasizing it so much in the film,
viewers in 2025 could have thought of Netanyahu and his crime against humanity in
Gaza. Using a film to push an ideological agenda can come back to bite
filmmakers.
Furthermore, given the militaristic forays of Russia’s Putin, Israel’s Netanyahu, and America’s Trump in the mid 2020’s, more screentime devoted to why the democracy fell to the Nazi dictatorship in 1933, what was behind Hitler’s invasions of other countries, and why no other country’s government stopped the aggression in time to avert a global war could have addressed contemporary events facing the world as international law was no longer a viable means of restraint, internationally. The film could have had Goring explain Hitler’s rationale more for having instituted a dictatorship, and for why Hitler played other governments so his invasions could continue unabated. The susceptibility of democracy to slip into a dictatorship was a salient worry in the U.S. in the early and mid-2020s due to fears that President Trump was or would shirk democracy. Governments doing nothing to stop Hitler’s incremental advancements militarily could be compared with governments doing nothing to stop Israel’s genocide of the race in Gaza, and too little to stop Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The film being used primarily to remind viewers of how the Nazis viewed and treated Jews is both redundant (e.g., Schindler’s List) and has a rather large opportunity cost in terms of what the film could have covered more adequately but did not due to the screentime devoted to the Jewish theme. To be sure, Goring admitting in court that he would have followed Hitler even knowing about the holocaust only from the trial (which is a lie) is a poignant moment in the film. Crimes against humanity, whether in Gaza or Germany, are indeed horrific, but it is a mistake to minimize distinctively war crimes just because they are more ordinary.
