Nuremberg Movie Review

I went to see this movie in the theater last fall with my parents and younger siblings. While there are parts that aren’t easy to watch, overall, I loved it.

The movie covers the Nuremberg trials, hence the name. For anyone who doesn’t know, the Nuremberg trials were an international war crimes court formed after World War II to try some of the leading Nazis and Nazi organizations.

The movie introduces us to an assortment of characters–real people–both good and bad. By far my favorite character was Howie, a goodhearted, cheerful, young American soldier working as a translator (you find out later in the movie how he knows German, and why he feels so strongly about bringing the Nazis to justice).

Other characters include Justice Robert Jackson, who organized the trials, Dr. Douglas Kelly, an American psychiatrist tasked with ensuring the mental well-being of the Nazi prisoners, a British lawyer, and, of course, the Nazi prisoners themselves. The movie focuses most on the highest-ranking of the Nazis, Hermann Göring. (I’ve only seen Russell Crowe in a couple of movies, but I thought he did a great job playing Göring.)

We also learn about several other high-ranking Nazis. I thought the movie was excellently written, naturally sharing the historical information in a way that’s easy to understand and remember.

It clearly shows how evil the Nazis were, but also how very good some of them were at manipulation and pretending to be innocent of any wrongdoing.

During the trials, actual footage is shown from the concentration camps, and it is some of the most disturbing images I’ve ever seen. I don’t think young children should see it, but I do think that everyone, once they’re old enough, should know about the Holocaust and just how tragic it really was.

One of the main themes of the movie is that the atrocities of the Nazis needed to be brought to light, so that we don’t let it happen again.

Because, as Dr. Douglas Kelly rightly says near the end of the movie, there are people in every country like the Nazis, even if they may not be “wearing scary uniforms.”

In every country, there are people who disregard human life and only view others as a means to an end, something that can be disposed of when it is not useful, rather than viewing human life as valuable and created in the image of God. We need to know what evil is and how to recognize it, so that we don’t let something like the Holocaust happen again. While this is a mainstream movie, the message is one that I would say is biblical.

But even though this movie deals with some very serious topics, there is some humor interspersed, which I loved!

In addition to the concentration camp footage, there are a few other content warnings to be aware of: a bit of language (a few misuses of God’s name and a handful of other crude words), two Nazis commit suicide in prison, we see the execution by hanging of one Nazi, and at the end of the movie, we’re told that Dr. Douglas Kelly committed suicide after a long battle of depression, which was terribly sad.

As a side note, the Nuremberg trials come briefly into my historical fiction book, Trains and Tulips: A Novel of the World War II Dutch Resistance. While the movie doesn’t focus on him, one of the Nazis on trial was Arthur Seyss-Inquart, who was the Reich’s Commissioner of the Netherlands and also comes into Trains and Tulips.

In summary, while I do want to give a few cautions, I thought this was an excellent movie, packed full of real history with an important message we need to remember.

Thanks for reading History Redeemed! 

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