In the first hour of Nuremberg, Major Airey Neve, a British officer captured and escaped twice by the Gestapo, who later joined the International Military Tribunal interviews each of the Nazi generals as they await trial. Their reactions vary: some lash out in anger and denial, while others listen reluctantly, but understand the seriousness of the situation, as their fate is no longer in their own hands. These early exchanges foreshadowed the verdicts to come—some generals were hanged to death, others faced imprisonment, and a few walked free.
Watching the film, I felt a complex mix of emotions. I hadn’t known much about the Nuremberg Trials before, so seeing the generals receive justice made me optimistic about the future of humanity. Yet in order to feel that sense of justice, I also felt a sense of horror and grief. One of the most disturbing moments came when the court screens footage of concentration camps: heaps of dead bodies in mass graves, survivors reduced to skeletons. Later testimonies detailing medical experiments in freezing tanks, children thrown into furnaces when gas ran out, and a train of 230 French women sent to Auschwitz, only 49 returning alive. The magnitude of cruelty is almost unimaginable.
The film’s setting in Nuremberg is also symbolic. The movie mentions that Nuremberg is considered Hitler’s “spiritual center,” it was where the Nuremberg Laws stripped Jewish people of their rights. Holding the trials there made poetic sense, the birthplace of Nazi ideology became the site of its judgment. Yet, even this city suffered under Hitler’s reign, bombed and 30,00 people trapped beneath rubble.
Additional scenes that stood out to me included when the Governor-General of Poland mentions he opposed the persecution of Jews but stayed silent, similar to an alleged assasination attempt towards Hitler by his good friend Albert Speer. His cowardice mirrors the broader themes identified by Captain Gustav Gilbert, the Jewish-American psychologist assigned to monitor the defendants. Gilbert observes three traits that enabled Hitler’s rise: blind obedience to authority, propaganda-fueled hatred towards Jews,, and a profound lack of empathy. The irony that a Jewish man held psychological power over these war criminals underscores the film’s moral tension—especially when Alec Baldwin’s Justice Jackson reminds Gilbert that he can influence whether the defendants own up to their crimes or hide behind obedience.
The film also exposes the hypocrisy at the core of Nazi ideology. Hermann Göring, Hitler’s second hand man, played by Brian Cox, claims that he and Hitler were unaware of the full scale of the killings, which I think is absurd. To play devil’s advocate, maybe they didn’t know. Ernst Kaltenbrunner, who was part of the camps in Auschwitz, boasted about accelerating the process of killing Jewish people, finding his solution through the use of carbon monoxide. He compared it to exterminating rats, all while insisting he did not see this as torturing Jews. One general even remarked on Hitler’s vegetarianism, his refusal to harm animals standing in grotesque contrast to his sanctioning of genocide.
In the end, Göring and another general chose suicide over facing execution, proof that even in defeat, they sought control. As Göring’s character declares, “The victors will always be the judges; the vanquished will always be the accused.” Yet their deaths underscored the final irony, the very men who showed no mercy to others refused to confront justice when it was their turn.
