Some of the defendants at the Nuremberg trial.
On this day in November 1945, testimony began in the first Nuremberg Trial.
The first trial was noteworthy for being the prosecution of the leadership of Nazi Germany. As subsequent trials were held, more and more people expressed doubts about the wisdom or necessity of prosecuting soldiers whose crime appeared to be carrying out orders during wartime.
Few doubted the necessity for the first trial, in which the likes of Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess, Julius Streicher, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Alfred Jodl — the upper echelon of the Nazi regime — were held responsible for their acts.
The trials gave the world the definition of "war crimes." It can be found in the "Nuremberg Principles."
And the trials have influenced the evolution of international crime law for nearly 65 years.
Yet, considering how important the role of Nuremberg was in the postwar history of the world, there have been surprisingly few dramatizations of it.
The best, by far, was "Judgment at Nuremberg," a 1961 film that was not a re-creation at all but rather the story of a fictional trial that explored issues that were raised by the real-life later trials.
It's a great film with great performances, but it is fiction. It does not tell the real story of the landmark tribunal.
A couple of TV movies attempted to tell the story of what happened at the first tribunal in 1945-46.
In 2000, TNT aired a film called "Nuremberg," which was actually a pretty good and — based on my own knowledge of what happened in Nuremberg — mostly accurate re-creation, although factual dedication sometimes was sacrificed in favor of more appealing story angles.
The courtroom and other trial-related scenes, however, appeared to be accurate. As Albert Speer observed in the film, when the splendor of Nuremberg during the Nazi rallies was recalled nostalgically (especially in comparison to the dreary, bombed-out city in which the trial was held), "The look in Hitler's eyes wasn't radiance. It was madness."
And, oh, how easily it could all happen again. Later in the film, Speer tried to explain Göring's grip on his co-defendants, even with no authority or real power of any kind, using merely the power of his "ideas and thoughts."
"What ideas? What thoughts?" Speer asked. "They were only platitudes. Nazi Germany was built on empty platitudes."
Anyone can fall under the spell of a psychopath like Hitler. It is not, as was implied in the film, exclusively a German character flaw. It is a trait that is not unique to any group.
The main problem that most film buffs seem to have had with "Nuremberg" was its casting — Alec Baldwin as Justice Robert Jackson, for example.
Baldwin made for a relatively youthful Jackson to play opposite Christopher Plummer as British prosecutor David Maxwell-Fyfe.
Although Maxwell-Fyfe was, in fact, younger than Jackson by several years, Plummer is more than 30 years older than Baldwin and played the role as more of a fatherly figure.
And, while it may be common knowledge among historians with access to better research sources, I am not aware of the intimate relationship between Jackson and his dedicated secretary (played by Jill Hennessy) that was suggested in the film. I suspect that was a liberty that was taken with the facts to capitalize on Hennessy's beauty and give the story a romantic angle.
But, in spite of these relatively trivial matters, the film was largely accurate, and the portrayal of Göring by Brian Cox was particularly noteworthy. Cox displayed an uncanny ability to mimic Göring’s affable yet cunning Jekyll-and-Hyde personality — particularly in his depiction of Göring’s friendship with the American soldier "Tex" and how he may have manipulated it to get access to the cyanide he took to commit suicide rather than face execution by hanging.
Göring was often parodied in cartoons and films of the era, but, other than "Nuremberg," the only supposedly fact-based portrayal of the Reichsmarschall and the trial that I’m aware of came in a British TV production, " Nuremberg: Goering's Last Stand," in 2006.
I’ve never seen it, but I’ve been told it’s been broadcast on The History Channel from time to time. From what I’ve read, it’s a pretty poor historical re-creation.
