It would seem that the new hit movie “Nuremberg” has everything going for it. Michael Shannon gives a powerful performance as Chief Prosecutor Robert Jackson, capturing the moral weight and rhetorical power of his opening statement. Russell Crowe is superb as Hermann Göring, who is smart, arrogant, and at times even endearing, but dangerous. The production design does a great job of recreating the Palace of Justice, and some scenes really hit home.
But it is a beautifully crafted distortion about what really happened.
“Nuremberg” takes one of the most important legal cases of the 20th century – an international effort to hold people accountable for massive crimes in a way never done before – and turns it into an American-centered story that leaves out key actors, ignores massive amounts of Nazi crime, and fundamentally misrepresents how the trials worked.
This isn’t just bad history. It’s false information packaged as high-end filmmaking.
An international court turned into an American play
The film’s biggest flaw is making it look like Nuremberg was mostly about Americans confronting their Nazi captives, with a token British contribution. This simply is not true.
The International Military Tribunal, held in Nuremberg, Germany, from November 1946 to October 1947, was a joint effort by four countries. The US, the UK, the Soviet Union, and France each chose a main judge. Francis Biddle, an American judge, was well known, but Sir Geoffrey Lawrence, a British judge, presided over the tribunal. The USSR sent Major General Iona Nikitchenko. Henri Donnedieu de Vabres was chosen by France.
The film's biggest flaw is making it look like Nuremberg was mostly about Americans confronting their Nazi captives, with a token British contribution. This simply is not true.
The US was in charge of logistics and supplied about two-thirds of the prosecution staff. The chief US prosecutor delivered important opening and closing statements. But all four powers had to agree on big decisions. The legal framework emerged after their representatives spoke with each other, each bringing its own legal traditions and priorities.
You wouldn’t know any of this if you only saw this movie. The trial looks like an American project happening in Germany. This is not artistic freedom; it’s deformation and disinformation.
Erasing untold millions of non-Jewish victims
The fact that the Soviet contribution is completely left out is even worse. The Soviet judge isn’t shown. Roman Rudenko, the Soviet chief prosecutor and one of Stalin’s henchmen, doesn’t appear. Yet his cross-examinations were some of the most dramatic parts of the trial.
The USSR came to Nuremberg with more deaths and damage suffered from Nazi Germany than any other state. The Soviet prosecutors focused on Nazi attacks on the USSR, the planned destruction of Soviet cities, the killing of large numbers of civilians, and the planned starvation of millions of Soviet prisoners of war.
Ironically, the Soviet delegation also added important legal ideas. It insisted that starting an aggressive war should be seen as an international crime, which became Count Two: “crime against peace.” Not only did they want to punish what the Nazis did during the war, but they also wanted to make it clear that starting a war of conquest was against international law.
Ironically, the Soviet delegation also added important legal ideas.
This principle is especially important right now because Russia is still pursuing its barbaric war against Ukraine.
“Nuremberg” takes away a whole part of the trials’ purpose by erasing the Soviet presence, and in this way also the huge suffering and losses sustained by the peoples of Eastern Europe and the Soviet empire.
Perhaps the filmmakers thought that including the USSR would complicate their story, so they left it out.. But this erasure is morally wrong because it ignores the deaths of many millions of people apart from the Jews.
A limited view of serious crimes
The movie focuses mainly on the Holocaust as the main charge against the Nazis. In fact, at that time, it wasn’t even a separate charge.
The charges in the indictment were conspiracy, crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The planned killing of European Jews was approached as a crime against humanity, which included murder, enslavement, deportation, and persecution of civilians based on political, racial, or religious grounds. The cases addressed ranged from the mass killings of Soviet POWs to the destruction of Polish culture, from starvation policies to forced labor.
So, in fact, the tribunal dealt with many horrific atrocities, and while the Holocaust at this stage certainly figured, it was not the central issue.
With hindsight, this is understandable. The US, UK, USSR and France were the main Allied powers, and they didn’t say much about the systematic extermination of the Jews while it was happening. Yet, they were aware. Reports from intelligence agencies showed that the death camps existed. But they didn’t make stopping it a top priority. They didn’t bomb the rail lines to Auschwitz or make it a main goal of the war. The Holocaust wasn’t the most important thing on their minds when they got to Nuremberg, either.
So, in fact, the tribunal dealt with many horrific atrocities, and while the Holocaust at this stage certainly figured, it was not the central issue.
The Allies focused on prosecuting aggressive war, including invasions, conquests, and treaty violations. They dwelt on the invasion of Poland, the attack on the Soviet Union, and the occupation of Western Europe. They examined the system of slave labor that kept the German economy going during the war. They also detailed how the Nazis plundered occupied countries, killed resistance fighters, and destroyed cities on purpose.
The film, however, reduces a full account of Nazi crimes to a single story by focusing largely on the Holocaust. So, it gets the basic idea of what Nuremberg was about wrong.
The film ignores bitter ironies. By 1946, the victorious Allies had given Stalin control of Eastern Europe. The Soviet leader was Hitler’s ally until Nazi Germany suddenly invaded the USSR in June 1941, and then he became an unlikely partner of Britain.
The US didn’t join the alliance until after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. At that point, the US initially declared war against Japan, which led Tokyo’s European partners, Nazi Germany and Italy, to declare war on America. US forces eventually joined the fight against Germany and Italy in North Africa in November 1942 and in Italy in July 1943.
At Nuremberg, Stalin’s USSR, which helped Hitler divide Poland in 1939, was now judging its former ally and partner in crime. The trials set important legal standards, but they were never the moral reckoning that the movie makes them out to be.
Göring without background
The movie’s portrayal of Hermann Göring also leaves out vital details. He was the most famous defendant – Hitler’s chosen successor, the commander of the Luftwaffe, and the creator of the Nazi economic system. He put up a strong defense, saying that Germany had the right to break the Treaty of Versailles, that its invasions were legitimate self-defense, and that the trials were “victors’ justice” – meaning that winners punished losers for actions that any country might take in war.
Rudenko, the Soviet prosecutor, cross-examined him in a dramatic way – people said they were “battling like two prize fighters.”
Göring was especially angry with the Soviet prosecutors, whom he thought were beneath him. The exchanges made it clear what was really at stake: defendants saying they had done the right thing as national leaders and prosecutors saying there are universal standards of human behavior that no government could break.
The movie doesn’t show any of this complexity. Göring goes from a dangerous figure who almost got away with defending the indefensible through intelligence and audacity to a sneering villain.
Why this matters
These distortions are important. “Nuremberg” will change how millions of people think about the trials, and many of them will leave thinking they learned history when they were really presented with a heavily fictionalized account.
No matter what you think of Stalin’s regime, taking the USSR out of Nuremberg, and with it not just the Russians but also the other peoples in the Soviet Russian empire, like Ukrainians, Belarusians, Balts, and many others, effaces a major dimension from what actually occurred in World War II.
The trial of the Nazi war criminal had to be conducted by more than one state for them to be valid. The fact that four countries took part showed that the decision came from the international community, not just one country forcing its will on the others.
No matter what you think of Stalin’s regime, taking the USSR out of Nuremberg, and with it not just the Russians but also the other peoples in the Soviet Russian empire, like Ukrainians, Belarusians, Balts, and many others, effaces a major dimension from what actually occurred in World War II.
The movie undermines the principles established by the real tribunal by making it appear as an American production. This makes it seem like international justice is just national power in legal robes, which is exactly what Göring said.
And today, those who are currently in charge of the Kremlin and the White House seem to think the same way.
A betrayal
The filmmakers had everything they needed to get it right. Lengthy trial transcripts and abundant academic works. Survivors, prosecutors, and witnesses all wrote down what happened in great detail.
Instead, they decided to oversimplify. It might have been politically uncomfortable to admit that the Soviets were involved. Four-power cooperation might have seemed too hard to manage.
But, no matter how you look at it, a rare major movie about such an important event that offends so blatantly against the historical truth is not okay and should not pass unchallenged.
Such a major distortion of history can’t be excused by great acting.
The real Nuremberg emphasized that the world could and should hold leaders responsible for crimes that violate international legal norms based on basic standards of human decency. Being a sovereign country, regardless of its power and claims, does not mean it can invade, kill, or enslave others, or conduct genocidal policies. That even in war, there are rules everyone must follow.
The makers of “Nuremberg” had the opportunity to reaffirm this lesson, so relevant for today, but regrettably failed.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s and not necessarily of Kyiv Post.