LIVE, LEARN, & LOVE SERIES #92. Nuremberg (film, 2025)

Do you take delight in watching films, listening to pop music, or reading books? For English learners, movies, songs, and books are one of the most wonderful sources to explore the language! You can indulge in your favorite pastime and still learn some expressions, words of wisdom, and oftentimes good lessons while you’re at it.

 

#92. Nuremberg (film, 2025)

The film follows U.S. Army psychiatrist Douglas Kelley (played by Rami Malek) as he delves into the minds of Hermann Göring (played by Russell Crowe) and other captured Nazi leaders, probing their psyches while monitoring their mental states before and during the historic Nuremberg trials.

 

(Dr. Doug Kelley said): “If we could psychologically define 'evil', we could make sure something like this never happens again."

ð     Dr. Douglas Kelley reveals his early hope that human evil could be traced to a biological or psychological defect. He believes that if such a flaw could be identified, future atrocities might be prevented.

However, his investigation of Hermann Göring and other Nazi leaders leads him to a chilling conclusion: they are not clinically abnormal, but disturbingly ordinary. This revelation echoes the philosophical idea of the "banality of evil," suggesting that history's greatest horrors were committed not by monsters, but by ordinary people who justified the unimaginable under certain circumstances.

 

(the Pope said to the Supreme Court Justice Jackson): “If you sit long enough in judgment of others, you come to believe that laws of man outweigh the laws of God.”

ð     This is the scene where the Pope's is warning to Justice Jackson about the danger of legal arrogance. As judges wield greater authority, they risk mistaking human law for absolute truth and replacing timeless moral principles with laws shaped by politics and power. The film contrasts the changing laws of man with the enduring standards of a higher moral order. This tension lies at the heart of the Nuremberg trials, where the Allies established new international legal principles to prosecute Nazi leaders. The Pope's challenge exposes a profound paradox: if those in power can rewrite or bend the law in the name of justice, justice itself can become an expression of the victor's will rather than an objective moral truth.

 

(Dr. Doug Kelley): “What do you want from me?”

(Justice Jackson): “I need you to start asking them the right questions.”

(Dr. Doug Kelley): “You want me to break doctor-patient confidentiality. Why not just shoot them and be done with it?”

(Justice Jackson): “After the last great war, we made Germany to crawl. We humiliated them. If we just shoot these men, we make ‘em martyrs. I’m not gonna allow them that.”

ð     This scene captures the ethical clash between Dr. Douglas Kelley and Justice Jackson over the role of psychology in prosecuting Nazi leaders. Jackson insists that the trials must do more than punish the guilty—they must expose and dismantle Nazi ideology through the rule of law. Rather than creating martyrs through summary execution, the prosecution seeks to hold the defendants accountable before the world, leaving behind an enduring historical record of their crimes.

 

(Hermann Göring said to Dr. Doug Kelley): “Just because a man is your ally does not mean he is on your side.”

ð     This is the scene where we see Göring's cynical view of power and loyalty. He means to say that allies may cooperate when interests align, but they will always protect themselves first. These words show his Machiavellian worldview, where trust is merely a temporary convenience. At the same time, it serves as a psychological tactic aimed at Dr. Kelley, planting seeds of doubt by suggesting that his own superiors and colleagues will eventually abandon him once he is no longer useful. In doing so, Göring exposes the ruthless survival instinct that shaped both his philosophy and his manipulation of others.

 

(Dr. Kelley on a radio talk show): “They (the Nazis high ranking officials) are not a unique people. There are people like the Nazis in every country in the world today. Yes, in America (as well)! Their personal patterns are not obscure. They are people who want to be in power. I would say I’m quite certain there are people in America who would willingly climb over the corpses of half the American public if they knew they could gain control of the other half. They stoke hatred. It’s what Hitler and Göring did. And it is textbook. If you think the next time it happens, we’re gonna recognize it because they’re wearing scary uniforms, …you’re damn out of your mind.”

ð    On a radio talk show, Dr. Douglas Kelley delivers a chilling warning: “evil is not confined to history but rooted in human nature.” He reminds us that authoritarianism can emerge in any nation, fueled by fear, division, and the pursuit of power rather than by unmistakable villains. That is, the Nazi ideology was not a one-time historical anomaly but a universal human possibility.

  

** Jean’s Small Thoughts:

This film presents the enduring legacy of the Nazi regime's atrocities against the Jewish people during World War II, inviting viewers to reflect not only on history but also on the world we inhabit today. The film reminds us that demagogues rise through ruthless ambition, sacrificing truth and human lives in their pursuit of power. As Dr. Douglas Kelley observes in the film's closing moments, tyranny rarely arrives in a recognizable form. It often wears an ordinary face, exploiting fear, prejudice, and division long before its true nature becomes apparent. By the time society recognizes the danger, it may already be too late.

This warning extends far beyond the historical setting of the Nuremberg Trials. Even today, governments justify military invasions, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, and the loss of innocent lives in the name of justice, national security, or peacekeeping. History demonstrates how easily noble ideals can be invoked to rationalize actions that inflict immense human suffering.

The film's message also resonates in my home country, South Korea. The newly elected president has pledged to revive the struggling economy and reform the prosecution to root out long-standing corruption. Yet political infighting and competing personal ambitions have repeatedly hindered these efforts. As the film wisely cautions, "Just because a man is your ally does not mean he is on your side." The pursuit of power can fracture even those who outwardly share the same goals.

Perhaps the film's most unsettling insight is that evil is not the product of extraordinary monsters but a latent capacity within ordinary human beings. By portraying the Nuremberg Trials as a triumph of the rule of law rather than an act of vengeance, the movie argues that justice rooted in universal humanistic principles remains the strongest safeguard against repeating history's darkest chapters. The realization that these patterns continue to unfold across the world today makes the film not merely a historical drama, but an urgent and sobering reflection on the fragility of justice and the enduring vulnerability of human nature.

 

"The only clue to what man can do is what man has done." 

-  R.G. Collingwood