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A Peek into the Psychopathology of a Nazi

9 1
20.12.2025

Set in 1945 and 1946, the recent film Nuremberg tells the story of Reich Führer Hermann Goring (Russell Crowe), the most powerful Nazi in the world, after Hitler's suicide and Germany's surrender. The film also depicts Dr. Douglas Kelley (Rami Malek), an American Army psychiatrist, who must assess the mental and physical fitness of 22 Nazis accused of war crimes before they face trial at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg.

The Tribunal was the first audience outside of the military to see the films of the Allied forces arriving at the concentration camps; they came upon massive numbers of murdered Jews, others barely alive, and tractors moving hundreds of bodies into pits because of widespread disease.

Goring and the other Nazis witnessed the film. Each prisoner faced four main charges: conspiracy, crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The judges needed to prove Goring was fully aware of the death camps, which he vehemently denied. "They were work camps." The camps were Himmler's, referring to the Reichsführer, the highest rank and title for the commander of the Schutzstaffel, or SS, in Nazi Germany.

The prosecutors appreciated Goring's wily nature. As the most senior living Nazi, anything less than conviction of crimes against humanity would not amount to a death sentence and would have been a........

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