Kirk Saduski

A new film starring Russell Crowe, Rami Malek and Michael Shannon explores the Nuremberg Trials and the story of the Nazi leader, Hermann Goering, and the American psychiatrist Douglas M. Kelly, who was assigned to evaluate this high ranking Nazi leader.

Nuremberg Trailer

I'm gonna put Hermann Goering on trial.

No man has ever beaten me.

He's the face of the Nazis now.

It's a logistical nightmare.

You have to be flawless.

Why not just shoot them?

You make them martyrs. I'm not gonna allow them that. This war ends in a courtroom.

The world needs to know what these men did.

This is it, this is everything.

Kirk Saduski

The film premiers ahead of the 80th anniversary of the beginning of the Nuremberg Trials, where 22 leaders of the Third Reich were put on trial, and 12 were sentenced to death. I'm Kirk Saduski, producer and executive for Playtone. I'm hosting this conversation for the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, where I'm a presidential counselor. I'm also a narrative consultant for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Today I'll be speaking with New York Times bestselling author and my good friend Donald Miller, as well as Rebecca Erbelding, one of the world's leading Holocaust historians. But first, I'm joined by the director and writer of Nuremberg, James Vanderbilt, along with Michael Berenbaum, the film's historical advisor and former director of the United States Holocaust Research Institute at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. James, let me ask you, what drew you to the story of Nuremberg as a whole?

James Vanderbilt

It was Jack El-Hai's book was the thing that started it for me. It was actually a book proposal. I had known Jack from another project that didn't end up getting made, so I was lucky enough to read this sort of five to six page proposal for "The Nazi and The Psychiatrist," which is a terrific book, you should all go out and buy it. But it was about the Rami Malek character of Douglas Kelly as this psychiatrist at the end of World War II, who thinks he's going home, but instead is given orders to go to Moordorf and reports to the Grand Hotel there. And there's a colonel there played by John Slattery who says, listen, upstairs, we have the entire surviving Nazi high command. And you've been brought in and tasked with the job of figuring out if they are fit to stand trial. And chief among them was Hermann Goering, who was the highest ranking living Nazi at the time. And I read this five or six pages, and it's the quickest I ever said yes to anything in my life because I thought, what a terrific way into a movie and what a terrific relationship that I had never really seen in a movie about this period of time between these two men. I used my own money to option the material, which I do not recommend you do. And then began to research it. And discovered very quickly that, you know, the Nuremberg Trials was a topic I thought I knew a lot about and discovered I knew very little about. And read the story of Robert Jackson, who's not really in the book that much, the Michael Shannon character and everything he went through to make sure the trials happen. There's so many people who didn't want the trials to happen. The United States Army didn't want the trials to happen, and Jackson was one of the men who said, no, that this is incredibly important. We have to do this, we have to do this. And not only internationally, you know, not not only the United States, we have to do this internationally. We have to do this with the other allied countries with Britain and France and Russia. And so for me as a writer, I thought, you know, I thought my movie was gonna be over here in a cell with these two men, but really, I think it's also in the courtroom. And then I read about how Triest, Leo Woodall's character, the translator and his story. And I went, oh my gosh, my story is also over here. So it just grew and grew and grew, which as a screenwriter is wonderful, but terrifying because usually, you know, the job of adaptation is subtraction. You know, you have 350 pages book, you have to fit into 120 page script or a two hour movie. So it's about what can you take out? And this, you know, just kept growing.

Kirk Saduski

Well at some point when you have this kind of wealth, if I can use that word of material, you have to have, you actually have to start corralling it. And you mentioned the research. At what point did Michael join your team and how did you guys work together?

James Vanderbilt

It's 13 years, so it was, I think, did we have a draft of the script when you came on board yet, a first draft, or did we talk before that?

Michael Berenbaum

We had a draft of the script. I didn't get to see the script for a while because we had a long conversation, including what did I know about Nuremberg and where did it fit in? And I always ask, what role do you want for the historian? Because one of the incredible things for me on this project was that they wanted to do it right. They wanted to do it factually, and they wanted to do it with integrity. That's not always the case in other projects. So I came in when you had a draft of the script, I reviewed that draft, I reviewed multiple drafts, and I ended up both being on the set and working with you in the editing room.

James Vanderbilt

Yeah.

Kirk Saduski

Well, let's stay with that theme of research. I mean, I've been involved in a number of historical projects that require that level of attention to detail, and it's absolutely essential. I've been in the Nuremberg, I've been in the courtroom at Nuremberg, and I know they've changed the configuration around a little bit, but you guys did an extraordinary job of recreating that courtroom such that the courtroom almost becomes a separate character in and of itself. Talk about that a little bit and why it's so important, James, to pay that close attention to detail.

James Vanderbilt

I mean, I don't know another way to work, really, especially with something, you know, the level of gravity obviously, that the story has and the number of people who were touched by that period of time, it was just incredibly important for us to get everything as accurate as possible. And I felt like as a filmmaker, you know, you know, it pays dividends as well on the other end too. It's not just, you know, I wanted people who knew the history to feel that we'd gotten it right, but I also wanted my actors to feel like they were in good hands and that they could walk onto that set and know that Eve Stewart, our incredible production designer, had, you know, reconstructed that courtroom down to the inch of what the size of it and what the original layout was. And that, you know, she built it, you know, 360 degrees. She even built the ceiling, which you don't always do on a movie set because it, you know, it costs money. But she was like, no, we have to build the ceiling so that we can hang this exact type of lights that burned down on them so you can feel what they felt on the day. And so creating you know, an environment for your actors to be able to step in and know that this thing has been researched down to the inch and the uniforms they're wearing are the correct uniforms. And I think imbues them with a level of, of belief that they are, you know, they can step into these roles. But it's what Michael said too, it's just, I never wanted to be wrong because we hadn't done the work. You know, if there was stuff that we needed to omit to tell the story in the two hours and change we do, I wanted that to be a decision, not a mistake.

Michael Berenbaum

And the courtroom itself determined the trial, and that is that, why did you try 22? And the answer is that's how many seats there were in the defendant's box. And the other part of it is you had, you know, a range of justices from the different countries. You had everybody working with translators, you had multiple prosecutors. And the other part of it, which is intriguing, is that part of this was a show trial, but not a show trial where the verdict is already decided, a show trial, because it wanted to demonstrate what had happened, and it wanted to hold these men accountable. Part of it was the attempt to recreate the scaffolding of justice, because in a world of injustice, how do you rebuild. Part of it was an attempt to persuade the German people. And part of it was a trial of history, and that's why there was massive amount of research done in preparation for the trial. And the other part is Douglas Kelly's idea was that he not only wanted to find whether these men were fit for trial, but he really got intrigued by the question of what type of person can commit these types of crimes?

Kirk Saduski

Let's talk about, one of the key moments in the movie, certainly in the trial, was when the film was shown in late November that the OSS had compiled. Talk a little bit about that James and Michael, what a pivotal moment that was, and the fact that we are all too familiar in the modern world, in the contemporary world, with those images of the liberation of Dachau and Buchenwald, et cetera. But this is the first time the people, most of the people in the courtroom will have ever seen this footage, talk about that.

James Vanderbilt

Yeah, I mean, it was, it certainly, from the very first draft of the screenplay, I knew I wanted to use the real footage and the actual film that was shown is, I think about 53 to 56 minutes. We only show a small portion of it, obviously, but I wrote out in the script the specific images and the parts of the footage that we wanted to do. And then as we moved into pre-production, our first AD, who's sort of the person who's in charge of scheduling everything, she sort of sits, so how do you wanna shoot this footage? I said, we're not shooting anything. We're using the real footage, and we're not gonna put music under it. We're not gonna, you know, movie it up. We're gonna, you know, really show it in the room. As I was casting the film, I spoke to my actors and I said, listen, I know you love to, you know, do research, and that's one of the things I love about you, but do me a favor, don't watch the films before we shoot. If you haven't seen them, don't revisit them if you have, and if you haven't seen them, don't watch them, because I want, on the day that we do this scene, for those images to hit you freshly because they are so powerful. And then the day came to shoot that scene, and we brought in a real projector. We didn't sort of blue screen it and comp it in later, and there were 300 extras in the courtroom set. And I went out and sort of explained, here's what we're gonna be doing today, and it's gonna be a tough day, but I think it's incredibly important that we do this and to honor the people who's lost their lives. And we had a moment of silence, and then we showed the film, and I had set up four cameras on our lead actors to capture that sort of first initial viewing of the films. And what you see in our film is their reaction to it. And listen, they're brilliant actors, so I don't wanna say no acting is required, but, you know, those images are, I think, as powerful today as they were 80 years ago.

Michael Berenbaum

This shows the power of film. It's the moment in the trial itself. Robert Jackson wanted to conduct the trial as a trial of documents. He essentially made it dry. This is the moment when it became real. And part of what Jamie did, which was incredible, is he not only showed the film just enough for the audience to grasp its power, but then showed the response of the people who were seeing the film. And you kept going from the film itself to the response to the film, and that's the way in which it could be absorbed, and you really feel the deep and profound emotional impact. And then you see how much this transformed Douglas Kelly as played by Rami, how much it transformed him, and therefore changed it from a great intellectual exercise into something that was deep and powerful. And that's the moment at which he thought he understood who the killers were, and then he saw what the crime was, and his theory of the killers evaporated. He gets drunk, and all of a sudden the whole texture changes.

Kirk Saduski

It struck me that, I mean, you make, Kelly utilized, I think Kelly and Gilbert, both utilized Rorschach tests. And it struck me that in a way, when they showed that film at the trial, early in the trial, it was kind of a Rorschach test for the world, because the world had never seen these images. How will the world interpret what they're seeing?

Michael Berenbaum

Well, let me talk historically for a moment. The first encounter, remember Majdanek was liberated in July of 1944, 6 months before Auschwitz, and nine months before the liberation of the camps by the American audience. What brought it home to the American audience and ultimately to the world, was what we had in those days called newsreels, used to drop a kid off on a Saturday or Sunday, and they watched the double feature. And in between you had newsreels, which was really the beginning of what the evening news and the images that were there made the events of what happened real to the audience. This was incredible, both for its duration and for the intensity of what was shot. And also because they came to these camps, these are the western camps, they came to these camps late, and these camps had been overrun by the death marches from Auschwitz and other concentration camps. They no longer could function, therefore, you had bodies piled up because crematoriums were not working, burning was not working. Body disposal, to use the word the Germans used at that point, was a deep and tremendous problem. Disease was rampant, and all of this became viscerally real. Both for the audience, for the perpetrators. And in a very real sense, it was the emotional heart of the trial.

Kirk Saduski

And maybe James, in some ways, the heart of the film as well, what do you think?

James Vanderbilt

I do, I mean, I think it's the moment where the film shifts, you know, and was designed, you know, that's by design, because I think the trial shifts there and the movie shifts there, because I think there's something, you know, as Michael said, you know, there is something about hearing stories about something occurring and reading about something occurring and facts and figures. But when you see it and you witness it through cinema, it hits you in a very, very different way. And I think that was, you know, the case for all of these characters. And I think in our movie, what I really wanted to do was to put you in that courtroom on that day and give you, as an audience member a similar experience to what most of the people in that courtroom on that day felt.

Kirk Saduski

As you mentioned, you had a number of wonderful actors. Rami Malek is an old friend of Playtone from the Pacific. But let's talk about your Hermann Goering. Let's talk about Russell Crowe. And I will, I think, I mean this literally, he embodies Hermann Goering. Please talk, both of you guys, tell us about that. How essential that was.

James Vanderbilt

For me, he was the first person I cast. He was the role. I knew that everyone else would sort of say, okay, but who's Goering gonna be? So I knew I wanted somebody who obviously was a great actor. But you know, the thing about Goering that I found so interesting and that I haven't really seen in a lot of, you know, feature films, is that he was funny and charming and gregarious. Someone once described him as the best dinner party guest you could ever invite over to your house, you know, and I thought, well.

Michael Berenbaum

He was larger than life.

James Vanderbilt

Yes.

Michael Berenbaum

And he had a tremendous, tremendous appetite. You know, his art collection was massive. His stamp collection was massive.

Kirk Saduski

His stolen art collection was massive.

Michael Berenbaum

His stolen art collection. And look, I'll tell you a minor example. There was a numanistics expert in Auschwitz who collected stamps, sent the best of the best of the best stamps to Hitler and to Goering. Goering had his own art man in Paris to capture art. Hitler had another art man, a little bit less good than Goering's. Goering and this is what Russell Crowe does so great. He fills the screen. And in fact, I was a little bit worried when I read the script and when I saw Russell act, I was a little bit worried he was gonna be too likable. That becomes a danger.

Kirk Saduski

When you, yeah, right, well, that's why context is so important, because everything you do read about Goering is how he would dominate a room. How he did not only charm most of his fellow defendants and was the obvious leader, but had a way of charming some of the Americans as well, or not just the Americans, but his captors. James, talk about the fact that there is one of the story elements here is that there's an odd kind of parallel between Kelly and Goering. That's obviously by design, talk about that a bit.

James Vanderbilt

Yes, well, I mean, that's one of the things that drew me to this initially was just how their lives ended up mirroring each other without saying too much about it. How they both affected each other. And I think ways that neither of them predicted, I think, you know, at the beginning of their professional relationship, if you wanna call it that, they're both trying to get something out of the other one. They're both trying to sort of get over on the other one, Kelly is looking to, you know, define what is the nature of evil, and then how can I use that as a psychiatrist to write a book about this experience and maybe make a name for myself? And Goering is looking, you know, for his last moment on the world stage to sort of define himself to the world as not a monster, as a military man. That relationship, I just found sort of fascinating and that Kelly could be seduced a little bit by Goering, and Goering could be seduced a little bit by Kelly. And was there concern about making Goering too sympathetic, I don't know is the right word. You know, there was always concern, but also I always knew in the back of my mind that once we get to that courtroom and you see those films, the movie's gonna turn. And, you know, I needed somebody who could play that seduction. And that's, you know, why Russell, you know, I wanted somebody who had a real relationship with the audience. Someone we'd seen for 25 years be the hero, be the charmer. So that, you know, the same way that Kelly's seduced a little bit, the audience is seduced a little bit.

Michael Berenbaum

Jamie's used to screening these actors. I come to it, I work on documentaries more than feature films. And I kept seeing how enormously powerful Russell Crowe is as an actor. And he also physically overpowers Rami. He physically overpowers him. And then Rami really rises to the occasion. My worry, and Jamie will recall this my worry was that Rami wasn't physically able to stand up to him. And then in the real moment, he rises to the occasion. So it's great acting on both sides and great intensity. The other thing that we have to give rise to is, I think without giving it away, I think the conclusion of the film raises some of the most profound issues still in our world today.

Kirk Saduski

You mentioned, you've both have now talked about Robert Jackson. We've focused a lot on Kelly and Goering for obvious reasons, but there's a third very important character in this story, and that's Robert Jackson. And in some ways, he had more of a burden on his shoulders than any other single individual in that courtroom. Talk about a little bit, help us understand who Robert Jackson was.

Michael Berenbaum

Lemme talk historically for a moment. Jackson was an Attorney General who then became a Supreme Court justice, who was far and above the leading candidate to become Chief Justice. And we have to talk for a moment about what's not seen, which is that Harry Truman fought with Stalin and Churchill. Churchill wanted to kill these men, to execute them immediately, 48 hours. Stalin wanted a quick show trial, and then we execute them. And Harry Truman really was the man who fought for this, but he fought for it because of the work of Robert Jackson, who really believed in the idea that we need to have a trial and we need to show the triumph of the rule of law. And Jackson did that. He ended up, and you show it brilliantly and beautifully in the film, he ended up losing the appointment to the Supreme Court. He was out of town, out of mind when the Chief Justice died. This for him, and again, one would've imagined that you would appoint a Justice Supreme Court as a judge. They appointed Jackson as a prosecutor, going back to a much earlier experience, he hadn't been prosecuting for years. And then he has his great test. And as the film shows, he was uncertain that he was equal to it. And he ultimately was rescued by the British prosecutor.

Kirk Saduski

James, tell us, I think that Jackson is the linchpin character, what do you think?

James Vanderbilt

I do, I think he is too. And that was the great, I don't wanna say panic, but the discovery after I had optioned Jack's book that I really, I said, oh my gosh, this is more than just the story of these two men. And it was more than just a exploration of the nature of evil. It's really telling the story of what went on in the courtroom. And I think he is, you know, it's a movie that has some really dark things in it. But it is a story that also has some heroes. And I think Jackson certainly is one of them. And you know, he did this as Michael said, to great professional cost to himself. You know, he could have not, he could have stayed in Washington, he probably would've become the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, you know, for, you know, for a guy who never went to law school, that's pretty incredible what he was able to pull off.

Kirk Saduski

A hero, and I think, because in some ways, oddly, ironically, he offered some hope that we could, the world could experience this most horrific event, if you will. And I mean, the entire war, the largest event in human history, let alone the Holocaust, let alone the Shoah. And yet what Robert Jackson was able to do is to put it, to help us make some moral sense of it. The unimaginable became containable morally to an extent because of Robert Jackson, I believe.

Michael Berenbaum

He also, I gotta say one word for history. They gathered all the material, and consequently, everybody who works in this field goes back to the material that was gathered at Nuremberg. He shaped the first generation of historians who wrote about World War II, the first generation of historians who wrote about the Holocaust. And he gathered in one place, massive, massive, massive amounts of information. I have the proceedings, which take up two and a half bookshelves in my office because he understood that you had to gather, you had to research, and then you had to pull out the documents that made real sense.

Kirk Saduski

You know, I've been, as I mentioned, I've been fortunate enough to work on a number of historical dramas based on real people doing important things. When you work on these things, you always come away with favorite or most impactful moments, moments that really will stay with you in terms of what you've been able, hopefully been able to convey to an audience. I'll ask both you guys what will stay with you from Nuremberg and what it means for humanity.

James Vanderbilt

I think for me, and, you know, my experience was learning about this in the context of making a film and doing that research. So it, so I came to it, you know, very differently than I think a lot of people do. But it, you know, it was a moment where, you know, Michael Shannon has a line in the film where he is speaking to the Pope and he says, I believe this to be a good act. And I believe that too. I think it was a pretty extraordinary moment in time where a lot of the world came together to do the right thing, to choose justice over vengeance and to sort of say, no, this needs to happen. It's the harder thing to do. It would've been easier, I think, to execute them and turn the page. And, you know, they just fought a world war, you know, who wants to dwell? But it was the right thing to do. And, I take a lot of, I take a lot of hope from that.

Kirk Saduski

Michael, what stays with you?

Michael Berenbaum

Nuremberg itself was in the words of Robert Jackson, the trial was the greatest tribute that power had ever paid to reason, it didn't allow the full exercise of power. And instead it began to say, there is accountability and there is justice, even if it's an imperfect justice, even if it's only restoring the scaffolding of justice. And that from my mind, is that, and you have to understand my personal experience, I was in Rwanda, right after the genocide, so I was there even earlier than these trials were to the event itself. There were still open graves, mass bodies and the like. And I was there to advise the government as to how to document the crime before they erased the evidence by burying the bodies. So you understand how a world is shattered and how much you have to find the means to heal the world, at least to cover the wounds and begin to develop the scabs. And Nuremberg has been gone to again and again and again, that we have to hold people accountable for what they do, restore justice in whatever inadequate fashion we can, and allow the world to rebuild in the aftermath of destruction.

Kirk Saduski

This is sort of the cliche question. What do you hope audiences take away from your movie?

James Vanderbilt

I think it's a very valid question and not a cliche. And you know, my answer to that is I worked with a great filmmaker named David Fincher years ago who said something that's always stuck with me. And that is, good movies make you ask questions. Bad movies give you all the answers. And I think if anything, it's not necessarily a certain lesson that we're trying to teach or something that we're trying to preach to you. I think if this makes you curious about history, curious about this period of time, curious about the time we live in now and curious about the future and makes you ask questions in relation to the story we've told, then I think we've done our job.

Michael Berenbaum

I think it asked the question, what type of human being could do this, and who are we? I also come back to, the basic language in the field was established by a mistake by a great philosopher, by the name of Hannah Arendt, who spoke of the banality of evil. Her moral mistake was, it's not the banality of evil. It's the evil is not banal, it's extraordinary. It's absolute, it's off the charts. Who it is are the people who do this, you have the powerful leader and leaders in this case, of course Goering was one of them. And then you have the ordinary men and women who are capable of facilitating, bringing into being the worst evil imaginable. And then the question is, and what do we do with that? We have to restore justice. The semblance of justice, maybe even the illusion of justice, the scaffolding of justice, because without that, society cannot continue.

Kirk Saduski

Thank you guys very much. I know this is a field I'm very familiar with, and yet watching the movie brought me back to, it prompted numerous questions, James. So thank you very much, thank you, Michael. Thank you, James. This has been very enlightening. Thank you guys very much. I'm now joined by historian, Donald Miller, author of "Masters Of The Air, The Story of World War II" and numerous other great books. But today we discuss the real events portrayed in the film "Nuremberg" and the legacy of those trials 80 years later. So Don, we're here today to discuss the Nuremberg trials. This November, it will be the 80th anniversary of the start of the trials held in Nuremberg, which we'll talk about in a minute, why Nuremberg? But I believe that this is an unprecedented, this was an unprecedented event in that after a war, the victorious side held the losing side or the defeated side, legally culpable, if not morally culpable, what do you think?

Donald Miller

Well, yeah, I mean, what the Germans wondered, is this allied vengeance or is it gonna be justice? And that came up several times in the trial on the part of the defendants. So what is going on here and why are we in Nuremberg? One of the first things they had to do is they had to create literally a new kind of trial, because in all war crimes before, they were against the state, the crimes, these war crimes are directed against individuals. So that's a whole new ball game. And what's interesting about it too, is there's a lot of latitude given to those on trial. They can pick their own lawyer, they can pick a fellow Nazi, they're given wide latitude in the cross examination. Some thought, some of the justices thought too much, especially with Goering. He went on and on and on, and they weren't shutting him up. They could cross examine witnesses. The prisoners could, as could the lawyers. In one sense, it is a fair trial in one sense, but it's not a fair trial in another sense. Everybody knows they're gonna be hanged or a great number of them are gonna be hanged. They had to create the crime after the crime was committed. The defense lawyers thought that was unjust. They were making it up as they went along. It's a tough trial to try, it really is.

Kirk Saduski

Let's step back for a moment and lay out the case for having the trials in the first place. I know you've been, you and I have talked about it a bit, and I know you've been looking at this and it's important, as we've said, this is unprecedented, this kind of thing, especially holding individuals responsible for what a nation state had done. Why now, why after World War II? Why in 1945, did the world, certainly the Western allies and the Soviets thought so? Tell us why.

Donald Miller

I think it is because the crimes are so massive and hideous, and it was known throughout the war who was responsible for each of the various agencies. Everyone knew that Himmler was head of the SS, and Rohm was head of the SA. And so on down the line, there were, Goebbels was a propaganda minister. I don't think you ever had, you know, in a war crimes trial that many individuals, Robert Lay and things like that, who were easily identified with a particular crime. So, and they kept their own records as well. They will be tried on their records. I think one of the most important aspects of the trial, even before they laid out their trial strategy, was to collect documents. And they collected a treasure trove of documents. The first army was, at the time, in the Harz Mountains, they collected 10 miles long of transcripts that the Nazis had kept, including photographs and films. And when they opened this stuff, they wondered, Eisenhower wondered, why in the hell did they keep it? So all these records are there, but why keep them? And the only conclusion that Ike and others could reach is they didn't think they were ever gonna lose the war.

Kirk Saduski

Well, it's always been interesting, and when you see so much of the ghastly footage that most people now have seen. That prior to the liberation of the concentration camps, which comes at the very end of the war in Germany. But the film record prior to that. But the point is that the Germans took this themselves. They wanted a record of what, I guess they didn't see as a crime, something some of them actually were proud of. And there are photographs of German soldiers taking photographs of some of these horrific things.

Donald Miller

You know, we were doing a film a while ago about the Nazi regime, and we were collecting, trying to collect film that hadn't been shown before. And we found a lot of it, and we were up in Minsk. We found that there was an SS officer who lived in the town who had a film of a particular atrocity took place at his village. And when the Nazis first occupied the village, a sniper, a local villager knocked off a German officer. So they rounded up all the men in the village, and they put them onto deer stands, and they strapped them to the deer stands, and then they crucified them. But as they were crucifying them on the deer stands, excruciating way to die, they had their wives and children walk through the scene of crucifixion. It was like a Golgotha, you know, times nine. This SS officer still had the film. He filmed it and he was proud of it, and he considered it a valuable thing. And when we asked him why he filmed it, he thought that it was part of the glory of the Reich, that it had conquered these Untermenschen, these people who didn't deserve to live and who had committed a heinous crime, murdering an SS officer, and they deserved what they got. And then to hold on to that, and he was in his nineties at the time, to hold onto that all that time, and he said he'd shown it to other people. That's pretty incredible. I mean, when you see that kind of stuff, it's like, what is going on? There's a diary, these guys were trying to, these SS officers were trying to, and this kid comes out in the trial, these SS guys are trying to find and convince their superiors that there's a more efficient way to kill. They did it with gas vans. They said, well, this is efficient, because while they're being gassed, they can be driven to their graveside and just open the doors and dump 'em in the grave. This is a classic example of Teutonic efficiency, and they were really proud of it. But one of the Nuremberg investigators said the really impressive, in an awful way, part of this thing was the records, the way they were kept, they felt the need to document every death. And they made it up, so and so they'd make a name up, died of a heart attack, and then on that page you'd see 50 so and sos, and they all died within one minute of each other. Then you turn the page and there's 50 more so and sos and they all died of stroke. All of them one minute apart. It was the record that was important. They thought they'd be decorated for that.

Kirk Saduski

Well, let's step back and for a moment, and answer a basic question. Okay, I think we've discussed why there were trials. Let's discuss where the trials were held and why, why Nuremberg?

Donald Miller

The Air Force took the American prosecutors, and I think one of the British prosecutors, they were flying these missions over German cities, to photograph the destruction, you know, the Russians were pressing at the time for Berlin. They thought that was a logical spot. And Jackson came down for Nuremberg because one, he was absolutely stunned by the scope of the destruction. It was a dead city, only 1% of the city was left. The British had been hammering it. So there was no Nuremberg. But when they landed, they were told that the Palace of Justice, which was the Bavarian Court, the Palace of Justice was in pretty good shape. And then in the basement was a very large jail. So between the two, it was a, and the building itself, the superstructure was in pretty decent shape.

Kirk Saduski

Oh, they had the facility, as you said, the Palace of Justice was in good shape. They had a large enough jail to accommodate the prisoners and the guards. But, and so those are practical reasons and makes a lot of sense why Jackson would opt for Nuremberg. But there was also a symbolic reason. And Nuremberg played a special role, had a special place, I should say, provided a special place for the Nazis in the Third Reich, tell us about that.

Donald Miller

Most of the footage you see of the most grandiose Nazi rallies were filmed by Leni Riefenstahl, a very famous international filmmaker who worked in this case for the Fuhrer to film these rallies. And the Nazis would hold these magnificently choreographed rallies every year, going all the way back to the early 30s. Here's where the torchlight parades were held. The flag celebrations, the fireworks, the picnics. They watched Hitler descend from the sky like a god in his plane, they were there to meet him. And then there's the rally itself, which is stirring. And that's the thing about Nazism that you're getting at, Kirk. It's this very powerful emotional appeal. And they provided something for the German people. Yeah, we heard about the Volkswagens and the Autobahns and things like this, but commingled with that were river cruises, days at the beach, beer parties, dances. And it was for the small people, it wasn't for the elite. It was taking care of us. That's a really important part of it.

Kirk Saduski

Well, I think you could say, I'm not sure that Nuremberg was the spiritual home of Nazis, and I think that distinction belongs to Munich. But Nuremberg certainly was one of the most important cities in the Third Reich. And for what Nazism came to mean and symbolized, because not only were the rallies held there, but also it's where the so-called Nuremberg laws were proclaimed. And the Nuremberg laws, which were passed in 1935 were basically the laws that stripped Jews of all civil rights and basically made them non-citizens. And that I think very purposefully were proclaimed by Hermann Goering in Nuremberg. And then we cut to 10 years later, and that same Hermann Goering is on trial in Nuremberg for the crimes that he helped commit.

Donald Miller

Well, that, Kirk, is exactly the central point, and I'm glad you brought it up. They brought the Reichstag down there to convene, and when they passed these laws, they revoked the citizenship of every non-Aryan in Germany.

Kirk Saduski

I think we've established why Nuremberg as the general location. Let's get into the courtroom, Don, you and I have both been there separately. It's, when I went there a few years ago, I was struck at how relatively small it is, although it's smaller today because, so it's still an operating courtroom. It's used by the state of Bavaria today. But so when I was there a few years ago, they've had to accommodate because they expanded the court in those days to accommodate the press of people, and the press of press. But, so it's smaller, but you're still struck about, I was at least, tell me what you think, how close everybody was. How they were almost on top of each other.

Donald Miller

They knocked out walls. Walls that would've separated people. So everybody's together, the reporters sat alarmingly close to the defendants. The cross-examinations, the Nazis were lined up very close to the lawyers and just had to walk two or three steps down the aisle to get cross-examined themselves. There's almost a claustrophobic closeness about it, and it really is eerie. And from what I've seen in the films, it became particularly acute when they turned the lights out and they turned on the cameras, which of course click, click, click, click, click. And there was absolute silence in the courtroom because of the horror of the film. I mean, you not only see the gas chambers and things, what you see are dead bodies being bulldozed, moved around by bulldozed, hundreds of people at a time, broken bodies. It's excruciating to see, even Goering had to turn his face, and it's right on top of you in a big screen. Everything was so close. I mean, it must have been, don't you think, Kirk, it must've been so eerie to be close to these heinous figures that you read about.

Kirk Saduski

Day after day after day. With the evidence of what they did. You mentioned when the lights went down and the projectors went on and the click, click, click and then these images. And we have to understand that these images that now we are all too familiar with.

Donald Miller

Great point.

Kirk Saduski

We are distressingly familiar with, they, the people in that courtroom, including the defendants primarily, were not. And so imagine those images that still have the power to horrify us, almost force us to look away at some point. Imagine you were seeing this, not just seeing it for the first time, but realizing this actually happened. This actually happened not too far from where we're sitting right now. And so I can't imagine what that moment, those moments were like, tell us, because the film was so important. It was so important to the Jackson's case. He deliberately, as you mentioned earlier, the Americans, I believe was under the auspices of the OSS, were gathering film and evidence and photographic evidence across Germany right after the war. And Jackson and his staff made the decision that they were going to use film as a primary piece of evidence. Tell us about that.

Donald Miller

They almost didn't, and wild Bill Donovan, who headed the OSS, who did a lot of the collecting of the information, he said to the prosecutors, this is about three months into the trial. This thing ain't working because people are frankly bored with it. And the reason is that if you take the document route, the argument on that was we'll convict them with their own words. How can they deny their own words and signatures? But as Donovan pointed out, the lawyers insisted on reading the entire document aloud. It took a long time and it was very boring. And he feared that the case was being lost. He did manage to convince the main prosecutors. Jackson saw the film, I think he saw it twice. And he didn't have to be convinced at that point. He knew that it was compelling beyond belief.

Kirk Saduski

We've talked, and I want to come back to Goering in a minute 'cause you've written particularly persuasively about him in "Masters of the Air," but who's not there? Himmler's not there, obviously Hitler's not there.

Donald Miller

At the trial.

Kirk Saduski

Martin Bormann, at the trial, Martin Bormann. I mean, they're there.

Donald Miller

Martin Bormann, they haven't found his body yet.

Kirk Saduski

Yeah, talk about the men, these key Nazi leaders who weren't there.

Donald Miller

Well, Hitler was an ever-present, non-present but present at the trial. It kinda became uncomfortable after a while because these guys are trying to save their butts at first by blaming everything on Hitler and claiming they had no idea of the kind of orders that were issued, limited knowledge. They're not gonna admit that they had slaughter camps. That's not gonna happen. Goering said he knew and he told the prosecutors that he knew that people were being transported by rail to camps. He was not part of the inner decision to do that. That that was Himmler's province. The prosecution jumps on that and now Himmler becomes the prime target because he made a speech at a place called Posen in East Prussia. He made two speeches actually. And it was a long speech and it was recorded. So the prosecution had that, they had Himmler saying that this is the most glorious moment of the Reich. There is no reason to be ashamed of what we've done, and we will be thanked copiously by future generations for saving them from the Jews.

Kirk Saduski

I've heard that recording in German and, yes. And he goes on to say, and here's part of, well, several things that are interesting. One, 'cause he admits this is a glorious chapter in our history, but one that cannot be.

Donald Miller

Yes, yes, that's what he says.

Kirk Saduski

And he then goes on and congratulates the men of the SS and by extension himself that we've done this and we've remained decent men. How we were able to do that, how we were able to attempt to wipe out European Jewry and remain decent men. That's precisely what he said. Well, how do you wrap up on a topic like this? I know you had some things you wanted to say about Nuremberg and what it symbolized, what it meant at the time and what it's come to mean in the world, to the world since.

Donald Miller

Well, I'm glad we held the trial. I think the trial is a great history lesson for the German people. It didn't sink in right away, but it did in later generations. There was a new sense that maybe we have to pay for these sins because complicity is part of the crime. I hope this new film is coming out, help to bring about a freshened look at this. I go a thousand ways on this.

Kirk Saduski

What do you mean by that, my friend?

Donald Miller

I think Goering's daughter getting swept into this thing, you know, 'cause he was a kindly loving father. What happens to her life?

Kirk Saduski

But there were millions of kindly loving fathers and daughters.

Donald Miller

It threw off so many of the investigators. And I've read them through Eric Sevareid and other people. What Sevareid points out is that the salutations and postscripts at the end of a letter calling for the killing 2000 or 20,000 Jews, my dear Heidi, you know, hug your teddy bear for me. You know, papa will be home for Christmas. We'll have the best Christmas celebration ever. I mean, right in the middle of these other letters is this stuff. And then you read things like Goebbels killing his whole family, all his daughters.

Kirk Saduski

The sympathy that engendered by Goering's daughter and also, again, he became a, I'll say semi sympathetic character to some during the trial because of his outsized personality and his charisma, et cetera, and his intelligence. But it can never be forgotten that he wrote a letter to Reinhard Heydrich in 1940, in July of 1941, that essentially tasked Heydrich who was really basically the second in command at the SS with finding the final solution to the Jewish question.

Donald Miller

That's a very, very important point.

Kirk Saduski

And we know what followed. The prosecution against Nazi war criminals did not end in 1946, a series of 12 additional military trials were held against high ranking German leaders. These are known as the subsequent Nuremberg trials. Rebecca Erbelding, Holocaust historian joins me now. Hello, Rebecca, it's good to see you again.

Rebecca Erbelding

Hi, Kirk, it's nice to see you.

Kirk Saduski

We wanna talk not just about the subsequent trials, but some other aspects of the Nuremberg trials. A lot of people believe that there was the initial trial from November '45 to September '46, and that was it. But that was not nearly the case. Give us an idea of the subsequent trials. Where were they held? Who was tried and what the result was?

Rebecca Erbelding

I mean, I think when, you're right, that when people think about Nuremberg, they think about what we call the International Military Tribunal. The main trial of 22 leading Nazis pulled from the diplomatic core, the political core, the economics, even propagandists were put on trial in the initial Nuremberg trial. That was the one that was run by the British, the Soviets, the French and the Americans. But there are thousands of other trials. You know, each of the allies had their trials, there were British trials at Bergen-Belsen. There were American trials at Dachau, there were Soviet trials in Soviet territory. There were all of these different trials that were run by the allies. There were trials that were run by different countries in the post-war years. And then there were the subsequent Nuremberg trials that you mentioned. These also large trials that are looking at military leaders, Nazi party leaders, people who are wrapped up in what we now call the final solution, industrialists. These were kind of not the main guys, but often in their branch of whatever area of Nazi dom that they were in. They were the main guys. They just weren't the Hermann Goerings, they were the Otto Ohlendorfs, the Oswald Pohls, still incredibly complicit, guilty people, intimately involved in the Nazi project. And they were put on trial between December, 1946 and April, 1948 in the same courtrooms that the IMT had taken place. And so that's why they're called the subsequent Nuremberg Trials. They're also taking place in the Nuremberg courtroom and using some of the principles that had been established in the International Military Tribunal to try these guys. Almost 200 of them and one woman.

Kirk Saduski

Let's talk about some of the individuals, you mentioned Oswald Pohl. Where were these individual, these 200 plus men, plus the one woman? Where are they? What was their part in all of this?

Rebecca Erbelding

Yeah, so they, most of them were charged with war crimes, with crimes against humanity. Many of them were also charged for being members of one of the now criminalized organizations like the Gestapo, the SS, the SD, those were organizations that in the initial Nuremberg trials or the initial Nuremberg trial, the IMT, the judges had criminalized membership in those organizations. So a lot of people who were tried in the subsequent trials were found guilty just by being members of these now criminalized organizations. Oswald Pohl was the head of what was called the WVHA. It was the kind of economic branch of the SS, it was the administrative head of the concentration camp system after 1942. And so he, and the defendants that were with him, there were 18 defendants in that trial. It was trial number four. They were indicted for war crimes that were taking place within the concentration camp system and crimes against humanity that were taking place within the camp system. So this is plunder, this is murder, this is slave labor. This is all of the crimes that you would associate with a concentration camp and a killing center. That's what they're put on trial for. But it's very explicitly war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Kirk Saduski

You mentioned that in addition to the IMT and the initial 22 men that were tried, that separate countries, the British, the Soviets had their own trials. Tell us a little bit about that as well, and that, because those aren't considered the subsequent trials. Those are separate trials.

Rebecca Erbelding

Right, they were generally run by the military or by the occupying governments. Once, you know, Germany is defeated, I mean the Soviets start trying, their first trial is in 1943. And so as they start to push the Germans back, they are capturing people and putting them on trial. And you know, this is Soviet justice. And so in many cases there are show trials that are happening within the Soviet system. I mean, this is one of the challenges that the allies faced in organizing the IMTs. That you had separate systems of justice and separate understandings of what a trial is and what a trial should be. And so the Soviets are investigating crimes that had taken place on Soviet territory and running trials even while the war is still going on. The Americans and the British, their trials really start immediately after the liberation of concentration camps. A lot of the initial trials, especially in the American Zone, are taking place for crimes against American military personnel. So people who murder American pilots who have been shot down over their territory. Those are, you know, just the very initial trials in the spring and summer of 1945. And then they move on to people who are captured, who had been staff at Dachau, at Buchenwald. And those trials are largely held at Dachau. So the Americans are running those, the British are running trials at Bergen-Belsen. And it tended to be people who worked at concentration camps in the areas that are ally occupied. So the British, it was anybody the British captured, or anybody who worked at a camp that was in the British zone of occupation. And the same thing for the Americans.

Kirk Saduski

Well, let's step back and talk generally and go back to the IMT and talk about what, there were four main charges that were brought against the, there were 24 men indicted, but 22 were held trial. Were held, were tried, I should say.

Rebecca Erbelding

Right, and then 21 of them were actually there, because they tried Martin Bormann in abstention. So that's why it's all confusing whenever you try to do numbers.

Kirk Saduski

If you took a poll of most Americans, maybe most people in the world, they would answer, what was the Nuremberg? What were the Nuremberg trials about? And they would probably say the Holocaust. But that's not the case, tell us what were the charges. And the Holocaust really wasn't to a large, in fact, it wasn't referred to the Holocaust at the time at all. Wasn't really on the docket.

Rebecca Erbelding

Right, so the charges that are in the initial indictment are conspiracy to commit crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity. So that initial charge is a conspiracy to commit charge, conspiracy to commit all of these things. The second charge was crimes against peace. The third was war crimes. And the fourth was crimes against humanity. Now the judges kind of reject part of the first part of the indictment. They only take into account conspiracy to commit crimes against peace. They do not render anyone guilty for conspiracy to commit war crimes or crimes against humanity. So that's another way that Nuremberg gets complicated pretty early on. But you have to remember that, you know, crimes against humanity was not a crime in international law that had really been codified, that people had really taken a look at and defined very clearly. And so you have the allies kind of getting together and trying to define that so that they could charge people with that. But they are also cognizant of their own individual situations. So you have allies that are in very different places than they were before the war. You have the British who are trying to hold onto an empire. You have France who very rightly has concerns about their own collaboration. You have the Soviets who, you know, the numbers that I'm seeing are as many as one out of every seven Soviet civilians have been killed in the war. And so they are very clear about wanting this charge of an aggressive war and the conspiracy to commit crimes against peace. And you have the Americans who had been isolationists for 20 years, 20 plus years, and are now emerging as even more of a world superpower than they had been before the war. And so you have kind of the Cold War coming into Nuremberg. You have all of this intrigue, and you have all of the allied powers kind of jockeying amongst themselves for control of this trial. It's a really interesting moment in history. And the way that they start to think about the charges, particularly crimes against humanity, they have to be really careful because you can't include the aerial bombings of civilians in that charge, because everybody had done that. You can't criminalize a one party state, because the Soviets were a one party state. And so they had to be really careful and particular about how they are defining these charges to avoid accusations of hypocrisy. And of course, those accusations come because despite what the Soviets wanted, this was not a show trial. You know, the defendants were allowed to produce evidence, to have witnesses testify on their behalf, to present an argument against their own guilt. And some of that argument was, why are you saying that we are guilty of something that you also did?

Kirk Saduski

Hence the crimes against humanity.

Rebecca Erbelding

Right.

Kirk Saduski

How has the Nuremberg trials helped shape our view of the Holocaust? How has it contributed to, is it in any way, I don't wanna say detracted, but has it in any way diverted us from the reality, the historical reality of the Holocaust? How did the Nuremberg trials help us shape what we have come to know? This was not a contemporary term. How did the Nuremberg Trials help us understand what the Holocaust was?

Rebecca Erbelding

I think that this is a great question and a really complicated question because I think I can push back and say, did the Nuremberg trials help Americans understand the Holocaust? I think the prosecutors wanted the trials to help Americans understand what the Nazis had done. I mean, this is one of the reasons that they pushed so hard for so much evidence. You know, in late November, 1945, they show a film as part of the trial that is liberation footage of camps that the Americans and the British liberated. So they show that in the courtroom they have a spotlight on the defendants. Everybody, of course, is watching how the defendants are reacting to this very graphic liberation footage. And so the allies are trying to introduce this evidence, and the American prosecutors make it clear with the other allied powers that this is really important, particularly for an American audience, because Americans did not have firsthand views of Nazi crimes. You know, those crimes were not committed directly against Americans outside of the European Theater. So it was really important for the prosecutors. I would argue, I think that most Americans, by the time Nuremberg begins, are not paying that much attention to it, largely because there's so much else going on. You have soldiers returning, you have women leaving the workforce. I mean, if you look at, you and I have talked about 1945 before, if you look at just the ridiculous amount of things that happen in 1945, it's really a pivot point in the history of the world. And I think many Americans are caught up in that. And so it really takes for many people, until the Eichmann trial in the early 1960s, you know, the Soviets have survivors testify at Nuremberg, but that testimony is not in English, easily available to an American listener. It's not, you know, maybe it's on a news reel, I'm not sure, but probably not. It is confined to what you might read in the New Yorker, what you might read in, you know, your newspaper coverage of the day. It's not televised, it's not on the radio. And so even though this evidence is being introduced, it's then being filtered through the media to an American audience. And it depends on what else is going on in the news that day as to whether Americans are really paying attention to it. So I think, you know, it shapes the Holocaust in the sense that I think people do get this understanding that there are these major criminals, but I don't know that it really gives Americans an understanding of the scope and scale. You know, by 1947, are they paying attention during the Einsatzgruppen trial? Is there an understanding that more than a million people are killed by mass shooting? I don't know, I don't know.

Kirk Saduski

You mentioned Adolf Eichmann. I'm glad you did, because again, I would imagine if you took a poll of most Americans, again, maybe most people around the world, was Adolf Eichmann one of the defendants at Nuremberg. I'll bet most people would say yes, tell us the real story.

Rebecca Erbelding

I think you're right. No, Adolf Eichmann escaped justice immediately. He managed to get to South America. He was then captured by the Mossad and extradited to Jerusalem, and was put on trial in Jerusalem in the early 1960s. That trial was televised. A lot of that footage appeared in American mass media. And so for many Americans, that was the first time they actually heard, unless they knew someone personally, that would be the first time most Americans heard a Holocaust survivor on television actually talking about what had happened to them.

Kirk Saduski

Rebecca, you also mentioned the Einsatzgruppen, there was a separate trial, as you said, for the Einsatzgruppen. I think this is really important for people to understand because the murder sites were not the only place of execution for Europe's Jews. Tell us who the Einsatzgruppen were and what their trial was about.

Rebecca Erbelding

The Einsatzgruppen were German mobile killing squads. Generally, they followed behind the German army as it moved into Polish territory and then Soviet territory. And they rounded up people in towns, usually by calling them partisans or saying that they were somehow going to, they were somehow criminalized in the minds of the Einsatzgruppen. And they were taken usually outside of their town or into a forest nearby their town, and shot en mass, thousands of people per day, across mostly occupied Soviet territory, which included at that point, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, to the point where we now assume even higher numbers than they had assumed at Nuremberg. During the Einsatzgruppen trial, Benjamin Ferencz, who was the 27-year-old prosecutor of that trial, said that he estimated that more than a million people had been killed in mass shootings. We now estimate it's closer, upwards of two, maybe even more than 2 million people killed that way. And for those people, the Holocaust is not systematized persecution, ghettoization, concentration camp, killing center. It's not this kind of general flow. The Holocaust will take place in the course of a couple of days. The Germans come into your town, they round you up, they take you out into the field or into the woods. There's very little opportunity for immigration, certainly, but also for escape. And so it's an absolutely brutal way to die, a brutal way to be killed. And the Einsatzgruppen were one of the German mobile killing squads that were responsible for this. And so the heads of the four different Einsatzgruppen units were put in trial nine of the subsequent Nuremberg trials, which took place between September, 1947 and April, 1948, and then the other 20 defendants below them were part of different units within the Einsatzgruppen and the heads of those different units.

Kirk Saduski

One last question, was justice served at Nuremberg?

Rebecca Erbelding

Can justice be served after the Holocaust? Is one of the, I think, massive ethical and moral questions of the 20th century is how can you atone for this kind of crime, this level of crime? I think Nuremberg was important. I think it was important that the Allies ran the trial the way that they did. I think you can look back and recognize it as kind of a miracle that it happened, that the four allies managed to hold themselves together long enough to have this kind of trial. I'm glad that the evidence was presented the way that it was. And there have been, you know, ramifications of Nuremberg that have been incredibly positive. Things like, you know, after the Doctors' Trial, mandating that human experimentation needs explicit consent. That's a really important concept for us to have. Was Nuremberg perfect? No. Was justice served? I don't think I'm in the position to be able to say that. You know, I would leave that to survivors. And I think most of them would say that it's not possible.

Kirk Saduski

What could constitute justice when this is the topic? Rebecca Erbelding, thank you so much for talking with us today. I look forward to seeing you again, my friend.

Rebecca Erbelding

Thanks, Kirk.

Kirk Saduski

The film "Nuremberg" is in theaters now. You can visit the National World War II Museum in New Orleans or explore its website to read more about Nuremberg and watch oral histories of those who were there. And a special thank you to NPR stations KCRW and WLVR for their help recording this podcast.