Top Photo: Nuremberg, 2025. Sony Pictures Classics. 

"The privilege of opening the first trial in history for crimes against the peace of the world imposes a grave responsibility. The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored because it cannot survive their being repeated. That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law is one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason."1

Throughout his time examining 22 top-ranking Nazi officials captured by the Allies, US Army psychiatrist Dr. Douglas M. Kelley found Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring to be “positively jovial over my daily coming.”2  When Kelley later left Nuremberg to return to the United States, Göring, one of the worst war criminals of all time, “wept unashamedly.”3  Kelley’s goal as psychiatrist for the imprisoned Nazi officials at Nuremberg was to determine and maintain their mental competency and ensure they were fit to stand trial, but he had a personal goal as well: to find out what made the Nazis evil. Was it a common mental disorder, a psychiatric cause, or something else?

Origins of Justice at Nuremberg

At the end of World War II, the Allies—the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and the Soviet Union—had to decide what to do with 22 captured top-ranking Nazis officials. They had three options: release them, shoot them, or try them. None of the Allies wanted to release them, for obvious reasons. The Soviets, with British support at first, wanted summary executions, and surveys at the time indicated that most American and British civilians did, too.4  

In a pivotal scene in James Vanderbilt’s 2025 film Nuremberg, Robert H. Jackson (played by Michael Shannon), US Chief of Counsel for the International Military Tribunal (IMT) tells Kelley (played by Rami Malek), the Army psychiatrist assigned to determine and maintain the prisoners’ mental fitness, that “if we just shoot these men, we make them martyrs. I’m not going to allow them that.”5  Nuremberg and the real Nuremberg Trials illustrate how the Allies sought to end World War II with justice, using law rather than vengeance to rebuild the postwar world.

In 1947, US Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson acknowledged that shooting the prisoners “would have satisfied the immediate requirement of the emotions, and in its own roughhewn way it would have been fair enough, for this was precisely the type of justice that the Nazis themselves had so often used.”6  However, in 1944, Stimson advocated for a trial, writing in a memo to Secretary of State Cordell Hull that “the method of dealing with these and other criminals requires careful thought and a well-defined procedure.”7  The following year, in 1945, Stimson argued that the “moral position” of the Allies would be challenged if they used Nazi methods and executed the prisoners without trial.8  

Hermann Goering testifies from the witness box at the International Military Tribunal trial of war criminals at Nuremberg. March 1946. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park

Nuremberg dramatizes this moral and legal crossroads in its depiction of one of the most consequential legal undertakings in modern history. Also known as the International Military Tribunal, the first of 13 total trials took place in Nuremberg, Germany, from November 1945 to October 1946. Vanderbilt’s film centers on Kelley and his evaluation of the 22 imprisoned top-ranking Nazi officials, including Reichsmarschall Göring (played by Russell Crowe). Kelley’s assignment functions as the connection between the film’s dramatic storyline and the historical foundations of the Nuremberg Trials. 

Why Nuremberg, and Why the Courtroom?

The United States spearheaded the Nuremberg Trials because Jackson helped lead the Allies in establishing the trials’ legal framework, also known as The London Charter. The Charter not only established the IMT but also enshrined unprecedented innovations into international criminal law, including the creation of three new crimes: crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. It also established that the Nazis would be tried for conspiracy to commit these crimes.

The courtroom at Nuremberg under construction for the IMT. Courtesy of the National Archives.

The Allies chose Nuremberg as the site for the trials for both practical and symbolic reasons. The city had a mostly intact courthouse and prison complex and was in the American occupation zone in Germany. It was also a significant site for the Nazi Party. In the 1930s, the Nazis enacted the Nuremberg Laws, legislation that stripped German Jews of their citizenship and laid the groundwork for the Holocaust. In the film, Jackson drives out to the Zeppelinfeld, where the Nuremberg Laws were announced, where the Nazis proclaimed their power to the world. There, he meets with Kelley and explains the significance of the site, emphasizing that because the Nazis’ crimes started with laws, “this war ends in a courtroom.”  

Jackson’s statement, though not documented in Jack El-Hai’s The Nazi and the Psychiatrist on which the film is based, encapsulates the symbolism of holding the trials at Nuremberg.  Before and during the war, Nuremberg served as the place where the Nazis started a war based on hatred. After the war, Nuremberg served as the place where the Allies ended the war with justice. It was a deliberate reversal of tyranny through law.

Competence, Sanity, and Douglas Kelley

At the heart of the film and the trials lies a complex question: what does it mean to be competent to stand trial? The Nuremberg defendants, including Göring and former Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess, were among the highest-ranking Nazi officials before and during World War II and were some of the worst instigators of human atrocity in history. Despite their crimes, however, the Allies declared that the 22 captured Nazi officials were entitled to due process, a principle which in American constitutional law presupposes a defendant’s mental competence.9  A declaration of incompetence would have statutorily prevented the Allies from trying the Nazis, destroying their goal of ending the war with justice. 

So, when Kelley arrived at the Central Continental Prisoner of War Enclosure No. 32 in Mondorf-Les-Bains, Luxembourg, also known as Camp Ashcan, his assignment “was to maintain the mental fitness of Göring and the other Nazi inmates until their disposition was determined.”10  Proving the defendants’ competence was essential to upholding the Allies’ commitment to bringing the Nazi officials to justice. In the film, Kelley tells translator Sergeant Howie Triest (played by Leo Woodall) that “if we could psychologically define evil, we could make sure something like this never happens again.”11  However, Kelley determined that the Nazi officials under his care were not special men. 

From left, Hermann  Göring, Admiral Karl  Dönitz, Admiral Erich Raeder, Rudolf Hess, Baldur von Schirach, and Joachim von Ribbentrop at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials. Courtesy of the National Archives. 

After rigorous mental evaluations, including Rorschach inkblot test and hundreds of hours spent talking to the prisoners, Kelley concluded in his book 22 Cells in Nuremberg that the Nazis “were not spectacular types, not personalities such as appear once in a century. They simply had three quite unremarkable characteristics in common—and the opportunity to seize power. These three characteristics were: overweening ambition, low ethical standards, a strongly developed nationalism which justified anything done in the name of Germandom.”12  He told a reporter after the war: “With the exception of Dr. Ley, there wasn’t an insane Joe in the crowd. … Their personality patterns indicate that, while they are not socially desirable individuals, their like could very easily be found in America.”13  By determining their competence, Kelley affirmed their accountability and validated the necessity of the Nuremberg Trials to demonstrate to the world that anyone who commits atrocities will not escape punishment. However, Kelley’s conclusion—that these men could exist anywhere in the world—haunted him for the remainder of his life. In the film’s final scene, the film Kelley paraphrases the real Kelley, who told a lecture audience that the Nazi officials were 

…people who exist in every country of the world. Their personality patterns are not obscure. But they are people who have peculiar drives, people who want to be in power, and you say that they don’t exist here, and I would say that I am quite certain that there are people even in America who would willingly climb over the corpses of half of the American public if they could gain control of the other half, and these are the people who today are just talking—who are utilizing the rights of democracy in an anti-democratic fashion.14 

Nuremberg captures the tension between Kelley’s psychological assessment of the prisoners and Jackson’s insistence that even those guilty of monstrous crimes must be tried to avoid making them martyrs. The film’s core dilemma—how to balance justice, legality, and morality in the face of mass atrocity—reflects the very real debate among the Allies in the aftermath of the war.

Conclusion

The Nuremberg Trials represented an unprecedented effort to confront the magnitude of Nazi atrocities through law, rather than vengeance. The trials forced the Allies and the world to grapple with fundamental questions of justice. Kelley’s assessments of the 22 top ranking Nazis on trial at the IMT ensured that they could—and would—be held accountable for their crimes. The trials also symbolized a moral reckoning: by situating justice in a courtroom rather than on the battlefield, the Allies demonstrated that law would define the postwar world. Nuremberg dramatizes this tension, emphasizing the ethical and procedural dilemmas the Allies faced. Jackson’s declaration in the film, “that it can never happen again,”15  captures the Nuremberg Trials’ ambition to ensure that law, not vengeance, remains the world’s answer to atrocity.

• 1

  Robert H. Jackson, “Opening Statement for the United States of America,” International Military Tribunal, November 21, 1945, 4. Accessed October 28, 2025. https://nuremberg.law.harvard.edu/documents/450105-opening-statement-for-the-united?mode=image&q=trial:imt+type:%22document%22. 

• 2

  Douglas M. Kelley, 22 Cells in Nuremberg (New York: McFadden 1947), 17.

• 3

  Kelley, 17.

• 4

  Tessa McKeown, “The Nuremberg Trial: Procedural Due Process at the International Military Tribunal,” University of Wellington Law Review, Vol. 45, No. 1 (2014), 110.

• 5

  James Vanderbilt, dir. Nuremberg, 2025. Sony Pictures Classics. 

• 6

  Henry L. Stimson, “The Nuremberg Trial: Landmark in Law,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 25, No. 2 (1947), 179. 

• 7

  Henry L. Stimson, “The Secretary of War (Stimson) to the Secretary of State,” Foreign Relations of the United States, Conference at Quebec, 1944, Document 90September 9, 1944. Accessed October 27, 2025. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1944Quebec/d90. 

• 8

  Stimson, 179. 

• 9

  United States Constitution, Amendment 14, Section 1.5.5.7.

• 10

  El-Hai, 16.

• 11

  Nuremberg, 20:07-14. 

• 12

  Douglas M. Kelley, “What Does It Mean to America?” 22 Cells in Nuremberg (New York: McFadden 1947), 171.

• 13

  El-Hai, 161-162.

• 14

  Douglas M. Kelley, “The Nuremberg Trial,” Lecture, 1946. Douglas McGlashan Kelley Archival Collection, University of California, Santa Cruz.

• 15

  Nuremberg,54:37