Nuremberg: How to Put the Banality of Evil on Trial (and on Screen)?

[Audrey Plan is a Research Engagement Specialist at University College Dublin, and Adjunct Assistant Professor at Trinity College Dublin. She holds a PhD from Trinity College Dublin and specialises in sociolegal research of international courts.]

Nuremberg (2025) is the latest attempt to put the first, and arguably most famous, International Criminal Law (ICL) trial on the silver screen. Released in November 2025, the movie follows a handful of key personalities involved in the proceedings of the first round of trials of the International Military Tribunal, between 1945 and 1946. The main point of view character, and audience surrogate, is US army psychiatrist Douglas Kelley, brought in to provide an evaluation of the twenty-two members of the Nazi leadership meant to stand trial. Among them, the movie singles out Robert Ley, Karl Dönitz, Julius Streicher, Rudolf Hess, but most of all, Hermann Göring. 

Nuremberg —the movie— is not overly interested in the legal challenges and seismic shift brought by the very concept of an international criminal tribunal (for this, Tokyo Trials will be a better recommendation). But director James Vanderbillt, who also wrote the screenplay, was interested in a different question. As Kelley gets to ask aloud early on:

“What if we could dissect evil? What sets these men apart from all others? What enabled them to commit the crimes that they did? […] So how do people become like that? We actually have a shot to figure that out. To find out what makes the Germans different. […]”

One of the key character arcs of the movie will actually be Kelley’s, as he reaches the conclusion that his initial question was misplaced. There is nothing that sets Germans, or Nazis, apart from the rest of humanity. The movie is not subtle about this being an important takeaway. The very final scene features Kelley, back from Nuremberg and trying to promote his book on a radio show:

Host: Dr. Kelley. I find some of the conclusions in your book quite unbelievable. You were dealing with the Nazis, who you must admit are unique people.

Kelley: They are not unique people. There are people like the Nazis in every country in the world today.

Host: Not in America.

Kelley: Yes, in America.

A warning tale in the context of rising autocratic legalism in major democracies, and an attempt to demystify and de-glorify the Nazi regime and its leadership, who had its own well-oiled propaganda machine (including through fiction and non-fiction movies)? A cinematic endorsement of not only Kelley’s learnings and conclusions , but also of Arendt’s banality of evil analysis of Nazi atrocities? A good echo of The Zone of Interest’s own thesis of everyday evil and diffuse complicity under the Nazi regime?

Well… not quite.

The Banality of Evil, Hollywood and “Spinach Movies”

While this banality of evil is the conclusion that is said out loud, the narrative of the movie says something different. Much of the tension throughout its 148-minute runtime stems from the dynamic between three characters:  Dr Kelley, Hermann Göring (the highest-ranking, and most high-profile accused on trial at Nuremberg), and US Prosecutor Robert Jackson. This narrative follows classic story beats and tropes of the conflict-based drama: Kelley as the likeable, tortured anti-hero who grows intellectually and personally from the events of the movie; Jackson as the righteous and driven prosecutor sacrificing a spot as SCOTUS Chief Justice in his quest for international justice; and Göring as the charismatic, shrewd and complex antagonist that all must unite to take down.

The movie cannot let go of the focus on Göring, and what makes him unique, special, covering him in mystic.

“Göring: What did [the Rorschach test] teach you about me?

Kelley: Honestly, that you are highly intelligent.

Göring: I could have told you this.

Kelley: And that you’re a narcissist. You’re into an expansive and aggressive fantasy life. With a strong ambition and drive to subjugate the world as you find it.”

Under the banality of evil, there is no antagonist other than the banality of evil itself. But it makes for a poor antagonist, in a Hollywood movie. Or, in the words of Vanderbilt, it makes for “spinach movies”, where the watching experience is comparable to doing homework and eating vegetable: profoundly un-entertaining, and un-engaging.

The movie can say that there is nothing special about Göring (“You know, I spent thousands of hours with him. I run hundreds of tests. You know what sets him apart from us? Nothing.”). But it stills shows that Göring’s intellect, charisma and ruthlessness were so compelling that it caused Kelley to mentally crumble and get discharged from the military. That Jackson failed to make him break when he took the stand. That Göring still won by taking his own life and “escaping the hangman’s noose” as he promises early on. 

The modern, popular movie, demands a conflict between protagonist(s) and antagonists(s) with opposite goals. The narrative of the movie provides an explanation as to how the conflict is resolved. Movie representations of atrocities provide a truth to navigate (appropriately or not) trauma, a brutality that we can barely process, let alone comprehend. A narrative provides one explanation, provides coherence, a rational. 

Therefore, Nuremberg ends up torn between its knowledge that there was “nothing special” to Nazis, or the Germans, that allowed them to commit mass atrocities; and the need to tell a compelling story, both because of its very medium (a movie) and its subject matter (understanding the inhumane).

But in this, Nuremberg  —the movie— perhaps reflects Nuremberg —the trials— and a challenge that international criminal law at large always faces.

The Unavoidable Legal Narrative of the Trial

Trials have long fascinated film directors, playwriters or even video games creators. There is a narrativity, a performance to the trial, with its cast of well-identified characters, conflict and resolution that lends itself to dramatization. This narrativity of the trial as a performance is mirrored by the narrativity of the legal truth that emerges from it. A judicial decision is an exercise in story-telling, selecting and ordering facts to put in the decision, in order to reach a satisfying and coherent conclusion.

The criminal trial, in particular, is character-driven and sees truth-seeking battle the need for a compelling narrative. This has multiple consequences, including expectations of “ideal victims”. But, in a mirror effect, ICL also expects an ideal guilty party. Criminal responsibility under international criminal law is individual rather than collective or diffuse. The narrative then offered by the trial needs to convincingly match the individuals taking stand with the crime for which they are tried. For atrocity crimes, and particularly those that require a certain scale such as crimes against humanity or genocide, tracing a line from command to criminal act is a challenge. ICL offers different modes of responsibility specifically to deal with these complexities, such as command responsibility, co-perpetration or aiding and abetting. But at the end of the day, a legal truth emerges from the trial, supported by the narrative weaved throughout the judicial decision.

This legal narrative cannot exist without characters, identified as more blame-worthy than others. It is fundamentally incompatible with the logic of the banality of evil, where nothing sets Nazi leadership or high-ranking officials apart from any other participant or even bystander to the mass atrocities committed throughout Europe before and during WWII.

Telling a Story, Against All Odds

“Law lives on narratives.” This is the limit of ICL as a tool of international justice: among other issues, it cannot do justice to the factual reality of atrocity crimes, the lived experience of victims. Similarly, the Hollywood movie as a medium cannot capture the complex and insidious social dynamics that lead to mass atrocities. Both need to attribute blame to a quasi a-human person, the only one who could have facilitated or committed an a-human crime. This is a problem if, as argued by Hovell, “treating these crimes as alien to humanity does not engender greater understanding of their causes or assist in their future deterrence”.

Nuremberg —the movie—, and Nuremberg —the trial—, movies and international criminal trials, are constantly trapped in this struggle. Neither will ever be fully able to make sense of senseless atrocities. And yet, there is enormous value in relying on narratives and storytelling, on both counts. Nuremberg is a movie that is seemingly confused because it is aware of its own limits: the character arcs (“Do you want to know why it happened here? Because people let it happen.”) and the narrative (“Hermann Göring and his Hitler-loving cronies are scheduled to face off with our boys in one week. Will justice prevail or will the fascists go free?”) go in opposite directions. Both realities need to co-exist.

Similarly, ICL needs to co-exist with its own limits, acknowledging that it cannot be the be-all and end-all of the aftermath of crimes of atrocity. Constrained by its own need for a narrative, it needs to make space for mechanisms of transitional justice, better able to cope with the banality of evil, relying less on storytelling and narratives, and more on remedies and reconstruction.

The author is grateful to David Kenny (Trinity College Dublin) for his feedback on an earlier draft of this post.