Mrs. WYpoxic, some friends and I watched Nuremberg last night.
Damn.
Warning: movie spoilers going forward (even though we already know the actual history, I’ll bet most people don’t know the details).
I was struck by a few things that absolutely related to our current situation here in the U.S. and in the world in general.
First and foremost, the people who committed the atrocities of World War II were just that… people. We tend to elevate some people- both good people and evil people - to be larger than life. The individuals in Nazi leadership were viewed as fearsome and intimidating. However, when it came time for them to meet their final fate at Nuremberg via hanging, several of them broke down into blubbering, sobbing pathetic creatures. Historically, the same holds for autocrats when they meet their fate: Muhammar Qaddafi was found hiding in a culvert and suffered an ignominious cowardly death at the hands of regular people; Saddam Hussein was found hiding in a hole in the ground and died by hanging; Nicolae Ceaucsescu of Romania died by firing after his palace was rushed by the public; Hitler shot himself in an underground bunker, and Goring died by cyanide capsule in his prison cell at Nuremberg to avoid hanging in public.
The moral? Autocrats and tyrants should not be accorded the elevated status they so badly desire. They should be shamed, humiliated and treated with derision and disdain whenever possible. They are just people who’ve managed to accrue power due to coercion and instilling hatred in some and fear in the rest of us. They do not have superpowers.
However, for me, the most profound scene was a radio interview Douglas Kelley, the real life the U.S. psychiatrist who worked with Goring and the other German prisoners at Nuremberg, does after the trials have ended and all the Nazis are convicted. While the dialogue is fictional, it closely mirrors the actual writings of Kelley in his book “22 Cells in Nuremberg” published in 1947. Here is the movie dialogue:
Interviewer: “I have to be honest Dr. Kelley. I find some of the conclusions in your book quite unbelievable. You were dealing with the Nazis, who you must admit are a unique people.”
Kelley: “They are not a unique people. There are people like the Nazis in every country in the world today.”
Interviewer: “Not in America.”
Kelley: “Yes, In America! Their personality patterns are not obscure. They are people who want to be in power. And while you say they don’t exist here, I would say I’m quite certain there are people in America who would willingly climb over the courses of half the American public if they knew they could gain control of the other half.”
Interviewer: “Doctor, please.”
Kelley: “They stoke hatred. It’s what Hiter and Goring did and it is textbook. And if you think the next time it happens, we’re going to recognize it because they’re wearing scary uniforms… you’re out of your damn mind.”
To add context, here a few actual quotes from Kelley’s book:
“These men were not ‘insane’ in the ordinary sense of the term.”
“We are not dealing with a group of madmen… but with men who were in many respects quite normal.”
“The potential for such behavior exists in all of us.”
“The conditions under which these men operated must be understood…”
In his book, Kelley states that he believed that evil does not require insanity - it can arise from ordinary people operating without moral restraint or emotional connection to others.
The movie ends with a quote from RG Collingwood, the English philosopher and historian: “The only clue to what man can do is what man has done.”
Deep breath.
It’s past time for opponents of the Trump Administration, the legacy media and regular people to clearly state that many people in America still do not recognize where we are right now politically, culturally and socially.
Our duly elected President is a pathologically lying, malignant narcissist who lacks any moral restraint or emotional connection to others. He is the definition of evil.
People like Stephen Miller and Pete Hegseth are not insane, yet they display all the traits that Dr. Kelley’s would describe as being “evil”.
Others - such as JD Vance, Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, Scott Bessent, Howard Lutnick, Marco Rubio, et. al. – while nominally “quite normal” people and not clinically evil, are weak sycophants willing to go along with Dear Leader for their own designs on power
They came to power, and seek to maintain power, based on hatred, division and fear
While this cabal has not yet sank to the deplorable depths of systemic and organized slaughter that the Nazis engaged in, they have:
Willingly set the conditions that killed several Americans, and shown no remorse
Created an organized system of ICE camps that have resulted in a significant number of deaths
It can happen here. In many ways, it already is. Some of the ways to fight against evil are to call it what it is, educate others, and push back at every opportunity.
Nuremberg has its flaws, but it depicts human horrors that - unfortunately – are being both forgotten and even denied in the mists of passing time. It depicts what Hannah Arendt coined “the banality of evil” in her book “Eichmann in Jerusalem”.
Everyone should watch this movie.
