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Russell Crowe will play convicted Nazi Hermann Göring in the new movie Nuremberg, being directed by James Vanderbilt
Based on Jack El-Hai’s book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist, Nuremberg tells the story of Kelley’s interactions with the group of Nazi criminals tried at the end of the war. As well as Göring and Ley, Kelley was the first Allied psychiatrist to evaluate Nazi leaders like Rudolf Hess, Julius Streicher and Karl Dönitz. And while the trials themselves have been adapted to film before — notably in Stanley Kramer’s 1961 epic Judgment at Nuremberg — Kelley’s particular take on what he witnessed has been largely ignored.
Kelley was young and eager to prove himself, but as he faced the men that had brought the world into its deadliest war, he came to understand the ease with which evil can pervade society. He returned from the trials determined to sound a warning that such a malignant slide would be possible again if it weren’t properly guarded against. But in the immediate relief of the war’s end, few were prepared to listen.
The Nuremberg trials exposed the dark secrets of the Nazi regime, but they also reassured people that the monsters had been dealt with. Kelley’s book about his experiences, and the warnings it contained, failed; overshadowed by the work of Gustave Gilbert, the psychologist brought in to reevaluate his findings. Kelley ultimately died by suicide in 1958 having taken potassium cyanide, the very same drug that Göring had indeed used to “escape the hangman’s noose” after his conviction.
Kelley was young and eager to prove himself, but as he faced the men that had brought the world into its deadliest war, he came to understand the ease with which evil can pervade society. He returned from the trials determined to sound a warning that such a malignant slide would be possible again if it weren’t properly guarded against. But in the immediate relief of the war’s end, few were prepared to listen.
The Nuremberg trials exposed the dark secrets of the Nazi regime, but they also reassured people that the monsters had been dealt with. Kelley’s book about his experiences, and the warnings it contained, failed; overshadowed by the work of Gustave Gilbert, the psychologist brought in to reevaluate his findings. Kelley ultimately died by suicide in 1958 having taken potassium cyanide, the very same drug that Göring had indeed used to “escape the hangman’s noose” after his conviction.
