Credit: Netflix

Netflix is not exactly short of historical titles, but the World War II movie that has viewers in a chokehold with its streaming availability is Nuremberg. And perhaps a lot of the credit goes to its real-life inspiration rooted in history.

Adapted from Jack El-Hai’s 2012 nonfiction book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist, Nuremberg tells the true story of a US Army psychiatrist who evaluated 22 high-ranking Nazis before their respective trials for war crimes committed during WWII.

Nuremberg, the war drama movie, currently streaming on Netflix, is set during a time period when Nazi Germany was falling to the Allied forces, with American troops capturing Hitler’s second-in-command, Hermann Göring.

After hearing the news, US Associate Supreme Court Justice Robert H Jackson agrees to become a part of something he wasn’t before: a panel of world powers that charges Göring and other Nazi leaders for their war crimes, setting the stage for the first model of the international prosecution of war criminals. For Jackson, punishing the anchors of Hitler’s regime through legal conviction and sentencing is the only way for the world to heal.

While at it, if the conviction serves as a cautionary warning to would-be-dictators, then it would be killing two birds with one stone. So, as part of Jackson’s efforts to create the International Military Tribunal, US Army psychiatrist Douglas Kelly was appointed to examine and analyse the mental health of the prisoners. Although Kelly confronted massive contempt from most prisoners, his exchanges with Göring were surprisingly civil.

But that doesn’t change the fact of his assessment that Göring was an extreme narcissist who believed he would walk away without consequences. Nuremberg follows Kelly as he continues his interviews with Göring, slowly embroiling himself in a psychological showdown, fleshing out the existence of any potential moral ground in a war and leaving the question out on the loose about whether Kelly can deliver or if Jackson will walk into a trap questioning Göring on the stand.

For those still curious, Nuremberg is based on the Nuremberg Trials, in which 22 Nazi leaders were tried for their war crimes between November 1954 and October 1946 by an international tribunal.

When WWII came to an end, the Allied powers went into lengthy discussions about what to do with the Nazi war criminals that had been captured. Some supported summary execution, but US Secretary of War Henry Stimson insisted and reminded that how the victors handled the residuals of the Nazi regime would automatically influence the Allies’ moral standing, especially if they turned to Hitler’s evil tactics to execute them without trials.

It was in the aftermath of this that Jackson advocated for the establishment of a legal framework for the trials, which included three newly prosecuted crimes: crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Göring and other Nazi leaders were found guilty of various combinations of all three.