Nürnberg: Gefangen zwischen Banalität und Hollywood

Abstract

The film Nuremberg presents the major war crimes trial in front of the International Military Tribunal as a pop-cultural engagement with the founding moment of modern international criminal law. The article examines how the film depicts law and legal history, and what alterations it makes to the historical proceedings. Its point of departure is Douglas Kelley’s finding that the defendants he studied were not psychologically abnormal outliers – a perspective the film adopts from a psychological standpoint, while at the same time relativizing it through the necessity of cinematic dramatization. In retrospect, Kelley’s finding can be interpreted in light of Hannah Arendt’s later concept of the “banality of evil“.