History Series / Nuremberg

* TheSociopath: Rudolf Höss killed over 2 million Jews when he was commandant of Auschwitz. He never shows the slightest emotion when discussing it. Instead, he treats it all as a bureaucratic matter, talking about how inefficient other camps were, and the innovations he introduced to murder people and dispose of their corpses more quickly. He genuinely seems to view it as no different from any other job.

* InsigniaRipOffRitual: When the Nazis are taken to Nuremberg for the war crimes trial, the generals among the captured men appeal to the Allied servicemen on the basis of a soldier's honor. The Allied commander slash jailer walks up and rips off the epaulettes on their shoulders.
-->Now you're no longer soldiers. [[SuddenlyShouting YOU ARE ALL WAR CRIMINALS! ALL OF YOU!]]

* ActuallyPrettyFunny: While being questioned on the stand, Herman Göering is asked who came up with the idea to make Hitler both head of government and head of state. Göering claims that the Nazis modelled it after the similar dual roles of the U.S. President. The American prosecutors are visibly annoyed by this, but the chief British prosecutor can't resist a chuckle at his allies' expense.

** Robert Jackson considers quitting, prompting his assistant to ask him ''"Does Herman Göering actually believe in his ideals more than you believe in yours?"''

* BritishNazis: Hermann Göering was portrayed by British actor Creator/BrianCox. To add further irony, he makes several anti-British jokes.
* BigBad: Herman Goering, as the highest ranking Nazi official is depicted as the main antagonist of the film, holding authority over all of the other prisoners.

* InsistentTerminology: During Justice Jackson's questioning of Hermann Göering, he presents the memorandum in which Goering ordered Heydrich to organize the Holocaust, i.e. the FinalSolution. Goering protests that the proper translation is "Total Solution", completely ignoring that it's an order for genocide either way.

-->Now you're no longer soldiers. You are all war criminals, all of you!

* NotSoDifferentRemark: Göering points this out when talking about Hiroshima and US segregation laws.

* DramaticallyMissingThePoint: Höss makes it a point in his testimony that he is not a sadist, and that when carrying out the Final Solution he killed in a relatively swift, efficient, and entirely impersonal manner. It doesn’t ever seem to dawn on him that the fact he’s speaking about industrialized mass murder as if that were a nine-to-five job at an assembly line creeps everyone out.

* TheSociopath: Rudolf Höss killed over 2 million Jews when he was commandant of Auschwitz. He not only never gave it a second thought, he ''found a way to kill people faster!''

* AffablyEvil: Goering is gregarious, funny, and charismatic. He was also at the highest echelons of power of a regime that committed war crimes and genocide.

** [[spoiler: Hermann Göring swallows cyanide before the executions start.]]

** Jackson is shown giving the opening speech, the famous "That four great nations, flush with victory and stung with injury, stayed the hand of vengeance ..." speech was actually given by, at the time, 27-year old Ben Ferencz, the star of the Netflix documentary ''Prosecuting Evil''. He was an American Jew by immigration from Romania, grew up in Hell's Kitchen, graduated from Harvard, fought in the war, and was asked by the US Pentagon to document the concentration camps because of his background in criminology. He's currently the last surviving lead prosecutor of Nuremberg and dedicated his life to human rights. He's quite the badass and was said to have a much more aggressive and belligerent manner of conducting himself than Jackson or his boss.

** Jackson is shown giving the opening speech, the famous "That four great nations, flush with victory and stung with injury, stayed the hand of vengeance ..." speech was actually given by, at the time, 27-year old Ben Ferencz, the star of the Netflix documentary Prosecuting Evil. He was an American Jew by immigration from Romania, grew up in Hell's Kitchen, graduated from Harvard, fought in the war, and was asked by the US Pentagon to document the concentration camps because of his background in criminology. He's currently the last surviving lead prosecutor of Nuremberg and dedicated his life to human rights. He's quite the badass and was said to have a much more aggressive and belligerent manner of conducting himself than Jackson or his boss.

* BackfireOnTheWitnessStand: Ernst Kaltenbrunner's lawyer asked for Rudolf Höss to be brought in to testify on Kaltenbrunner's behalf. The prosecution doesn't object because it gave them to cross examine Höss. In direct examination Höss testified Kaltenbrunner never visited Auschwitz, hesitating when asked to confirm that. During the course of the cross examination Höss tells Jackson that his people killed over 2.5 million people during the time Höss was commandant at Auschwitz, bragging about how he discovered how to kill people faster by using Zyklon B. The testimony by Höss does absoultely nothing to help Kaltenbrunner escape a guilty verdict and death sentence at the end of the trial and likely sealed the fate of a number of the other Nuremberg defendants as well.[[note]]The real life Höss was found guilty of crimes against humanity at a subsequent trial and sentenced to death. He was hung at the camp he had ran on April 16, 1947.[[/note]]

* SexySecretary: Jackson's secretary and chief assistant, Elsie Douglas (Creator/JillHennessey), is stunningly beautiful, and the two end up having an affair during the trial. Their feelings are portrayed as genuinely mutual and there is no suggestion that their relationship is anything but entirely consensual, but the power differential does tend to raise some modern-day eyebrows.

** Jackson is shown struggling with his examination of Goering, before rallying and getting the better of ol' Hermann. In reality, observers agreed that Goering left his encounter with Jackson unscathed. Jackson, while a fine orator who wrote a great closing statement, hadn't been a trial lawyer in decades and the inexperience showed. It was actually the British prosecutor Sir David Maxwell Fyfe who pinned Goering to the wall on cross.

** Jackson is shown struggling with his examination of Goering, before rallying and getting the better of ol' Hermann. In reality, observers agreed that Goering left his encounter with Jackson unscathed. Jackson, while a fine orator who wrote a great closing statement, hadn't been a trial lawyer in decades and the inexperience showed.

** Jackson telling Elsee that they have some personal choices to make when they get home alludes to something that would not fly in the modern United States. In the late 40's, it was a career-ending scandal if someone, and especially important like a Supreme Court justice, were in an extramarital relationship. Sometimes this was even a crime, though it usually wasn't prosecuted.

** Earlier, Goering himself gets one from Captain Gilbert, the Jewish psychologist. Goering makes a dismissive remark about how the Nazis are being accused of so many appalling acts that it's hard to keep track of them all. Gilbert hits back with ''"Did you try?"'', effectively piercing Goering's self-delusion that he's ever been on the side of right.

* ArmorPiercingQuestion: Robert Jackson considers quitting, prompting his assistant to ask him ''"Does Herman Göering actually believe in his ideals more than you believe in yours?"''

* BackfireOnTheWitnessStand: Ernst Kaltenbrunner's lawyer asked for Rudolf Höss to be brought in to testify on Kaltenbrunner's behalf. The prosecution doesn't object because it gave them to cross examine Höss who was cross-examined by Jackson. In direction examination Höss testified Kaltenbrunner never visited Auschwitz, hesitating when asked to confirm that. During the course of the cross examination Höss states that his people killed over 2.5 million people. The testimony by Höss does nothing to help Kaltenbrunner escape a guilty verdict and death sentence at the end of the trial and likely sealed the fate of a number of the other Nuremberg defendants as well.