History Series / Nuremberg

** There were actually nine judges at the real Nuremberg trial. Here, it is watered down to four.

''Nuremberg'' is a 2000 miniseries based on the main IMT 'Nuremberg' Trials of 200 Nazi leaders for [[UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity]] conducted during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII. It consisted of two episodes and starred Creator/AlecBaldwin, Creator/BrianCox, Creator/MichaelIronside, Creator/JillHennessy, Creator/ChristopherPlummer, Creator/ColmFeore and [[LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters many, many others]].

** While it is easy to see the Nazi high command get executed, the argument that the Allies are not any better would very much apply in the modern era, especially to the Soviets. In the modern era, regardless of whether who wins or loses, anyone can be tried for war crimes. However, whether they will face any serious ''consequences'' depends on the extradition laws of their countries of residence, many having been tried ''in absentia''.

** [[YesMan Wilhelm Keitel]] builds up his defense on this principle.

* JustFollowingOrders: [[YesMan Wilhelm Keitel]] builds up his defense on this principle.

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

* FamousLastWords: Some of the defendants who are sentenced to death are shown while delivering their last speeches on the gallows. The writers goofed with Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, whose last words weren't "Deutschland über alles!" but "Alles für Deutschland!".

* BritishNazis: Hermann Göering was portrayed by British actor Creator/BrianCox.

''Nuremberg'' is a 2000 miniseries based on the main IMT 'Nuremberg' Trials of 200 Nazi leaders for [[UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity]] conducted during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII. It consisted of two episodes and starred Creator/AlecBaldwin, Creator/BrianCox, Creator/MichaelIronside, Creator/JillHennessey, Creator/ChristopherPlummer, Creator/ColmFeore and [[LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters many, many others]].

''Nuremberg'' is a 2000 miniseries based on the main IMT 'Nuremberg' Trials of 200 Nazi leaders for [[UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity]] conducted during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII. It consisted of two episodes and starred Creator/AlecBaldwin, Creator/BrianCox, Creator/MichaelIronside, Jill Hennessey, Creator/ChristopherPlummer, Creator/ColmFeore and [[LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters many, many others]].

* YourCheatingHeart: Jackson begins to have an affair with his secretary Elsee while he is in Nuremberg. He later says that when they get home, they have to make a personal decision.

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

* RedemptionEqualsDeath: Hans Frank shows remorse for the crimes he committed while he was Governor-General of the General Government in occupied Poland, but this isn't enough to spare him the gallows.

* TooDumbToLive: Jokingly, Göering states that Ribbentrop should be hanged for his foolishness.

* AntiVillain: Invoked by Albert Speer in his self-portrayal, and played straight in this miniseries. AsYouKnow the 'anti-Nazi' attitudes which he claimed to have had during the war never manifested themselves until his capture, until which point he had only ever been a loyal and active Nazi.[[note]]During the war he assumed leadership of the ''Wehrmacht'' Armaments Ministry and folded Fritz Todt's ''Organisation Todt'' into it, controlling nearly half of Germany's entire armaments output. He negotiated and coordinated increases in armaments production with the ''Luftwaffe'' Four Year Plan Organisation and together they gave subsidies and technical aid to help private and state-owned German corporations expand existing and develop new industrial plants which used low-skilled labour. They then enslaved several million Soviet [=POWs=] and civilians, Polish civilians, French [=POWs=], and various Undesirables and other peoples and rented them out to those same companies. Speer and co. forbade the companies from giving the non-Slavic and non-Undesirable slaves lethally low wages or unsurvivable workloads, but permitted them to treat the others as they liked. Consequently, Slavic-Undesirable slave life expectancy averaged three months by the winter of '44-'45. Speer later lied about his awareness of said slaves' death rates and life conditions, and about [[UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust the direct killing of Undesirable slaves whom starvation and hard labor had rendered unable to continue working without a recuperation period (chiefly at the Auschwitz-II/Birkenau complex)]].[[/note]]

* ActuallyPrettyFunny: While being questioned on the stand, Herman Goering is asked who came up with the idea to make Hitler both head of government and head of state. Goering 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.

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

** Averted when Göring reminds Dr. Gilbert that Nazi antisemitic laws were inspired by English and American racist theories (actual defendants used American forced sterilization laws as a defense to their own-essentially a [[AdHominem tu quoque fallacy]]).
** Wilhelm Keitel is referred to as an admiral, when in reality he was a field marshal.

-->'''Jackson:''' Witness, there is evidence before this court that nearly 10 million people have been exterminated-murdered in cold blood. ''You mean to say that you did not, and in your opinion Hitler did not, know what took place in the concentration camps?''

* BritishNazis: Hermann Goering was portrayed by British actor Creator/BrianCox.

* HangingJudge: Soviet judge Iona Nikitchenko. [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] by what people like Keitel, Rosenberg and Frank did in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. If he'd had his way, there wouldn't have been any trials at all. Ironically this depiction is contrary to real life, where it was in fact Churchill who wanted to execute the Nazis without trial and it was ''Stalin'' who insisted on trying them in court. The trials had already been decided on by the time of that meeting and Nikitchenko advocating to the Western Allies the opposite from what Stalin ordered would have had serious consequences. However, they wanted trials [[KangarooCourt like those in the Soviet Union]] (Nikitchenko was one of the judges in the Moscow Show Trials).

** There's a moment where Goering is presented with the document which he sent to SS General Reinhard Heydrich to organize the Holocaust, but he still claims that this doesn't mean that the SS had anything to do with it. The entire courtroom does a double take from the blatant untruth of this statement, and even Goering himself has an OhCrap expression when he realizes what he just said.

* InsistentTerminology: During Justice Jackson's questioning of Hermann Goering, 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.

* LaughingMad: Rudolf Hess, who has received a life sentence, bursts into a fit of manic laughter [[spoiler:after the executions]].

* NotSoDifferent: Göring points this out when talking about Hiroshima and US segregation laws.

** Albert Speer presents himself as an otherwise sensible bureaucrat who simply worked for an evil regime before he had a crisis of conscience. In reality this was more complicated; while Speer was saner than the vast majority of his colleagues, he was careful to downplay his own war crimes during the trials and in his memoirs (which still forms the dominant narrative about his conduct during the war to the general public).

* TooDumbToLive: Jokingly, Göring states that Ribbentrop should be hanged for his foolishness.

* VillainHasAPoint: Göring is lying when he talks about not being personally complicit in the Holocaust, but part of what makes him so charismatic is that he makes plenty of solvent points about the {{double standard}}s that are being applied to the Germans simply because they lost, or how the supposedly contrite Speer is intentionally trying to portray himself in the most sympathetic manner possible.

** Göring to Jackson.

* YesMan: All of the defendants, according to Göring, as an explanation for their "JustFollowingOrders" defense and why they won't take any responsibility for the Holocaust. In his words: "all the no-men are six feet underground."

** Jackson telling Elsee that they have some personal choices to make when they get home alludes to something that would not fly in the United States. In the late 40's, it was a crime for someone, especially a Supreme Court justice, to have an affair.

* 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 ritual mass-murder as if it were a nine-to-five job at an assembly line creeps everyone out.

* HotBlooded: Julius Streicher is a capricious, rude, loud antisemite.

** Gestapo chief Ernst Kaltenbrunner's entire strategy of legal defense is to deny everything he's done and everyone who claims that he engaged in war crimes as a liar, even when the prosecution presents him with incontrovertible evidence and multiple witness testimonies to prove it.

* NotSoDifferent: Göring points this out when talking about Hiroshima and segregation laws.

* VillainHasAPoint: Göring is lying when he talks about not being personally complicit in the Holocaust, but part of what makes him so charismatic is that he makes plenty of solvent points about the double-standards that are being applied to the Germans simply because they lost, or how the supposedly contrite Speer is intentionally trying to portray himself in the most sympathetic manner possible.

* 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 ritual mass-murder as if it were a nine-to-five job at an assembly line '''creeps everyone the fuck out.'''

* VillainHasAPoint: Göring is full of shit when he talks about how he wasn’t complicit in the Holocaust, but part of what makes him so charismatic is that he makes plenty of solvent points about the double-standards that are being applied to the Germans simply because they lost, or how the supposedly contrite Speer is intentionally trying to portray himself in the most sympathetic manner possible.

''Nuremberg'' is a 2000 miniseries based on the main IMT 'Nuremberg' Trials of 200 of 200 Nazi leaders for [[UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity]] conducted during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII. It consisted of two episodes and starred Creator/AlecBaldwin, Creator/BrianCox, Creator/MichaelIronside, Jill Hennessey, Creator/ChristopherPlummer, Creator/ColmFeore and [[LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters many, many others]].

Some tout it as [[HollywoodHistory an almost propagandistic re-iteration of the contemporary US government's portrayal of the trial process.]] Others note that it is flawed, especially in its sympathetic portrayal of such figures as Albert Speer, but is nonetheless an interesting miniseries with well-developed characters which stimulates interest in the events.

* AntiVillain: Invoked by Albert Speer in his self-portrayal, and played straight in this miniseries. AsYouKnow the 'anti-Nazi' attitudes which he claimed to have had during the war never manifested themselves until his capture, until which point he had only ever been a loyal and active Nazi. [[note]] During the war he assumed leadership of the ''Wehrmacht'' Armaments Ministry and folded Fritz Todt's ''Organisation Todt'' into it, controlling nearly half of Germany's entire armaments output. He negotiated and coordinated increases in armaments production with the ''Luftwaffe'' Four Year Plan Organisation and together they gave subsidies and technical aid to help private and state-owned German corporations expand existing and develop new industrial plants which used low-skilled labour. They then enslaved several million Soviet POW & civilian, Polish civilian, French military, and various Undesirables and other peoples and rented them out to those same companies. Speer &c forbade the companies from giving the non-Slavic and non-Undesirable slaves lethally low wages or unsurvivable workloads, but permitted them to treat the others as they liked. Consequently, Slavic-Undesirable slave life-expectancy averaged three months by the winter of '44-'45. Speer later lied about his awareness of said slaves' death rates and life conditions, and about [[UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust the direct killing of Undesirable slaves whom starvation and hard labour had rendered unable to continue working without a recuperation period (chiefly at the Auschwitz-II/Birkenau complex)]] [[/note]]

* DeliberateValuesDissonance: Given the time period, obviously this happens

* DirtyCommunists: {{Averted}}.

* GreedyJew: Julius Streicher openly and proudly admits considering this stereotype as a matter of fact.

* HollywoodHistory:
** Averted when Göring reminds Dr. Gilbert that Nazi antisemitic laws were inspired by English and American racist theories (actual defendants used American forced sterilization laws as a defense to their own-essentially a [[AdHominem tu quoque fallacy]]).
** Wilhelm Keitel is referred to as an admiral, when in reality he was a general.
** 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.

* 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.

* YesMan: All of the defendants, according to Göring as an explanation for their "JustFollowingOrders" defense and why they won't take any responsibility for the Holocaust. In his words: "all the no-men are six feet underground."

** While it is easy to see the Nazi high command get executed, the argument that the Allies are not any better would very much apply in the modern era, especially to the Soviets. In the modern era, regardless of whether who wins or loses, anyone can be tried for war crimes.

* Jackson telling Elsee that they have some personal choices to make when they get home alludes to something that would not fly in the United States. In the late 40's, it was a crime for someone, especially a Supreme Court justice, to have an affair.

* YouCheatingHeart: Jackson begins to have an affair with his secretary Elsee while he is in Nuremberg. He later says that when they get home, they have to make a personal decision.

* LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters

* 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 ritual mass-murder as if it were a nine-to-five job at an assembly lines '''creeps everyone the fuck out.'''

* DramticallyMissingThePoint: 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 ritual mass-murder as if it were a nine-to-five job at an assembly lines ‘’’creeps everyone the fuck out.’’’