Misjudgment at Nuremberg | Alice Kaplan
In the first scene of Nuremberg, it is May 7, 1945, the last day of World War II in Europe, and refugees are trudging down a country road. A GI on patrol stops to piss on a swastika on the wing of a fallen German plane, and we hear the sound of piss against metal: it’s not a subtle message. Then a big Mercedes flying Nazi flags comes barreling down the road. As the GIs raise their guns, a pudgy hand in the backseat tears a strip of white cloth from his companion’s petticoat for the chauffeur to hang out the window. Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, supreme commander of the Luftwaffe, Hitler’s second in command, and the highest-ranking surviving Nazi leader, steps out of the car, stands at attention to announce his surrender, and orders the soldiers to carry his bags. Göring, played by Russell Crowe, is the troubling centerpiece of James Vanderbilt’s ambitious film devoted to the trial of the major Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg in 1945–1946. Billed as an “epic World War II …
