Customer Reviews

The American Experience: The Nuremberg Trials

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When the producers attempt to vacuum-pack, into one hour, the entire story of the first round of the war crime trials at Nuremberg (the trials themselves lasted very nearly a year), one has to expect that a fair amount of detail will be omitted. However, this production skims the surface to such a degree that this program can be, at best, regarded as the most basic introduction to the trials.

Really, this program should have been given the subtitle "Göring versus Jackson," because it is clear that the program focuses on the showdown between Hermann Göring and Robert Jackson as being the main event in the trial. It is hard to argue that the jousts between these formidable adversaries doesn't make for compelling television. However, so much else is left out that the great footage just isn't enough to salvage this effort.

For instance, one will not even be told the names of all of the defendants, why they were charged, and who got what sentences. It does not address how three defendants actually managed to be acquitted (which was considered by some at the time a major embarrassment to the Allies --- some observers suggested that all verdicts should be ignored and all defendants be summarily executed). It does not examine how Admirals Raeder & Dönitz managed to avoid execution while Generals Jodl & Keitel were hanged. It does not examine the murky reality that many defendants of the subsequent trials received milder sentences than they might have had they been tried in the first round.

All of this is ignored, and the program wraps up tidily, with Göring's suicide, after one hour. But it was far from a tidy affair, and some of the principals were left with mixed feelings as to whether or not justice was truly being served. For a more in depth analysis of the trials, I would recommend Telford Taylor's "The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials," which will show you all that you are missing by watching this program.

The Nuremberg Trials are arguably the most famous trials of the 20th century; they were conducted to try, convict, and execute the surviving Nazis members of Hitler Germany for war crimes during World War II. This is a decent video for someone who does not know anything about the trials. It would be good for instructional purposes for high school students.

Subject matter of this sort requires great detail and intense exploration, but this production has a cursory feel and plays like a cliffnotes version of history's greatest atrocity. It's not bad, but not definitive. There are better documentaries.