Nuremberg – review

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/jun/14/nuremberg-film-review

Version 0 of 1.

"He who battles monsters should see to it that he thereby does not become a monster," wrote Friedrich Nietzsche; these words underpin any attempt to subject criminal regimes to the rule of law. This documentary, commissioned by the US War Department in 1946, was screened in Germany as part of the de-Nazification programme, but never released in the US and Britain. It is a near-contemporaneous record of the Allied attempt to prosecute prominent Nazi leaders, and proceeds in deliberately artless fashion, essaying in preçis the legal charges and proofs while resisting voyeuristic lingering on the reactions of the accused: Goering, Speer et al, are not even clearly identified. Much of the evidential atrocity footage of was filmed by the Nazis themselves, all the more traumatic to see now because of its unfamiliarity. Meeting the demands of justice whilst filtering out the thirst for vengeance is no easy matter; here, the distinction is a matter of primacy.