On May 8, 1945, “der dicke Hermann,” or “Fat Herman” to the German public, stepped out of his vehicle.
With the writing on the wall, Hermann Göring, the leader of the Luftwaffe, had surrendered to the Americans.
Now, based on Jack El-Hai’s book “The Nazi and the Psychiatrist,” director James Vanderbilt is bringing Göring’s 18-month incarceration and trial to the big screen in “Nuremberg.”
Starring Rami Malek as Lt. Col. Douglas Kelley, the U.S. Army psychiatrist assigned to interview the Nazi leader, the film follows Malek’s character as he interrogates Göring, played by Russell Crowe.
Held alongside 51 senior Nazi leaders, Göring was confined in Prisoner of War Camp No. 32, known to its inmates as the “Ashcan.” Kelley was the first Allied psychiatrist to evaluate him and other Nazi leaders such as Rudolf Hess, Julius Streicher and Karl Dönitz. His work, however, has been largely overshadowed by that of Gustave Gilbert, the psychologist brought in to reevaluate his findings.
According to historian James Holland, “Göring’s dandy image made him a persistent figure of ridicule. Germans mocked him and the foreign press painted him as an overweight buffoon. But Göring was a colossus in every way: a wily Machiavellian with an outsize IQ, skilled at combining charm, guile and ruthlessness to get what he wanted — skills he employed to the end.”
“I responded to the script straight away, but in a funny way I was also emotionally exhausted by it,” Crowe told the news site Deadline. “How would you even attempt to play that guy? When that kind of question comes up, that’s usually what I’m attracted to.”
During his incarceration Göring lost weight, detoxed from his steady war diet of morphine, and, writes Holland, “demonstrated acute intelligence, guile, wit and even charm.”
While imprisoned, the Nazi managed to befriend his guard, Lt. Jack G. Wheelis, and physician Ludwig Pflücker. During the trial, he ran rings around his prosecutor, even managing to draw laughter from onlookers.
It is, though, the psychological duel between Kelley and Göring that appears to be at the heart of “Nuremberg” — until a vial of cyanide spared Göring the noose.
“He couldn’t help but empathize with [Göring],” Malek told Deadline. “For Kelley to be so convinced that he was there to ‘dissect evil,’ as he explains in his book, and then to discover there’s nothing uniquely evil about Göring; in fact, there’s humanity in there. He realized that anyone at any moment in any political landscape could be capable of an atrocity like that. How jarring, and how absolutely terrifying that must have been.”
Joining Malek and Crowe is Michael Shannon, playing chief U.S. prosecutor, Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson; Leo Woodall as Sgt. Howie Triest; Colin Hanks as American psychologist Gustave Gilbert; and John Slattery as Burton C. Andrus, U.S. Army officer and commandant of the Nuremberg Prison.
“Nuremberg” is in theaters Nov. 7.
Claire Barrett is the Strategic Operations Editor for Sightline Media and a World War II researcher with an unparalleled affinity for Sir Winston Churchill and Michigan football.