Tom Howard: Parallels of 'Nuremberg' with our current political climate are frightening

To The Daily Sun,

Recently I watched “Nuremberg,” a 2025 movie based upon the International Military Tribunal held to try the Nazi High Command following the end of World War II. The charges were crimes against peace; war crimes; crimes against humanity; and of a common plan or conspiracy to commit those crimes.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, chief prosecutor for the United States, in his opening statement before the court stated, “The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored because it cannot survive their being repeated.

“We will show them [defendants] to be symbols of racial hatreds, of terrorism and violence, and of the arrogance and cruelty of power. Wars are no longer local. All modern wars become world wars eventually. But the ultimate step in avoiding periodic wars in a system of international lawlessness is to make statesmen responsible for the law. We are able to do away with domestic tyranny and violence and aggression by those in power against the rights of their own people only when we make all men answerable to the law.”

A main character in the movie, an Army psychologist, states, “If we could psychologically define ‘evil,’ we could make sure something like this never happens again.” And in describing Hermann Goering, successor to Adolf Hitler, “You are a narcissist given to an expansive fantasy life, with a strong ambition and drive to subjugate the world as you find it to your own pattern of thinking.”

Spoiler alert: Justice Jackson established case laws at Nuremberg that have become the bedrock for modern war crimes prosecutions. The parallels that can be drawn with our current political climate are frightening. So, unless readers' fear learning from a history lesson, watch “Nuremberg.”

Tom Howard

Moultonborough