At the end of the Second World War, after the defeat of the Axis powers and Adolf Hitler’s suicide, the Allies were faced with answering a difficult question: what to do about the surviving members of the Nazi regime that had been captured in the liberation of Europe.
Led by United States Supreme Court Associate Justice Robert H. Jackson, the Allies set to work establishing a framework for a trial. And into this charged atmosphere stepped Lt. Col. Douglas Kelley, a quietly resolute U.S. Army psychiatrist tasked with a mission that was as novel as it was urgent. Kelley’s assignment was to probe the minds of the captured Nazi hierarchy – men whose decisions had devastated continents and annihilated millions.
“In the prisoners’ dock sit twenty-odd broken men. Reproached by the humiliation of those they have led almost as bitterly as by the desolation of those they have attacked, their personal capacity for evil is forever past. It is hard now to perceive in these miserable men as captives the power by which as Nazi leaders they once dominated much of the world and terrified most of it. Merely as individuals, their fate is of little consequence to the world. What makes this inquest significant is that those prisoners represent sinister influence that will lurk in the world long after their bodies have returned to dust. They are living symbols of racial hatreds, of terrorism and violence, and of the arrogance and cruelty of power.”
For writer and director James Vanderbilt, who learned about Kelley’s work in the pages of an article and a book proposal from author Jack El-Hai that would become the bestselling The Nazi And The Psychiatrist, the psychological and political machinations of Nuremberg became an undeniable fascination. Vanderbilt was captivated by the extraordinary intersection of history and human inquiry – a moment when the fate of the world’s most notorious war criminals depended not only on armies, or laws that had yet to be written, but on the fragile complexities of the mind.
What thrilled him as a filmmaker was the way El-Hai’s book peeled back the legal proceedings to reveal a gripping, intimate battle of wits between Kelley and the men he evaluated, most notably Göring. “Immediately, I thought, Oh, that’s a movie,” says Vanderbilt. “I’d never seen anything like it explored before, and I didn’t even know what the state of psychiatry was during World War II.”
Beyond his fascination with the psychological dimensions of Nuremberg, Vanderbilt was also propelled by a deep, personal sense of generational responsibility – a responsibility shaped by the ever-widening gap between the world of living memory and that of distant history. He reflected on the profound shift that has taken place as the direct witnesses of World War II fade from the collective stage, leaving their stories at risk of slipping into abstraction for new generations. The war, once a vivid reality for so many, now risks becoming little more than a chapter in a school textbook, its moral questions and human drama flattened by the passage of time.
“My grandparents fought in World War II, and I grew up hearing about it as a piece of living history,” he explains. Today, he finds himself grappling with a new challenge: “When I talk to my children about World War II now, it’s like talking to them about the Civil War. It feels so far removed for them, so it felt important to keep the stories of that time alive.”
Douglas Kelley ultimately reached a profoundly unsettling conclusion: the Nazi leaders, including Göring, were not clinical psychopaths or monsters in any medical sense. Rather, they were disturbingly ordinary men – shrewd, ambitious, and fully rational, yet capable of orchestrating unspeakable crimes under the right conditions.
This diagnosis challenged the world’s desperate need for simple answers or comfortable categories of good and evil. Kelley’s assertion that monstrous acts could emerge from ordinary individuals provoked fierce controversy among his contemporaries, many of whom recoiled from the idea that the line between good and evil was so fragile and human.
At Nuremberg, he was soon replaced by the psychologist Gustave Gilbert, who concluded that the Nazi leaders exhibited profound moral and emotional deficits – qualities he regarded as pathological and emblematic of an innate capacity for evil. As the world sought to come to terms with the legacy of Nuremberg, it was Gilbert’s damning psychological portraits that captured public attention and ultimately shaped the prevailing narrative. Gilbert’s perspective resonated with a public eager for clear moral boundaries, and his subsequent writings, particularly his detailed diaries, became touchstones for understanding the Nazi psyche.
Kelley, by contrast, saw his more nuanced conclusions pushed to the margins. As Gilbert’s views took hold and were widely publicized, Kelley’s own reputation and sense of mission seemed to erode. In a chilling echo of the very men he had studied, Kelley ultimately took his own life in 1958 by ingesting cyanide – the same lethal substance Hermann Göring had used within hours of his scheduled execution.
“Nobody escapes from war unaffected,” notes Vanderbilt. “You can’t ignore what happened to Douglas Kelley at the end of his life. It’s such a deliberate thing that it’s hard not to see some kind of symbolism in what happened to him.”
Intent on adapting El-Hai’s book, Vanderbilt soon determined that the narrative should center not on Kelley’s entire biography, but rather on this specific period of his life, and the bigger picture surrounding it. This approach allowed Vanderbilt to incorporate Robert Jackson’s efforts in organizing the trials and provide a more comprehensive view of this singular event in history.
“I made a decision very early on that the story I wanted to tell was the story of what happened to Kelley in Europe,” Vanderbilt explains. “Jack’s book covers his entire life in a beautifully written way, but Robert Jackson’s storyline is not in the book. As I continued my research, the story grew and grew. I knew I needed to keep the guardrails up on what we were going to portray in the film.”
Central to Vanderbilt’s task was a preoccupation with the enduring lessons the events at Nuremberg sought to impart – those that resonated, those that faded, and those now drifting toward oblivion. “Evil isn’t always going to put on a scary uniform,” Vanderbilt says. “It’s not always going to announce itself. It can be insidious. It can be – as Göring was – the nicest guy at the dinner party. That’s a much scarier thought than good guys versus bad guys.”
Through this lens, Vanderbilt set out to illuminate the subtle, chilling ways darkness can infiltrate the ordinary, entertaining audiences with a remarkable true story, while challenging them to confront the discomforting fragility of moral boundaries.
In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, as the world grapples with the unveiled horrors of the Holocaust, U.S. Army psychiatrist Lt. Col. Douglas Kelley (Rami Malek) is assigned the extraordinary task of assessing the mental state of Hermann Göring (Russell Crowe), the notorious former Reichsmarschall and Hitler’s second in command, along with other high-ranking Nazi officials. As the Allies – led by the unyielding chief U.S. prosecutor, Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson (Michael Shannon) alongside Sgt. Howie Triest (Leo Woodall), David Maxwell-Fyfe (Richard E. Grant), Gustave Gilbert (Colin Hanks), Col. John Amen (Mark O’Brien) and Burton C. Andrus (John Slattery) – navigate the monumental task of creating an unprecedented international tribunal to ensure the Nazi regime answers for its atrocities, Kelley gets to know his ‘patients’. But he soon finds himself locked in a psychological duel with Göring, whose charisma and cunning reveal a sobering truth: that ordinary men can commit extraordinary evil.
The Journey To Screen
“I often get asked what the hardest script I ever wrote was, and it’s usually the one I’m currently working on,” quips Vanderbilt. “But I will say Nuremberg was particularly challenging, because the story kept growing.”
The story of Douglas Kelley had first been brought to him by producer Bradley J. Fischer. While producing the Martin Scorsese film Shutter Island Fischer stumbled onto El-Hai’s book The Lobotomist, which he went on to option and set up as a series at HBO. So, when El-Hai finished writing his new work The Nazi And The Psychiatrist for Scientific American magazine, Fischer was one of the first producers with whom he shared it, along with his plans to expand it into a book.
“Jack has an extraordinary knack for finding these old tales that have been lost to the pockets of history,” says Fischer, who had particularly responded to the cat-and-mouse game played by Kelley and Goring. “There was this incredible sense of manipulation that occurred between them. Kelley was starstruck by this guy, and Göring latched onto that for his own benefit. There was great tension in the story between them, and a lot of fascinating, terrifying levels to unpack. To find that kind of drama enshrined within a relatively obscure chapter of the history of WWII – between the capture of what remained of the Nazi High Command and their trial by the Allies at Nuremberg – was a profoundly rare opportunity to me, as a film producer.”
Vanderbilt, known to his collaborators as Jamie, immediately saw the same potential. Sparked to the possibility of bringing this lost story to the screen, he plunged into years of rigorous research on Kelley and the trials, immersing himself in archives, court transcripts, memoirs, and the entwined lives of the people at the heart of Nuremberg.
As he worked to refine the screenplay, it became clear to him that the complexity of these events could not be captured by focusing solely on the psychological chess match between Kelley and Göring. Vanderbilt felt compelled to broaden the narrative’s scope and weave in other pivotal figures whose actions and perspectives shaped the course of history. Among them, chief prosecutor Robert Jackson, whose impassioned drive established the very framework of the trials, and his British counterpart David Maxwell-Fyfe; Col. Burton Andrus, the warden tasked with the daunting responsibility of guarding the Nazi defendants; and psychologist Gustave Gilbert, whose own interpretations of evil stood in sharp contrast to Kelley’s. Each of them became essential threads in the tapestry Vanderbilt sought to weave.
“Initially, I thought the film might be about two men in a cell, because just reading Jack’s book, there’s already so much depth in there,” Vanderbilt notes. “But as I read Douglas Kelley’s book, 22 Cells At Nuremberg, and looked at his observations of the men he studied, I started researching the trials themselves, and the scope just kept growing. When I read Robert Jackson’s story, and how he and Kelley intersected, I knew the movie had to include it.”
Vanderbilt was struck by the monumental efforts of Robert Jackson in laying the foundations of the International Military Tribunal, better known as the Nuremberg Trials. He felt it essential that the screenplay not only highlight Jackson’s legal prowess but also chronicle the tireless journey that took him from the corridors of Washington to diplomatic meetings in London and even the halls of the Vatican. By tracing Jackson’s travels and relentless negotiations, Vanderbilt sought to capture the extraordinary international coalition-building required to bring the architects of atrocity to justice – an odyssey as dramatic and consequential as anything that transpired inside the courtroom itself.
It was during his exhaustive research that Vanderbilt also stumbled upon the remarkable story of Sgt. Howie Triest – a young German Jewish émigré who, having fled the Nazis as a boy, returned to Europe in a U.S. Army uniform to serve as an interpreter at the Nuremberg Trials. Vanderbilt was captivated by the tragic arc of Triest’s family: Howie’s escape from Germany, the loss of loved ones to the Holocaust, and his improbable return to the very heart of postwar justice. The weight of Triest’s perspective proved irresistible to Vanderbilt, who recognized that weaving Howie’s singular vantage point into the script would deepen the film’s emotional resonance and illuminate the trials from a profoundly personal lens.
But as Vanderbilt wove together the disparate strands, he found himself confronted by the enormity of synthesizing so many vantage points into a coherent whole. Each narrative thread threatened to pull the film in a different direction, demanding that the structure stretch and contort beyond the boundaries of conventional screenwriting. It became clear that capturing the true magnitude and nuance of the Nuremberg story meant relinquishing the safety of tidy, three-act formulas. Instead, Vanderbilt embraced a messier, more organic approach, accepting that the truth of history, with all its interwoven complexities, could not – and should not – be forced to fit the established rules of cinematic storytelling.
“It’s sort of wonderful and terrifying not to have the traditional, three-act structure,” laughs Vanderbilt. “I suppose I’m attracted to movies that don’t hit every beat the way you’re supposed to, but it is nerve-wracking.”
Fortunately, Vanderbilt is no stranger to such unconventional structures, having worked to adapt Robert Graysmith’s book about the Zodiac killer for David Fincher’s 2007 masterpiece Zodiac. Among its quirks, the fact that the two lead characters don’t meet until the halfway point of the narrative mirrors itself in Nuremberg with Kelley and Jackson’s late first encounter. “Doing Zodiac gave me some confidence that I might know how to build this. Once I determined the movie would be about these three men, and we were going to follow them wherever they might go, that built the structure for me.”
“One of the things Jamie really latched onto, I think in a similar way to ZODIAC, was to look at the procedure of the trials – how the sausage really got made,” notes Fischer, who had produced Fincher’s film. “I credit Jamie with pulling open other history books and getting into Robert Jackson’s story; the onus Jackson took upon himself and his team to pave the way for international law.”
For his part, author Jack El-Hai appreciated Vanderbilt’s talent for finding new angles in Kelley’s story. “The mental adjustment I made when I optioned the book was that it wasn’t my story anymore,” says El-Hai, who visited the film’s set during production and was always on hand as a resource for Vanderbilt and the cast and crew. “I concluded my book is what it is, and that will never change, and that it’s wonderful to have somebody like Jamie, with a creative vision, to tease out other things from this story, and to expand the scope.”
Key in Vanderbilt’s mind was the idea that he wanted to create an accessible retelling of this history. “It was important to me that the movie not overstay its welcome,” he says. “I wanted it not to feel like medicine. I wanted it to be entertaining. It deals with some really serious themes, but a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.”
Says Rami Malek, who would eventually be cast to play Douglas Kelley, “Jamie writes with great structure and rhythm, and he finds that thrilling quality we saw in ZODIAC. There’s also a dry sense of humor that is a thread throughout this entire film, because it’s a story about human beings, and in certain circumstances humans must find their own ways to escape the horrors. The way Jamie threads that needle so finely and elegantly, with characters you can root for in every corner of the film, is extraordinarily unique to him.”
It always starts from the top, says Russell Crowe, who would become the first cast member to sign on. Crowe notes that Vanderbilt’s commitment to the project reflected on every department. “Jamie has been a writer for other people, and he’s seen his ideas shaped by other people. That creates a level of determination within an artist, that when he gets that opportunity to direct, he knows what he wants to create.”
The Psychology Of Evil
At the center of Nuremberg’s narrative lies the riveting dynamic between Lt. Col. Douglas Kelley and Hermann Göring. Their relationship forms the emotional and psychological core of the film, as Kelley seeks to understand the mind of his infamous patient, the charismatic and cunning Göring. Through a series of probing interviews and tense exchanges, the film explores the blurred boundaries between fascination and revulsion, empathy and condemnation. The evolving interplay between Kelley and Göring not only illuminates the complexities of evil but also challenges both men – and the audience – to confront uncomfortable truths about power, responsibility, and the human psyche.
For Russell Crowe, tapping into the humanity and inhumanity of a character like Herman Göring was an irresistible draw, even if he knew it would be an enormous challenge. “For the most part, the things that attract me are the things that terrify me,” he says. “I responded to the script straight away, but in a funny way I was also emotionally exhausted by it. How would you even attempt to play that guy? When that kind of question comes up, that’s usually what I’m attracted to.”
An Eager Psychiatrist
To play alongside Crowe’s Göring as Douglas Kelley, Vanderbilt knew he needed to find an actor who could not only go toe-to-toe with Crowe in their scenes together, but who could capture the nuance of personality that Kelley represents; a man who found himself charmed by the charisma of Hermann Göring, but who ultimately sounded the most cogent alarm about how dangerous these charms could be.
Kelley, says Vanderbilt, was a contradiction himself. “He was a scientist, and he was also an amateur magician who used to volunteer to sit in the backseat of cockpits to help the army test the effects of G-forces on the human body. We’re putting a psychiatrist on screen who is like nothing you’ve ever seen. He’s a daredevil, he’s a bit rash.”
Indeed, beyond his accomplishments as a psychiatrist, Douglas Kelley harbored a lifelong fascination with magic, delighting in the art of illusion and often performing sleight-of-hand tricks for friends and colleagues. This passion for magic was more than a mere hobby; it reflected his curiosity about the mind’s capacity for wonder and deception. Kelley saw parallels between the magician’s craft – misdirection, reading an audience, psychological manipulation – and his own work in psychiatry, where understanding human behavior and uncovering hidden truths were essential. His skills even found their way into his professional life, whether entertaining fellow doctors at conferences or employing psychological insights drawn from magic to better understand those he was tasked with analyzing.
Malek hadn’t just stopped at the script, but had charged ahead through Jack El-Hai’s source material, and summoned up a copy of 22 Cells At Nuremberg, Douglas Kelley’s book about his experiences there, which was not easy to track down having been out of print for decades. “I love history, and if you give me something to read, I’ll always gravitate to nonfiction over fiction,” says Malek. “Reading this script, I felt exactly as I hope audiences will when they come out of the movie, which is a sense of, ‘How did I not know this?’ It was a very unique perspective into one of the most devastatingly dangerous moments in history. It was shocking, and I found it so profoundly well-written and balanced. I thought, How can I be a part of this?”
Writer and director James Vanderbilt
James Vanderbilt is a talented writer, director, and producer whose diverse catalogue of films range from heavy-hitting blockbusters to edge-of-your-seat thrillers. Vanderbilt sold his first screenplay 48 hours before graduating from the University of Southern California. It was promptly not made.
He has written and produced over twenty films, including: David Fincher’s ZODIAC, for which he was nominated for a Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay; THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN films; the MURDER MYSTERY films; BASIC; THE RUNDOWN; THE LOSERS; WHITE HOUSE DOWN; THE HOUSE WITH THE CLOCK IN ITS WALLS; Luca Guadagnino’s SUSPIRIA; READY OR NOT; and the upcoming READY OR NOT 2.
In 2019, Vanderbilt co-founded the independent production and financing company Project X Entertainment (PXE), with partners William Sherak and Paul Neinstein. Since its launch, the company has produced: SCREAM (2022) and SCREAM VI, both of which Vanderbilt co-wrote; Michael Bay’s AMBULANCE; Radio Silence’s ABIGAIL; MURDER MYSTERY 2; and FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH. They are currently in production on HEADWATERS for Sony and SCREAM 7, as well as the global smash hit Netflix series THE NIGHT AGENT, created by Shawn Ryan.
Jack El-Hai bestselling The Nazi And The Psychiatrist
Jack El-Hai is the author of THE NAZI AND THE PSYCHIATRIST: HERMAN GÖRING, DR. DOUGLAS M. KELLEY, AND A FATAL MEETING OF THE MINDS AT THE END OF WWII (PublicAffairs Books), which has been adapted into the movie NUREMBERG. He is also an executive producer for the film. Published in nineteen languages, the book won a Minnesota Book Award for general nonfiction.
El-Hai’s writing covers history, science, medicine, and crime. His other nonfiction books include THE LOBOTOMIST: A MAVERICK MEDICAL GENIUS AND HIS TRAGIC QUEST TO RID THE WORLD OF MENTAL ILLNESS (Wiley; adapted into an American Experience/PBS documentary), FACE IN THE MIRROR: A SURGEON, A PATIENT, AND THE REMARKABLE STORY OF THE FIRST FACE TRANSPLANT AT MAYO CLINIC (Mayo Clinic Press), and THE LOST BROTHERS: A FAMILY’S DECADES-LONG SEARCH (University of Minnesota Press; adapted into the LONG LOST podcast).
He has contributed longform narratives and essays to The Atlantic, Smithsonian, GQ, Wired, Scientific American, and many other publications. He also publishes the free monthly Damn History newsletter for writers and readers of popular history. Born in Los Angeles, El-Hai received his Bachelor’s degree from Carleton College in Minnesota and his Master’s of Fine Arts degree (in nonfiction creative writing) from Bennington College in Vermont. He is a past president of the American Society of Journalists and Authors and is a past board chair of the Loft Literary Center. He lives in Minneapolis.
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