- The tragic story of Hermann Wilhelm Göring
History often remembers tyrants and warmongers for their crimes, but rarely does it pause to explore the deeper tragedy behind their choices.
In James Platten Vanderbilt’s film Nuremberg (2025), German Nazi politician and military leader and convicted war criminal Hermann Wilhelm Göring re-emerges not simply as Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s second-in-command or the architect of racial laws, but as a cautionary emblem of a man who gave his loyalty to the wrong cause and never once questioned it.
His performance at the Nuremberg trials reveals a chilling truth: loyalty, when divorced from morality, becomes a weapon more dangerous than any gun. The film captures this dangerous devotion with unsettling clarity. In Göring’s eyes, serving Hitler was a mission, a calling, a destiny. Even as the evidence of genocide piles before him, he refuses to abandon the man that he worshipped. Nuremberg turns this courtroom into a stage where loyalty itself is cross-examined, revealing how it can elevate, corrupt, and ultimately destroy. Göring’s tragic arc sheds light on why intelligent, capable men sometimes march proudly toward the wrong side of history.
The charismatic rise: Göring’s self-made illusion
At the start of the film, Göring’s imposing stature and refined confidence announce him long before he speaks. He enters the courtroom not as a defeated man but as a former war hero, determined to recite the narrative that he built for himself. The movie carefully portrays how Göring crafted this self-image: an aristocrat, a warrior, and above all, a loyal servant of the German people. His past as a decorated pilot becomes his shield, a way to claim legitimacy even after participating in the construction of a murderous regime. The film does not shy away from exposing how this charisma helped Hitler rise to power. Göring was persuasive, charming, and dangerous.
His early loyalty to Hitler stemmed from admiration, but it quickly evolved into something more potent: a belief that Hitler embodied Germany’s destiny. Nuremberg shows how this belief blinded Göring to Hitler’s brutality, allowing him to justify actions that would later shock the world.
Loyalty as ideology: the Führerprinzip on display
One of the film’s most powerful lines occurs when the prosecutor confronts Göring with the scale of the Nazi atrocities. Rather than distancing himself from responsibility, Göring calmly states that even knowing everything, he would still follow Hitler. The courtroom falls silent. This moment lays bare the dangerous force behind the Nazi hierarchy: the Führerprinzip, or the leader principle, where loyalty to the Führer superseded all moral and legal constraints. Göring embodies this principle throughout the film. His unwavering faith in Hitler was not an accident, it was the core of his worldview.
To Göring, disloyalty was treason against the nation. The film reveals the terrifying consequences of such blind obedience. It demonstrates how loyalty, when weaponised by an authoritarian state, becomes a path to atrocity. When Göring speaks, he speaks for an entire generation of men who surrendered their conscience in the name of devotion.
Bureaucracy as a weapon: the administrative face of persecution
A defining scene in Nuremberg occurs when the prosecutor hands Göring a 1939 decree on forced Jewish emigration. When asked to translate it, Göring offers a softened interpretation, calling the measures administrative and orderly. But the prosecutor’s reading exposes the truth: it was a ruthless directive enabling mass dispossession and persecution. The film highlights how Göring used bureaucracy to mask brutality. Under his oversight, the state became a machine that stripped the Jews of rights, property, citizenship, and dignity. By labelling these acts as “legal”, Göring removed moral responsibility from the process. This is one of the film’s most disturbing insights: evil often operates behind desks, stamps, and signatures. Göring’s reliance on administrative jargon becomes symbolic of the entire Nazi system, where paperwork carried the weight of violence.
Throughout the trial, Göring treats the courtroom as another battleground. He challenges the prosecutors, sparring verbally in ways that both captivate and disturb the audience. His confidence is disarming at moments, he almost appears statesmanlike, explaining away crimes as national necessity. Yet, each explanation reveals a deeper, darker truth.
The film depicts how Göring uses rhetoric to manipulate and distract. He portrays Nazi actions as strategic, necessary, even reluctant. But, as documents pile before him, bearing his signature, detailing deportations, seizures, and forced emigration, his arguments collapse. The courtroom becomes a place where truth dismantles propaganda. Göring’s downfall is not simply the exposure of his crimes; it is the exposure of the ideology that justified those crimes. His words, once powerful tools of deception, become evidence against him.
The psychology of devotion: why men follow wrong causes
One of the major questions posed by Nuremberg is why Göring, a man of intelligence and influence, remained loyally committed to a cause built on cruelty. The film offers several insights. First, power itself became addictive. Hitler elevated Göring, gave him authority, and allowed him to shape institutions. Loyalty became entwined with ambition. Second, Göring derived identity from serving the Führer. He was not merely an official, he was a believer. This deep psychological tether meant that abandoning Hitler would have meant abandoning himself. In his mind, the cause became inseparable from the nation’s survival, even as it destroyed the nation from within.
Finally, Göring’s loyalty allowed him to ignore moral consequences. The film subtly suggests that loyalty can become a mechanism of denial: as long as Göring remained devoted to Hitler, he could avoid confronting the horrors that he helped create. This psychological pattern is not unique to Nazism; it is a warning for all societies where loyalty is prized above accountability.
A brilliant mind in service of darkness
What makes Göring’s story tragic is not just the crimes that he committed but the potential that he squandered. The film portrays him as articulate, strategic, and intellectually sharp, qualities that could have served a peaceful, post-war Germany. Instead, Göring harnessed his intelligence to build a police state, suppress dissent, and enforce racial ideology. Nuremberg shows this paradox clearly. His courtroom exchanges reveal a man who considered himself a patriot and a visionary, yet, he used every ounce of his talent to reinforce Hitler’s dictatorship. This section of the film forces viewers to confront a difficult truth: brilliance does not equate to morality. In fact, intelligence in service of a destructive cause amplifies harm. Göring’s tragedy lies in the fact that his talents became engines of suffering rather than forces for good.
The last loyal soldier: Göring’s final act
As the trial concludes, Göring remains unrepentant. Even faced with execution, he refuses to condemn Hitler or renounce Nazism. His final days, portrayed starkly in the film, show a man clinging to loyalty as his last possession. When he ultimately takes his own life before he can be hanged, it becomes his final gesture of defiance, his last attempt to control the narrative and remain loyal to his distorted ideology. This ending is not portrayed as heroic. Instead, it is deeply unsettling. Göring dies believing that he served a noble cause. The film emphasises that this is precisely what makes him and others like him so dangerous. Their loyalty survives facts, truth, and justice. Göring’s suicide becomes a final reminder that loyalty, once corrupted, does not release its grip easily.
Conclusion
Nuremberg is a warning wrapped in a biographical narrative. Through its portrayal of Göring, the film demonstrates the catastrophic consequences of loyalty when it is yoked to immoral leadership. His unwavering devotion to Hitler, maintained even after the revelation of unimaginable atrocities, reveals a disturbing truth about human nature: loyalty can be the foundation of greatness, but it can also be the root of profound evil. Göring’s story implores modern readers to examine loyalty critically. It teaches that loyalty must never become an excuse for injustice or a shield for cruelty. Nuremberg ultimately transforms Göring from a historical figure into a symbol, a reminder that the world must be vigilant, for the most dangerous men are those who, with total conviction, choose to die for the wrong cause.
(The writer is an attorney and a Senior Law Lecturer at the Colombo University)
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The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of this publication