I think that it is a necessary film for today....the newly released Nuremberg. It was 1959 I believe....and I was only nine years old....but there was one particular episode that stayed with me my entire life. This was Sunday evenings if I remember correctly....maybe 6:00 to 6:30....as I was waiting for Disney to come on....and Walter Cronkite was the documentary host...the show....The Twentieth Century. The topic this day was the Holocaust. I remember....at that age....the piles and piles of bodies. Of course I have seen many of the same clips since then....but possibly because I was only nine....none of the clips since then had anything near the effect on me....until this afternoon when my wife and I went to an 11:20 AM showing of Nuremberg....(all the other showings were filled up.) The footage in this new film of those piles of bodies was extensive....and we Americans need to be fully aware of what happened.
Russell Crowe....(just opinion here of course....but an educated opinion)....is another Brando. His portrayal of Herman Göring was....flawless I believe. I was disappointed for a while as the film portrayed Göring in a somewhat....compassionate light....but when the other main character in the film....a psychiatrist....saw the real Göring....and the real problem with these men on trial....then the movie portrayed him as such.
It's about two and a half hours....which I usually do not enjoy....but in this case the time went by fast. Is there politics in the film? Is ....Trump Göring....or is Trump the justice system going after Göring? I don't see it either way. Opinion again but surprisingly the intentional or unintentional intent of the film transcended politics....to the human condition. The psychiatrist was probably unaware that his conclusion on where this murderous mindset came from....had nothing to with they're being German....but rather pointed to God's Word in the doctrine of Total Depravity.
How could these men....and millions more people....have so quickly and totally been taken in by the man with the mustache and the apparently mesmerizing words? My gray hair....(a rather dark gray by the way)....but my wrinkles and my sagging eyelids....pointing to fifty-some years of studying men like this....and forty-some years of studying them on the grid of God's Word....tell me that this that brought upon the world the Holocaust and tens of millions of other deaths....was supernatural....demonic. Evil might be another appropriate word but we bandy about that word so much that it in effect has no real meaning to us....and using it actually works against what a person might be trying to say.
If it were politics....then we could work on the problem....become patriots....that kind of thing....but being supernatural....all we can do is make sure that we are never susceptible to this type of deception and lure of power and glory.
Bringing this scenario even closer to home....and to today....we cannot do anything to stop the Antichrist....whoever or whatever that may turn out to be. There was no changing the minds of the National Socialists. Their love....(though it wasn't really a love but a worship)....their worship of country....was a power that was able to suspend all reality....even unto their own deaths!
One theme of the film was that the trials had to be held so that this could never happen again....but it is going to happen again. So when it happens again....which will be soon if it has not already started....we are to take it as a sign and not a cause. There is no....International Military Tribunal ahead for the Antichrist....but rather...
"And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming." 2 Thessalonians 2:8 NKJV
