‘Nuremberg’: Russell Crowe’s haunting portrayal of Nazi evil



Say what you will about Russell Crowe, but he has never been a run-of-the-mill actor.

At his best, he surrenders to the role. This is an artist capable of channeling the full range of human contradictions. From the haunted integrity of "The Insider" to the brute nobility of "Gladiator," Crowe once seemed to contain both sinner and saint, pugilist and philosopher.

In a time when truly commanding leading men are all but extinct, Crowe remains — carrying the weight, the wit, and the weathered grace of a bygone breed.

Then, sometime after "A Beautiful Mind," the light dimmed. The roles got smaller, the scandals bigger.

There were still flashes of brilliance — "American Gangster" with Denzel Washington, "The Nice Guys" with Ryan Gosling — proof that Crowe could still command attention when the script was worth it. But for every film that landed, two missed the mark: clumsy thrillers, lazy comedies, and a string of forgettable parts that left him without anchor or aim. His career drifted between prestige and paycheck, part self-sabotage, part Hollywood forgetting its own.

Exploring the abyss

But now the grizzled sexagenarian returns with "Nuremberg" — not as a comeback cliché, but as a reminder that the finest actors are explorers of the human abyss. And Crowe, to his credit, has never been afraid to go deep.

In James Vanderbilt’s new film, the combative Kiwi plays Hermann Goering, the Nazi Reichsmarschall standing trial for his part in history’s darkest chapter. The movie centers on Goering’s psychological chess match with U.S. Army psychiatrist Douglas Kelley, who becomes both fascinated and repulsed by the man before him. Goering, with his vanity, intelligence, and theatrical self-pity, is a criminal rehearsing for immortality.

The film unfolds as a dark study of guilt and self-deception. Kelley, played with that familiar, hollow-eyed tension of Rami Malek, sets out to dissect the anatomy of evil through Goering’s mind. Yet the deeper he digs, the more he feels the ground give way beneath him — the line between witness and accomplice blurring with every exchange.

Disturbingly human

Crowe’s Goering is not the slobbering villain of old war films. He’s disturbingly human, even likeable. He jokes, he reasons, he charms. He’s a man who knows how to disarm his enemy by appearing civil — and therein lies the horror. It’s a performance steeped in Hannah Arendt’s famous concept of the “banality of evil”: the idea that great atrocities are rarely committed by psychopathic monsters but by ordinary people made monstrous — individuals who justify cruelty through bureaucracy, obedience, or ideology.

Arendt wrote those words after watching Adolf Eichmann, another Nazi functionary, defend his role in the Holocaust. She was struck not by his madness but his mildness — his desire to be seen as merely following orders. Crowe’s Goering embodies that same terrifying normalcy. He doesn’t see himself as a villain at all, but as a patriot — wronged, misunderstood, and unfairly judged. It’s his charm, not his cruelty, that unsettles.

The brilliance of Crowe’s performance is that he resists caricature. He reminds us that evil doesn’t always wear jackboots. Sometimes it smiles, smokes, and quotes Shakespeare. It’s the kind of role only a mature actor can pull off — one who has met his own demons and understands that evil seldom announces itself.

It is also, perhaps, the perfect role for a man who has spent decades wrestling with his own legend. Crowe was once Hollywood’s golden boy — rugged, brooding, every inch the leading man — but the climb was steep and the fall steeper. Fame, like empire, demands endless victories, and Crowe, ever restless, grew weary of the war.

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A bygone breed

With "Nuremberg," he hasn’t returned to chase stardom but to confront something larger — the unease that hides beneath every civilized surface. Goering, after all, was no brute. He was cultured, eloquent, even magnetic — proof that wisdom offers no wall against wickedness. And in a time when truly commanding leading men are all but extinct, Crowe remains — carrying the weight, the wit, and the weathered grace of a bygone breed.

At one point in the film, Goering throws America’s own hypocrisies back at Kelley: the atomic bomb, the internment of Japanese-Americans, the collective punishment of nations. It’s a rhetorical trick, but it lands. Crowe delivers those lines with the oily confidence of a man who knows that moral purity is a myth and that self-righteousness is often evil’s most convenient disguise.

The film may not be perfect. Its pacing lags at times, and its historical framing flirts with melodrama. But Crowe’s performance cuts through the pretense like a scalpel. There’s even a dark humor in how he toys with his captors — the court jester of genocide, smirking as the world tries to comprehend him.

Crowe’s Goering is, in the end, a mirror. Not just for the psychiatrist across the table, but for us all. The machinery of horror is rarely built by fanatics, but by functionaries convinced they’re simply doing their jobs.

Crowe’s performance reminds us why acting, when done with conviction, can still rattle the soul. His Goering is maddening and mesmeric. He captures the human talent for self-delusion, the ease with which conscience can be out-argued by ambition or fear. "Nuremberg" refuses to let the audience look away. It reminds us that every civilization carries the seed of its own undoing and every human heart holds a shadow it would rather not confront.

Russell Crowe is back, tipped for another Oscar — and in an age when Hollywood produces so few films worthy of our time or our money, I, for one, hope he gets it.

Stories Behind the Stars: On a mission to honor every American who died in WWII



September 2, 1945. The mighty battleship USS Missouri and an armada of hundreds of ships waited patiently for the end of the biggest, most destructive conflict the world had ever seen.

The American forces had been anchored in Tokyo Bay for a few days. They were surrounded by naval mines, having been carefully escorted into the port of the enemy they'd devastated with two nuclear bombs just weeks before. Many suspected it was a trap.

'This is a permanent memorial so that anybody walking up to that grave site can read their story for decades to come on their phones.'

But just after 9 a.m. local time, Japanese and American delegations met on the ship's deck to sign documents formalizing the unconditional surrender of the Empire of the Sun. The war was over.

As part of the surrender ceremony, 1,500 Allied aircraft flew in formation over Tokyo Bay as a massive show of force mere minutes after the signing. The weight of the moment was obvious to everybody involved, so much so that many Americans went out of their way to see it firsthand.

One last mission

Meanwhile, the business of war continued. The 16th Bombardment Group in Guam was scheduled to participate in the flyover, but American prisoners of war were still in need of supplies. Lt. George R. Hutchison’s B-29B bomber had been grounded due to mechanical issues, and so he volunteered for a mercy mission aboard another bomber to drop goods on Osaka.

Hutchison would not live to celebrate with his fellow soldiers. Two hours into the mission, a low-speed runway crash shredded and burnt the plane, taking his life and the lives of eight others. Only three men survived.

Lt. Hutchison was one of 30 servicemen to give their lives on the day World War II ended. He would be buried in Honolulu, Hawaii, and leave behind a widow, Eleanor.

Honoring the fallen

The tragic fate of Lt. Hutchison is one of nearly 78,000 stories that have been carefully preserved by Stories Behind the Stars, a volunteer group that has spent nearly a decade researching and cataloging the life stories of the hundreds of thousands of Americans who died in World War II.

Since 2016, hundreds of volunteers from across the United States and several international volunteers have collaborated to document stories like this to honor the fallen.

Drawing upon military records from Ancestry.com, headstone applications, census records, and newspaper archives, project volunteers have contributed obituary-length short essays on thousands of profiles in a publicly available database. These trained volunteers are usually able to pull together a profile in two or three hours, and many contribute hundreds per year.

Among the project’s greatest feats has been a complete catalogue of all WWII veterans at Arlington National Cemetery and Pearl Harbor’s USS Arizona Memorial, two of America’s largest memorial sites. Users can find the history of every serviceman listed at both memorials.

“When you look at flowers on a grave, they disappear after a week,” Stories Behind the Stars founder Don Milne tells Align. “This is a permanent memorial so that anybody walking up to that grave site can read their story for decades to come on their phones.”

RELATED: John J. Pinder Jr.: Baseball hero who chose greater sacrifice

Army Tech. 5th Grade John J. Pinder Jr. (right) and his brother Harold, 1943. U.S. Dept. of Defense

Lunchtime hobby

Milne, a Kentucky-based bank examiner and member of the Church of Latter-day Saints, never expected the project to gain as much traction as it did; it began in 2016 as something to do on his lunch break, he tells Align.

The father of six and grandfather of 15 launched Stories Behind the Stars on the 75th anniversary of Pearl Harbor and planned to end the project with the 75th anniversary of VJ Day in 2020.

But as Milne continued at a consistent pace, writing one story per day, what began as a humble, personal blog was soon attracting millions of views. Dozens of volunteers contacted Milne, wanting to help. It quickly grew into a much larger project, one that Milne ultimately handed off to other leaders. (He remains a part-time contributor.)

“It really took off during COVID, when a lot of people were stuck in their houses,” he says. “They heard about this project and thought it was something to do while stuck in their home. And year after year, we’ve done more and more projects. We’re not professionals. We’re not getting paid to do this.”

New recruits

Milne and the other volunteers soon realized they needed more help to do the project justice:

We did the math and said if we did one story per day, it would take us 1,000 years to write this many stories, but said, why one per day? Why not get more volunteers? We brainstormed and thought that if we put everything into this blogspot, nobody would know it's there, so we need to save it in a database. We reached out to Ancestry.com, which has billions of records and military records, and asked them if they would host this database for us. They agreed and put it outside their firewall, so nobody has to pay to look at these records.

Volunteers wanted

The need to gather and document firsthand accounts of World War II grows more urgent with each passing day. Of the 16 million Americans who served in the global conflict, fewer than 50,000 are still alive. Most of them are in their late 90s or 100s, and it is expected that they will all be gone by 2035.

The need to memorialize those who never grew old is no less urgent — and no less daunting. Stories Behind the Stars intends to record all of the nearly half a million service members who died between 1941 and 1946 — a massive undertaking that could take decades. At its current pace, the organization anticipates having 25% of the project complete by the end of 2026.

Grassroots efforts such as Stories Behind the Stars are doubly important considering the gaps in government recordkeeping, says Milne:

There isn’t an official tally of how many people died in World War II. Our organization is probably going to find it eventually when we add up all the names by the time we’re done. But even the organization that runs the national WWII memorial in DC doesn’t know what the total is. They didn’t have computers in 1946 when they put the records together. They did their best with index cards, but they didn’t get everyone.

The project’s stable of regular volunteers includes a group of devoted veterans, retirees, and researchers, and they are always looking for more help! Even if it's just a single article, they appreciate the contributions of people who step up to tell their family’s stories as much as devotees who make a hobby out of regularly assisting.

“Visit our website, and we’ll send you information on how to volunteer!” says Milne. “We provide free training and free access to tools. There’s never any financial obligation to participate. We’re lean and mean! We just need bodies to sit at a computer.”

Stories Behind the Stars can be reached through its website and Facebook page. Check out its YouTube and completed projects pages to learn more.

Weekend Beacon 6/15/25

As the U.S. Army celebrates its 250th birthday, we honor those who bravely go in harm's way, often far from home and rarely at a time of their choosing (unless you're the IDF). Speaking of war planning, Tim Bouverie is out with his latest book, Allies at War: How the Struggles Between the Allied Powers Shaped the […]

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Fighting Trump in Congress Like Fighting 'Nazis in Northern Africa,' Dem Rep Says

Resisting President Donald Trump in Congress is like fighting Nazis in Northern Africa during World War II, according to Rep. Stephen Lynch (D., Mass.).

The post Fighting Trump in Congress Like Fighting 'Nazis in Northern Africa,' Dem Rep Says appeared first on .

Fashion icon turned Nazi ally: Coco Chanel’s dark wartime secrets (plus the nation that revived her)



It was Coco Chanel who said, “In order to be irreplaceable, one must always be different.” She was talking about fashion and personal branding, of course.

However, during the dark years of World War II, the maxim took on a dark meaning when the visionary fashion icon’s drive to remain indispensable led to cultivated strategic ties with German elites in order to secure her personal safety, social status, and business interests in Nazi-occupied France.

Glenn Beck, who just returned from vacation in Europe, tells Stu Burguiere that many have no idea that “Coco Chanel was a despicable human being.”

During WWII, “most of the designers just close down and they're like, ‘We're not making anything for anybody right now.’ But not Coco Chanel. She decides she's going to move into the hotel where all the Nazis are,” says Glenn.

Once she was living in the Ritz, she started “making dresses for the Nazi wives” and “[sleeping] around a little bit with a few Nazis.” One Nazi she had a strategic romantic relationship with was Hans Günther von Dincklage, a German intelligence officer who gave her protection and influence.

At one point, she outed the French Jewish family who had partnered with her to fund the iconic perfume Chanel No. 5, but thankfully, they had already “transferred ownership to somebody else” by that point.

“Is it fair to call her a Nazi spy?” asks Stu.

“Yeah, she was known as a Nazi spy,” says Glenn.

But if her Nazi allegiance was well-known in France, how is her brand still thriving today?

It turns out that the answer lies right here in America.

When the war ended and she saw that Nazi collaborators were being executed, Chanel moved to Switzerland. From there, she put together a French couture show, which Vogue Paris rejected due to her Nazi ties.

However, Vogue America — “the same people that started the Met Gala in 1948” — decided to “whitewash her,” says Glenn.

“They brought her out on a new collection” that pitched “the little black dress,” which to this day is said to be something every woman should own. Her brand soared again.

“When did Vogue magazine come out and go, ‘You know what? That whole Nazi thing with Chanel was probably pretty bad’? Oh, I don't know — never!” says Glenn.

To hear more about Coco Chanel’s Nazi ties, as well as the story of another French designer who was a war hero, watch the episode above.

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80 Years After The Allies Won World War II, U.S. Taxpayers Are Funding European Authoritarianism

The United States has protected and bailed out Europe for far too long.

How Glenn Beck brought a SWORD and a BOMB to Mar-a-Lago



Glenn Beck was recently invited to Mar-a-Lago to give a history speech in front of Donald Trump at a PragerU event. When he was planning what he would say, Glenn decided his speech would benefit from the addition of two odd props: William Wallace's sword from "Braveheart" and a World War II-era rat with a bomb in its butt.

He didn’t, however, consider the implications of bringing these weapons to one of the most secure places in the country. The ordeal ended in a hilarious story that put down Glenn in the history books as a Secret Service legend.

“I don't write my speeches, I just kind of go through the vault, and I'm like, I want to tell that story and that story and that story. So I grabbed a bunch of stuff and didn't really put a lot of thought into it until we started approaching Mar-a-Lago,” says Glenn, recounting the story.

From multiple security clearances to fleets of Secret Service trucks to “old school buses” surrounding Trump’s airplane, Glenn describes getting into the estate as “a nightmare.”

“The security around him now is absolutely incredible,” he tells co-host Stu Burguiere.

At one security checkpoint, Secret Service agents asked Glenn if he had any weapons in his vehicle. He said no (the reality that his speech props were in fact weapons having slipped his mind).

When he got to another security checkpoint, agents opened the hood and all the doors of the car, brought the dogs out, and started in on their questions. That’s when Glenn realized he had misspoken. When he explained to the agent, who luckily recognized Glenn, that his speech props were technically weapons, he was waved through to the next security checkpoint, where the entire process began again.

When an agent asked again if Glenn had any weapons, this time his answer was “well, kind of” before explaining that he was carrying a broadsword from "Braveheart" and a WWII-era bomb.

The agents, thankfully, thought the situation was hilarious.

“They were taking pictures of everything; they were laughing; they were like, ‘This is now lore,’” laughs Glenn.

Regardless of the humorous nature of the situation, they still had a job to do.

“They were like, ‘OK, the rat — let’s X-ray the rat.”’ After finding that the rat was full of wires, “The head guy comes over, and he said, ‘We really don't know what to do here,”’ Glenn recounts.

Finally, Glenn was told that the agents would keep both the sword and the rat bomb until 30 minutes prior to his scheduled speech, at which time they would have a decision.

When it came time for Glenn’s speech, an agent told Glenn that they would need to “remain with the sword and the rat” but that the event was nonetheless “legendary.”

To hear Glenn’s much funnier retelling of the event, watch the clip above.

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Mitch McConnell's jaw-dropping insinuation about the MAGA movement



In the aftermath of President-elect Donald Trump's landslide victory, former Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell compared the MAGA movement to American isolationists in the 1930s, insinuating that Trump would have been indifferent to the fascist uprising in Europe at the time.

Trump, whose foreign policy is far more hands-off than McConnell's hawkish approach, is fundamentally at odds with the former leader's geopolitical worldview. Consequently, McConnell spoke about the current state of foreign affairs and said it was "reminiscent" of the times leading up to World War II, criticizing American isolationists from both today and nearly a century ago.

It all comes down to McConnell and money. McConnell has greenlit over $170 billion to Ukraine, while Trump has repeatedly called for an end to the war altogether.

“We’re in a very, very dangerous world right now, reminiscent of before World War II,” McConnell said. “Even the slogan is the same. ‘America First.’ That was what they said in the ’30s.”

McConnell has famously been a thorn in Trump's side and has been a staunch critic of the president-elect, both on and off the record. He reiterated his opposition to Trump and said he intends to push back on him and the incoming administration.

“No matter who got elected president, I think it was going to require significant pushback, yeah, and I intend to be one of the pushers," McConnell said.

It all comes down to McConnell and money. McConnell has greenlit over $170 billion to Ukraine, while Trump has repeatedly called for an end to the war altogether.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) takes a question from a reporter during a news conference following the weekly Senate Republican policy luncheon at the U.S. Capitol on November 19, 2024, in Washington, D.C. Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

“To most American voters, I think the simple answer is, ‘Let’s stay out of it,'" McConnell said. "That was the argument made in the ’30s, and that just won’t work. Thanks to Reagan, we know what does work — not just saying peace through strength, but demonstrating it.”

While McConnell may have stepped down from his leadership role, his grip on foreign funding is not loosening any time soon. McConnell notably stepped into the new role of chairing the Senate appropriations subcommittee on defense, which will allow him to continue influencing the cash flow to our "democratic allies."

“That’s where the real money is,” McConnell said.

While he didn't say how much more money he is willing to approve for foreign conflicts like the Russia-Ukraine war, he said, "The goal here is for the Russians not to win."

"We've got two democratic allies fighting for their lives," McConnell said. "I don't think we ought to micromanage what they think is necessary to win."

McConnell has generously signed off on hundreds of billions of dollars of foreign funding. At the same time, Trump poses a threat to McConnell's preferred foreign policy. As a result, McConnell resorted to drawing perverse comparisons between Trump and American isolationists who were lukewarm about fascistic uprisings in Europe during the 1930s.

That being said, McConnell likely draws this comparison because Trump is a legitimate threat to the political infrastructure he has built since he was first elected Republican Senate leader in 2007.

McConnell can't dispute Trump's support, even admitting that the president-elect has become the most influential Republican in the party. One thing is for sure: The old-guard Senate Republicans, especially McConnell, won't go down without a fight.

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80 Years After D-Day, Remember The Men Who Liberated The World

Eighty years ago, the D-Day invasion was essential in securing freedom and ensuring Christian civilization was to be saved.

Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg reunite for long-awaited WWII drama 'Masters of the Air,' celebrating brave men of the 'Bloody Hundredth'



Following the massive popularity of "Band of Brothers," "The Pacific," and "Saving Private Ryan," Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg have reunited to release "Masters of the Air." The upcoming drama documents the efforts by the 8th Air Force that made unimaginable sacrifices to help defeat Nazi Germany in World War II.

In what has been a work in progress for a decade, the long-awaited "Masters of the Air" finally has a premiere date. Originally confirmed by HBO in January 2013, "Masters of the Air" will premiere on Apple TV+ on Jan. 26, 2024.

The upcoming World War II drama series is being produced by Hanks, Spielberg, and Gary Goetzman.

"Masters of the Air" stars Austin Butler – who was nominated for an Academy Award for his portrayal of Elvis Presley in the 2022 movie "Elvis." The series also features Academy Award-nominated Barry Keoghan, Callum Turner, Anthony Boyle, Nate Mann, Rafferty Law, Josiah Cross, Branden Cook, and Ncuti Gatwa.

The nine-episode streaming series is based on Donald L. Miller's book of the same name.

"'Masters of the Air' is a salute to the brave men of the 8th Air Force, who, through their courage and brotherhood, helped defeat Nazi Germany in World War II," executive producer Goetzman said in a press release. "Tom and Steven have always wanted to visualize cinematically what our author Don Miller has called, this 'singular event in the history of warfare.' We’re thrilled that Apple TV+ has given us the opportunity to combine the efforts of so many talented people, on-screen and behind the camera, to tell this important story."

The official synopsis of the series:

"Masters of the Air" follows the men of the 100th Bomb Group (the “Bloody Hundredth”) as they conduct perilous bombing raids over Nazi Germany and grapple with the frigid conditions, lack of oxygen and sheer terror of combat conducted at 25,000 feet in the air. Portraying the psychological and emotional price paid by these young men as they helped destroy the horror of Hitler’s Third Reich, is at the heart of “Masters of the Air.” Some were shot down and captured; some were wounded or killed. And some were lucky enough to make it home. Regardless of individual fate, a toll was exacted on them all.
— (@)

The 8th Air Force ventured deep into Nazi territory in an attempt to handicap Germany's war machine. However, the daylight bombing campaign proved to be extremely dangerous.

During a mission to bomb German ball bearing factories on Oct. 14, 1943, the 8th Air Force suffered so many casualties that the day was known as "Black Thursday." U.S. B-17 and B-24 heavy bombers flew over Nazi Germany without any fighter protection because the smaller planes didn't have the extensive range like the massive four-engine bombers. The gamble proved to be tragic.

Fighter planes of the Luftwaffe induced devastating losses on the 8th Air Force – also known as the "Bloody Hundredth."

According to the National WWII Museum, "By the time the Americans returned home, they had lost 60 B-17s, another 17 were no longer airworthy, and an additional 121 received minor damage. That was only the material loss. The number of aircrew killed, wounded, or missing in action was more than 600, totaling almost 20 percent of the men sortied."

Despite the soul-crushing losses, the 8th Air Force adopted new tactics and America soon produced fighter planes with extended range to escort the Flying Fortresses.

The "Mighty Eighth" would continue to batter Germany's industrial centers to help cripple the Nazi's military production – unleashing 697,000 tons of bombs over 440,000 bomber sorties.

The destruction of Germany's infrastructure came at a steep price – 47,000 of the 115,000 U.S. Army Air Force casualties were from the Mighty Eighth.

The Mighty Eighth's brave men earned 17 Medals of Honor, 220 Distinguished Service Crosses, and 442,000 Air Medals.

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