Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Hitler And The Nazis: Evil On Trial’ On Netflix, A Docuseries About The Rise And Fall Of The Nazis And The Nuremberg Trials

In the six-part docuseries Hitler And The Nazis: Evil On Trial, director Joe Berlinger goes into detail about the rise and fall of Hitler and the Nazi party. The story is told through colorized archival footage, audio recordings, reenactments, and readings of works by AI-created voice tracks, as well as numerous interviews with historians and experts.

HITLER AND THE NAZIS: EVIL ON TRIAL: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: “BERLIN, GERMANY. 30 April, 1945.” A reenactment of Adolf Hitler (Károly Kozma) and Eva Braun (Anna Szilvási) killing themselves as Germany is about to surrender to the Allied forces.

The Gist: Berlinger starts with the end of the European campaign in World War II, and the war crimes trials of top Nazi officials in Nuremberg, Germany, that started in November of 1945. Much of story is also told via the writing and radio speeches of American journalist William Shirer (Balázs Kató), who was in Germany from 1934-40, documenting the rise of the Nazi party and the implementation of its racist and antisemitic policies.

As the trial starts, with Robert H. Jackson, the chief American prosecutor, making a stirring opening argument, the show goes back to World War I, and the near-chaos that ensued in Germany after their defeat and the attempts to start a new republic. Hitler’s younger years in Austria are also examined, as well as how he came to Germany, how his views on government and Aryan supremacy developed, and the first time he and the Nazi party tried to take over the Bavarian government via a violent putsch in the 1920s. That led to a light prison sentence, which he got via his persuasive speechifying and a right-wing judge, where he wrote his book Mein Kampf.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? There have been plenty of docuseries about World War II and the rise of the Nazis, but this could be a companion piece to Ken Burns’ The U.S. And The Holocaust, to give a view of Nazism from multiple sides.

Our Take: Whether it’s in scripted dramas or in docuseries, we almost always favor stories that are told in linear fashion rather than ones that jump back and forth in time. But in the case of Hitler And The Nazis: Evil On Trial, Berlinger’s decision to encase the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party within the context of the Nuremberg Trials was a smart one.

The history of that time period is, of course, very well known. But what Berlinger accomplishes with this storytelling method is to put the rise of the Nazis and their atrocities in direct comparison to the consequences of the actions of the surviving Nazi higher-ups. It’s showing these monsters as they rose to power and then how they were as they had to answer for the war crimes they committed.

We’re also never the biggest fans of reenactments or colorized archival footage. But by using both, often cut close to each other, Berlinger makes the story seem more immediate, as it should be. As one of the experts says, something like the rise of the Nazis doesn’t happen overnight, and by making the footage more vivid and modern-looking, Berlinger is communicating that it’s not all that inconceivable that the same thing could happen now.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: The AI-generated voice of Shirer reads from his writing that “we shall see” what Hitler did with the power he gained by the time the Nazi party took over Germany’s government.

Sleeper Star: It’s not easy to play Hitler at various stages of his life, but Károly Kozma manages to pull it off, making him look small and menacing at the same time.

Most Pilot-y Line: This isn’t really a complaint, but if it weren’t for the different letterboxing between archival footage and reenactment footage of the trials, it would be tough to tell them apart. Perhaps that’s a tribute to both the colorization of the archival footage and how well Berlinger recreated the trial in his reenactments.

Our Call: STREAM IT. While Hitler And The Nazis: Evil On Trial may not provide a ton of new information for people who have even casually studied the time period before, during and after WWII, Berlinger still does a good job of making a powerful case that the conditions that gave us the horrific atrocities that Hitler and the Nazis committed can very easily happen again.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.