Judgment at NurembergWhat is the purpose of the law? Is it merely the extension of the will of the government, which should in theory be the will of the people? Is it the codification of the morals and ethics of civilized society? And what is to be said about the law--its practitioners and administrators, lawyers and judges--when a regime falls, and another is tasked with defining and serving justice? All of these huge questions are at the heart of Stanley Kramer's Judgment at Nuremberg, a courtroom dramatization of one of the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials in the wake of World War II, when four judges that served under the Third Reich were tried for their complicity in events that enabled the Holocaust.
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Judge Dan Haywood (Spencer Tracy) is a former district court judge from what he calls a "backwoods part of Maine", responding to the unpopular task of passing judgment upon not only four German non-combatants, but four judges themselves, for crimes against humanity, at the advent of the Cold War with the U.S.S.R. The Germany which Dan visits is one that is still shattered from the most devastating war in modern history, where the city of Nuremberg is choked with rubble and his live-in German servants are grateful to have their jobs so they can simply avoid starving. Outside of the courtroom, Judge Haywood discovers that the people of Nuremberg--and Germany by association--are now a conquered people, and their subservience to their conquerors is a mask that hides fear, resentment, or maybe both. The United States is slowly attempting to rebuild relations with their former foe, and the trial which Dan presides over is treated as something of a political necessity. His military liaison, Captain Byers (William Shatner) introduces his German girlfriend to Dan over drinks, and Dan begins to meet with the lovely widow in whose mansion he occupies, Frau Bertholt (Marlene Dietrich), who attempts to engender sympathy toward the German people by showing him the apparent love that flows through the common people, who claim to have been ignorant of the Holocaust. As the former Maine judge discovers Germany for himself, he begins to formulate his own perceptions of the people and their own involvement in the Holocaust from the kind of sly seduction by those who wish to forget the tragedy and the terrible accounts presented within the trial in tandem.
The true meat of Judgment at Nuremberg is in the courtroom, where the prosecution and the defense wage a colossal slugfest of rhetoric, the litigious equivalent of Muhammad Ali versus Joe Frazier. In this corner is the prosecution, Colonel Tad Lawson (Richard Widmark), whose offensive is a crusade born in part out of first-hand experiences after liberating concentration camps like Dachau at the end of the war. The thrust of Lawson's argument is that the defendants were active participants in the Nazi machine to sterilize and sentence to death innocent people on the basis of race, mental faculty, or for purely political motives. Lawson's approach is one of a steadfast phalanx of evidence and an unyielding dreadnought of devastating events which propose that no law could be defended which could lead to the horrifying images of the camps which he presents. In the other corner is Hans Rolfe (Maximillian Schell), intelligent, charismatic, but most important in the defense of his clients--logical. Rolfe should arguably be on the backstep in this arena, in an American tribunal, defending those who were known civil servants of the Nazi government. But Rolfe always appears to be not only in control, but able to deftly and nimbly deliver evidence which posits that if his clients are to be found guilty, then the whole world must bear the same responsibility, the same guilt. "Sting like a bee," indeed. Rolfe's argument is that the men on trial were upholding the law of their country, and were not legislators, not politicians...they were charged--took an oath--to serve the state; "my country, right or wrong," is quoted by Rolfe, and attributed to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., an American jurist of repute. And while three of the defendants do not garner much sympathy--Emil Hahn is even played by Werner Klemperer, who would go on to play Colonel Klink in Hogan's Heroes--there is the fourth defendant, whose gravitas and staggering reputation for justice makes him an unlikely addition: Ernst Janning (Burt Lancaster). Judge Haywood begins study more about Janning, learning about the significant contributions he made not only to the formation of Germany's preceding government--the Weimar Republic--but to his contributions to the definition of law itself. From the start of the trial, Janning refuses to acknowledge the authority of the tribunal, but as the testimony continues, with harrowing accounts by Rudolph Peterson (Montgomery Clift), a young man sterilized for being "feebleminded" and then by Irene Hoffman-Wallner (Judy Garland), forced to relive the traumatic miscarriage of justice that was the "Feldenstein case" (modeled after the real-life "Katzenberger Trial"), Janning opens wide the floodgates of his guilt, and views his role in the Holocaust differently than his mutual defendants. Judgment at Nuremberg raises a multitude of questions about national and global responsibility, about what responsibility an individual has to his or her commitment to an institution, a government, and it raises the important question about the responsibility of those "everyday, good people" who turn a blind eye in the aftermath of one of the most atrocious, conscious acts of genocide in history. It is a movie with a message, one that unfortunately, still rings true today, in light of events in Syria, in the Sudan, in Crimea, just as it has been in places before (like China), and will be in places after: who will be judged? Just as Herr Rolfe utilized quotes to underscore his argument, I'd like to propose a quote often attributed to 18th Century Irish statesman, Edmund Burke: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
Recommended for: Fans of courtroom drama and historical period pieces. For fans of World War Two films--or, rather, the aftermath--where the pervading sense of cynicism for politics at the expense of justice makes the final words Dan Haywood delivers so utterly satisfying.
The true meat of Judgment at Nuremberg is in the courtroom, where the prosecution and the defense wage a colossal slugfest of rhetoric, the litigious equivalent of Muhammad Ali versus Joe Frazier. In this corner is the prosecution, Colonel Tad Lawson (Richard Widmark), whose offensive is a crusade born in part out of first-hand experiences after liberating concentration camps like Dachau at the end of the war. The thrust of Lawson's argument is that the defendants were active participants in the Nazi machine to sterilize and sentence to death innocent people on the basis of race, mental faculty, or for purely political motives. Lawson's approach is one of a steadfast phalanx of evidence and an unyielding dreadnought of devastating events which propose that no law could be defended which could lead to the horrifying images of the camps which he presents. In the other corner is Hans Rolfe (Maximillian Schell), intelligent, charismatic, but most important in the defense of his clients--logical. Rolfe should arguably be on the backstep in this arena, in an American tribunal, defending those who were known civil servants of the Nazi government. But Rolfe always appears to be not only in control, but able to deftly and nimbly deliver evidence which posits that if his clients are to be found guilty, then the whole world must bear the same responsibility, the same guilt. "Sting like a bee," indeed. Rolfe's argument is that the men on trial were upholding the law of their country, and were not legislators, not politicians...they were charged--took an oath--to serve the state; "my country, right or wrong," is quoted by Rolfe, and attributed to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., an American jurist of repute. And while three of the defendants do not garner much sympathy--Emil Hahn is even played by Werner Klemperer, who would go on to play Colonel Klink in Hogan's Heroes--there is the fourth defendant, whose gravitas and staggering reputation for justice makes him an unlikely addition: Ernst Janning (Burt Lancaster). Judge Haywood begins study more about Janning, learning about the significant contributions he made not only to the formation of Germany's preceding government--the Weimar Republic--but to his contributions to the definition of law itself. From the start of the trial, Janning refuses to acknowledge the authority of the tribunal, but as the testimony continues, with harrowing accounts by Rudolph Peterson (Montgomery Clift), a young man sterilized for being "feebleminded" and then by Irene Hoffman-Wallner (Judy Garland), forced to relive the traumatic miscarriage of justice that was the "Feldenstein case" (modeled after the real-life "Katzenberger Trial"), Janning opens wide the floodgates of his guilt, and views his role in the Holocaust differently than his mutual defendants. Judgment at Nuremberg raises a multitude of questions about national and global responsibility, about what responsibility an individual has to his or her commitment to an institution, a government, and it raises the important question about the responsibility of those "everyday, good people" who turn a blind eye in the aftermath of one of the most atrocious, conscious acts of genocide in history. It is a movie with a message, one that unfortunately, still rings true today, in light of events in Syria, in the Sudan, in Crimea, just as it has been in places before (like China), and will be in places after: who will be judged? Just as Herr Rolfe utilized quotes to underscore his argument, I'd like to propose a quote often attributed to 18th Century Irish statesman, Edmund Burke: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
Recommended for: Fans of courtroom drama and historical period pieces. For fans of World War Two films--or, rather, the aftermath--where the pervading sense of cynicism for politics at the expense of justice makes the final words Dan Haywood delivers so utterly satisfying.