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Judgment at Nuremberg
film poster
Directed by	Stanley Kramer
Produced by	Stanley Kramer
Written by	Abby Mann
Starring	Spencer Tracy Burt Lancaster Richard Widmark Marlene Dietrich Judy Garland Maximilian Schell Montgomery Clift
Cinematography	Ernest Laszlo
Editing by	Frederic Knudtson
Studio	Roxlom Films
Distributed by	United Artists
Release date(s)	December 19, 1961 (US)
Running time	186 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) is a fictionalized film account of the post-World War II Nuremberg Trials. It was written by Abby Mann, directed by Stanley Kramer, and starred Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Marlene Dietrich, Maximilian Schell, Judy Garland, and Montgomery Clift. An earlier adaptation had been broadcast as a television movie.^[1]

The film depicts the trial of certain judges who served during the Nazi regime in Germany. Such a trial did occur: the film was inspired by the Judges' Trial before the Nuremberg Military Tribunal in 1947. By the time the film was made, all of the convicts had already been released, including four of them who were sentenced to life in prison. A key thread in the film's plot involves a "race defilement" trial known as the "Feldenstein case". In this fictionalized case, based on the real life Katzenberger Trial, an elderly Jewish man was tried for an improper relationship with an "Aryan" woman, and put to death in 1942.

Synopsis

Judgment at Nuremberg centers around a military tribunal in which four judges are accused of crimes against humanity for their actions during the Nazi's regime. Judge Dan Haywood (Spencer Tracy), the chief justice in the case, attempts to understand how defendant Ernst Janning (Burt Lancaster) could have passed sentences resulting in genocide, and by extension how the German people could have turned blind eyes to the Holocaust. In so doing, he befriends the widow of a German General (Marlene Dietrich) and talks with a number of German people with different perspectives on the war.

The film examines the questions of individual complicity in crimes committed by the state. For example, defense attorney Hans Rolfe (Maximilian Schell) raises such issues as the support of U.S. Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. for the practice of eugenics and Winston Churchill's words of praise for Adolf Hitler. In the end, Janning makes a statement condemning himself and his fellow defendants for "going along" with the Third Reich and all four are found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.

The film is notable for showing actual historical footage filmed by American soldiers after the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps. Shown in court by prosecuting attorney Colonel Tad Lawson (Richard Widmark), the footage of huge piles of naked corpses laid out in rows and bulldozed into large pits was exceptionally gruesome for a mainstream film of its day.

The film ends with Haywood's having to choose between patriotism and justice. He rejects the call to let the Nazi judges off lightly to gain Germany's support in the Cold War against the Soviet Union.^[2]

Accolades

The movie won the Academy Award for Best Actor (Maximilian Schell) and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium, and was nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Spencer Tracy), Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Montgomery Clift), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Judy Garland), Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White (Rudolph Sternad, George Milo), Best Cinematography, Black-and-White, Best Costume Design, Black-and-White, Best Director, Best Film Editing and Best Picture.^[3] This is one of the few times that a film had multiple entries in the same category (Tracy and Schell for Best Actor) and Schell was the first Best Actor winner to be billed fifth. Many of the big name actors who appeared in the film did so for a fraction of their usual salaries because they believed in the social importance of the project.

In June 2008, the American Film Institute revealed its "Ten top Ten" after polling over 1,500 people from the creative community. Judgment at Nuremberg was acknowledged as the tenth best film in the courtroom drama genre.^[4]

Adaptations

In 2001, a stage adaptation of the film was produced for Broadway, starring Schell (this time in the role played in the film by Burt Lancaster) and George Grizzard, with John Tillinger as director.^[5]

Cast

See also

• List of Holocaust films
• Trial movies
• War crimes trials
• Nuremberg Trials (film) (a Soviet film on the trials)

References

External links

• Judgment at Nuremberg at the Internet Movie Database
• Judgment at Nuremberg at Allmovie
• Judgment at Nuremberg at the TCM Movie Database
• 3 Speeches from the Movie with Text, Audio and Video from AmericanRhetoric.com

From Wikiquote

Judgment at Nuremberg is a 1961 film directed by Stanley Kramer and starring Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, and Marlene Dietrich.

Ernst Janning

• There was a fever over the land. A fever of disgrace, of indignity, of hunger. We had a democracy, yes, but it was torn by elements within. Above all, there was fear. Fear of today, fear of tomorrow, fear of our neighbors, and fear of ourselves. Only when you understand that - can you understand what Hitler meant to us. Because he said to us: 'Lift your heads! Be proud to be German! There are devils among us. Communists, Liberals, Jews, Gypsies! Once these devils will be destroyed, your misery will be destroyed.' It was the old, old story of the sacrifical lamb. What about those of us who knew better? We who knew the words were lies, and worse than lies? Why did we sit silent? Why did we take part? Because we loved our country! What difference does it make if a few political extremists lose their rights? What difference does it make if a few racial minorities lose their rights? It is only a passing phase. It is only a stage we are going through. It will be discarded sooner or later. Hitler himself will be discarded... sooner or later. The country is in danger. We will march out of the shadows. We will go forward. Forward is the great password. And history tells how well we succeeded, your honor. We succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. The very elements of hate and power about Hitler that mesmerized Germany, mesmerized the world! We found ourselves with sudden powerful allies. Things that had been denied to us as a democracy were open to us now. The world said 'go ahead, take it, take it! Take Sudetenland, take the Rhineland — remilitarize it — take all of Austria, take it! And then one day we looked around and found that we were in an even more terrible danger. The ritual began in this courtoom swept over the land like a raging, roaring disease. What was going to be a passing phase had become the way of life. Your honor, I was content to sit silent during this trial. I was content to tend my roses. I was even content to let counsel try to save my name, until I realized that in order to save it, he would have to raise the specter again. You have seen him do it — he has done it here in this courtroom. He has suggested that the Third Reich worked for the benefit of people. He has suggested that we sterilized men for the welfare of the country. He has suggested that perhaps the old Jew did sleep with the 16-year-old girl, after all. Once more it is being done for love of country. It is not easy to tell the truth; but if there is to be any salvation for Germany, we who know our guilt must admit it... whatever the pain and humiliation.

Judge Dan Haywood

• Janning, to be sure, is a tragic figure. We believe he loathed the evil he did. But compassion for the present torture of his soul must not beget forgetfulness of the torture and death of millions by the government of which he was a part. Janning's record and his fate illuminate the most shattering truth that has emerged from this trial. If he and the other defendants were all depraved perverts — if the leaders of the Third Reich were sadistic monsters and maniacs — these events would have no more moral significance than an earthquake or other natural catastrophes. But this trial has shown that under the stress of a national crisis, men — even able and extraordinary men — can delude themselves into the commission of crimes and atrocities so vast and heinous as to stagger the imagination. No one who has sat through this trial can ever forget. The sterilization of men because of their political beliefs... The murder of children... How easily that can happen! There are those in our country today, too, who speak of the 'protection' of the country. Of 'survival'. The answer to that is: 'survival as what?' A country isn't a rock. And it isn't an extension of one's self. It's what it stands for, when standing for something is the most difficult! Before the people of the world — let it now be noted in our decision here that this is what we stand for: justice, truth... and the value of a single human being!

Hans Rolfe

• It is easy to condemn the German people, to speak of the flaw in the German character that allowed Hitler to rise to power — and at the same time ignore the flaw that made the Russians sign pacts with him, Winston Churchill praise him, American businessmen profit by him!

Col. Tad Lawson

• One thing about Americans: we're not cut out to be occupiers. We're new at it and not very good at it.

Mrs. Bertholt

• Listen to me... there are things that happened on both sides. My husband was a military man, had been all his life. He was entitled to a soldier's death; he asked for that. I tried to get that for him, just that and he would die with some honor. I went from official to offical. I begged for that, I begged for that, that he should be permitted the dignity of a firing squad. You know what happened. He was hanged with the others, and after that, I knew what it was to hate. I never left the house. I never left the room. I drank. I hated with every fiber of my being, I hated every American I'd ever known. But one can't live with hate. I know that. We have to forget. We have to go on living.

Dialogue

Capt. Harrison Byers: I trust you'll be comfortable in this room, sir.

Judge Dan Haywood: Captain, I have no doubt that the entire state of Maine would be comfortable in this room!

Hans Rolfe: I'll make you a wager...

Judge Dan Haywood: I don't make wagers.

Hans Rolfe: A gentleman's wager... in five years, the men you sentenced to life imprisonment will be free.

Judge Dan Haywood: Herr Rolfe, I have admired your work in the court for many months. You are particularly brilliant in your use of logic. So, what you suggest may very well happen. It is logical, in view of the times in which we live. But to be logical is not to be right, and nothing on God's earth could ever make it right!

Ernst Janning: Judge Haywood... the reason I asked you to come: Those people, those millions of people... I never knew it would come to that. You must believe it, you must believe it!

Judge Dan Haywood: Herr Janning, it "came to that" the first time you sentenced a man to death you knew to be innocent.

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