Judgment at Nuremberg

On my friend Bette's recommendation, I watched the 1961 film Judgment at Nuremberg today (also see its Wikipedia entry, and check out the entry for the Nuremberg Trials themselves while you're at it).

Spencer Tracy was excellent as chief of the tribunal's panel of judges. A very handsome William Shatner makes a pre-Star Trek appearance as Tracy's aide.

[I read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich in 2005. At 1147 pages, not counting notes, it's quite an undertaking, but Shirer's documentation of the events leading to the rise of Hitler, his early years in power, World War II, and the Nazi defeat reads almost like a novel.]

I was never familiar with the political context of the Nuremberg Trials. Judgment at Nuremberg tells the story of the third of the military tribunals (there were 12), the defendants in which were all judges. (The tribunals followed the Trials themselves which tried the most significant members of the Nazi regime.) Near the end of the movie, the Soviet blockade of West Berlin begins. The tribunal judges experience pressure to go easy on the German defendants in hopes of enlisting support from the German people for the U.S. in the Cold War against the U.S.S.R.

The verdict is memorable, with Tracy largely focusing on the role of the one defendant (Janning) who admited before the court his complicity with the Nazis. I found this excerpt on the web (no vouching for its accuracy):

Janning's record and his fate illuminate the most shattering truth that has emerged from this trial. If he, and all of the other defendants, had been degraded perverts, if all of the leaders of the Third Reich had been sadistic monsters, and maniacs, then these events would have no more moral significance than an earthquake, or any other natural catastrophe.

But this trial has shown that under a national crisis, ordinary, even able and extraordinary men, can delude themselves into the commission of crimes so vast and heinous that they beggar the imagination. No one who has sat through the trial can ever forget them. Men sterilized because of political belief, a mockery made of friendship and faith, the murder of children. How easily it can happen.

There are those in our own country too, who today speak of the protection of country, of survival. A decision must be made. In the life of every nation, at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at his throat, then it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient, to look the other way. Well, the answer to that is survival as what? A country isn't a rock. It's not an extension of one's self. It's what it stands for. 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, that here in our decision, this is what we stand for: justice, truth, and the value of a single human being.

There have been times in the last five and a half years when this mindset of sacrificing our principles for the sake of survival has taken hold again here at home. I'm beginning to hope that those days are behind us, but it's always good to remember: How easily it can happen.