Probably the most frightening moment in "Judgement at Nuremburg" comes when Nazi judge Emil Hahn (Werner Klemperer), the first of the four defendants on trial in the third Nuremburg tribunal, is sentenced to life in prison. Still a committed Nazi to the point of being totally unrepentant, he points at American judge Hayward (Spencer Tracy) and predicts, "Today, you sentence me. Tomorrow, the Bolsheviks sentence you." It might have been more frightening in 1961 when there was at least a theoretical possibility of Russia winning the Cold War, but it is frightening enough today, for its suggestion that perhaps there was no moral distinction between the American, German and Russian systems as they clashed in World War II, a point which would not be so mercilessly driven home again until "Camp de Thiaroye" was made in Senegal in the late 1980's.
This statement comes directly on the heels of defense counsel Hans Rolfe (Maximillian Schell)'s making the true enough point that Hitler succeeded for so long because until 1939, the rest of the world let him succeed and sometimes even wanted him to succeed. Rolfe suggests trying all the guilty parties, a task which the three already beleaguered American judges who compose the tribunal are happy to leave to historians. But something else he does, undoes his case.
The first time I saw "Judgement at Nuremburg," in a video room at the Yokosuka Naval Base library, Linda Tripp had not turned over her tapes of Monica Lewinsky to Ken Starr. All three of those characters have analogs at the turning point in the trial, with Rolfe, building on evidence supplied by a Nazi cleaning woman, attempting to get a German housewife now in her thirties to confess she did have sex with an over-the-hill Jewish merchant (who was subsequently put to death) when she was a teenager. Something has to give during this scene.
And something does. As though he were watching the Army-McCarthy hearings, Ernst Janning (Burt Lancaster), the most learned of the four Nazi judges on trial, turns on the man who is trying to save his reputation and demands, "Are we going to go through it all again?" The next Monday, he convicts himself in testimony before the tribunal -- not with specifics, but with a broad brush -- explaining that another course WAS possible, but none of the four men on trial saw it until too late. Knowing he cannot vindicate himself, he lays it all on the line in order to vindicate the truth. In this he sets himself apart from Rolfe, who is serving (Rolfe thinks) the German cause, in order to serve justice. For twelve years he was on the wrong side. No more.
Janning's anguished confession of his failings proves to be the weightiest consideration for Hayward, who has been advised that a free Europe, threatened by Stalin, has a much better chance of survival if he goes easy on the defendants. The German war widow to whom Hayward is attracted (Marlene Dietrich) just wants to survive and therefore seems to avoid emotional attachment to abstractions (until the end). In this she is much like the senior American officers who put pressure on the prosecutor (Richard Widmark) to let up on the defendants. But as Hayward looks at Janning gardening in the prison courtyard, he realizes that because of Janning's proclamation, he respects this man too much to deny his last request, and sets himself in opposition to the American judge who wants to find the judges blameless, having only carried out duly approved laws.
Janning too wants to express his respect for his opposite number, but he has an ulterior motive. He hopes Hayward will concede one shred of understanding for the position he was in during the Third Reich's early years, the timeframe of the decisions for which he was convicted. But to Hayward, and the audience, the line between understanding and condoning is too thin, and so Hayward hammers him back into his place by observing, "It came to that (the Holocaust) the first time you sentenced a man to die, and knew he was innocent."
DAMMIT, HOW MANY JUDGES SERVING IN THE 38 DEATH PENALTY STATES TODAY HAVE DONE THAT?
A Yankee judge conducts the 1948 trial of Nazi war criminals. Directed by Stanley Kramer. Best actor Oscar for Maximilian Schell.More at HotMovieSale.com
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