Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) is a serious film that enables the viewers to wrestle with the demands of justice for atrocities enabled by German jurists in NAZI Germany and the post-war emerging Cold War between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., for which the American military needed the support of the German people against the Soviet Union. The film accepts the need of such support as being vital in 1947, when the actual trial took place (the film has it as 1948). To the extent that acceptance of this assumption is deemed spurious, the viewers would likely view the tension as being between the need for justice, a virtue, and expediency, a vice. Accordingly, the pressure from an American general on the prosecutor to recommend light sentences so not to turn the German people against the Americans and thus from helping them in the Cold War can be viewed as being astute political calculation in the political realist sense of international relations, or else undue influence or even corruption of a judicial proceeding.
The prosecutor, Tad Lawson, having
liberated death camps, rebuffs the General Matt Merrin’s pressure, and the four
defendants get life sentences. Whether Merrin’s
claim that the U.S. needs the support of the German people in the Cold War is
valid or not, pressuring a prosecutor is clearly depicted as unethical and so
Lawson comes off as virtuous in resisting the exogenous pressure even though he
is in the American military. It is certainly ironic that the victor army would
push for lighter sentences for the vanquished; typically the question is
whether a trial by the victors can be fair. Israel’s kidnapping and subsequent trial
of Eichmann brought this question to the forefront. A trial in Germany would
have also brought up this question. Britain would have been a good choice that
would have avoided the conflict of interest. In the film, Lawson successfully resists
exploiting a conflict of interest by deciding not to curry favor with the
general by urging the judges to go light in sentencing the defendants.
To be sure, chief judge Haywood has
an opportunity to give a light sentence to one of the defendants. Ernst Janning,
an expert jurist before the NAZI period and the Minister of Justice under
Hitler, is the only one of the defendants who should have known better than knowingly
convict innocent people, including Irene Hoffman for having sex with a much-older
Jewish man, and sterilizing others, including Rudolph Petersen for being mentally
impaired. Janning gives an impassioned speech to the court in which he admits
his guilt, and that he should indeed have known better. Haywood holds Janning responsible
for the latter’s use of the judicial system to send Jews and Poles to the death
camps anyway; the crimes are simply too heinous for justice to be ignored. In
the final scene, Haywood tells Janning that he should have known that it would
come to such crimes the moment he convicted a person Janning knew was innocent.
Using the gutted-out infrastructure of a judiciary to enable the state to engage
in mass murder seems to particularly bother the chief judge. That is to say: a
jurist who has written juridical books has no excuse in making a mockery of a
judiciary.
After the last scene, the film indicates
that none of the actual defendants of the American trial of jurists were still
in prison as of 1961, when the film was made. Janning is loosely based on Louis
Schlegelberger, who was State Secretary in the German Reich Ministry of Justice.
He got a life sentence for conspiracy to perpetuate war crimes and crimes
against humanity. He instituted procedures for the persecution of Jews and Poles,
and thus played a vital role in the mass extermination. As much as such severe
harm deserves harsh justice, he was released just a few years after having been
convicted for “health reasons” even though he died in 1970. Similarly, Rudolf
Oeschey had his life sentence commuted to 20 years, but he was released in just
8 years. Guenther Joel, chief prosecutor of the Ministry of Justice, got a 10
year sentence but was released in 1951. The same for Ernst Lautz, the Chief
Public Prosecutor of the People’s Court. Herbert Klemm, State Secretary in the Ministry,
had his life sentence commuted to 20 years but was released after just 10
years. Oswald Rothaug, a senior public prosecutor in the People’s Court and
Chief Justice of the Special Court, had his life sentence commuted to 20 years
but was released in just 9 years. Justice was clearly not served, and the film
acknowledges this frailty of justice “in the real world.” The implications are
that none of the fictional defendants would actually serve a life sentence, and
the American military, which had tried and failed to get its way in the
sentencing, ultimately gets its way. Any relief from Lawson resisting the
pressure to urge light sentences such that justice wins the day is short-lived
as the viewers read the film’s caveat at the end that in the end, all of the
actual defendants of the jurist Nuremberg trial were still in prison as of
1961.
Interestingly, Maximilian Schell,
who plays Hans Rolfe, the German defense attorney who applies NAZI thunder in severely
questioning Irene Hoffman—such zeal being objected to by Lawson but allowed by
the chief judge—beat out Spencer Tracy, who plays the chief judge who comes
down on the side of justice (and is fair in ruling on the objections during the
trial) and thus resists manipulations by “friendly” former NAZI civilians and
the American military and a U.S. Senator, to get the Best Actor Oscar in 1961. Spencer
Tracy is so mild-mannered throughout the film that his acting was typical
rather than exceptional, whereas Richard Widmark, who plays Lawson, should have
been in contention with Schell for the Oscar. Both actors are impassioned and frustrated,
hence they both drew on strong emotions in playing their respective roles.
Perhaps both should have gotten the award. The world, however, is not so just,
as the movie makes clear in the end even if justice momentarily has the upper
hand.
