Judgment at Nuremberg is a 1961 American drama film
dealing with the Holocaust, with non-combatant war crimes against a civilian
population (i.e., crimes committed in violation of the Law of Nations or the
Laws of War), and with the post-World War II geo-political complexity of the Nuremberg
Trials. The picture was written by Abby Mann and directed by Stanley Kramer,
and stars Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Maximilian Schell, Werner
Klemperer, Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland, William Shatner, and Montgomery
Clift. An earlier version of the story was broadcast as a television episode of
Playhouse 90. Schell and
Klemperer played the same roles in this version as well.
Although
touching on (in newsreel footage) and discussing the war-time (1939-45)
persecution and genocide of European Jews, the film's events relate principally
to actions committed by the German state against its own racial, social,
religious, and eugenic groupings within its borders “…in the name of the law…”,
(to quote from the prosecution’s opening statement in the film) that began with
Hitler's rise to power in 1933. The plot development and thematic treatment
question the legitimacy of the social, political and alleged legal foundations
of these actions.
The
trial depicted in the film was part of the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials
(formally the Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals),
a series of twelve U.S. military tribunals, held after World War II (1946-49)
in the Palace of Justice, Nuremberg, that tried surviving members of the
military, political, and economic leadership of Nazi Germany for war crimes
following the Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International
Military Tribunal (IMT).
The
film focuses on the trial of certain judges who served before and during the Nazi
regime in Germany and who either passively, actively, or in a combination of
both, embraced and enforced laws that led to judicial acts of sexual
sterilization and to the imprisonment and execution of people for their
religions, racial or ethnic identities, political beliefs and physical
handicaps or disabilities.
The
film was inspired by the Judges' Trial before the Nuremberg Military Tribunal
(1947), which resulted in four of the defendants being 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 non-"Aryan" Jewish
man was tried for having a "relationship" (sexual acts) with an Aryan
(German) 16 years old woman, an act that had been legally defined as a
"crime" under the Nuremberg Laws, which had been enacted by the
German Reichstag. Under these laws the man was found guilty and was put to
death in 1935. Using this and other examples, the movie explores individual
conscience, responsibility in the face of unjust laws, and behavior during a
time of widespread societal immorality.
Cast
- Spencer Tracy as Chief Judge Dan Haywood
- Burt Lancaster as Dr. Ernst Janning
- Richard Widmark as Col. Tad Lawson
- Maximilian Schell as Hans Rolfe
- Werner Klemperer as Emil Hahn
- Marlene Dietrich as Frau Bertholt
- Montgomery Clift as Rudolph Peterson
- Judy Garland as Irene Wallner
- Howard Caine as Irene's husband, Hugo Wallner
- William Shatner as Capt. Harrison Byers
- John Wengraf as His Honour Herr Justizrat. Dr. Karl Wieck - former Minister of Justice in Weimar Germany
- Karl Swenson as Dr. Heinrich Geuter - Feldenstein's lawyer
- Ben Wright as Herr Halbestadt, Haywood's butler
- Ed Binns as Sen. Burkette
- Torben Meyer as Werner Lampe
- Martin Brandt as Friedrich Hofstetter
- Kenneth MacKenna as Judge Kenneth Norris
- Alan Baxter as Brig. Gen. Matt Merrin
- Ray Teal as Judge Curtiss Ives
- Virginia Christine as Mrs. Halbestadt - Haywood's Housekeeper
- Joseph Bernard as Major Abe Radnitz - Lawson's assistant
- Olga Fabian as Mrs. Elsa Lindnow - witness in Feldenstein case
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