Synopsis
Judgment at Nuremberg centers on a military tribunal held in Nuremberg, Germany, in which four judges are accused of crimes against humanity for their actions during the Nazi 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 and deaf ears to the Holocaust. Doing so, he befriends the widow (Marlene Dietrich) of a German general executed by the Allies. He talks with a number of Germans with different perspectives on the war. Other characters the Judge meets are U.S. Army Captain Byers (William Shatner), who is assigned to the American party hearing the cases, and Irene Hoffman (Judy Garland), who is afraid to bring testimony that may turn the case against the judges in favor of the prosecution.
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 eugenics practices, the Hitler-Vatican Reichskonkordat in 1933, the Nazi-Soviet Pact in 1939 that allowed Hitler to start World War II and Winston Churchill's praise for Adolf Hitler. At the end, Janning makes a statement condemning himself and his fellow defendants for "going along" with the Third Reich; all four are found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.
The film is notable for its use of courtroom drama to directly confront individual perfidy, social upheaval and amorality; in addition, it is one of the first few films that does not shy from showing actual footage filmed by American and British 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, and he rejects the call to let the Nazi judges off lightly to gain Germany's support in the Cold War against the Soviet Union. At the end of the film Janning thanks Judge Haywood for his rulings, saying that it was the right and just decision.
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