"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 its 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." Spencer Tracy (Judge Dan Haywood) delivers this poignant summation of the Nuremburg Trials of four Nazi Judges.

Normally Holocaust movies are a bitter pill to swallow. The most lauded tend to focus, with almost medical attention to detail, on the morbid minutiae of this ghastly event. Often their efforts are so effective that I leave the theatre forgetting (temporarily) that the war has ended, that Hitler was vanquished and that the current generation of Germans is not to blame for acts of those who proceeded them.

Judgment at Nuremburg 1961 is different. The writers, directors and each actor combine perfectly to set the context for the trial without an ounce of blood and gore. This movie emphatically proves that brilliant actors delivering brilliant dialogue are worth $5 billion in special effects.

And as you can see the film finishes by cutting to the core of the issue: how could this happen in a civilized country? The answer in essence is that "all that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."

This lesson is encapsulated in the character of Ernst Janning (Burt Lancaster) a man of considerable intelligence who was not a "good German who knew how to take orders, who sent men before him to be sterilized like so many digits" nor a "decayed, corrupt bigot, obsessed by the evil within himself." No, Ernst Janning (a fictional character who is actually a collage of several actual defendants) was "worse than any of them because he knew what they were, and he went along with them. Ernst Jannings: Who made his life excrement, because he walked with them."

I lack the talent to describe the performances of Spencer Tracy, Maximilian Schell and Montgomery Clift. They are magnificent. Far better, in fact, than Alec Baldwin et al. in the modern remake called "Nuremburg." Is it enough to tell you that Tracy, Schell and Clift each won an Oscar for their work on this film? Probably not considering how the standards of today’s Oscar judges have fallen. What I can do is refer you to http://www.americanrhetoric.com/MovieSpeeches which includes audio excerpts and transcripts of the key speeches (it is the source of the quotes in this little essay).

To summarize Judgment at Nuremburg is a movie the world will never forget. But then I could be biased because I am a huge Spencer Tracy fan. Grab it from Amazon and decide for yourself.

Note that the version pictured features an interview with Maximilian Schell. He is a German-born actor who risked his career to play the Council for the accused. This role requires him to play a German-apologist for this heinous crime and he does such a good job that you will end up loathing him unless you see this DVD’s special feature."