A wonderful thing about some movies is their ability to make clear things we thought we knew but, for one reason or another, allowed to become muddled.
So it is in a dramatic moment during the 1961 movie "Judgment at Nuremberg" (a fictionalized account of the post-World War II trial of Nazi judges) when one of the judges being tried insists on taking the stand over his defense attorney's objections.
The aging judge named Ernst Janning (Burt Lancaster) neither proclaims his innocence nor defends Nazi beliefs. Rather, he wants to explain how the horror of the Third Reich came to be - even though the explanation means he will be admitting his own complicity in its making:
We had a democracy, yes, but it was torn by elements within. Above all, there was fear. Fear of today, fear of tomorrow, fear of our neighbors, and fear of ourselves. Only when you understand that can you understand what Hitler meant to us. Because he said to us: "Lift your heads! Be proud to be German! There are devils among us. Communists, liberals, Jews, Gypsies! Once these devils will be destroyed, your misery will be destroyed." ... We who knew the words were lies ... why did we sit silent? Why did we take part? Because we loved our country! What difference does it make if a few political extremists lose their rights? What difference does it make if a few racial minorities lose their rights? It is only a passing phase. ... It will be discarded sooner or later. Hitler himself will be discarded ... sooner or later.
Surprisingly, I'd never seen the powerful movie until finding it on television last week. In fact, I don't think I'd ever heard of it. It's set in 1949 in the American sector of Nuremberg (Bavaria, Germany) at a time when most major Nazi criminals already had been tried and imprisoned or executed, and interest in bringing Nazi criminals to justice was waning. Governments of the U.S. and England had become more concerned about a united Europe to combat increasing Soviet aggression than they were about prosecuting minor Nazi players.
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As the movie unfolds, the American judge sent to head a panel of three adjudicators - a respected but obscure judge from Maine named Dan Haywood (Spencer Tracey) - finds himself under unexpected political pressure from military and government leaders to deal leniently with the Nazi judges.
The widow of an executed Nazi officer (Marlene Dietrich) befriends Haywood and as romantic sparks fly, she tries to convince him that most Germans did not know about the death camps.
The defense attorney Hans Rolfe (Maximilian Schell) makes an effective argument that the judges in the dock did nothing more than their duty to carry out the laws of the land. (His argument is a variation of "everybody is to blame so nobody is to blame.")
Haywood seems to take it all into account, but in the end he will have none of it. When he delivers the verdict, he speaks both of Germany and the U.S.:
There are those in our country today, too, who speak of the "protection" of the country. Of "survival." The answer to that is: "survival as what"? A country isn't a rock. And it isn't an extension of one's self. "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 in our decision here that this is what "we" stand for: "justice, truth ... and the value of a single human being!"
During the Bush administration, the open use of torture appalled most of the nation. However, for fear of terrorism, more Americans than I would have thought possible approved. (Who cares if a few terrorists are tortured when the risk is great? Besides, a new administration will restore moral clarity.)
Now, we learn that President Barack Obama has asserted the right to order the assassination of U.S. citizens living abroad, if the president deems them to be a threat - an abuse of executive power that is outrageous and leaves us floundering in muddled national identity.
Please understand that by using the example of the movie, I'm not implying that the U.S. is like Nazi Germany. It isn't. The point is that we cannot be a just nation unless, when it is "most difficult," we stand for justice.
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Ahlin is a regular contributor to The Forum's commentary page.
