This a movie starring Spencer Tracy as a judge who presided over the trials of judges in Germany after WWII. The main trials of the big figures were over, but in 1948, the trials of other, lesser figures occurred. Four German judges are on trial in this movie, and the key word repeated over and over is "responsibility." The movie begins with much emphasis upon the atrocities that occurred, as if these judges were responsible for everything that went on. Tracy plays a judge who is intent upon finding out just what, if anything, these judges did that was truly criminal.
Many people complain about the "technicalities" of the law that allows the guilty to go free. Such cases are few and far between. The technicalities are what keep a free people free. Freedom from state coercion means the State must prove its case against the individual to the tee. In other words, the person must be guilty of violating all the elements of the law. For example, the person on trial for murder may assert that he thought he saw a gun in the victim's hand. If he truly saw a gun, whether the victim had one or not, then he is not guilty of murder. That is a technicality.
The other biblical principle upheld by holding the State to a high standard is grace. A people who live under grace may commit all kinds of wrongs. But wrong in whose eyes? Yours? When did your standard of right and wrong become the means for imprisoning and executing people? Grace means the people have many opportunities to do "wrongs," but they can only be held responsible for truly violating the law. Wrongs, in and of themselves, do not mean people are responsible for crimes.
In the movie, the prosecuting Colonel JAG, played by Richard Widmark, takes on the face of mass vengeance. He holds the entire country responsible, and he prosecuted the husband of the woman, in whose house Tracy is able to live while he's a judge on the tribunal. Tracy tries to understand and seeks to get to know the woman, Mrs. Bertholt, played by Marlene Dietrich. She's nobility in Germany, and she despised Hitler. She tells Tracy about a time she saw Judge Yaneng, one of the defendants played superbly by Burt Lancaster, cut Hitler down to size at a concert one night, causing Hitler to blanche and walk out. She claims Yaneng was one of the few people who could do so. Yaneng also rebukes one of his fellow indicted judges, whom he considers a party hack. The question arises: Who is responsible? Was Yaneng a good guy or bad guy?
The prosecuting Colonel has a tough job. He has to convince Germans to testify against their own country men. But he did not have trouble getting Yanneng to testify. Yaneng stopped the defense counsel in the middle of his questioning of a woman to ask, "Are we going to do this all over again?" It's a moving moment, and during Yaneng's testimony he ends with this awful indictment of himself: "Ernst Yaneng made himself excrement." This is the testimony of every honest man, that deep down he knows what he's capable of and that he is not deserving of anything except God's wrath.
The key to understanding the responsibility of these judges in the Nuremburg trials, at least as portrayed in the movie, was the action of the most eminent jurist on trial in not holding to the principle mentioned above - that the man on trial must be proven to have strictly violated every element of the law. The judges were not guilty of all of Nazi Germany's crimes. And the Germans and the judges may not have know just how far the Nazis' atrocities would go. But as Tracy's character after the sentencing tells the eminent jurist Yanieng, who said that he did not know it would come to the execution of millions: "It came to that when you sentenced one man to death who was innocent."
Toward the end of the trial and the movie, the Berlin Airlift began. Its effect upon the Americans brought home the truth of Yaneng's words about Germany being afraid of enemies without and within, and that is why they did the things they did. In other words, in a national crisis, things are done out of fear. That is what was bandied around by military officers - we need not alienate the Germans because we need them to fight the Russians. Pressure was brought to bear on the prosecutor. Tracy's words as he issued sentence ring out: "This is what we stand for in this tribunal - justice, truth, and the value of a single human being." These are preeminently biblical principles. His final words also warn all those who think that they are incapable of such crimes; the horror and tragedy of the Nazi regime was that the good people, like Yaneng, became caught up in the fear, for love of country.
More importantly, this movie teaches a core biblical truth that people constantly forget or don't want to admit. Mankind constantly compares sins and asserts that the so-called minor sins, like fear and doubt, are not like the more heinous offenses, like murder and torture. But this is so completely untrue. The "minor" offenses like fear and doubt are the root cause of the heinous offenses like murder and torture.
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