An Old Movie Brings New Understanding

Early morning thoughts upon watching "Judgment at Nuremberg"

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One night, after my weekly newsletter was done, I came across the 1961 film "Judgment at Nuremberg" on Prime Video. I remembered only snippets of it, so I decided to watch it — all 2 hours and 59 minutes of it. It has a stunning cast — Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Judy Garland, Montgomery Clift, Maximillian Schell, Marlene Dietrich, Werner Klemperer (later Col. Klink of "Hogan's Heroes"), even a young Willliam Shatner (thankfully restrained by director Stanley Kramer). And Spencer Tracy, the magnificent Spencer Tracy, as Chief Judge Haywood.

As I watched the trial of four judges for war crimes committed during the Nazi era, I couldn't help but see parallels to today in the movie's examination of law, justice and social responsibility. The Germans in the movie were all trying so hard to move beyond the horrors of the Hitler regime, but Richard Widmark's Army prosecutor (Germany was under allied occupation at the time of the trial, 1948-49), so obviously traumatized by what he'd seen when he liberated two concentration camps, wanted revenge.

At one point, after showing horrifying films of the masses of dead bodies discovered at concentration camps, Widmark's prosecutor notes that the Nazis killed six million Jews "but the final number killed, no one knows." Since the time of the movie, historians have estimated from Nazi records that the regime killed upwards of 13 million people – Slavs, Poles, Roma ("gypsies"), "mental defectives" like poor Montgomery Clift's character, people from all the countries conquered by Germany, people who didn't agree with Nazi policies – but most of all, a third of Europe's Jews. The Nazis killed more people than the populations of Bolivia, Belgium or Zimbabwe in 2020, the equivalent of an entire country's populace. Think of it.

The genius of director Stanley Kramer was to make even the most villainous characters likeable to some degree — until the guilty verdict. The final exchange between Burt Lancaster's justice Emil Jannings and Tracy's Judge Haywood was absolutely electrifying:

Jannings to Haywood: "I never thought it would go that far."

Haywood: "You went that far the first time you convicted someone you knew was innocent."

Now when I read accounts of people at school boards trying to ban books about racial prejudice, about women's bodies, about LGBTQ coming-of-age, I wonder how far the notion of "inferior" humans will go this time. As I read about the hundreds of anti-LGBTQ bills now before state legislatures — nearly 300 in Texas alone — I wonder how long before our LGBTQ friends and family will be taken away to incarceration as "undesirables." Women have been deprived of autonomy over their own bodies by the downfall of Roe v. Wade. We've been seeing the extrajudicial slaughter of Black people, especially Black men, for years now and done nothing about it. In this respect, we are all as complicit as those Germans who claimed they knew nothing about the concentration camps. We simply refuse to acknowledge the depth of perfidy we're seeing; we deny our own culpability for the society whose benefits we enjoy. We reject God's justice that runs like a river throughout scripture.

Is it funny that Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert sit in their committee meetings and outright lie about issues and conditions in the USA? Late-night comedians ridicule them and audiences laugh but lurking behind those incidents lies the same malevolent spirit that infected people under the Nazis. Novelist Sinclair Lewis was right when he said that when fascism came to America, it would arrive wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross. Well, fascism has arrived in America; it's found in the pernicious spread of white Christian nationalism, in which nearly a quarter of Americans believe, according to the latest polls. And the bulk of those believers are people who style themselves "evangelicals."

When I was a girl growing up in Florida, the southern evangelical churches my family attended preached about the end of the world. Some preachers even set the date of Jesus' return as the year 2000, a convenient target to convince people to "flee from the wrath to come," as John Wesley put it. I was terrified of Armageddon, of being "left behind" because I wasn't a good enough little girl, of burning in hell for all eternity.

I've grown up since then. The year 2000 came and went, and Jesus didn't come back that year, or the next, or the year after that. Now in 2023, looking back through the lens that the movie "Judgment at Nuremberg" provided, I see quite clearly that we are in an apocalyptic time, when our inhumanity to God's creatures, from the most accomplished human down to the microbes that cause the coronavirus, are convicting us of our sin, of the evil we continue to perpetuate in the world.

I now know that should the evil of this inhumanity — what I would term the unforgivable "sin against the Holy Spirit" — erupt in the kind of blatant action condemned at Nuremberg, I will be among those sent to concentration camp or killed outright. I will not stand for the kind of lies and deceit being foisted on U.S. citizens by the far-right elements in both government and church. I will counter those lies with every fiber of my being, with every word I write, every newsletter I produce, every sermon I preach, every act of loving kindness I hurl against violence and hatred. If need be, I will put my declining 70-year-old body on the line for those being persecuted by the disciples of hate. What happens after death none of us knows for sure. What I do know is that I will march into hell for the heavenly cause of human worth, to quote "Man of La Mancha." Otherwise, my life will have been in vain.

If I had my way, I'd make "Judgment at Nuremberg" part of required curriculum for high school seniors and beyond. But of course, requiring a film is the same as banning books — an attempt at thought control unworthy of human liberation. Ergo, I can only advocate, plead, persuade people to watch it, with the hope that it will bring historical understanding and current awareness to everyone who sees it. Perhaps if enough of us remember what has gone before, and pledge ourselves to resist its return, we may yet save ourselves from the abyss of our own evil, with God's help.

Additional Resources:

Faithful Lent: Connecting the Practices of Lent and Anti-Racism from the General Commission on Religion and Race.

Veteran religion journalist Cynthia B. Astle serves as Editor of United Methodist Insight, an online journal she founded in 2011 as a channel for the voices of underserved and marginalized United Methodists. Please contact the editor to reproduce this article elsewhere.