Ernst Janning: Judge Haywood… the reason I asked you to come: Those people, those millions of people… I never knew it would come to that. You must believe it, You must believe it!
Judge Dan Haywood: Herr Janning, it “came to that” the first time you sentenced a man to death you knew to be innocent.
Judgment at Nuremberg, (1961)
Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), loosely based on the trial of German jurists after World War II, is a powerful film. Burt Lancaster, an actor of the first calibre, gives the performance of his career as Ernst Janning. The early portion of the movie makes clear that Ernst Janning is in many ways a good man. Before the Nazis came to power Janning was a world respected German jurist. After the Nazis came to power evidence is brought forward by his defense counsel that Janning attempted to help people persecuted by the Nazis, and that he even personally insulted Hitler on one occasion. Janning obviously despises the Nazis and the other judges who are on trial with him. At his trial he refuses to say a word in his defense. He only testifies after being appalled by the tactics of his defense counsel. His magnificent and unsparing testimony convicts him and all the other Germans who were good men and women, who knew better, and who failed to speak out or to act against the Nazis. Janning’s testimony tells us that sins of omission can be as damning as sins of commission. When he reveals that he sentenced a man to death he knew to be innocent because of pressure from the Nazi government, we can only agree with his bleak assessment that he reduced his life to excrement. Yet we have to respect Janning. It is a rare man who can so publicly take responsibility for his own evil acts.
Yet even this respect is taken away from Janning in the final scene of the film where he attempts to justify himself to Judge Haywood, superbly portrayed by Spencer Tracy, by saying that he never believed that it would all come to the millions of dead in the concentration camps. Judge Haywood delivers his verdict on this attempt by Janning to save some shred of self-respect: “Herr Janning, it came to that the first time you sentenced a man to death you knew to be innocent.”
I wonder if Herr Janning feared that the final Judge to Whom he would be sent would give him the same verdict:
“Herr Janning, it came to that the first time you sentenced a man to death you knew to be innocent.”
Maybe he repented before departure.
Am I wrong to assume that a similar omission as to the absolute truth that children in the wombs of their mothers are indeed human beings and as such deserve the protection granted it by these United States, regardless of the blinded Justice’s who choose the way of Herr Janning….a death sentence for millions of Innocent’s?
Talk about living in the past.
Thanks you Nazis of today. War on women…B.S!
You are absolutely correct Philip, God help us all.
Watching this movie is truly an amazing experience. You can’t help but want to scream out that abortion is precisely the same evil as the genocide which is the subject of the film. The parallel is undeniable. As far as the movie itself, the acting is superb. The Courtroom scenes are really well done and there are moments during cross-examination that any lawyer would envy if it took place in their own career.
The first murder is the hardest. By numbers alone, we have murdered more than Hitler. God help us indeed. The opening march music is like many German marches, excellent. What a shame they are associated with such an evil regime. I refer to Wenn Wir Marscheiren, written by Weisse Wölfe in 1910, well before the Nazis