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)
When the world finally stops to confront the horrors it once allowed, the question becomes unavoidable: how far can a person go in the name of obedience before responsibility comes crashing back? In a courtroom where every witness carries the weight of a nation’s conscience, the truth becomes something no one can outrun.
So, let’s start at the beginning.
Hello to all of the classic people who are returning. I am glad you are back. I want to welcome any new visitors and let you know there will be spoilers ahead. Today on Classic Movie Review, we are taking on Judgment at Nuremberg (1961). The film has an IMDb rating of 8.3. Rotten Tomatoes lists it with a 93 percent Tomatometer score and a 93 percent audience score.
New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther said in a December 20, 1961, review:
“Within the scope and depth of this picture, which runs for something more than three hours, there are many disturbing intimations and revealing performances. There are questions of the moral responsibility of political and religious powers, thoughts on the weaknesses of people, and some shocking looks at concentration-camp films.”[1]
The movie received 10 Oscar nominations and 2 wins. The nominees were for Best Picture, Best Actor in a Leading Role (Spencer Tracy), Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Montgomery Clift), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Judy Garland), Best Director (Stanley Kramer), Best Cinematography, Black-and-White (Ernest Laszlo), Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White (Rudolph Sternad /George Milo), Best Costume Design, Black-and-White (Jean Louis), and Best Film Editing (Frederic Knudtson).
The film won for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Maximilian Schell) and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium (Abby Mann).[2]
I have wanted to review this movie for a long time, as it falls into my favorite subgenre: military trials. With the new Russell Crowe/Rami Malek Nuremberg (2025) being released in late fall of 2025, it is time to stop stalling and deal with one of the greatest casts ever assembled.
This film stands as one of the great morality dramas of American cinema. It forces viewers to look directly at the structures that make injustice possible and to consider the cost of silence in the face of cruelty. Judgment at Nuremberg is not a film of easy answers. Instead, it asks questions that remain relevant in every era. The performances are extraordinary, and the script navigates legal, ethical, and emotional terrain with precision. It is a film that deserves its place in the canon of essential dramas.
Actors – Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)
Returning
Burt Lancaster has appeared on the show many times, including The Train (1964), Go Tell the Spartans (1978), Seven Days in May (1964), and Birdman of Alcatraz (1962). In Judgment at Nuremberg, he plays Dr. Ernst Janning, a once-respected legal scholar who must face the consequences of the rulings he supported. Lancaster plays Janning with a haunted stillness that makes his eventual confession one of the film’s most powerful moments. His performance captures the internal collapse of a man who knows that silence became complicity.
Marlene Dietrich previously appeared on the show in No Highway in the Sky (1951). Here she steps into the role of Frau Bertholt, a German widow attempting to live with the legacy of a defeated nation. Dietrich gives the character a quiet elegance and a sense of personal conflict that emerges in her conversations with Judge Haywood. She reflects the desire of many Germans to move forward while also revealing the lingering weight of the past. It is a nuanced and understated performance.
Richard Widmark has been featured before in Pickup on South Street (1953), Road House (1948), Warlock (1959), Saint Joan (1957), and The Alamo (1960). He brings sharp intensity to Colonel Tad Lawson, the American prosecutor determined to hold the defendants accountable. Widmark excels at playing driven men who refuse to back down, and he uses that strength here to full effect. His courtroom presence is forceful, and he becomes the loudest voice reminding the world that justice must not be forgotten or set aside.
Montgomery Clift, previously reviewed in Red River (1948) and From Here to Eternity (1953), delivers one of his most heartbreaking performances in a single extended scene. He appears as a sterilization survivor, Rudolph Petersen, whose life was shattered by the very legal system on trial. Clift’s physical and emotional fragility adds devastating authenticity to his testimony. His halting speech and wounded expressions turn the legal arguments into something painfully human.
Ray Teal was cast in the role of the politically expedient Judge Curtiss Ives. Teal built a long and reliable career as one of classic Hollywood’s most recognizable tough character actors, often playing authority figures, hard cases, or quietly menacing background players who added texture and realism to every scene. He appeared in major postwar dramas like The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), contributing to the film’s grounded sense of everyday America returning from war, and followed it with strong supporting work in hard-edged noirs such as Brute Force (1947) and The Asphalt Jungle (1950), where his presence reinforced the brutal, unsentimental tone of those worlds.
Teal was especially effective in stories about power, corruption, and pressure. In Ace in the Hole (1951), he fit seamlessly into Billy Wilder’s cynical portrait of media manipulation, while in The Command (1954), he was placed in a military role where his no-nonsense demeanor felt entirely authentic. Across these films, Teal rarely sought the spotlight, but his steady performances gave credibility to the environments around the leads. His body of work stands as a testament to the importance of strong supporting players in classic cinema.
New
Spencer Tracy brings monumental moral authority to his role as Chief Judge Dan Haywood, drawing on the same quiet integrity that defined his finest work. As in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967), he embodies reasoned decency under social pressure, and like Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), he projects moral courage without ever raising his voice. Tracy plays the judge as a thoughtful, deeply humane man who listens more than he speaks, recalling the principled resolve he showed in Inherit the Wind (1960). His pauses and measured delivery convey a man determined to find the truth, even when that truth is uncomfortable for everyone involved. There is also a statesman’s weariness here, reminiscent of The Last Hurrah (1958), and a reflective calm that echoes the quiet endurance of The Old Man and the Sea (1958). Even moments of understated warmth recall his lighter touch in Desk Set (1957). Tracy anchors the film with dignity and restraint, making him the steady moral center around which the entire story turns.
Maximilian Schell delivers a commanding, sharply focused performance as defense attorney Hans Rolfe, a role that earned him the Academy Award for Best Actor. He brings the same intellectual intensity and moral seriousness seen in A Bridge Too Far (1977), where conviction collides with impossible odds, and the cool, analytical edge he later displayed in The Black Hole (1979). In the courtroom, Schell turns legal arguments into moral battlegrounds, refusing to play Rolfe as a simple villain. Instead, he approaches the character with the emotional complexity and restraint found in Julia (1977), portraying a man who genuinely believes in the case he is making, no matter how unsettling it may be. There is also a sense of looming consequence in his performance, a quiet awareness of catastrophe that echoes the grave inevitability of Deep Impact (1998). The result is a riveting portrayal that stands among the greatest courtroom performances in film history.
Judy Garland, star of The Wizard of Oz(1939), gives a quiet, emotionally wrenching performance as Irene Hoffman that stands in stark contrast to the warmth and musical joy she brought to Meet Me in St. Louis (1944). Here, Garland strips everything away, using her natural vulnerability to portray a woman deeply scarred by the events she endured. Her testimony scene is among the most powerful moments in the film. She trembles as she speaks, her voice barely holding together, revealing the lasting damage left by years of coercion and fear. There is an emotional nakedness that echoes the raw, painful honesty of her comeback performance in A Star Is Born(1954). It is a rare late-career dramatic showcase that proves Garland’s extraordinary range and reminds us just how devastatingly effective she could be without a single song.
Werner Klemperer, best known for playing Col. Klink on television’s WWII POW spoof. “Hogan’s Heroes” appears as Emil Hahn, a defendant who still believes in the ideology he once served. Klemperer plays Hahn with an unsettling calm, creating a character who is dangerous precisely because he sees no error in his thinking. His lack of remorse and unwavering self-righteousness make him one of the most disturbing figures in the story. His performance highlights the film’s central question of personal responsibility.
William Shatner, the great Captain of the United Federation of Planets USS Enterprise, who was briefly covered in Star Trek TOS Movie Reviews – Does B-G-B-G-B-G Hold Up, plays Captain Byers, the young American officer assisting the tribunal. We all know that Shatner’s best film role was in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1983), followed by Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986), and finally Free Enterprise (1998).
Shatner’s crisp energy and earnest manner help frame the proceedings through the eyes of a witness to history as it unfolds. His scenes provide structure for the courtroom environment and a sense of the generational divide between those who fought the war and those who came after.
Story – Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)
Under the credits, nazzie imagery is shown, including the blasting of the symbol off the Zeppelintribüne, Adolf Hitler’s most powerful pulpit, at the heart of the Nazi party rally grounds in Nuremberg, clearly showing the appropriate method for dealing with nazzies.
The year is 1948, and the city of Nuremberg is a bombed-out wreck. Chief Judge Dan Haywood (Spencer Tracy), an American jurist from Maine, is being driven through the city along with American Sen. Burkette (Edward Binns). Haywood is shocked by the level of devastation. Their German driver, Schmidt (Paul Busch), is very efficient and eager to please the Americans.
The German Museum of Nuremberg says there are three reasons why the trials were held in this city. Firstly, there was a standing building large enough for the international trial; a prison nearby to house the prisoners; and, finally, because this city was used extensively by the nazzies for rallies and propaganda.[3]
The war has been over for three years, but Germany has not been rebuilt. When I was stationed there in the 1970s, you could view the eastern side, which was under Soviet control, and many buildings were still not repaired.
Hayward is taken to his quarters, where he is introduced to his aide, Captain Byers (William Shatner), and the housestaff, Frau Halbestadt (Virginia Christine) and Herr Halbestadt (Ben Wright). The level of luxury inside strikes Haywood compared to the outside. The house formally belonged to a nazzie general and his wife. Hayward is also not comfortable with the formality and fawning he is being shown.
Hayward says he doesn’t need the staff, but the Senator tells him that by working here, they get to eat. These trials are taking place after the leaders have been dealt with, and many people in America are beginning to lose their taste for this justice. Hayward says it is very important for this trial, the trial of judges, to continue, for when judges fail to do their jobs, evil can thrive.
Much of this movie takes place in the courtroom, and it is a military trial. Members of all the allied nations are present, and elaborate translation and recording equipment has been installed. Four criminals are brought into the court. Hayward is joined on the bench by Judge Curtiss Ives (Ray Teal) and Judge Kenneth Norris (Kenneth MacKenna).
The defendants are Emil Hahn (Werner Klemperer). He is unrepentant and readily recites nationalist slogans, defending the past with smug confidence. Next is Friedrich Hofstetter (Martin Brandt), and he is timider and more compliant. Next is Werner Lampe (Torben Meyer), who shows contempt for the proceedings. Finally, Dr. Ernst Janning (Burt Lancaster) was once a world-renowned legal scholar. Janning refuses to stand or listen, but a soldier helps him to his feet and gives him a headset. After he remains silent, German lawyer Hans Rolfe (Maximilian Schell) answers on behalf of the defendant. Rolfe is intelligent, passionate, and competent. The defendants are charged with crimes against humanity for enforcing Nazi racial laws, overseeing forced sterilizations, and using their judicial authority to destroy innocent lives.
On Janning’s behalf, Rolfe enters into the record that the defendant does not recognize the tribunal’s authority. This is a legal tactic used in every military trial shortly before they execute the defendant.
The prosecution is led by Colonel Tad Lawson (Richard Widmark). Lawson is driven, bitter, and determined that the criminals must face judgment. Lawson says they destroyed law and justice in support of the nazzies, and they are murderers and torturers and are just as guilty as the leaders. He states that they weren’t warped from childhood like a hister Youth. This is followed by – They embraced the ideologies of the Third Reich as educated adults when they most of all should have valued justice.
Herr Rolfe opens for the defense by arguing that they are seeking a code of law that the entire world must be required to follow. He speaks of the character of the men and speaks of what the defendants did before they became nazzie stooges and that they were just following the laws of the country. If he cannot prove the defendant’s innocence, he aims to show that the entire world shares the defendant’s guilt and that no country, including the United States, is free from hypocrisy.
At the recess, Lawson looks at Rolfe with hate and contempt. The judges wonder if their task can be accomplished. Hayward asks Captain Byers if he is dating a German girl, and he confirms that he is.
Hayward goes for a walk in the rubble, where he sees the citizens clearing rubble. He travels to the old city where food can be obtained, and pretty prostitutes work their craft. He travels to the site of the nazzie rallies. The speeches and cheers of the ghosts can be heard.
Rolfe visits with Janning and confirms that he is being treated well by the Americans. Janning did not want Rolfe as his counsel. Rolfe admits he admired Janning, but the criminal remains cold.
Lawson begins building his case with chilling clarity. The first witness, Dr. Karl Wieck (John Wengraf), states that when nazzies took over, judges were no longer independent and followed the political will of the party. Most adapted rather than resign. The witness says they must have known what this would lead to. The use of the death penalty and sterilization increased as well. Beginning in 1935, all judges were required to wear a swastika on their robes.
Rolfe has the witness testify to the horrible conditions at the end of the Weimar Republic. He also asks if following the nazzies would be beneficial to the country. Rolfe tries to justify sterilization to help stop criminality. Rolfe reads an American legal text justifying sterilization written by Supreme Court Justice Oliver Windel Holmes. Wieck says that sterilization was used against political opponents. Rolfe impugns Wieck because he signed the 1934 civil servant oath affirming loyalty to hister to save his pension. The two attorneys end the day by having a shouting match.
Back at his quarters, Hayward reads books by Janning and about the founding of the Weimar Republic. Hayward goes to the kitchen, and the former owner of the house, Frau Bertholt (Marlene Dietrich), is there gathering some of her possessions from the basement. Hayward is kind and helps her carry the box. He lets Schmidt drive Frau Bertholt home.
Hayward questions Frau Halbestadt about her work for the Bertholts and how long the family has lived in the home. He asks what it was like to live under the nazzies. They never heard of them! Hayward really wants to know. He then asks about the Dachau concentration camp and what they knew. They know nothing, nothing. I visited that place and am still struck by an image of a pile of eyeglasses as large as a building. Frau Halbestadt says that hister did good things, such as building the autobahn.
Judge Hayward asks about Frau Bertholt’s military husband, and Frau Halbestadt tells him that he was executed after the Malmedy trial. The Malmedy Massacre took place during the Battle of the Bulge, near the end of World War II. Eighty-four captured American prisoners were executed[4], although they should have been given protection under the Geneva Convention.
A trial was held in Nuremberg in 1946. The highest-ranking German tried was former Waffen-SS general Sepp Dietrich. It is ironic that the nazzie criminal shares the last name with the actress who played his wife in this film, as Marlene Dietrich was staunchly anti-nazzie. Because of this stance, Marlene Dietrich was persona non gratia in Germany for many years.
Dietrich raised funds to help Jews and dissidents escape from Germany. In 1939, she renounced her German citizenship and became an American. Dietrich was one of the first celebrities to sell war bonds. She toured the U.S., Algeria, Italy, the UK, France, and the Netherlands, giving USO shows to allied soldiers, sometimes near the front lines. She allowed her recordings to be used by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) for propaganda broadcasts.
After the war, Dietrich reconnected with her sister and brother-in-law. Oddly, they lived in the town of Belsen, where they ran a small cinema. Since it was near the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, nazzie camp officers often visited the cinema.
Dietrich received the U.S. Medal of Freedom in 1947 and later the Légion d’honneur from France for her wartime efforts.[5] Dietrich was vilified in Germany long after the war. Finally, in 2002, she was made an honorary citizen of Berlin, her birth city.
In court, Lawson presents a stack of affidavits from people being forced to submit to sterilization. Rolfe objects based on a ruling by an earlier allied tribunal that documents must be supported by live testimony. The objection is sustained. Rolfe has fallen into a trap as Lawson calls Rudolph Petersen (Montgomery Cliff).
Petersen is a simple but broken man. Petersen’s father was a member of the communist party. In 1933, members of the SA, a nazzie paramilitary group known as the Storm Division or Brownshirts[6], broke into their house and attacked the family. However, in this case, Petersen and his family won the fight.
Later, when he tried to get a truck driver’s license, the official was one of the attacking SA men. Hofstetter was the judge at a hearing called by the SA man. As a result of the hearing, Petersen was ordered to be sterilized. Janning was the Minister of Justice and was named in the order.
Rolfe’s cross was based on the fact that Petersen and his brothers were laborers. Rolfe has to take the nazzie line that some people are inferior and should not be allowed to reproduce. Rolfe breaks Petersen, saying his mother was mentally incompetent.
Hayward is disgusted by the examination.
At a dinner that night, Judge Ives calls Lawson and the prosecution radicals. He then asks Hayward about his politics. Hayward says he is a rock-ribbed Republican who liked FDR. A reporter and Frau Bertholt arrive at the dinner. The reporter says the American public is no longer interested in the Nuremberg trials. Frau Bertholt and Hayward get along famously. Frau Bertholt invites Hayward to a concert the following week.
When Lawson and his colleague, Maj. Abe Radnitz (Joseph Bernard) approaches the table. Frau Bertholt abruptly leaves because Lawson was the prosecutor at her husband’s trial. Maj. Abe Radnitz comes across as being Jewish, giving people like Judge Ives the opportunity to say that radicals or Zionists are driving the prosecutions. This is my opinion and is not spelled out in the film. Judge Ives pipes in that the nazzies wouldn’t have been given a death sentence at the current time.
Lawson is a little drunk, trying to drink away the events of the day’s trial. Lawson makes a good case for Americans being kind, but he still wanted to indict the entire country, as they all say they knew nothing about what happened.
An announcement is made calling certain officers back to their commands. Captain Byers comes to the table with his pretty German date and says the Soviets are toppling the Czechoslovakian government, and American units are being sent to the border. Of course, this is another reason a lot of Americans wanted to cozy up with the former nazzies against the Soviet Union.
In prison, Emil Hahn excitedly reads a newspaper about how the Americans must stand up to the Red threat. Hahn says this was exactly what hister said they would all be saved by it. Janning feels superior to the other defendants, thinking he was not a nazzie.
Hayward attends an excellent concert. He finally sees Frau Bertholt sitting in a box, looking very regal. After the concert, Hayward walks Frau Bertholt home. She is living in a bombed-out wreck with boarded windows. She asks how he feels about Janning, but he will not discuss the man. She tells of a time Janning took down hister in a verbal battle. She continues that Janning, her, and her husband hated hister. See, nobody backed him at all. She goes on to say that her husband was innocent and a victim of political murder. Hayward tells her he just wants to understand.
Maj. Radnitz tells Lawson that they located Irene Hoffman, but she doesn’t want to testify. Lawson takes a train to Berlin. Lawson is shown green-screened (I know, it wasn’t green-screened yet) against films of bombed-out Berlin, including the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag, or the seat of government that the Commies fought room to room to capture in a race to raise the red flag above it.
Irene’s husband does not want her to testify. Lawson makes a good case, and Irene Hoffman (Judy Garland) decides to go as Janning is on trial. She knows if she testifies, the pro-nazzie crowd will attack their store.
Lawson and his team introduce the Feldenstein case. Rolfe strongly objects but is overruled. The case was about a well-respected Jewish man who was accused of having sex with 16-year-old Irene Hoffman. The charge came about due to nazzie race purity laws. Defendant Hahn was the prosecutor. Defendant Janning was one of the judges.
Lawson calls Irene Hoffman to the stand. Judy Garland nailed it as the reluctant and fragile witness. Feldenstein was a family friend and occasionally visited Irene after her parents died. She says Hahn coerced her. Feldenstein was convicted and sentenced to death. Irene received a two-year sentence for perjury after the first trial. Rolfe says that they will recall Irene during the defense.
Lawson continues that the defendant’s actions allowed for multitudes to be sent to the concentration camps without due process. Maj. Radnitz then has Lawson called as a witness. Lawson testifies that he commanded troops that liberated some concentration camps. In one of the most shocking parts of the movie, historical footage of the horror of the camps is shown. Hayward and others in the court are shocked by what they are seeing. It is sickening to watch this day.
Hahn is indignant that they were shown the films, believing that, as judges, they were above the crimes. When they ask another nazzie in prison to explain how it could so easily happen, he gives them a technical explanation of the hows, not the why.
That night, Hayward meets Frau Bertholt in a diner. He does not eat because of what he has seen earlier that day. Frau Bertholt talks about the films that Lawson showed. She says they didn’t know. He says as far as he can make out, no one in the country knew. She is still angry that her husband was hanged like a criminal and not shot by a firing squad as a military man should have been.
The other diners sing a happy song as the camera pulls in and out. This gives the feeling of being on a wild ride and not knowing which way is up. Hayward senses Frau Bertholt has just been lobbying him the entire time.
Rolfe begins the defense by apologizing for what was done in the camps. He then attacks, saying the films should not be used against these defendants. He argues that Janning and the others stayed in power only to preserve justice. Rolfe then returns to the Feldenstein case and calls Elsa Lindnow (Olga Fabian), who earlier worked for Feldenstein. Lindnow testified that she saw Irene kissing Feldenstein at her doorway, and that she once saw Irene on Feldenstein’s lap.
On cross, Lawson asks Lindnow about her political affiliations and being a member of the nazzie party.
A shaken Rolfe recalls Irene to the stand. He attacks with precision and aggression. Rolfe maintains it was a matter of just following the law. Irene says he was like a father to her. Lawson objects, but Hayward overrules. This seems like a trap for Rolfe, as his super-aggression undermines his case.
After having remained silent the entire trial, Janning jumps up and says, “Herr Rolfe, are we going to do this again?” Hayward regains order and lets Janning make his statement. Both lawyers make their case. Hayward allows an adjournment until the next day.
In private, Rolfe says he has done things in the court that make him ashamed. But he says they must look to the future and to what is best for Germany. He also invokes the American nuclear bombing of Japan.
The standoff with the Soviets is intensifying. The military brass is moving for speedy trials. Sen. Burkette, backed by Judge Ives, calls for leniency in the trials.
At the next session, Janning testifies about the Feldenstein case. He says he went along for the country’s benefit, thinking it was a phase. But then, they were swept up in the power. Janning said he was content until he realized that the specter would have to be raised again, as Rolfe had been doing in the courtroom. He says the verdict was predetermined, and Feldenstein was a sacrifice. He says they knew.
Rolfe objects, but Janning continues. Hahn calls Janning a traitor. Janning condemns the others and himself. Rolfe is broken but tries to defend the men who went along. He tries to indict the entire world for not stopping hister. He clearly indicts the Soviet Union for signing a treaty with the nazzies and the Vatican for going along. Rolfe seems like a crazy man and says Americans made war profits off the war, too.
The American army is becoming increasingly concerned about the Soviet blockade of Berlin and begins airlifting supplies to the city, which began in May 1948.[7] A general asks Lawson to ease up on the trial. Lawson says he won’t bend. He won’t go along just because it is easy. The general actually sounds like a German apologizing for going along.
Lawson closes by arguing that the crimes must be seen for what they were, not for what needs to be done today. Hayward allows the defendants to make their final statements. Hahn says he stands by what he did and will not apologize. Hofstetter basically says he did what the law required, and he looked no further. Lampe breaks down and cries. Janning says he has nothing to add.
Judge Ives struggles with the tension between domestic and international law. Hayward looks at the images of the victims. Hayward won’t bend to the rationalizations of letting the nazzies go.
Hayward says the real issue is that the men who did this were not evil degenerates, at least not at the beginning. Finally, Hayward delivers the verdicts and sentences. All four are found guilty and are sentenced to life in prison. Frau Bertholt is present in the court. The general says Hayward doesn’t understand what he means when he says that every life is sacred. Lawson says he does. Judge Ives dissents on the verdict and presents the expedience argument.
Hayward prepares to leave and says goodbye to his staff. Captain Byers states that Americans are unpopular in Nuremberg following the verdict. Hayward calls Frau Bertholt, but she sits under the portrait of her nazzie husband and refuses to answer.
Rolfe comes in at Janning’s request. Rolfe says that others’ trials of nazzies are ending with not-guilty verdicts or light sentences because of the shifting political situation with the Soviets. Hayward says that making decisions based on political expediency is never the right thing to do. Taking the easy way out is often a slippery slope.
Haywood visits Janning in his cell. Janning gives Hayward a written record of his cases. Janning understands the pressure exerted on Hayward to secure a favorable verdict. Janning said he never knew it would come to millions of deaths. Hayward tells him that it came to that the first time he sentenced an innocent man.
Haywood walks through the prison as German patriotic music plays. The crawl reads that 99 men were sentenced at the Nuremberg trials, which ended in 1949. By 1961, none of the convicted remained in jail, dying or having been released.
Conclusion – Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)
This movie is an amazing courtroom drama. It deals directly with the question of going along because it’s easier, or doing what you know to be right, even though there will be a cost. The cast delivers remarkable performances, and the themes remain relevant in any era where justice struggles against political pressure. Maximilian Schell won the Academy Award for Best Actor for the role of Rolfe. Judy Garland’s and Montgomery Cliff’s performances are noteworthy, ranking among the strongest dramatic moments of their careers and demonstrating the depth of their acting. It can’t happen here, or can it?
World-Famous Short Summary – Just following orders is not an excuse.
Beware the moors.
[1] The Screen: ‘Judgment at Nuremberg’ – The New York Times
[2] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055031/awards/
[3] Choice of Nuremberg as the venue for the trials | Memorium Nuremberg Trials
[4] Malmedy massacre trial – Wikipedia
[5] Marlene Dietrich – Wikipedia
[6] Sturmabteilung – Wikipedia
[7] Berlin Blockade – Wikipedia
