MovieChat Forums > Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) Discussion > Justice, Truth, and the Value of a Singl...

Justice, Truth, and the Value of a Single Human Being

posted 12 years ago by Kitchen_Sink
3 replies | jump to latest

"Any person who sways another to commit murder, any person who furnishes the lethal weapon for the purpose of the crime, any person who is an accessory to the crime -- is guilty."

If we are to take these ideals and implications at face value, if we are to carry them to their furthest possible conclusion, I'm afraid that many more than four men should be sentenced to prison terms. In fact, many more people than those just on the Axis powers should be carted off.

Think of all the women in the USA and the UK who fastened the bombers that dropped millions of tons of incendiary bombs on Germany and Japan in the Allied terror bombing campaigns. Think of those corporations that helped Germany to engineer its tanks and munitions, some of them you may recognize: Standard Oil, Coca Cola, IBM, and Ford, to name a few. Think of all those brilliant scientists who designed and tested the atomic bombs. Think of all those subjugated nations that the Allied powers held before WWII despite their condemnations of Germany and Japan for the same behavior, nations such as the Philippines, India, Vietnam, and nearly the entirety of Africa.

While I could never dispute the value of the ideals mentioned above, is it really fair for this film to take such a heavy-handed moralistic tone when the inevitable result is mere hypocrisy? No, I think this issue is much grayer than this film might lead us to believe.

[–] bhoover247 12 years ago

You wrote of the "brilliant scientists who designed and tested atomic bombs". If you will remember Robert Oppenheimer agreed with your assesment and after seeing films showing the destruction of Hiroshima quoted from the Bhagavad Gita. "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds".

[–] roarmeister2 11 years ago

It seems to me that the defence in this film took that very same tact and the Judge praised him for in his sentencing remarks. At the time I thought it was just a shallow technique to blunt the guilt but in reality there is some truth to it.

However, the trial did not put on trial these "accessories". It was trying only these men, and these men were found guilty. The sharing of guilt among those who permitted Hitler to gain and maintain power, the industrialists and even the peoples of Germany have their own God to answer to even if the imperfect judges/justice systems of this world can not or did not try them.

You complain about the film being too heavy handed and moralistic and that the reality is grayer? Perhaps, but it is Hollywood after all. AND I thought it was a ripping good movie. :)

[–] 11 years ago

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