NUREMBERG:  THE MOVIE

I love good movies.  My favorite feature film is The Nuremberg Trial.  It’s about the first Nuremberg trial, the prosecution of almost all the top Nazis––Goering, Hess, Speer, etc.––22 of these jerks.  (Not to be confused with Judgment at Nuremberg, a flick about the later trial of Nazi judges.)

The first trial was the big one.  It was the true trial of the century.  Nothing like it had ever happened before, and it set the scene for war crimes trials occurring down to the present.

There’s just one slight problem.  The movie doesn’t exist––yet. 

But it’s just waiting to be made.  It has all the elements of a great film.  In the hands of the right producer, it would garner Oscars, a legacy, and big bucks. 

You want drama?  The historical record shows drama and crazy characters at every turn.  For starters, why a trial at all?  Churchill said, “Just shoot the 50 top Nazis.”  Stalin disagreed:  “Only 50?  Nyet! 50 thousand!”  But the Americans wanted a trial, to show the world what had happened––and show the Germans what a proper justice system looks like.  And the Americans held the trump card: most of the defendants had fled west to surrender to the Americans. 

Trouble right off the bat.  This was the first “war crimes” trial in history.  So earlier, when the defendants committed their alleged “war crimes,” there was no law against what they did.  Lead prosecutor Robert Jackson (on leave from the U.S. Supreme Court) dealt with this ex post facto problem creatively:  “Your honors, the law against murder and theft has been part of the law of every society since time immemorial.  These defendants knew it was wrong to kill and steal.  They cannot be excused merely because their crimes were committed on a scale so vast that prior laws gave them no special name.  When murder becomes genocide, it is still murder.”

Probably the most difficult ex post facto problem arose with defendant Alfried Jodl, a Wehrmacht general who carried out Hitler’s orders to invade other countries.  The indictment alleged that this was a “war crime” because it violated treaties Germany had made with the invaded countries.  Never before had an army officer been indicted for carrying out a political decision made by his head of state.  If Jodl was guilty, weren’t many generals of the British empire also guilty?

Another difficult prosecution was against Kriegsmarine Admiral Karl Doenitz, accused of refusing to rescue Allied seamen who had survived the U-boats’ torpedoes.  But the presiding judge presented a letter from American Admiral Chester Nimitz, who said that he indulged in the same practice in the Pacific. 

Several defendants hated each other.  They saw Albert Speer (Hitler’s armaments boss) as a slimy sell-out, willing to kiss ass at the trial to save his neck.  They saw Rudolf Hess (Hitler’s buddy from early Nazi days, who helped him write Mein Kampf) as a nut-case.  They saw Julius Streicher as a child-molesting pervert.  Behind the scenes, in prison, they argued and mocked each other.  Say what you like about the Nazis––but you can’t say they were dull.

At the trial, Jackson’s opening and closing arguments were extraordinary.  My favorite lines:

• the Nazis’ “crimes were so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated,”

• “The heart of these crimes, of the Nazi regime, of Germany itself for the past 12 years, can be summed up in one word:  racism.  Racism: the belief that one race is superior to all others. * * * * Racism.  This was the crime of crimes––the crime from which all other crimes sprang.” 

• And to the defendants’ claims that “they didn’t know” of the atrocities, Jackson responded:  “Could such a government of know-nothings have built one of the fiercest war machines the world has ever known?  If this Tribunal finds that these men did not know, then it might just as well find that the horrible deeds of the Nazi regime never happened.” 

Jackson was a great orator, but his sparring with the defendants on cross-examination was sometimes shaky.  His most formidable opponent was Hermann Goering, second in command to Hitler, founder of the Gestapo and head of the Luftwaffe.  Goering was the perfect villain:  arrogant, sneering, and cunning.  Goering justified his acts by invoking loyalty––to Germany and to his political superior, Hitler.  And he continuously maintained that the trial was a farce––“victor’s justice,” where the result was preordained.  Unfortunately, this view was confirmed by the Russian judge, who made no secret of his desire from the outset to hang ‘em all. 

To Germans, Goering was a decorated World War I fighter pilot, a hero.  Jackson tried to deflate him, “Goering was no brave warrior.  He was a bully and a thief.  His pudgy finger was in every pie.  He founded the Gestapo and the concentration camp system, he stole from his Jewish victims, and he launched his V-2s and Heinkels against innocent Londoners.”  And at the trial, Goering’s image took a hit with evidence that he had enriched himself with thousands of paintings stolen from Jews––and that he enjoyed dressing up in ladies’ clothes!  (Would this be admissible in a U.S. court?) 

Goering’s “victor’s justice” view was undermined by Jackson’s insistence that the trial be fair, with each defendant given counsel of his choice (even a Nazi lawyer), and each with the right to present evidence, cross-examine, and argue.  But German lawyers had been trained in the European legal system, which did not include cross-examination.

Defendant Julius Streicher was vicious gutter-snipe, the publisher of Der Stuermer, an anti-Semitic rag that urged Germans to persecute Jews.  Jackson argued that “Streicher was no mere publisher.  He furnished the essential link to the ultimate destruction of the Jews: he motivated the German people to carry out those awful murders.”  Was that enough?  (If he’d done such things in the U.S., wouldn’t he be protected by the First Amendment?) 

Jackson needed evidence and thought he’d found it in the enormous piles of documents the Germans had saved.  But documents are boring, and the trial bogged down.  He finally found some pizzazz when one of Jackson’s aides ran into Hollywood screen-writer Budd Schulberg, who had been gathering films of Nazi atrocities.  The movies shocked the court––and even the defendants.  (Our movie could include re-enactments of Einsatzgruppen massacres, and the camps.)

The final result seemed to rebut Goering’s “victor’s justice” thesis.  The judges rejected Jackson’s plea for the death penalty for all defendants.  Of the 22 defendants, only twelve were sentenced to death.  (They were hanged then cremated at Dachau.)  Seven were sentenced to prison.  And three were entirely acquitted.

But Goering had sworn they would never hang him.  He was right, as he somehow managed to have cyanide pills smuggled into his cell.  He killed himself right before his scheduled execution.  This was despite the guards’ vigilance after another defendant (Robert Ley, who ran the Nazis’ slave labor program) had hanged himself in his cell. 

Yes––action, drama, history––the whole shebang.  But wait a minute.  What about sex (what used to be called “the love interest”)?  My historical research didn’t uncover much of that at Nuremberg.  So I took the liberty of throwing in some naughty bits into my script.  In the post-war period, Germans were poor and desperate.  That led many women to consort with Allied occupiers for food for their families.

“My script”?  Yep, you guessed it.  As I got deeper into this, I couldn’t help myself.  If no one else would do it, I’d have to do it myself.  Now, if I could just get some producer interested, maybe I’d get to watch my favorite movie.  Until then, I’ll just enjoy viewing it in my head.