The Ending of “Judgment at Nuremberg” And the Film’s Lesson for Today

The film “Judgment at Nuremberg” ends with a stunning indictment from Spencer Tracy’s character that should offer a chilling lesson for today.

The 1961 film Judgment at Nuremberg, directed by Stanley Kramer and written by Abby Mann, presents a fictionalized trial based on real events following World War II. There were twelve trials in military courts in Nuremberg, Germany regarding Nazi crimes committed during the war. The movie centers on a trial similar to the actual trial of jurists and lawyers (sometimes called “The Judges’ Trial“). [Warning: This post contains some spoilers for the movie.]

Judgment at Nuremberg features many great actors of the time, including Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland, Richard Widmark, Montgomery Clift, Maximilian Schell (who won the Best Actor Oscar) and a young William Shatner. Much of the fim, though, centers on the characters played by Spencer Tracy and Burt Lancaster.

Spencer Tracy and Burt Lancaster

Spencer Tracy, who was 61 at the time and looked older, plays Chief Judge Dan Haywood, one of the judges overseeing the trial. Tracy’s Maine judge is in many ways the heart of the film, as we see through his eyes the war-torn streets of Germany and the moral questions surrounding the war and the atrocities.

Lancaster, plays Dr. Ernst Janning, one of the German defendants. Initially appearing defiant, Janning is troubled by what the Nazi’s did. Eventually, Janning takes the stand as a witness for the prosecution. During his testimony indicting the works of the Nazis, he confesses his own role in sentencing a Jewish man to death for having sex with a 16-year-old Gentile girl when he knew the charges were not true.

Lancaster was a great handsome movie star, and he brings his gravitas to the role, evoking sympathy from us for the guilt he feels and for his willingness among the defendants to admit the sins of the Germans. Tracy and Lancaster were long-time movie stars by this point, and we were familiar with Tracy as a trustworthy character and Lancaster as a strong man with a vulnerable heart and intense eyes.

The Final Confrontation

Janning: “Those people . . . Those millions of people. I never knew it would come to that. You must believe it. You must believe it.”

Haywood: “Herr Janning, it came to that the first time you sentenced a man to death you knew to be innocent.”

At the end of the film, we do finally get a one-on-one scene between the two heavyweight actors. After Janning and the other three defendants are found guilty and sentenced to life in prison, Janning asks Judge Haywood to visit him in his cell. And Judge Haywood agrees. Throughout the film, Tracy has played Haywood as a man conflicted about how blame may be assessed among the living for the crimes of the Nazis, and we have seen him moved by Janning’s acceptance of guilt. So, the viewer may expect that this final scene of the two men (and great actors) meeting alone, will provide some common understanding between the two judges. But that is not what happens.

The two men complement each other. Lancaster’s Janning tells Spencer’s Haywood that his decision of the court was a just one. Haywood responds that Lancaster’s testimony was what needed to be said.

Then, Burt Lancaster’s Janning turns to the reason he wanted to talk to the judge in private. He does ask for some type of understanding, if not forgiveness from Spencer Tracy’s judge, explaining he did not know the extent of the horrors and the killings of the Jewish people. He pleads, “Those people . . . Those millions of people. I never knew it would come to that. You must believe it. You must believe it.”

But Spencer Tracy’s judge does not give forgiveness or understanding, only an indictment. He replies, “Herr Janning, it came to that the first time you sentenced a man to death you knew to be innocent.” The camera captures Lancaster’s pained and haunted face as the movie ends with his prison door closing.

America’s Dilemma

That scene from Judgment at Nuremberg has always stayed with me, and I have been thinking about it a lot lately. In the news, we have read and seen about the Trump administration rounding up immigrants and sending them to an inhumane prison in El Salvador. A few years ago, it might have been hard to imagine the United States sending convicted criminals to such a place, but because these men are not citizens of the U.S. and the administration asserts they are members of the MS-13 gang, so far we have mostly accepted sending people who have been convicted of no crimes.

As we find out more about some of the men sent, we should be more troubled. There is Andry Jose Hernandez Romero, a gay makeup artist who sought asylum in the United States last year. He was sent to the prison based on a signature from a disgraced former police officer, now a private prison contractor, with a record of lying.

Merwil Gutiérrez also was sent to the El Salvador prison. The 19-year-old with no criminal record and reportedly no gang affiliation was taken from the Bronx and sent to the prison. Reportedly, he was seized after an ICE agent realized he was not who they were looking for. But another agent responded “take him anyway,” so they did. Gutiérrez’s father is still trying to get information on his son.

Ábrego García also sits in the El Salvador prison, though his case has already gone to the U.S. Supreme Court. The lawyer for the foreign-born Maryland father says he has no ties to criminal gangs. The U.S. has admitted it was a mistake to send García to El Salvador, and the Supreme Court has ordered the government to “facilitate” his return to the U.S. But the Trump administration continues to do nothing and claim both that they cannot do anything to get García back — and anyway García is still a bad guy who is not a citizen.

García’s case in particular might remind one of Spencer Tracy’s rebuke to Burt Lancaster’s character in Judgment at Nuremberg. After observing Lancaster’s sympathetic performance, like his character, we are reminded that one bore the blame for the atrocities that followed once one was complicit in the first injustice.

I don’t know if we are there yet, and of course we are not Nazi Germany. But there are lessons to be learned from history (and movies).

And many of us are surprised that more of our fellow citizens are not outraged at the thought of innocent people being sent to this inhumane foreign prison. And to have our government concede it committed a mistake that results in suffering and do nothing to correct it (even assuming anyone should be in this prison) is something out of a horror movie if you imagine what these people are going through each day.

The U.S. has never been perfect. And maybe in recent years the fact that people did not stand up to the horrors we perpetrated in the wake of 9/11 like torturing suspects and accepting the mistreatment, torture, and rapes at Abu Ghraib prison have made us immune to these atrocities committed by our country against non-citizens.

Twenty-five years ago, I would have thought that my fellow citizens would not have allowed these things to happen. Yes, some have stood up and many are fighting the administration’s cruelty and bullying today. For example, constituents showed up in Iowa at a Republican senator’s town hall to ask what was being done about getting García out of the prison where he does not belong.

Yet, how many of us will allow our government to send people to an inhumane prison without any type of due process?

Maybe like Burt Lancaster’s Janning character we will be thinking that later we will be able to claim that we never knew it would come to whatever comes next.

Find your representatives in Congress to call them athttps://www.congress.gov/members/find-your-member. Leave your two cents in the comments.

“You Don’t Miss Your Water”: Sturgill Simpson Song of the Day

In October 2024, Sturgill Simpson played a sizzling cover of William Bell’s “You Don’t Miss Your Water.”

In addition to his classic original version, William Bell’s “You Don’t Miss Your Water” has been covered by artists such as Otis Redding, Gram Parsons, The Byrds, Percy Sledge, and more recently Sturgill Simpson. Not a bad group.

“You Don’t Miss Your Water” is one of the great heartache songs. The song recounts how we often do not appreciate our lovers until they are gone. The singer explains, “But now that you left me / Oh, how I cried out, I keep crying /
You don’t miss your water ’til your well run dry.”

The live performance below by Sturgill Simpson (aka Johnny Blue Skies) is from October 25, 2024. Check it out.

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Glen Sherley: Prison, Johnny Cash, & “Greystone Chapel”

Glen Sherley’s first brush with fame came while in Folsom Prison when Johnny Cash sang one of his songs. Despite his talents, though, Sherley could not escape his demons.

Glen Sherley

Singer-songwriter Glen Sherley was born in Oklahoma on March 9, 1936. Between his birth and his self-inflicted death in Gonzales, California on May 11, 1978 at the age of 42, Sherley’s life had several highs and lows. He is most known for his brief brush with fame when Johnny Cash performed one of Sherley’s songs during his famous 1968 concert at Folsom Prison.

When Cash performed the song, Sherley sat in the audience. He was serving time for armed robbery.

Greystone Chapel

Sherley wrote songs while in prison. He and his wife had had a son, Bruce, and a daughter Ronda. And his extended family often visited him, giving him tapes to record his songs. One of those tapes made it to Johnny Cash.

Prior to Johnny Cash’s 1968 performance at Folsom Prison, Floyd Gressett, a Folsom preacher and friend of Cash’s, gave Cash a copy of Sherley’s song “Greystone Chapel.” Cash liked the song about the chapel at Folsom, and he decided to perform it at the show. On January 11. with Sherley in the front row, Cash surprised the inmate by introducing him and singing his song. Cash later recognized it was a “terrible thing” to single out Sherley in such a setting, but the other inmates cheered.

The recording of the show was released as the album At Folsom Prison (1968) was a crossover hit for Cash, resurrecting his career. And as singer-songwriter Marty Stuart explained, the Sherley’s song “was kind of the heart of that record.”

Cash was not Sherleys’ only encounter with fame while in prison. After being transferred to Vacaville Prison in California, Sherley befriended country singer and former television personality Spade Cooley, who was serving life in prison for the murder of his wife. Sherley and Cooley even wrote a song together in 1969 called “Big Steel Prison Gate.”

And in 1971, another one of Sherley’s songs was recorded by a country star. Eddy Arnold recorded Sherley’s “Portrait Of My Woman.”

And then Sherley was given the chance to record his own album live while still in prison in 1971. The record company originally released the album as entitled Glen Sherley, and later it was re-released as Glen Sherley Live at Vacaville California (Bear Records).

Also in 1971, an episode of This Is Your Life was devoted to Johnny Cash. The show featured a video of Sherley in prison thanking Cash. You can see Cash’s jaw drop when the announcer introduces Sherley. And then Cash tears up at the warm tribute (starting around the 6-minute mark in the video below).

Release from Prison

Sherley was paroled from prison later in 1971. Johnny Cash welcomed him to freedom at the gates of the prison. Cash began a mentorship trying to help Sherley on the outside with his career and life.

The former country star who had befriended Sherley in prison, Spade Cooley, however, was not around to provide additional support. Although Cooley had been granted parole effective a year earlier, he died of a heart attack in late 1969 while giving a concert on furlough before he could be released.

Sherley remarried in 1972. Cash took Sherley on tour. Sherley’s children Bruce, 14, and Ronda, 11, for the first time saw their dad perform, not in a club, but at the Los Angeles Forum with an audience of 17,000 people.

Later that year, Ronda moved from California to Nashville to live with her dad. But she saw him struggling with the change from prison to the musician’s life. She later explained that although he knew how to be in prison, “he didn’t know how to be the person people wanted him to be out here.”

A Flower Out of Place

In 1974, Sherley, apparently with support from Johnny Cash, hosted a TV special recorded at Tennessee State Prison called A Flower Out of Place. Sherley performed some songs, alone and with Johnny Cash, while introducing other acts like comedian Foster Brooks, Linda Ronstadt, and Roy Clark.

In watching the special, one may wonder whether Sherley was nervous or maybe back on drugs. Though his song performances are still very good, the title of the special captured an aspect of Sherley’s life outside the joint.

Out of prison, Sherley could not escape whatever demons haunted him from his past. Sherley, whose migrant farmer family moved from Oklahoma to California when he was young, was apparently in trouble often since a young age, often while drunk. In the 1950s, he committed crimes with little planning, such as robbing a man of a cash roll of one-dollar bills or holding up an ice cream company for $28 with a toy gun. By the time Cash met Sherley at Folsom, his armed robbery career had sent him to serve time in several penal institutions.

And once out of prison, Sherley again had behavior issues, carrying a gun and finding solace in drugs and alcohol. Eventually, reportedly he threatened to kill Johnny Cash’s bass player and road manager Marshall Grant (“I love you but what I’d really like to do to you, I’d like to get a butcher knife and start cutting you all to hell”).

So, reluctantly, Johnny Cash, who had turned his own life around to become sober, dismissed Sherley from his performing group. The setback for Sherley preceded other problems such as more drugs, alcohol, and Pall Malls, eventually becoming estranged from his wife and kids.

Sherley’s Downward Spiral

And despite great talent and a taste of fame, Glen Sherley ended up losing his star. He worked other non-music jobs, including feeding cattle at a cattle farm. Like many who struggle after life in prison, his use of drugs and alcohol contributed to the downward spiral.

According to Wikipedia, in May 1978, while high on drugs, Sherley shot another man in California. But it is hard to find any details about that shooting anywhere else, so I am not sure if that is true.

But we do know that on May 11, 1978, Sherley, who did not want to go back to prison, stood on his brother’s porch and committed suicide by shooting himself with a gun to his head.

Johnny Cash paid for Sherley’s funeral. Sherley was buried outside Bakersfield, California, a place made famous by another singer-songwriter who had attended a Johnny Cash concert while in San Quentin prison, Merle Haggard.

Sherley’s Legacy

Knowing Sherley’s story, it is hard to separate the man’s life (as well as his incarceration at the time) from the music while listening to Glen Sherley Live at Vacaville California (or the re-released version with bonus tracks Glen Sherley: Released Again). The narration and lyrics to the live performances often remind the listener of the singer’s situation.

But it is also hard to ignore that Glen Sherley was a great talent who showed much potential. With a booming voice, he sounds great, and his songs at their best show flashes of Cash, Haggard, Paycheck, and Jones. For example, his version of “Portrait of My Woman” illustrates a tenderness that outshines Eddy Arnold’s cover.

In his live performances, perhaps he understandably at times tries a little too much to copy Johnny Cash’s swagger. And maybe that swagger, trying to copy Cash’s bravado without understanding how Cash eventually embraced his vulnerability too, helped keep Sherley playing the tough guy in his life even when he needed help.

And of course, in the 1970s, there was not the type of understanding or mental health support that someone getting out of prison would need. Despite all Johnny Cash tried to do for Sherley, he could not have understood that Sherley needed much more than a guitar and an audience to adjust to life and freedom.

Sherley largely remains a footnote to the Johnny Cash story, unfortunately. Even his hosting and performing in the A Flower Out of Place TV special was later edited to completely exclude Sherley in a DVD release as well as scrubbed from a Johnny Cash album called A Concert: Behind Prison Walls (2003) (even while it includes the drunk comedy routine of Foster Brooks).

There exists more music that Sherley wrote and recorded as demos while in prison. His family has talked of releasing some of it, although so far the only additional music are three extra bonus tracks added to the Bear Records release of Glen Sherley Live at Vacaville California. And below, his daughter plays one of the tapes. She introduces the unreleased song “My Last Day,” a song about a man on death row. If there are more songs like these recent releases, I hope some day we get to hear more of Sherley’s music stored on cassette tapes in a box.

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Podcast Review: A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs

Chimesfreedom recommends the podcast, “A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs,” a fascinating look into music history by Andrew Hickey.

Anyone interested in rock music should listen to Andrew Hickey’s podcast A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs. Each episode focuses on one song and provides background information putting the song in its historical context. Hickey also has been putting his work into books.

The podcast episodes are presented in chronological order, tracing the early origins of rock music through the great recordings during the rock era. Each episode is not strictly only about one song, but Hickey provides the background leading up to the song, including information about the artist and related music.

Hickey, who is a writer from England who enjoys his privacy, does a great job presenting the music and lets his work speak for hitself. For those interested in supporting his work, his website provides some ways to do so. As of this date, he still is not halfway through his 500 songs.

Where to start? I suggest you check out the episodes on some of your favorite songs. Then, if you love the podcast, like me, you can go back to episode one and listen to the episodes in chronological order.

For an example, this episode focuses on the song “This Train” by Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

Leave your two cents in the comments.

  • Land of Hope & Dreams, This Train, and People Get Ready
  • Happy Birthday Little Richard!
  • Bruce Springsteen’s Fighting Prayer for the U.S.

    The night after the 2024 U.S. presidential election, Bruce Springsteen opened his show in Canada with two of his most powerful songs.

    On November 6, 2024, Bruce Springsteen awakened feeling like many people in the United States did following the previous night’s election of Donald Trump. While many were happy, in a divided country there were around just as many people who were sad, angry, scared and/or feeling despair. Those feelings have amplified for many people in the months following the election.

    Back in November, like many of us, Springsteen did not have the option of staying in bed all day and had to go to work. Unlike most of us, though, Springsteen had to do his job in front of a large audience.

    And as he often does, he let his music speak for his feelings. So that night, playing for our neighbor and friend Canada, Springsteen opened with a brief comment introducing what he called “a fighting prayer” for his country, which was a one-two punch of two of his most powerful songs.

    First, he opened with “A Long Walk Home” from his 2007 album Magic. He had never opened with that song prior to the election. The song, inspired by a Stanley Brothers song, is in the voice of a person coming back home and not recognizing where he once lived. Originally written about the George W. Bush and the post-9/11 years, the song is even more relevant for many today.

    But Springsteen is not one to leave us in the dark, as his songs and performances bring together his fans and lifts them up. So, as part of the opening after “A Long Walk Home” he followed with one of his most hopeful songs, which we have previously discussed more in-depth, “Land of Hope and Dreams.”

    While many may not have felt they were living in such a land that morning, Springsteen reminded us that your community is what you make of it. ” This Train / Dreams will not be thwarted; / This Train / Faith will be rewarded.”

    Music does not change the world overnight. But at least for now, here is something to listen to during the next several years when you need to feel less alone and to find some hope to get you through the night.

    The full audio of the November 6, 2024 show is also available on Nugs.net. Leave your two cents in the comments.