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.

The Strange Coincidence With the Ending of “Wrath of Khan”

Many commentators have noticed the parallels between Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. Several parallels are intentional, but is one of the biggest similarities just a coincidence? Note that this post has spoilers for both Moby Dick and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

Wrath of Khan The Wrath of Khan (“TWOK“) mirrors the overrding theme of vengeance from Moby Dick. Just as Ahab is driven by his desire for vengeance against the white whale, TWOK focuses on Khan’s obsessive quest for vengeance against Captain Kirk (William Shatner). The movie writers’ intent is reinforced with Herman Melville’s book appearing in one scene and Khan quoting or paraphrasing from Moby Dick at points (“to the last I grapple with thee; from Hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee”). Finally, the ending of TWOK is almost identical to the ending of Moby Dick. But what is interesting is that, despite all of the intentional similarities, it appears that this major similarity about the two endings is entirely coincidental.

In the end of TWOK, after Spock dies, his body is sent off in a photon torpedo as his coffin. In one of the final scenes, we see that this “coffin” has landed on the planet where Genesis is bringing the planet back to life.

The test version of the film, though, omitted the final coffin-on-the-rejuvinating-planet scene. Various sources, including Wikipedia, explain that Leonard Nimoy had initially agreed to reprise his role as Mr. Spock in TWOK only because his character would finally be killed. But, as the filming was coming to a close, Nimoy had enjoyed the making of the movie so much, he wanted to allow for Spock’s return if they so chose. So, the scene of Spock mind melding with Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley) was added, but the initial cut of the movie still ended in a way that appeared to make Spock’s death final. Only after test audiences reacted poorly to seeing the icon’s death did producer Harve Bennett add the final scene showing Spock’s coffin on the rejuvenating planet with Nimoy’s voiceover of the traditional Star Trek series opening monologue.

The director, Nicholas Myer objected to the changes but allowed them. According to his director’s commentary on the video, he believed it was cheating to change the finality of the death scene (and having no interest in a resurrection story, he declined an offer to direct Star Trek III: The Search for Spock). In the commentary, he explains that as the movie was being finalized, producers realized that they might want to continue the series. And so the movie has the ending we all know:

Other sources confirm the story about the changes to the ending of TWOK. The book Star Trek and Sacred Ground, by Jennifer E. Porter and Darcee L. McLaren, reports that the first versions of the film did not include the scenes with Spock’s coffin landing on the Genesis planet. (p. 155.) A 2010 Los Angeles Times article noted Nimoy’s response to seeing the coffin scene: ”I was caught by surprise by the ending…. I was sitting there watching it and the camera goes across some foliage, some mist — a little magical kind of look — and guess what, there’s the black tube … whoa, I think I’m going to get a call from Paramount.”

So why is it interesting that the final scene was an afterthought and not planned from the start? Because so much of the rest of the movie echoes Moby Dick, and in the classic novel, a coffin plays an important role. Aboard the novel’s ship the Pequod, the character Queequeg at one point thought he was dying and had a coffin built for him. At the end of the novel, the obsessed Ahab is killed by his obsession just as the obsessed Khan is effectively killed by his obsession Kirk. Then, the book’s narrator Ishmael survives because after the Pequod is destroyed, he uses the coffin as a life buoy, just as Spock is left with a coffin after the Enterprise is almost destroyed. As Ishmael is adrift after the ship’s destruction, he describes his discovery of a “black bubble” in the ocean:

“[T]he black bubble upward burst; and now, liberated by reason of its cunning spring, and owing to its great buoyancy, rising with great force, the coffin like-buoy shot lengthwise from the sea, fell over, and floated by my side. Buoyed up by that coffin, for almost one whole day and night, I floated on a soft and dirge-like main. The unharming sharks, they glided by as if with padlocks on their mouths; the savage sea-hawks sailed with sheathed beaks. On the second day, a sail drew near, nearer, and picked me up at last.”

[Update February 2015: The final coffin scene from the Gregory Peck movie does not seem to be on YouTube any longer, but below is a trailer for the movie.]

When I first saw The Wrath of Khan in the movie theater, because of the Moby Dick references, I thought the director intended to invoke Moby Dick again at the end. Just as the classic novel ended with Ishmael surviving in a scene with a coffin, I thought the producers’ message with the final coffin scene was designed to evoke Ishmael’s survival, revealing that Spock would live again. While they did intend to imply Spock might live again, it seems it was a coincidence that the way they did it once again invoked Moby Dick.

Were the similar endings a coincidence? What do you think? Leave a comment.

Bonus Moby Dick References: There are a couple of other parallels between Moby Dick and Star Trek outside The Wrath of Khan. Captain Picard, i.e., Patrick Stewart, starred in a TV version of Moby Dick and like Khan he quoted the book in a Star Trek movie, Star Trek: First Contact (1996).

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  • “This man’s dead, Captain”
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    7 Things About “Star Trek: Into Darkness” (Short Review)

    Star Trek Into Darkness Here are seven spoiler-free things about Star Trek: Into Darkness (2013).

    1. You already know whether or not you will enjoy Star Trek: Into Darkness. If you are a Star Trek fan or like action movies in space, you will see the movie no matter what I say. And you probably will not be disappointed. For a Star Trek fan like me, it is a very entertaining movie and the most fun I have had at the cinema in awhile.

    2. Director J.J. Abrams continues with our heroes in an alternate time-line from the 1960s series and the William Shatner movies. In this first sequel to J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek (2009) reboot, where time does not need to be wasted on the set-up, we are starting to see the brilliance of having the freedom to change the events of the “past” while also connecting to the stories we know.

    3. While the first film took me awhile to adapt to the new actors in the classic roles, by now the actors fit well into their roles. Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, John Cho and others have become the characters we know. Benedict Cumberbatch does a good job as the bad guy too.

    4. There are several references to the old TV and movie series. I will leave it to you to decide whether the movie overdoes it. On one hand, one might conclude there was a little too much old and not enough new — while also wondering if this alternate universe storyline really makes much sense for the characters. But on the other hand, the connections did make for an entertaining and clever movie.

    5. As Slate has noted, the new film has a little something to say about the U.S. war on terrorism, making the movie relevant in the way the old series was. The Atlantic, however, finds the message is not so ambiguous. There is a lot to discuss on this point, which makes the movie even more memorable.

    6. While many speculated about the identity of the villain prior to the film’s release (and which I will not spoil here), I was pleasantly surprised by the appearance of one of these (warning: clicking on the link will give you a minor spoiler).

    7. Conclusion? If you liked past Star Trek films, you should see Star Trek: Into Darkness. But I probably did not need to tell you that.



    What did you think of Star Trek: Into Darkness? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    “First” Interracial Kiss on TV

    Interracial Kiss

    The first interracial kiss on broadcast television is often cited as having occurred in a Star Trek episode “Plato’s Stepchildren.” The episode featured a kiss between Nichelle Nichols as Lieutenant Nyota Uhura and William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk.

    Maybe they were able to break this new ground because the alien Platonians used their telekinetic powers to force the two to kiss. This scene aired on television on November 22, 1968.

    In this video, Nichols explains how the kiss caused some controversy on set and how Shatner becomes a hero of the story. While making the episode, NBC forced the actors to do the scene again without the kiss so they would have options in what they used. Shatner, however, ensured the kiss would be used by intentionally screwing up other takes without the kiss.

    Was it really the first interracial kiss on television? Other sources cite an interracial kiss on a British television show in 1964 between the characters Dr. Mahler (Joan Hooley) and Dr Farmer (John White) on the show Emergency Ward 10. Some also note that Our Gang segments had played on TV where the character Buckwheat, played by Billie Thomas, had kissed white girls.

    But even if Star Trek was not the first in the world, it was groundbreaking at the time, as was the role of Lt. Uhura. Even Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at one point told Nichols that she played an important role as an officer where her race and gender were not an issue.

    What is your favorite rule-breaking scene from Star Trek? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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  • The Ending of “Judgment at Nuremberg” And the Film’s Lesson for Today
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    William Shatner Wishes You a Safe Thanksgiving

    william shatner deep fries turkey

    If you are planning on deep frying a turkey this year, take some cautionary advice from William Shatner, set to music, of course. Check out “Eat, Fry, Love: A Cautionary Remix.”

    The musical tale is based on a real experience that Bill Shatner had, so he teamed up with State Farm to make the video.

    Have a safe and happy Thanksgiving.

    Do you have any frying turkey stories? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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