The Personal Website of Mark W. Dawson
Containing His Articles, Observations, Thoughts, Meanderings,
and some would say Wisdom (and some would say not).
Get Trump
The movie ‘Judgement at Nuremberg’, is about an American court In 1948, in occupied Germany, that tried four Nazis for war crimes. Specifically, the movie is about a trial after three years since the most important Nazi leaders had already been tried. A trial of four persons who used their judicial offices to conduct Nazi sterilization and cleansing policies, including an esteemed Judge Dr. Ernst Janning, as well as Prosecutor Emil Hahn, Administrator Werner Lampe, and Minister of Justice Dr Karl Wieck, who are ably defended by the German lawyer Herr Rolfe. Retired American judge Dan Haywood has a daunting task ahead of him. The Cold War was heating up, and no one wanted more trials as the German and Allied governments wanted to forget the past. The overarching question for the tribunal to decide is what the proper thing to do is.
This movie contains a lot of thought-provoking dialogue about justice and jurisprudence, quoted here within. The thoughts that have provoked me are, ‘Are we seeing the perversion of justice and jurisprudence in today’s America as depicted in this movie?’ The following lines of dialog are illuminative of this concern:
“Judge Dan Haywood:
The principle of criminal law in every civilized society has this
in common: 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.”
__________________________
“Ernst Janning:
There was a fever over the land. A fever of disgrace, of
indignity, of hunger. We had a democracy, yes, but it was torn by
elements within. Above all, there was fear. Fear of today, fear of
tomorrow, fear of our neighbors, and fear of ourselves. Only when
you understand that - can you understand what Hitler meant to us.
Because he said to us: 'Lift your heads! Be proud to be German!
There are devils among us. Communists, Liberals, Jews, Gypsies!
Once these devils will be destroyed, your misery will be
destroyed.' It was the old, old story of the sacrificial lamb.
What about those of us who knew better? We who knew the words were
lies and worse than lies? Why did we sit silent? Why did we take
part? Because we loved our country! What difference does it make
if a few political extremists lose their rights? What difference
does it make if a few racial minorities lose their rights? It is
only a passing phase. It is only a stage we are going through. It
will be discarded sooner or later. Hitler himself will be
discarded... sooner or later. The country is in danger. We will
march out of the shadows. We will go forward. Forward is the great
password. And history tells how well we succeeded, your honor. We
succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. The very elements of hate and
power about Hitler that mesmerized Germany, mesmerized the world!
We found ourselves with sudden powerful allies. Things that had
been denied to us as a democracy were open to us now. The world
said 'go ahead, take it, take it! Take Sudetenland, take the
Rhineland - remilitarize it - take all of Austria, take it! And
then one day we looked around and found that we were in an even
more terrible danger. The ritual began in this courtroom swept
over the land like a raging, roaring disease. What was going to be
a passing phase had become the way of life. Your honor, I was
content to sit silent during this trial. I was content to tend my
roses. I was even content to let counsel try to save my name,
until I realized that in order to save it, he would have to raise
the specter again. You have seen him do it - he has done it here
in this courtroom. He has suggested that the Third Reich worked
for the benefit of people. He has suggested that we sterilized men
for the welfare of the country. He has suggested that perhaps the
old Jew did sleep with the sixteen year old girl, after all. Once
more it is being done for love of country. It is not easy to tell
the truth; but if there is to be any salvation for Germany, we who
know our guilt must admit it... whatever the pain and
humiliation.”
__________________________
“Ernst Janning:
Once more, it is being done - for love of country. It is not easy
to tell the truth. But if there is to be any salvation for
Germany, we who know our guilt must admit it - whatever the pain
and humiliation. I had reached my verdict on the Feldenstein case
before I ever came into the courtroom. I would have found him
guilty, whatever the evidence. It was not a trial at all. It was a
sacrificial ritual in which Feldenstein, the Jew, was the helpless
victim.”
__________________________
“Judge Dan Haywood:
Janning, to be sure, is a tragic figure. We believe he loathed the
evil he did. But compassion for the present torture of his soul
must not beget forgetfulness of the torture and death of millions
by the government of which he was a part. Janning's record and his
fate illuminate the most shattering truth that has emerged from
this trial. If he and the other defendants were all depraved
perverts - if the leaders of the Third Reich were sadistic
monsters and maniacs - these events would have no more moral
significance than an earthquake or other natural catastrophes. But
this trial has shown that under the stress of a national crisis,
men - even able and extraordinary men - can delude themselves into
the commission of crimes and atrocities so vast and heinous as to
stagger the imagination. No one who has sat through this trial can
ever forget. The sterilization of men because of their political
beliefs... The murder of children... How *easily* that can happen!
There are those in our country today, too, who speak of the
"protection" of the country. Of "survival". The answer to that is:
survival as what? A country isn't a rock. And it isn't an
extension of one's self. It's what it stands for, when standing
for something is the most difficult! Before the people of the
world - let it now be noted in our decision here that this is what
‘we’ stand for: ‘justice, truth... and the value of a single human
being!’”
__________________________
“Emil Hahn: Today,
you sentence me! Tomorrow, the Bolsheviks sentence you!”
__________________________
“Ernst Janning:
Judge Haywood... the reason I asked you to come: Those people,
those millions of people... I never knew it would come to that.
You must believe it, You must believe it!
Judge Dan Haywood: Herr Janning, it came to that
the first time you sentenced a man to death you knew to be
innocent.”
__________________________
“Judge Dan Haywood:
Herr Rolfe, I have admired your work in the court for many months.
You are particularly brilliant in your use of logic...
[Rolfe nods with an appreciative smile]
Judge Dan Haywood: -so, what you suggest may very
well happen. It is logical, in view of the times in which we live.
But to be logical is not to be right, and nothing on God's earth
could ever make it right!
[Rolfe wipes the smile from his face]”
__________________________
“Emil Hahn: Germany
was fighting for its life. Certain measures were needed to protect
it from its enemies. I cannot say that I am sorry we applied those
measures. We were a bulwark against Bolshevism. We were a pillar
of Western culture. A bulwark and a pillar the West may yet wish
to retain.”
__________________________
“Emil Hahn: [During
dinner in the prison mess hall] How dare they show us those films,
how dare they? We are not executioners, we are judges!
Werner Lampe: You do not think it was like that,
do you? There were executions, yes, but nothing like that, nothing
at all!
[Turning to a man at the table behind him]
Werner Lampe: Pohl! Pohl, you were at those
concentration camps, you and Eichmann. They say we killed millions
of people. ‘Millions’ of people! How could it be possible? Tell
them, how could it be possible?
Pohl: [In a matter of fact tone] It's possible.
Werner Lampe: How?
Pohl: You mean technically? It all depends on
your facilities. Say you have two chambers that accommodate two
thousand people apiece. Figure it out. It's possible to get rid of
ten thousand in a half hour. You don't even need knives to do it.
You can tell them that they are going to take a shower, and then
instead of the water, you turn on the gas. It's not the killing
that is the problem, it's disposing of the bodies. That's the
problem.”
__________________________
In America today, we are seeing the corruption of the Judicial system to ‘Get Trump’ and his supporters, as I have written in my collected Chirps on "The Weaponization of Government". Judicial actions against Trump and his supporters that they justified with the same type of reasoning employed by the four Nazis tried for war crimes in the movie ‘Judgement at Nuremberg’. If this is allowed to continue, we are indeed sliding down the slippery slope away from our "American Ideals and Ideas" and our principles of "Freedoms, Liberties, Equalities, and Equal Justice for All".
In these prosecutions of Trump and his supporters there is also more than a hint of “Show me the man and I will find the crime” that Lavrentiy Beria, the most ruthless and longest-serving secret police chief in Joseph Stalin’s reign of terror in Russia and Eastern Europe, bragged that he could prove criminal conduct on anyone, even the innocent. By stretching the bounds of the law, the Trump prosecutors are attempting to find the crime. By prosecuting Trump’s advisors, they are also attempting to breach lawyer-client privilege and the confidentiality of presidential advisors’ communications. They also do not consider the repercussions of their actions on the future of American society. If we allow this type of prosecution against one side, then when the other side controls the levers of power, these prosecutions may become commonplace in American governance. In this, we should also keep in mind the following dialogue from another movie, A Man for All Seasons:
William Roper:
“So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!”
Sir Thomas More: “Yes! What would
you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the
Devil?”
William Roper: “Yes, I'd cut down
every law in England to do that!”
Sir Thomas More: “Oh? And when the
last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where
would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is
planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not
God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do
it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds
that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law,
for my own safety's sake!”