Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)

Judgment at Nuremberg is a 1961 American drama film dealing with the Holocaust, with non-combatant war crimes against a civilian population, and with the post-World War II geo-political complexity of the Nuremberg Trials. The picture was written by Abby Mann and directed by Stanley Kramer, and stars Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Maximilian Schell, Werner Klemperer, Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland, William Shatner, and Montgomery Clift. An earlier version of the story was broadcast as a television episode of Playhouse 90. Schell and Klemperer played the same roles in this version as well. Although touching on and discussing the war-time persecution and genocide of European Jews, the film's events relate principally to actions committed by the German state against its own racial, social, religious, and eugenic groupings within its borders “…in the name of the law…”, that began with Hitler's rise to power in 1933. The plot development and thematic treatment question the legitimacy of the social, political and alleged legal foundations of these actions.