I’m a fan of old movies, mostly because I’m old but also because they’re populated by the actors of my youth, now almost all dead and gone.
I re-watched Judgement at Nuremberg a few days ago, a film I hadn’t seen in sixty-three years and had very nearly forgotten. But the cast caught my eye: Spencer Tracy in the lead role of Judge Dan Haywood, supported by Marlene Dietrich, Burt Lancaster, Maximilian Schell, Montgomery Clift, Richard Widmark and Judy Garland. That’s a royal flush of my most revered actors, so how could I resist?
These were not the main Nuremberg trials, these occurred in 1948, trying a second echelon of purported criminals
Those of us who even remember those days are usually unaware of the continuing, although secondary, trails of Nazis who aided and abetted, each in their way. In this case, four top Nazi judges and prosecutors (of an actual sixteen) stood trial before a three-judge panel headed by Tracy.
Nazi Judges, of course, were the glue that held the entire German p…