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Judgment at Nuremberg
Author's Introduction by Abby Mann

On March 26, 2001, I stood backstage at the Longacre Theatre. It was the opening night of Judgment at Nuremberg on Broadway. I knew the theater well. As a student at NYU, I used to sneak into the second acts at theatres including the Longacre because I didn't have enough money to pay for tickets --  and a good many times I would be humbled by ushers asking me to leave.

Anita Ross, the stage manager, pushed me toward the curtain. “Go!” I went on stage to take a curtain call with the illustrious cast. Looking out at the audience filled with famous people from the theater, motion pictures and politics, I thought of the events that had brought me here.

When I first began writing Judgment at Nuremberg in the fall of 1957, it was considered a breach of good manners to bring up the subject of German guilt for the events that happened during the Third Reich. There were even those who denied that a Holocaust had ever happened. There was a new crisis with the Russians and Germany was suddenly our new ally. Therefore it was eagerly accepted that the Ger­man people had been hypnotized by a great orator, Adolf Hitler, and the camps were so removed from the German people that they had no inkling of some of the greatest crimes committed in our century or any century. There was no demand or even appetite for further explanation. Even from me, though I had more reason than some to ask.

I grew up in East Pittsburgh, a suburb of Pittsburgh and the home of Westinghouse, a town populated by the blue-collar workers employed by the company. My father, Ben Goodman, owned a one-man jewelry store. At high school there were students who would often taunt me because of my name, Abraham Goodman, and the fact that my dad owned a jewelry store and spoke with an accent and we were middle class while they were struggling to survive. These taunts became even more disturbing when I listened to the short-wave broadcasts from Germany, especially those by a man with an American accent who called himself Mr. O.K. and talked about how Jews were corrupting America and that soon he and the Nazis would be in New York.

I was inducted into the Army when I was seventeen. I was sent to Fort Eustice where I found that I had not left East Pittsburgh behind me. Many of the men in my barracks shared the same prejudices and repeated the taunts for Abe Goodman. Tom Brokaw has said this was “the greatest generation,” men who sacrificed their lives to defeat prejudice and save the world. There were, of course, those who understood and cared and did want to wipe out everything the Third Reich stood for. But the mundane truth was that the majority went because the government told them to go — the same way a later generation went to Vietnam. Since I was one of the worst privates in the United States Army, it was a lucky thing for me that I developed pneumonia; while I was in the hospital doctors found that my eyesight did not meet Army standards, so I was discharged. The irony did not escape me that men who had no basic feeling about the war were to die while I, a smart-ass who had some idea of what it was about, survived.

The first time I gave Nuremberg any real thought was when I met Abraham Pomerantz at a dinner party in New York in 1957. Pomerantz had been one of the prosecutors in the last trials at Nuremberg when the defendants included diplomats, doctors and judges. He had left when he found that most of the judges willing to serve at these trials were political hacks. Judges who could have made a real contribution did not go because Nuremberg had become unpopular and being part of it might hurt their careers. I was dismayed by what Pomerantz told me and he suggested I talk to Telford Taylor, who had been head of the prosecution at Nuremberg.

Taylor was a personable, articulate, courageous man who had left a promising career to go to Nuremberg. Later, he was to become one of the most eloquent and consistent voices against McCarthyism and Vietnam. When we talked about Nuremberg, he told me there had been hopes of creating a code of justice to which the whole world would be responsible. He said the most significant of the trials was that of the judges in Germany. Why? Because these judges' minds had not been warped at an early age. Having reached maturity long before Hitler's rise to power, they embraced the ideologies of the Third Reich as educated adults. They, most of all, should have valued justice.

Intrigued, I read through the transcripts of the trials and found them fascinating. Paraded before the judges to have their fates decided: a man sterilized because of his political beliefs. A woman sent to prison for having a relationship with an older Jewish man, though it was never proven that they were sexually intimate; just the fact that they were friends was enough to send the Jewish man to his death and to send her to jail for years, ostensibly for perjury.

In the German judges' final statements some were unrepentant. One said, “Your Honors, the highest thing a man can do is do his duty to his country. I upheld my oath of allegiance to my fatherland and to its laws. As a judge, I could do no other. I believe Your Honors will find me, and millions of Germans like me, to be not guilty.”

 There were, however, other defendants whose justification for joining the Third Reich had alarming overtones. In effect, it was this: “The country is in danger. 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. And then one day, we looked around and found we were in even more terrible danger. The rites began in this courtroom, swept over our land like a raging, roaring disease! What was going to be a passing phase had become a way of life.” McCarthyism was at its height when I read these transcripts. While there were no gas chambers, people were being destroyed financially and jailed because of their political beliefs and even because of whom they knew. The question was on the table: Could what happened in Germany happen elsewhere?

I had been working on a screenplay, but the transcripts haunted me. I talked on the phone to Herbert Brodkin, one of the producers of the TV program Playhouse 90. He was interested. I left Hollywood and went back to New York. I was giving up a thousand-dollar-a-week job for a five-hundred-dollar advance.

I went to Germany and I met some of the participants in the Nazi regime. Leni Riefenstahl was one. She had done the infamous film which helped so much to promote Hitler, Triumph of the Will. She suggested we meet in the cellar of her apartment building where she had set up a projector. She wanted to show me the last film she had been working on. When I questioned her about the camps and what had happened, she said, of course, she knew very little about it. She didn't think that even Hitler really knew. It was [Joseph] Goebbels and [Heinrich] Himmler and the others. I questioned her about Hitler. She said he was terrible yet wonderful in many ways. There was something electric about him. She had gone, with her husband, to see him in the last days in his bunker. And she wanted me to know that if he had asked her, she would have stayed and died with him.

I talked to one of the judges who had been on trial at Nuremberg and served a light sentence. While he had been repentant at the trial, he was not repentant now. All during the conversation, he spoke only in German. Only at the end he spoke in perfect English to say, “Be careful you don't have an accident while you are in Germany.” I turned and said to him, “If I have an accident, you'll have an accident.” I left the house feeling brave. Then I jumped at something I saw. It turned out to be my own shadow.

The most poignant meeting that I had was with the widow of a general who had been convicted at Nuremberg. It was in her apartment in Munich. She had a large portrait of her husband on the wall. She told me that she and her husband hated Hitler. That he had been placed on trial with the Nazi political leaders and was made to seem one of them. He was part of the revenge the victors always take on the vanquished. She told me about the cruelty of the authorities at Nuremberg. Her husband had been a military man all his life. He was entitled to a soldier's death. She went from official to official asking that he be permitted the dignity of a firing squad. But he was hanged with the others. She told me that after that she knew what it meant to hate. She told me for a long while she had never left the house. Never left her room. Drank. She hated with every fiber of her being. She hated every American she had ever known. But she discovered one can't live with hate. She said, “We have to forget. We have to forget if we are to go on living.” She wanted the whole world to know that. She was writing her memoirs. But somehow she was unable to finish. I thought I knew why. There were things she couldn't bear to face. Yet was there not truth in what she was saying? Wouldn't it be better to forget?

Most important of all, I went to see Robert Kempner in Locarno, Switzerland. Robert Kempner was one of the most illustrious lawyers in the pre-Nazi era in Germany. As a matter of fact, he prosecuted Hitler when he was arrested because of his actions in a beer hall putsch to overthrow the government. Things Kempner told me were illuminating. He said the myth that Hitler was a great orator was garbage. In his own words, he said, “He was a noisy, vulgar fellow.” What did he have, I wanted to know. “He had something important. He knew the German people. He knew what they wanted. And he gave it to them. The myth is that he succeeded in spite of anti-Semitism. The truth is he succeeded because of it. I was happy to tell him what I thought of him in the courtroom. He was convicted, but he was out of jail in a matter of months.” I talked to Kempner about my project and what the General's wife had told me: “We must forget. We must forget if we are to go on living.” Kempner said, “You know what's wrong with that? Then all these people would have died for no reason and no one was responsible and it will happen again.”

I finished the script. I tried to the best of my ability to find the most powerful thing one could learn from the greatest crimes in recorded history. It is spoken by Judge Haywood, the central character of the play. It is this: “This trial has shown that under the stress of a national crisis, ordi­nary 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 it 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 we could get into rehearsal, people in the Eisenhower administration had read the script and said it would hurt our efforts to get the German people on our side in the struggle with Russia. They persuaded CBS to cancel it. I called our producer Brodkin. He said that one thing was certain: Judgment at Nuremberg would not be done. But the script had an advocate who was not willing to rest at that: George Roy Hill, a brilliant director who was later to do Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting.

There were meetings with Hill and the cast. I believe it was Hill who suggested that we take a full page ad out in The New York Times saying that it was important that the American people see this production. I began composing the ad when CBS decided with the controversy building that it was the better part of valor to go ahead with the production.

Rehearsals began. For the first time in my life — and the last time — I had no notes for the actors or the director. We gathered a cast that was remarkable under any circumstances, and particularly one for television: Claude Rains, Melvyn Douglas, Paul Lukas, and a young German actor, Maximilian Schell.

I watched the live broadcast from my apartment. It was a wonderful production. At one point, Claude Rains broke down at the emotion of what he was feeling about the events that had passed. At the end of it I said to myself, “Well, now let's see what the American people think about that.”

But then again something happened. One of the sponsors, American Gas Inc., had sent a memo demanding that we delete any mention of gas. They didn't want to be held responsible for what happened in the Holocaust under any circumstances. Brodkin and Hill refused. So when the climactic moment came in the production when Judge Haywood as played by Claude Rains says to Paul Lukas, the German judge, “I understand the pressures that you faced. No man can say how he would have faced those pressures himself unless he had actually been tested. But how can you expect me to forgive sending millions of people to gas ovens?” American Gas took matters into their own hands and had an executive at CBS pump out the words “gas ovens” so that Claude Rains mouthed the words but no sound came out.

This incident overshadowed, as far as the media was concerned, anything else about the production. The pumping out of the word “gas.” That was what was important. Not German guilt. Not our own lack of responsibility or that millions of people were killed without reason. Censorship was what was important. People who watched the television show didn't feel that way. A record number of calls for a dramatic program flooded the network. However, the Emmys reacted the way they usually do to the evaluation of the media. We were passed by. We didn't receive one nomination.

I tried to put Judgment at Nuremberg out of my mind. I showed a copy of another television drama I had written, A Child Is Waiting, to the wonderful Katharine Hepburn. It was the first drama to deal with retarded children. Hepburn wanted to do it if we could obtain the right director. I went to Europe to talk to Jack Clayton and Jules Dassin when my agent called me with the incredible news that Hepburn had shown a copy of Judgment at Nuremberg to Spencer Tracy and he wanted to do the role of Judge Haywood. My thoughts went back to the time I was writing Nuremberg in my one-room apartment in New York. I had dreamed of one actor doing it. That actor was Tracy. He was the essence of America, all that was good about it in one man.

Tracy wanted the remarkable Stanley Kramer to produce and direct it. Kramer had such admiration for Tracy that he would have done almost anything that Tracy suggested. So it really was Tracy that was responsible for the film being done.

I'll always remember the first reading of the screenplay, because surrounding me were the figures who were the very essence of motion pictures and whose legends have grown through the years. Besides Tracy, there were Marlene Dietrich, Burt Lancaster, Judy Garland, Montgomery Clift, Richard Widmark, and the young actor that had performed so brilliantly in the television production, Maximilian Schell. After the reading Tracy said, “Let's get one thing straight. The role that's going to win an Academy Award is the one that Max is playing. I'm just doing it because I want it done.”

It was United Artists' crazy idea to open the film in Berlin. On the plane going over was not only Judy Garland but a group of reporters, including Max Lerner, who was considered a great “liberal,” but who strongly objected to the film. He said it would hurt our country, “It's going to embarrass the administration.” Judy answered him saying, “If this administration could be embarrassed, it would have dropped dead a long time ago.”

When we reached Berlin, we were all tense about what the reaction of the Germans would be. Tracy was ill, but he came, too.

Tracy and I started to walk from our hotel to the Congress Halle, where the picture was going to be shown for the first time. We were well aware of the sensation the opening was causing. Tracy said with his acerbic humor, “I hope we get out of this alive.” All of a sudden we heard a wild, hysterical yell. Someone grabbed Tracy from behind. Tracy was too frightened to look around and see who it was. The two of them continued to walk almost half a block with the figure behind Tracy still holding onto him. The figure turned out to be Montgomery Clift, who had been drinking and was trying to express his affection for his idol.

After the film was shown, there was dead silence in the audience. Even Willy Brandt, one of the most literate and sensitive leaders in Europe, hedged his bets. He thanked everyone for coming and said he would have to study this document to see what he would have to say about it.

There was a deadly pall at the festive dinner that had been arranged after the showing. A press conference followed. A woman got up and said to Tracy, “You know, Mr. Tracy, the German people love you perhaps more than any other American actor. We find it hard to believe that you would appear in such a harsh movie about our people. We read in an interview where you said, in reply to some movies you were doing, that you did them for the money. Is that why you did this one? You don't really believe what this movie says, do you?” Tracy put his tongue in his cheek, in extraordinary Tracy fashion, and said, “Every word.”

Judy and I decided we would stay over a couple of days just to see what was happening in the theaters with Nuremberg before going to New York for the opening there. After the showing, we came upon a young man who was saying to whoever would listen that it was a disgrace to show the film in Berlin. It turned out that he was the son of one of the judges portrayed in the film. I tried to talk with him, trying to find out what his feelings were. One of the publicity guys from United Artists called me by name. The German judge's son turned to me and said, “Are you Abby Mann?” I was silent. “You wrote this?” He advanced toward me and spoke to me half in German and half in English. Judy kept tugging me and said, “Let's go.” A crowd gathered around us. I couldn't help telling him some things I knew about his father. There were murmurs from the people surrounding us that I didn't understand, having no knowledge of German. Police entered the lobby. The publicity guy from United Artists had thought it was best to bring them in. They escorted us out swiftly.

The fate of Judgment at Nuremberg as a motion picture was far different than how it had been received on television. Maximilian Schell and I won the New York Film Critics Award. The film was nominated for 12 Academy Awards. Max won for Best Actor and I won for Best Screen­play. But the award I prize the most was not from the Academy. It was a wire I received from Tracy in which he said, “All I can say is if the lights go out now I still win. Please do not forget it was a great privilege to say those words. Love, Spence.”

Since the movie, to quote Colonel Lawson, “mankind has not crossed over into Jordan.” There were Rwanda and Yugoslavia. Genocide was not dead. It was very much alive. These events put pressure on the United States to join a permanent crime tribunal for bringing justice to perpetrators of genocide and war crimes.

On January 1, 2001, then President Clinton signed the Rome Treaty for an International Criminal Court. “In taking this action, we join more than 130 other countries to reaffirm our strong support for international accountability. The United States has a long history of commitment to this principle based on our involvement in the Nuremberg tribunals.”

Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina called Mr. Clinton's decision “as outrageous as it is inexplicable. I have a message for the outgo­ing President. This decision will not stand.” Many others echoed Senator Helms' objections. Their reason was that if there should be such a court it could inhibit the ability of the United States to use its military to meet alliance obligations and participate in multinational operations.

I got a call from Fred Walker and Tony Randall, the Managing Director and founder of the National Actors Theatre, who said that they wanted to revive Judgment at Nuremberg on Broadway. There had been many offers before. What intrigued me was their attempt to make a permanent American repertory company comparable to those that exist in London. I answered I'd do it on one condition: that Max Schell, who had been with me from the beginning, would be part of it.

I had dinner with Schell. He, too, wanted to be part of it. But he asked to play the main defendant, the role that Paul Lukas and Burt Lancaster had played, not the defense attorney, the role he had won an Academy Award for.

The National Actors Theatre put together a magnificent cast. Besides Schell there were Tony Award winner George Grizzard; Marthe Keller, who had made such an impression in Black Sunday and Marathon Man; Joe Wiseman, now in his eighties, who was so marvelous in Detective Story and Viva Zapata; and Michael Hayden in the Max Schnell role. Hayden was the one who redefined Carousel with his portrayal of Billy Bigelow. He was as magnetic in his own way as Max had been. I am certain a very exciting future lies in store for him. Max was as wonderful in the part of Janning as he was as Rolfe.

The audiences seemed to be even more moved by the play than they were by the film. Maybe in time the events had become more real to them. They seemed so outrageous at the time of the film. Maybe it was because we shared a live experience together which no movie can ever equal.

In June 2001, Slobodan Milosevic was brought before an international court charging him with thousands of murders of Kosovo Albanians. He refused, as Janning did in Judgment at Nuremberg, to accept an attorney because he would not recognize the legitimacy of the court. He refused to plead guilty or not guilty. “I consider this Tribunal a false tribunal and the indictment a false indictment.”

Now we have experienced something unknown to us. Our country has been attacked. And once again history is being distorted. There are many who say that the explosions at the twin towers and the deaths of thousands of people were somewhat justified by the United States taking sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Once more there is an at­tempt to minimize responsibility. George Bush has displayed a great deal of courage in explaining how much of a lie this justification is. But he has asked that Osama bin Laden and the leaders of Al Qaeda be tried by a military tribunal.

The procedures of a military tribunal are: Military officers, who are dependent on their superiors for promotion, would act as judge and jury. A two-thirds vote of commission members would be sufficient to convict and to impose any sentence. The defendant could be barred from seeing the evidence against him. The defendant could not appeal. The trials could be held in secret.

As Anthony Lewis said in an article in The New York Times, “What confidence could the world have in the justice of such a proceeding? Such confidence is crucial. The Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders, in open court before an international tribunal, had a profound effect in bringing Germans back to democracy and humanity.”

The words ring in my ears that Robert Kempner had told me years ago when I asked him whether the Nuremberg trials were necessary. His answer: “Without them all these people would have died for no reason and no one was responsible and it will happen again.”