The importance of questioning

Below is the text of a speech delived brilliantly as usual by Spencer Tracy at the end of the trial portrayed in "Judgment at Nuremberg." It enscapsulates the message of the movie- that even good people who go along with tyranny must be held responsible for not having stood up for what was right. One of the men on trial, Ernst Janning, played by Burt Lancaster, was clearly a very intelligent and at heart a very decent man, who nonetheless cooperated with and ran the judicial branch under the Nazis.


Janning's record and his fate illuminate the most shattering truth that has emerged from this trial: If he and all of the other defendants had been degraded perverts, if all of the leaders of the Third Reich had been sadistic monsters and maniacs, then these events would have no more moral significance than an earthquake, or any other natural catastrophe. But this trial has shown that under a national crisis, ordinary -- even able and extraordinary -- men can delude themselves into the commission of crimes so vast and heinous that they beggar the imagination. No one who has sat at through trial can ever forget them: men sterilized because of political belief; a mockery made of friendship and faith; the murder of children. How easily it can happen.

There are those in our own country too who today speak of the "protection of country" -- of "survival." A decision must be made in the life of every nation at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then, it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient -- to look the other way.

Well, the answer to that is "survival as what?" A country isn't a rock. It's not an extension of one's self. It's what it stands for. 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 that here, in our decision, this is what we stand for: justice, truth, and the value of a single human being.

Later, Janning asks to see the Judge played by Tracy to insist to him he knew nothing of the holocaust, saying:

"Those millions of people, I never dreamed it would come to that."

Tracy's character responds:

"Herr Janning, it came to that the very first time you sentenced a man to death you knew to be innocent."

We must remember that it isn't morality that prevents the US from becomming Nazi Germany, it's the continued questioning of one's government and demanding that it live up to the ideals on which it was founded.