The lesson we have hopefully learned

Rating: Null/10 (4 March 2019)

After World War Two a number of trials were conducted in Nuremberg, Germany. International courts came together to judge Nazi war criminals. It was decided that Germans alone could not judge their own criminals and that the crimes of the Nazi regime were crimes against humanity itself.
The most famous of these trials tried and sentenced 24 Nazi leaders in the years 1945 and -46. But there were a series of less famous trials, conducted mostly by Americans in the occupied West Germany, that aimed to judge and sentence Nazi judges, merchants and other influential figures that were seen to be at least partially responsible for the holocaust, for example. This movie is a fictive version of one of those trials.
There are four accused judges. The prosecution is demanding life imprisonment for all of them. But the defense tries to argue on their behalf by saying that they could not have possible have known about the horrors of the concentration camps, among other things. The movie, through the trial, also discusses things such as following orders, loyalty to one's nation, one's homeland, the meaning and concept of justice, the slippery slope of lesser evils, and just what it took to survive under Hitler's rule.
The movie was filmed some fifteen years after the war and thus I believe it had enough distance to look at the whole thing at least with something approaching objectivity. It acknowledges the political atmosphere in Germany after World War One, and also during the actual trial, at the brink of the Cold War. It is a heavy movie that forces you to think. And while it is passionate about its message and its take on the whole issue, it doesn't paint the situation as black-n-white. It acknowledges the complexity of the whole thing and preaches caution against something like it happening again. And for that it has my respect.
One of those movies I wish was shown more often on TV. Or in schools. Because we should remember what it was like back then, during the days of our parents and grandparents. If only so we don't end up making the same mistakes all over again.