Nuremburg quite timely today--treatment of disabled in particular

Rating: 9/10 (5 August 2005)

Note that Judgment at Nuremburg is a film in which the choice to resist an corrupt "state", or branch of the state, (the executive branch in this case i.e. Hitler having gone out of control) is the choice the 4 Nazi judge defendants failed. Thus, the Allies chose to try them.
People remember "Nuremburg" as holding up the holocaust to view---with actual concentration camp footage shown during the trial, and the prosecuting attorney testifying (here as a witness---as his zeal was fueled by what he saw when liberating the death camps)
BUT Judgment at Nuremburg shows us about other Nazi war crimes we have forgotten about... there were victims even amongst the so called "aryans"; the so called master race, as the Nazis had a burning passion to "purify their race by sterilizing those who were retarded or even "slow learners" or who possibly had some other kind of genetic based defect.
Montgomery Clift is great as the tragic mildly retarded man forcibly sterilized by the Nazis, tho the prosecuting attorney quotes US sources (even the venerable Oliver Wendell Holmes) to show that the US in the early 20th century favored forced sterilization to "protect" the race.
And the Nazis sometimes executed non "aryans" for sleeping with "aryans". Judy Garland is also great as the woman accused of sleeping with a Jewish man, defined then as a crime with jail time for her and death for him because of "race defilement". This is based on a real life incident.
Tho the film only mentions in passing the murder of others, maybe Nuremberg will entice people to research the so called science of racial "purification" i.e. of eugenics that the Nazis practiced.
Search under the word "eugenics" or "eugenics watch" and be amazed... As the German defense attorney correctly says, the Nazis did not invent these practices...but copied them, especially from the US!.
We today are making more and more decisions concerning who is disabled, and who should live or die. For instance today the Netherlands are boldly practicing euthanasia, partly like the Nazis practiced...only the Nazis were more discreet.
In memory of Terri Schiavo, and the adult stem cell versus embryonic stem cell battle...and the battle over abortion on demand (a crime in the actual Nuremburg trials) I say this film is extremely timely.