The movie portrays the actual trial of four judges which held after the collapse of Hitler and Nazi regime in Germany. Historically, the actual trials of four judges before the Nuremberg Military Tribunal occurred in 1947. An important ingredient of the movie’s plot is the ‘race defilement’ when a Jewish man was sentenced to death when he had inappropriate relationship with an ‘Aryan’ woman in 1942.
The plot of the movie Judgment at Nuremberg revolves around the proceedings of a military tribunal in which four Hitler-era judges were tried for charges of crimes against humanity during Nazi regime.
The chief justice Dan Haywood (Spencer Tracy) tries to understand the position of the defendant Ernst Janning (Burt Lancaster) by putting himself in to his shoes
and to look for an answer how he could have given such brutal sentences allowing genocide of innocent people and what factors led the German people to turn a blind eye towards Holocaust. In order to have in-depth understanding of Nazi-era mindset of the German people, he gets closer to the widow of a German General and has discussions with her and other ordinary German people as well. The film tries to analyze the extent of individual liability of a person when the state is involved in a criminal act.
In the end, Janning condemns himself for justifying such brutal acts of the state. The film portrays the mental conflict of Haywood between patriotism and Justice. But Haywood does not favor patriotism with a view to earn German people’s soft corner in the cold war against Soviet Union and sentences them to life imprisonment. The movie won many awards including Academy Awards.