Ernst Janning: Judge Haywood… the reason I asked you to come: Those people, those millions of people… I never knew it would come to that. You must believe it, you must believe it!
Judge Dan Haywood: Herr Janning, it “came to that” the first time you sentenced a man to death you knew to be innocent.
Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)
Start of a new series. Burt Lancaster as German Judge Ernst Janning, Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), explains how going along with the Nazis made his life “excrement”.
Great movie.
“Herr Janning, it ‘came to that’ the first time you sentenced a man to death you knew to be innocent.”
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Pontius Pilate who decided the fate of Christ preceded Herr Janning. The SCOTUS Justices who decided the fate of unborn babies succeeded Herr Janning. I see no substantive change.
BTW, at one point in the video, Herr Janning said, “We must go forward!” Is that not the motto of the Obama Administration?
In 1933, just after the NSDAP seized power in Germany, Josef Pilsudski asked France, who then had the biggest army in Europe, to team up with Poland and get rid of the Nazis. Pilsudski told France to occupy the Rhineland, while the Poles would move in from the East. The Nazi government, without significant military strength, would be forced from power.
France refused. An opportunity to stop the Nazis was lost.
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Great movie. We lose our way at first making excuses and rationalizing until it then becomes too late.