Courtroom conflicts: ‘Inherit the Wind’ and ‘Judgment at Nuremberg’
“I am going to tell them the truth. I am going to tell them the truth if the whole world conspires against it”
At 8 am, on a hot summer’s day in 1925, somewhere deep in the ‘Bible Belt’ of the southern United States, four men cross the fictitious town of Hillsboro to the sound of a warbling, old-fashioned soprano singing a gospel hymn called ‘(Give Me That) Old Time Religion.’ Among the men are Hillsboro town’s Mayor and Reverend. They check pocket-watches and button suit jackets, perfectly prim and proper, and stride onwards towards the town’s comprehensive school. There, they will arrest a teacher by the name of Bert Cates (Dick York) for illegally teaching Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution — recognised unanimously today as scientific fact.
Twenty-three years later, in Nuremberg, Ernst Janning (Burt Lancaster) and three other German judges discover for the first time the dread of being seated in the docks. They listen as a translator reads them the charges as articulated by a foreigner — an American by the name of Colonel Tad Lawson (Richard Widmark), a man who has seen the horrors of the Second World War and the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps with his own eyes. These four judges are not on trial for breaking the law of their country, but for perverting it — allowing “murder, brutalities, torture, atrocities” to take place across the Third Reich by submitting to the will of the Nazi regime.
These two stories have more in common than their blurbs might suggest. Both widely regarded courtroom dramas, Inherit the Wind (1960) and Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) are semi-histories — heavily fictionalised retellings of the Scopes Monkey Trial and the Nuremberg Judges’ Trial, respectively. They share a director in Stanley Kramer and feature a large cast of diverse and vibrant personalities fuelled by fundamentally incompatible ideologies and motives. Yet, what makes these films such a perfect duology is not their similarities, but their differences.
In many ways, the films seem to sit in perfect contention with one another. Inherit the Wind is an undoubtedly biased account of the debate between science and religion, although not without good reason. It is filled with vitriol for blind believers who would rather put innocents to the sword than turn it upon themselves and cut out their own hypocrisy. It is not that Bert Cates is innocent as far as the law is concerned — he is absolutely guilty of breaking the law — but that the law itself is so ridiculous to contemporary and present audiences that the law seems an injustice in itself; that such a law was ever allowed to exist in the first place is a permanent blemish on the history of human progress.
While Judgment at Nuremberg views the atrocities of the Third Reich with equal, if not greater, revulsion than Inherit the Wind condemns the anti-intellectualism of the Bible Belt, it is not so easy to locate the culprit here. The greatest proponents of murder, torture and genocide were long dead by the time of the Judges’ Trial — Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels and Bormann were among those who committed suicide at the end of the Second World War, rather than face defeat at the hands of the Allies. Defence attorney Hans Rolfe (Maxmilian Schell) in this fictionalised version of the Judges’ Trial objects to the whole thing — in his view, it is not only the four defendants but the “whole of the German people (who) are on trial.” He argues that the “whole world is as responsible for Hitler as Germany” because of its failure to intervene before 1939, as well as the active participation in such events the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (Soviet Union) and profiteering from German rearmament (United States).
Together, the films do not simply portray their own, contained on-screen debates — they form a debate against one another. Inherit the Wind opens with a grand and optimistic flourish of rhetoric that, if nothing else, suggests that truth and justice would be attainable if only a few more people were willing to listen, really listen, and to open their minds. In Judgment…, this rhetoric has all but failed; it is too easy for people to turn a blind eye even to genocide when there is profit to be made through it. (One needs only to look at the present-day Hong Kong and Uighur crises and the indifference of Western corporations to see this effect for themselves.) Col. Lawson and Hans Rolfe articulate two juxtaposing philosophies of responsibility that seems to have no answer — yet the tragedy that has led them there is so great that an answer simply must be found.
Still, Judgment… is optimistic about the enduring nature of truth. Ernst Janning, upon whom much of the film’s focus falls, reverses his vow of silence in the courtroom, declaring, “I am going to tell them the truth. I am going to tell them the truth if the whole world conspires against it.” He understands well the precedent his confessions will set, as well as the verdict that will surely be declared against him. Unlike the stubborn, ill-educated Hillsboro townspeople, Janning is willing to examine himself and his actions — condemning himself if needs be — in order to help the truth break free into the world. He sees himself as a martyr, insisting that he “never knew” the reforms of the Third Reich would lead to the Holocaust. Even if his motives are ulterior, he stands tall above his peers by breaking the cycle of self-serving lies that plague Hillsboro and postwar Germany alike.
This aspect of putting oneself in the gallows for the sake of the higher good is key to the films’ allusions to McCarthyism. Inherit the Wind is a highly critical allegory of McCarthyism and mob mentality in general; it explores how fundamentalist communities reject knowledge and justice in favour of purity and uniformity, even going as far as to cast out dissenting members their families if necessary. Creationist ideas are not only an existential crutch employed by the Hillsboro citizens to stave off fears of their own mortality, but also one which these citizens guard zealously as a source of power, refusing to permit their children to hear of any views to the contrary for fear of how it may affect the town’s traditions. (Of course, nobody in court wants to hear whether Cates’ students want to learn about evolution.) The Hillsboro community is not a thinking people — linking back to the song played over the film’s opening scene, “that old-time religion is good enough for (them)” and that spells the end of the discussion. They have no intention of even considering whether Darwinism can provide them with answers about life, humanity or history.
Judgment… is not directly concerned with McCarthyism, but the excuse of supporting the Nazi regime on the grounds that it removed the “economic threat” of German communists does come up in the courtroom. If Inherit the Wind is a direct allegory of McCarthyism, then Judgment… could be viewed as demonstrating the aftermath of allowing mob-mentality to grip a community. Though the film does not conclude with a strong conviction for either prosecution or defence, if Judgment… concludes anything at all, it is that politics must not be permitted to devolve into a false dichotomy that tries to justify one terrible regime as a means to avoid another. Janning’s confessions break away from this cycle: he welcomes prosecution as a means of atonement for years of refusing to stand up to the Nazi regime.
The differing focal theme of each film is represented by the choice of protagonist. The lead role in both films is played by Spencer Tracy, although his two characters could not be more unalike. In Inherit the Wind, Tracy plays the defence attorney, Henry Drummond, a highly controversial champion of atheism who views Cates’ small-town case as the perfect opportunity to shine a light on the ridiculous, anti-intellectual laws stifling the American education system. Drummond is headstrong to a fault, but he needs to be; equally wilful and merciless is the prosecuting attorney, staunch creationist and three-times Presidential candidate Matthew Brady (Fredric March). Their conflict is the primary source of the film’s tension.
In Judgment…, however, Tracy plays not a lawyer, but the chief judge presiding over the case. His character, by the name of Dan Haywood, is more measured, a virtue that is reflected in the tone of the film: Judgment… is allowed to be much more doubtful and meditative than Inherit the Wind because of its choice of protagonist.
Judgment… is not a biased film — the debate at its core is not of the immorality of genocide, but over who must be held responsible for allowing it to happen. It doesn’t have a ‘bad guy’ who must be outwitted for the sake of progress and rationalism — as Rolfe points out, everyone fills that role to some small degree for their failure to oppose the Third Reich — at least until it became convenient for them. While both films are meritorious, Judgment… is a truly superlative achievement because of its thoughtful approach to the debate. Yet it is improved, not hindered, by its contrast with films which make us want to believe that morality can always be as dichotomous as in Inherit the Wind. Even when a verdict is ultimately reached in this fictionalised Judges’ Trial, it is not a unanimous decision. In spite of Janning’s insistence that the truth must prevail, it appears that it might elude humanity forever.
