Watching "Judgment At Nuremberg" In Very Similar Times In America

 

My wife and I have just watched the incredibly well made movie "Judgment At Nuremberg" which was made in 1961 by Director Stanley Kramer.  The movie is about the trial of several Nazi judges at Nuremberg in 1947.  The movie was nominated for eleven Academy Awards and actually won three, including Maximilian Schell for Best Actor, who won out over his costar Spencer Tracy.  The movie was loaded with one of the greatest casts ever assembled in Hollywood history with Maximilian Schell, Spencer Tracy, Judy Garland, Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, Richard Widmark, Marlene Dietrich, and a young William Shatner.  But this blog post is not about a movie for a movie's sake.  This blog post is about the movie's depiction of a small part of the aftermath of World War II and its lasting effects on the world and how it is possible that the events which led to the trials at Nuremberg could be about to be repeated in America today.  

The movie portrays several of the Nazi judges and their trial for the crimes against humanity they committed for Adolph Hitler and the Nazis before and during World War II.  It discusses how these judges and, in particular, the judge played by Burt Lancaster could have been led to believe that their abuses of human rights could have been committed by men who had previously in their lives been relatively normal members of the German judicial system.  One of the most persistent questions which is still not fully answered about Adolph Hitler, the Nazis, and the ordinary German people who assisted them throughout World War II and the Holocaust involves the question of how the German people have been able to commit the atrocities they did, to murder more than 6 million innocent men, women, and children, to sterilize thousands of others, and to have driven hundreds of thousands of others out of the country.  The 16 judges who were actually tried at Nuremberg are represented in the movie by four characters played by Burt Lancaster and three other actors.  These judges held fake trials for hundreds of thousands of innocent German citizens who were sentenced to the concentration camps, and eventual death for most of them, or for compulsory sexual sterilization simply because they were different from the Nazis in some way due to their religions, racial or ethnic identities, political beliefs, or physical handicaps and disabilities. These people's fates were decided before they ever entered the courtrooms at the time someone in the Nazi chain of command had them arrested, sent to the court system, tried in sham trials with little or no evidence, and given sentences which were predetermined by the Nazi system and the judges involved.  After they were found guilty, the concentration camp system completed the work of the Nazi regime whether it be eventual death or a brutal life of starvation and slave labor until the Allied forces could win the war and liberate the camps.  

So the greater question, still unresolved, is this: could such a series of murderous, corrupt, and evil events take place in a country like the United States of America.  The common knee jerk response to that question is almost always "it couldn't happen here".  That knee jerk response was satirically portrayed in the song "It Can't Happen Here" by Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention.  It was also tested under laboratory conditions by Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram in one of the most famous psychological experiments ever completed.  Milgram's work is still a mandatory topic of discussion in nearly every college level class in group psychology or the clinical term social psychology. Stanley Milgram wanted to investigate whether Germans were particularly prone to obey orders from their superiors since this was the most common explanation for the Nazi killings in World War II. Milgram obtained volunteers for his experiment by advertising for people to take part in a study of learning at Yale University. The method of the experiment required that each participant was paired with another person and they drew lots to find out who would be the ‘learner’ and who would be the ‘teacher.’  The draw was fixed so that the volunteer was always the teacher, and the learner was one of Milgram’s associates at Yale who was "in on the scam" so to speak. The so-called "learners" were placed in a room and had electrodes attached to their arms, and the teacher and researcher went into a room next door that contained an electric shock generator and a row of switches marked Slight Shock, Moderate Shock, and Severe Shock. The shocks in Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiments were not real. The “learners” were actors who were part of the experimental staff did not actually receive any shocks.  But the study volunteers were never told this and fully believed that the shocks they were told to administer were real.  The main goal of the experiment was to learn if the volunteers would continue to administer shocks to the "learners" which the volunteers believed would be capable of delivering serious injury or even death. The results of the experiment were that the great majority of the volunteers would continue to obey an authority figure to the point of administering a "shock" which they believed was capable of killing the other person.  The gist of the experiment was that American were no different than the Germans who had been those convicted judges, concentration camp guards, and other members of the general population of Germany who had assisted the Nazi regime in the murder of more than 6 million innocent victims.  

So the question now becomes what is the difference between normal American citizens today and normal German citizens of the 1930's and 1940's.  The answer derived from Doctor Milgram's experiment is that there was not in 1961, and is not today, one iota of difference between American citizens and German citizens when it comes to obeying people whom they believe to be legitimate authority figures.  And that is where we momentarily return to the movie "Judgment At Nuremberg".  It portrayed German judges, and discussed ordinary German citizens, who prior to the rise of the Nazi party had been simply ordinary members of society who later, at the direction of Nazi authority figures, murdered more than 6 million innocent victims, sterilized thousands of others, and were capable of committing any crime under the orders of their leaders.  And Americans today are no different.  And we are in a time, politically in America, when just such similar events could be possible if the American voters make a tragic mistake in the 2024 Presidential Election.  On January 6, 2021, we saw a few thousand "ordinary American citizens" commit both a mass insurrection and thousands of individual crimes against the government of the United States at the direction and incitement of what they perceived to be an appropriate authority figure, TRAITOR Trump, who had called upon them to "come to Washington on January 6.  It will be big."  The US Capitol was breached, seriously damaged, and five people died because TRAITOR Trump, a person those criminals believed to be a legitimate authority figure, told them it was the right thing to do to subvert the will of the American voters, prevent the congressional approval of that electoral process, and stop the US Congress from carrying out its constitutional duty by certifying the election of President Biden on November 3, 2020.  Today, we are faced with the fact that once again the Right Wing Radical Repugnican party has nominated TRAITOR  Trump as their presidential candidate, and he has chosen the equally reprehensible J. D. Vance to be his running mate. Both these men are malignant narcissists at the very least and are willing to commit any crime at any time against anyone in order to achieve their personal objectives.  And, at this point, on July 22, 2024, we do not absolutely know who the Democratic nominee for president will be which is temporarily clouding the issues involved in this most important election in American History.  We can assume the Democratic nominee will be Vice President Kamala Harris who was also a target of TRAITOR Trump's TREASON and his minions on January 6.  There is absolutely no doubt that both TRAITOR Trump and J. D. Vance would be willing in January 2025 to incite an even worse insurrection against the United States of America.  And, based on Stanley Milgram's experiment and the actions of the German people in World War II, there can be no doubt that many of the very same people who supported the insurrection of January 6, 2021, will be willing and ready to stage an even worse insurrection, kill even more people, and destroy the legally constituted government of the United States of America.  We also now have a House of Representatives under the control of the very same people who have never admitted to the fact that TRAITOR Trump and the actual participants of the Januarey 6 insurrection are criminals.  We also have a 6 vote Right Wing Radical majority on the United States Supreme Court which has already minimized the nature of the previous TREASON of TRAITOR Trump and given him, quite literally, a license to kill.  

 These times in America are just as dangerous as the times were in Germany in the 1930's and 1940's.  TRAITOR Trump is just as dangerous, just as demented, just as evil as Adolph Hitler was.  He is also just as maliciously and malevolently ambitious as Adolph Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Idi Amin,, Pol Pot, or any other malevolent dictator ever were.  He is also still under the control of Vladimir Putin and Russia.  We as American citizens must prevent America from becoming what Germany was in World War II.  We must go to the polls in the highest numbers ever recorded in an American election and we must elect the Democratic nominee no matter who that person is.  And, I can hear a few of you muttering "but what if the nominee isn't somebody I like or somebody who is qualified".  I can assure you that in America today we have roughly 45 million registered Democrats, and anyone of those 45 million people is a far more qualified candidate for president than either TRAITOR Trump or J. D. Vance.  We must, as a nation, do what we should have been doing in every election in recent times, vote Straight Democratic and prevent another insurrection by TRAITOR Trump and his Right Wing Radical Repugican followers.  We must not do as the German people did in the 1930's and allow evil in one of its most dangerous and virulent forms to win either at the ballot box, the streets of Washington, or the court system of America.