"NUREMBERG: ITS LESSONS FOR TODAY"

Something You Need To Watch

I just found out about the existence of this film watching the documentary “Filmmakers For The Prosecution” on TCM last night.

“Nuremberg: Its Lessons For Today” was the official US documentary on the Nazi crimes. It was made from captured German film, by Budd Schulberg - later the author of “What Makes Sammy Run?” and the screenwriter of “On The Waterfront,” and his brother Stuart, who became a film and TV producer, who were working for the OSS after the war to find German film that was later used at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal to convict the Nazis with their own words and actions.

Working with the American Chief Prosecutor, Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, Stuart Schulberg’s goal was to educate the public that Nazism would not die with the Nazis (don’t we know that now). The film wasn’t completed until early 1948, by which time US policy toward Germany had moved on from postwar de-nazification to the Cold War, the Berlin Airlift and the Marshall Plan. It was “disappeared” by the government without ever being shown.

In 2009, Stuart’s daughter Sandra found his 16mm copy in a box when she went through her parents’ effects after her mother’s death. It had sat on a shelf in a closet for 60 years.

Sandra decided to have the film restored. The restoration in a clean 35mm print was finished in 2022.

You can watch it (1 hr 18 min) at the US Holocaust Museum - link below.

The film doesn’t pull even one punch. It is not easy viewing even though the original footage it was made from has become the “Nazi footage” you have seen in every documentary on World War II and the Nazis. The difference here is that it’s all together in one place. You don’t have to watch it all at once, but it is well worth watching, and well worth forwarding on to your networks.

Here is a link to the full version.

"Nuremberg: It's Lesson for Today"