Dirty Water

Nuremberg Trials, dir. Roman Karmen and Elizaveta Svilova (Tsentralnaya Studiya Dokumentalnikh Filmov, 1947). Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today, dir. Stuart Schulberg (Schulberg Productions, 2010 [1948]). Judgment at Nuremberg, dir. Stanley Kramer (Roxlom Films, 1961). Nuremberg, dir. Yves Simoneau (Alliance Atlantis Communications, 2000). Atrocities against Jews (c. 1941), IMT Doc. 3052-PS (US Exhibit 280). Nazi Concentration Camps, dir. George Stevens (1945), IMT Doc. 2430-PS (US Exhibit 79). The Nazi Plan, dir. George Stevens (1945), IMT Doc. 3054-PS (US Exhibit 167). Reality is always more complicated than invention: less kempt, cruder, less rounded out. It rarely lies on one level. – Primo Levi1 My father was a lawyer; he knew what he did. – Niklas Frank2 It is possible to trace the rise and fall of Nazi Germany, its delusional conceit and negation in genocide, in a series of geographic metonyms: Weimar, Munich, Wannsee, Stalingrad, Auschwitz. But these locations need to be bookended by another: Nuremberg. Unusually, Nuremberg is a dual metonym; it represents two very different and yet intimately connected episodes. First – as framed by the filmwork of Nazi supporter Leni Riefenstahl in Triumph of the Will (1935) – it encompasses the apogee of Nazism. This ‘Nuremberg’ reflects the Nazi party congresses which symbolized Gleichschaltung, the integration of the Nazi movement and the German state. The congresses gathered millions of people in perhaps the most grotesque example of ‘society worshipping itself’ in human history. Second – as framed by a series of representations that we can characterize as the ‘Nuremberg films’ – it represents the judgment the world passed on the catastrophe that followed this ‘triumph of the will.’ The second Nuremberg is very self-consciously and explicitly embedded in notions of law and justice at the International Military Tribunal (IMT) for ‘major war criminals.’3 Nuremberg was chosen as the locus of this judgment precisely because of its association with Nazi rallies and racist laws

Art · Art history · Genocide · George (robot · German · Nazi concentration camps · Nazi Germany · Nazism · Nuremberg trials · Political science · Italian Fascism and Post-war Society · Law in Society and Culture · History · Law