Judgment at Nuremberg Page #19

"Once these devils will be destroyed,

your misery will be destroyed."

It was the old story of the sacrificial lamb.

What about those of us who knew better?

We who knew the words were lies,

and worse than lies?

Why did we sit silent?

Why did we take part?

Because we loved our country.

What difference does it make...

if a few political extremists

lose their rights?

What difference does it make

if a few racial minorities lose their rights?

It is only a passing phase.

It is only a stage we are going through.

It will be discarded sooner or later.

Hitler himself

will be discarded sooner or later.

The country is in danger.

We will march out of the shadows.

We will go forward.

Forward is the great password.

And history tells

how well we succeeded, Your Honor.

We succeeded beyond our wildest dreams.

The very elements of hate and power

about Hitler...

that mesmerized Germany

mesmerized the world.

We found ourselves

with sudden, powerful allies.

Things that had been denied to us

as a democracy...

were open to us now.

The world said, "Go ahead, take it.

"Take it.

"Take Sudetenland, take the Rhineland,

remilitarize it.

"Take all of Austria. Take it."

And then, one day, we looked around...

and found that we were

in an even more terrible danger.

The ritual began in this courtroom...

swept over the land like a raging,

roaring disease.

What was going to be a passing phase...

had become the way of life.

Your Honor...

I was content to sit silent during this trial.

I was content to tend my roses.

I was even content...

to let counsel try to save my name.

Until I realized...

that in order to save it,

he would have to raise the specter again.

You have seen him do it.

He has done it here in this courtroom.

He has suggested that the Third Reich

worked for the benefit of people.

He has suggested that we sterilized men

for the welfare of the country.

He has suggested that perhaps...

the old Jew did sleep

with the -year-old girl, after all.

Once more, it is being done...

for love of country.

It is not easy to tell the truth.

But if there is to be any salvation

for Germany...

we who know our guilt must admit it...

whatever the pain...

and humiliation.

I had reached my verdict...

on the Feldenstein case...

before I ever came into the courtroom.

I would have found him guilty,

whatever the evidence.

It was not a trial at all.

It was a sacrificial ritual...

in which Feldenstein, the Jew,

was the helpless victim.

Your Honor, I must interrupt.

The defendant is not aware

of what he is saying.

He is not aware of the implications...

I am aware.

My counsel would have you believe...

we were not aware

of the concentration camps.

Not aware.

Where were we?

Where were we when Hitler began shrieking

his hate in the Reichstag?

Where were we when our neighbors

were being dragged out...

in the middle of the night to Dachau?

Where were we when every village

in Germany has a railroad terminal...

where cattle cars were filled with children...

being carried off to their extermination?

Where were we

when they cried out in the night to us?

Were we deaf? Dumb? Blind?

Your Honor, I must protest.

My counsel says we were not aware

of the extermination of the millions.

He would give you the excuse...

we were only aware

of the extermination of the hundreds.

Does that make us any the less guilty?

Maybe we didn't know the details.

But if we didn't know,

it was because we didn't want to know.

Traitor!

Order!

Put that man back in his seat

and keep him there.

I am going to tell them the truth.

I am going to tell them the truth,

if the whole world conspires against it.

I am going to tell them the truth

about their Ministry of Justice.

Werner Lammpe,

an old man who cries into his Bible now.

An old man who profited

by the property expropriation...

of every man

he sent to a concentration camp.

Friedrich Hoffstetter...

the good German

who knew how to take orders...

who sent men before him

to be sterilized like so many digits.

Emil Hahn...

the decayed, corrupt bigot...

obsessed by the evil within himself.

And Ernst Janning...

worse than any of them...

because he knew what they were...

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