All language subtitles for The.Memory.of.Justice.1976.1080p.WEBRip.x264-RARBG

Nein!

That will be entered
as a plea of not guilty.

You see, I proceed
from the assumption

that every human
being is guilty.

I--

By degree, by association,
by being human,

if they did it here,

it is not that it could
not happen in America.

It is not that it
could not happen elsewhere.

What happened here was
an accident of war.

Somebody made a mistake.

Arthur Lord, NBC News,
on Highway 1.

There were many men who went to Vietnam 'cause they believed in it,

like I believed in it,
and went over there.

And there were many
men who went to Canada

because they believed
that it was immoral.

I think that I like

those men who went to Vietnam
'cause they believed,

and those men who went
to Canada because they believed.

I knew I was, I was right
in what I was doing.

I think all the deserters did.

That might not have been

in the forefront of our mind,
exactly what it was--

principles like Nuremberg.

But after hearing
about the war

or, in my case,
after seeing it,

I knew what I was doing
was correct.

Most of these things
are not done by monsters.

They're done by
very ordinary people,

people very much
like you and me.

These things are results
of pressures and circumstances

to which human
frailty succumbs,

and a large part of it
isn't really due

to any intrinsic sadism
or desire to inflict pain.

It's... It's the degeneration
of standards under pressures--

boredom, fear,
other influences of this kind.

Well, I guess that
I did think before that, uh,

that Americans
in their history had been

somewhat more immune
to these pressures

and that the historical record
was a better one

and the moral standards
we tried to attain

in peace and war were higher.

I guess I still think we try
to attain the higher values.

But, uh, yes--
- And succeeded sometimes.

And succeed sometimes. Succeed less often,
I guess, than I thought before.

I didn't want to see
the museum at Dachau.

Why not?

I had, uh...

I guess some of it's
from my father.

He never talked about, uh,
about World War II very much,

and I didn't have
the personal desire to see

where, uh...

a number of thousands of Jews
were destroyed.

Uh, no, I didn't want
to see pictures of it.

I had no, no desire to see that.

♪ ♪

One of the, uh, clearest
recollections I have

is of a little gypsy child,

uh, whom I wish now
I had, I had, uh...

I had taken and adopted.

I don't know what
ever happened to...

little boy, I think,
of five or so, but--

What struck you
about him in particular?

Oh, simply because
he was a gypsy child,

and I knew he'd probably play the violin if he were given half a chance.

The privilege of opening
the first trial in history

for crimes against
the peace of the world

imposes a grave responsibility.

The wrongs which we seek
to condemn and punish

have been so calculated,
so malignant and so devastating

that civilization cannot
tolerate their being ignored

because it cannot survive
their being repeated.

No, I...
I think it's fine.

It's really--
It's a little narrow here.

And too wide.
And a little large here.

But... But it's roomy.

Reginchen, how do you feel
about my making this film?

I think I was dragging around
that skeleton in the closet

for all our...
all the time of our marriage.

And I think--
I hope we will get over it.

Because...

♪ ♪

They needed a psychologist

who had been
in military intelligence

and, uh, I was assigned.

You were a captain in the American Army and you're a Jew.

I mean, were there any problems
in establishing authority?

Of course, as you know,

the Germans are very rank-conscious.
- Yes.

And, uh, that,
as a matter of fact, proved handy

because I was able to administer IQ tests simply by telling them,

"I have orders.
You will now take an IQ test,"

and they sat down very
meekly and took IQ tests.

If I simply said that,
"I'm a psychologist,

and I'd like to know how intelligent you war criminals are,"

I obviously wouldn't
have gotten anywhere.

When the trial started,
if you recall the grim picture

of the Nazi war criminals
in the prisoners' dock,

and they were leaning into each other and and mumbling something.

What they were
talking about was,

"What did you get on
that professor's IQ test?"

Uh, "How many digits
did you remember?"

"I got eight forward
and six backwards."

And this is what they were arguing about
at the beginning of the war crimes trial.

Attention!
The Tribunal will now enter.

There is laid upon everybody who takes any part in this trial,

a solemn responsibility to discharge their duties with justice.

The indictment
shall now be read.

This is rather
a unique document.

The original indictment of the Nuremberg trial.
- Hmm.

With the...

...handwritten reactions of each of the defendants That's interesting.

To this document
after they received it.

Hermann Wilhelm Goering,

Rudolf Hess...

Goering, who as you might expect,
was quite cynical about it, wrote...

Uh, Rudolf Hess, as you recall,
had this problem of amnesia.

And all he wrote was,
"I can't remember."

He wrote that in English.

Joachim von Ribbentrop...

Ribbentrop wrote that,

"The indictment is directed
against the wrong people."

And what he meant by that was that Hitler should have been indicted,

but he didn't dare
put that down in writing,

because heaven knows
where Hitler was,

and he was still afraid of him.

You had Doenitz, who was,
uh, Hitler's final successor

as fuhrer for the last few days of the Nazi Reich, uh, wrote...

"Typical American humor.
Karl Doenitz."

Uh, Albert Speer had
a rather different reaction.

He said...

That is,
"The trial is necessary."

The kind of thing that Speer spoke of really established

a realm of responsibility
for everyone in that system,

uh, potentially,
from top to bottom.

And that had to do with the element of guilty knowledge,

or the potential
for gaining knowledge.

"That the shooting
of uniformed prisoners

"must be carried out
even after

"they have
surrendered voluntarily,

and asked for pardon."

The next pa--
Do you see that?

Do you agree
that that is a reason

for giving top secrecy
to this document?

You were commander-in-chief
of the German navy.

Do you say that you're not
able to answer this question?

Now, you have this final opportunity of answering that question.

Will you answer it
or won't you?

Ja.

"...even if they are,
to all appearances,

"soldiers in uniform,
whether armed or unarmed,

are to be slaughtered
to the last man."

This order was issued
by OKW in 12 copies.

And the distribution,

shown on the second page,

included the three
supreme commands:

army, sea and air, and
the principal field commands.

These are the locations
of the largest concentration

and prison camps
maintained throughout Germany

and occupied Europe
under the Nazi regime.

As soon as our troops arrived,
arrangements were made

to remove these people from the miserable surroundings.

Nazis who formerly
maltreated them

are forced to help
look after the patients.

The staff of German nurses is also forced to attend the victims.

The women are able to smile
for the first time in years.

Dr. Gilbert,
after the showing

of the concentration camp
film in the Tribunal,

you went to their cells the same evening.
Yes.

It was surprising in that the reactions
went from one end of the spectrum,

from apparent indifference,
to the most violent kind of,

uh, guilt-laden
self-recrimination.

Doenitz was
extremely indignant.

He, he thought it was a crime

to expose him
to witnessing the film, even,

because he as a naval officer had nothing to do with atrocities.

Well, to begin with,
Doenitz was about the least unpolitical of the bunch,

and that probably is why Hitler named him as
his successor when Hitler committed suicide.

Uh, but no, this, uh,
this is really, uh, utter rubbish.

The Nazi conspirators
adopted and publicized

a program of ruthless
persecution of Jews.

We have no accurate estimate of how many
persons died in these concentration camps,

and perhaps
none can ever be made.

The Nazi conspirators were generally meticulous record keepers,

but the records which they kept
about concentration camps

appear to have been
quite incomplete.

Perhaps the character
of the records resulted

from the indifference,

uh, which the Nazis felt
for the lives of their victims.

But occasionally,
we find a death book or a set of index cards.

For the most part,

the victims faded
into an unrecorded death.

Regine, have the children seen the film?

How old do you have to be to see the film,
the concentration camp?

Forty-five.

So don't you think
Catherine can see the film?

I don't think she should.
I, uh-- Well, she could, and, and, uh...

Of course she could.

Hmm.

Regine, what kind of picture
would you like me to make

for my 47th birthday?

A Lubitsch film,
or something like that.

Something
the children can see?

Or, uh, My Fair Lady
all over again.

♪ ♪

♪ I see a new sun ♪

♪ Up in a new sky ♪

♪ And my whole horizon
has reached a new high ♪

♪ Yesterday, my heart
sang a blue song ♪

♪ But today, hear it hum
a cheery new song ♪

I dreamed a new dream,
I saw a new face ♪

♪ And I'm spreading sunshine
all over the place ♪

♪ With a new point of view,
here's what greets my eye ♪

♪ New love ♪
♪ New love ♪

♪ New luck ♪
♪ New luck ♪

♪ New sun ♪
♪ And there's a new sun ♪

♪ In the sky ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

Jack Buchanan, Fred Astaire:
♪ I guess I'll have to change my plan ♪

♪ I should've realized
there'd be another man ♪

♪ I overlooked that
point completely ♪

♪ Until the big affair began ♪

♪ Before I knew
where I was at ♪

♪ I found myself up on the shelf,
and that was that ♪

♪ I tried to reach the moon,
but when I got there ♪

♪ All that I could get
was the air ♪

♪ My feet are back
upon the ground ♪

♪ I've lost the one girl
I found ♪

♪ ♪

This is really very beautiful
country, Schleswig-Holstein.

It's funny about Nazis
in Germany,

they always seem to choose the loveliest spots to live in.

We're coming into Stocksee now,
which is the village

where the concentration camp
doctor Oberheuser lived.

She practiced here for years
after she got out of prison.

♪ ♪

Uh-huh.

Ja.

Nein.
Nein.

Danke schoen.

Danke.

Nuremberg,
November 21, 1946.

Military Tribunal Number One.

United States of America
v. Karl Brandt, and others,

better known as
the "Medical Case."

...and answer the questions
which I shall propound to him.

Is your name
Hertha Oberheuser?

Ja wohl.

Have you received
and have you had an opportunity

to read the indictment
filed against you?

Ja wohl.

Have you entered your plea of "not guilty" to this indictment,

and do you now plead
"not guilty" to this indictment?

You may be seated.

Dr. Hertha Oberheuser was

a young and attractive
woman in 1946.

She was accused
of having tortured

dozens of
concentration camp inmates,

of having artificially
infected wounds,

of having administered
lethal injection.

Ja.

Ja.
Ja?

Uh-huh.

Uh-huh, uh-huh.

Ja.

Ja.

Ja.

Ja.

Danke sehr.
Auf Wiedersehen. Bitte.

And in your affidavit,

you admit that you gave
five or six lethal injections.

Is that correct?

Nein.

Well, you gave injections,

and after such injections
the persons died, did they not?

And this medical aid
resulted in death, did it not?

Did you hear that?

Nein.

I said, "And this medical aid
resulted in death, did it not?"

Miss Oberheuser, were you ever
given any awards or medals?

And for what reason
did you receive that medal?

I don't know.

Was it for
your participation

in the sulfanilamide
experiments?

I have no further
questions, Your Honor.

The really interesting
reaction, it seems to me,

comes from her patients
after the war.

They did not abandon her,
and the medical authorities of Schleswig-Holstein

apparently saw nothing wrong.

Ja.

Ach so!

Ja?

Ja?

Ja.

Ja, ja.

Ja.

Ja.

Ja.

Ja, ja.

Nein.

Hertha Oberheuser,

Military Tribunal One has found
and adjudged you guilty

of war crimes
and crimes against humanity.

For your said crimes,
Military Tribunal One

sentences you,
Herta Oberheuser,

to imprisonment
for a term of 20 years.

The officer of the guard will remove the defendant,
Herta Oberheuser.

- Nein.
- Nein?

Ja.

In the important,
but sinister typhus researches,

the eminent Dr. Rose
appeared for the Luftwaffe.

Rose became a distinguished
specialist in the fields

of public health
and tropical diseases.

Ja.

At Buchenwald,
numerous healthy inmates

were deliberately infected
with spotted fever virus

in order to keep
the virus alive.

Over 90 percent of the victims
died as a result.

It is our deep obligation
to all peoples of the world

to show why and how
these things happened.

Mm-hmm.

Ja.

So, my initial connection
with Nuremberg really began

because I was ordered to become
part of the prosecution team.

I was in the Army.
I was given orders to report to it.

And my initial connection
with it was not really governed

by any principled approach
to this at all.

Far wider are the duties
which we must fulfill here.

These larger obligations
run to the peoples and races

on whom the scourge
of these crimes was laid.

For them,
it is far more important

that these incredible events
be established

by clear and public proof,

so that no one can ever doubt

that they were fact
and not fable.

After all, I was not in
a high position at that time.

The ones who were responsible
for thinking it out and...

uh, providing the motivation
for Nuremberg, yes,

I think they were governed

by this desire to,
to articulate these principles,

to put them into application,
and to do it on a basis

that they would be willing to see applied to ourselves as well.

Although my initial connection
with Nuremberg was, uh,

was as I say... a matter
of response to orders,

I then did become
interested in it.

I invested nearly four years,
uh, of my life after the war...

in continuing
to conduct the trials

and was responsible for the trials that came after the first one.

I had signed indictments
against individuals

accusing them of, uh, crimes
under the laws of war.

Uh, men had been hanged and imprisoned
as a result of charges that I had brought.

Karl Brandt,

Military Tribunal One has found
and adjudged you guilty

of war crimes,
crimes against humanity

as charged under the indictment
heretofore filed against you.

Military Tribunal One
sentences you,

Karl Brandt,
to death by hanging.

And may God have mercy
upon your soul.

The officer of the guard will remove the defendant Brandt.

How do you feel
about capital punishment?

If you're asking about capital punishment in the United States,

I'm among its opponents,
because it has come to be applied

in a... in a irrational way.

I don't believe that I am completely opposed to capital punishment,

however,
if one assumes that it is

in a measured
and rational application.

How could I be?

Uh, if I had been opposed
to capital punishment,

I, uh, I would not have, uh,

been involved with Nuremberg.
Well, you could've changed.

I mean, you could've been in favor then and...
"I could have changed."

...in opposition now.
I don't believe so.

I don't think I've changed
in that respect.

Ja.

The ability to,
to live with quite contradictory notions in one's mind,

such as that we are working to preserve democracy and freedom,

uh, with our ally in,
uh, South Vietnam,

knowing quite consciously,
on the other hand,

that we have a corrupt dictator,
that we have installed,

and who is imprisoning and
torturing thousands of people.

The ability to hold
those two thoughts in your mind,

uh, not to question
either of them,

not to confront them and not to draw any logical implications,

especially from the latter,

the facts of what
we're actually doing,

uh, that's an ability which
is essential in an official.

And we all had it. I had it.
My bosses had it.

Nixon and the American
people have made

enormous sacrifices for the interests of their allies.

And I am conscious
of the fact

that the existence
of my state Germany,

and myself and my family,

depends on the United States,

which maintains
peace and order

among minor nations
who are guilty of misdemeanor.

Isn't it a little paradoxical
that you should take that stand?

Because, after all,
you were prosecuted by this American power.

Well, uh, that only

could prove that, uh,

I am a man who is not,

uh, determined
by prejudices.

Military Tribunal One
sentences you, Gerhard Rose,

to imprisonment for the full term and period of your natural life,

to be served
at such prison or prisons

or other appropriate
place of confinement

as shall be determined
by competent authorities.

- Nein.
- Nein.

Many people of that age
were involved.

And therefore,
the whole idea of...

of imposing a guilt feeling on this is very repugnant to them.

I think one of the reasons why the Anne Frank movie was so popular

was because you never
see any Germans in it.

You hear them come up the stairs,
you never see anybody.

And so the German people could get a feeling of, "Ah, yes,
it was all terrible,"

but nothing is ever brought home to them,
as an individual about it.

Oh.

Ja.

When we made
Judgment at Nuremberg,

one part of that
television show

consisted of clips
of the concentration camps,

and, uh, where gas had been used
as a means of extermination.

Um, just before the show
was put on television,

the producer
and the director were asked

to eliminate all
reference to gas.

Well, they refused,
quite rightly,

but when the show
was put on television,

the control, uh,
switch was pulled every time gas was mentioned,

so the word "gas"
is never heard.

Blipped out.
Uh, blipped out, yes.

The reason was that, uh,
one of the sponsors of the show was Pacific Gas and Electric,

uh, which didn't like the idea of having
gas mentioned in this unfriendly way.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

Seig Heil!

Ja.

Uh-huh.

Ja.

Oui.

Oui.

Oui.

Oui.

Ja, ja.

Ja.

Ja.

"The people who
had got off the trucks,

men, women
and children of all ages,

had to undress
upon the orders of an SS man

who carried a riding
or dog whip."

"I walked around the mound,
and found myself confronted

"by 30 naked people
lying near the pit,

"about 30 to 50
meters away from it.

"Some of them
were still alive.

"They looked straight in front of them with a fixed stare,

"and seemed to notice neither the chilliness of the morning

"nor the workers
of my firm who stood around.

"They had to put down
their clothes in fixed places,

"sorted according to shoes,
top clothing, and underclothing.

"Without screaming or weeping,
these people undressed,

"stood around in family groups,

"kissed each other,
said farewells,

"and waited for a sign
from another SS man

who stood near the pit
with a whip in his hand."

"An old woman
with snow-white hair

"was holding a one-year-old child in her
arms and singing to it and tickling it.

"The child was
cooing with delight.

"The couple were looking on
with tears in their eyes.

"The father was holding the hand of a boy,
about ten years old, and speaking to him softly.

"The boy was fighting
his tears.

"At that moment,
the SS man at the pit shouted something to his comrade.

"I well remember a girl,
slim and with black hair,

"who, as she passed
close to me,

pointed to herself and said,
'Twenty-three.'"

"People were closely
wedged together,

"and lying on top
of each other,

"so that only their heads
were visible.

"Nearly all had blood running over their shoulders from their heads.

"Some of the people shot
were still moving.

Some were lifting their arms and turning
their heads to show that they were still alive."

Women and children have died thus,
murdered in cold blood!

It's understandable,
I suppose, that, um,

some Germans should resent
the Nuremberg process,

and understandable,
also, that the British

and the Allied powers
should, um, defend it.

What is that old maxim?

"My country, right or wrong,
but still my country."

Now, I'm not trying to justify that ethically,
but it is a fact of life

that people tend
to think in that way.

I don't think that the Germans,
um, ever realized or...

or considered whether these
things were moral or not.

Yes, but not only
were these acts

not discouraged
under the previous system,

they were
openly encouraged.

I mean, there was a whole
ideology that, um,

that made what was considered
by others immoral

into patriotic acts.

It's awfully
difficult to think

that those who took part,
for instance, in the, uh,

in the establishment and conduct of the concentration camps,

and the annihilation
of the Jews

can ever really
have thought,

if they thought
about it at all,

that it was a, a good
and a patriotic thing to do.

Millions upon
millions more today

mourn their fathers
and their mothers,

their husbands, their wives,
and their children.

What right has any man to mercy
who has played a part,

however indirectly,
in such a crime?

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

They, they really seem
pretty enthusiastic

about the books
and things.

Did, did they know what
the books were, were like?

The new books, uh...

I guess I liked them very much
because they were prettier.

Uh, what kind of, uh,
effect did the Nazi books have on you?

So, do you remember?
Mm. Oh, oh.

Well, I-I guess
I remember pretty well,

because there wasn't
any sentence in... in a book,

uh, that wasn't, wasn't really
referring to a propaganda.

I think you can't imagine
what, what it is, um,

being, being brainwashed
all day long.

So, your friends,
or were they

relations involved
in the Hitler Youth movement?

I was.
You were?

I w-- I was. Uh...
I see.

How did you get
involved in that?

Was it,
um... I know it's something that sort of spread like a wildfire over--

No. No, it was just...

It was almost compulsory.
It was--

Being a Jewish child,

surrounded by kids
that you played with,

and that became Nazis, I mean,
became Hitler Youth and so on...

you felt very much
you wanted to join, too,

and wanted to have their jackets and things like this.

Of course,
you weren't allowed to. Hardly.

All that you did hear was,
uh, you know, "Jew die."

From the very beginning,

the trucks drove around

through Berlin yelling,
"Jews die."

Do you have any memories
of the destruction of temples

or children not showing up
at school? That's, uh--

Well, uh, the first, first,
uh, thing I have mem--

uh, I have memories of was the burning of the synagogue

around the corner
of our, of our house then,

and, uh,
I just remember the smoke coming out of the building.

Next day, I went by and, uh,

I saw people jumping
on a piano in the rubble,

and that was something
that stayed with me

as an image of, uh,
of the whole thing.

Parents didn't
talk to children,

because the children might denounce them.
Denounce them.

And I remember my-my sister,
my younger sister,

five years younger than I am,

um, she admitted,
uh, that, at one time,

she was thinking about
denouncing my mother,

and she's, she's a real nice,
nice, uh... woman.

She was also a real nice kid,
but she was thinking about denouncing my mother,

because she was talking over
a garden fence to a neighbor

who, uh, was...
- Considered politically--

...considered politically
unsafe, and...

The March of Time!

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

Today, almost two years

after the last great
battles of World War II,

American troops
are still heading overseas

as occupation forces
for conquered Germany.

♪ ♪

But of America's
aims in Germany,

aims which may profoundly
affect the future of the world,

few of these soldier ambassadors of the United States

have any very clear idea.

You know how much money
we're spending on Germany?

I read the other day
it costs us $200 million a year.

Don't worry.
We'll get it all back.

They say with a few cartons
of cigarettes to start with,

you can get rich
over there in no time.

Yeah, and with just
a few packs of cigarettes,

you can up pick any
Fraulein in Germany.

Okay, okay.

But how do you like us spending all that dough on a lot of Krauts?

Today, Hitler's erstwhile
master race is living abjectly,

without initiative,
without dignity.

Its grandiose aspirations reduced to an
endless struggle for mere existence:

for enough fuel
to keep from freezing,

for enough food
to keep from starving.

♪ ♪

We used to, for instance,
stole chocolates

out of the Jeeps
of the American GIs.

Opportunities to enjoy
life are plentiful

for any German girl who is willing to fraternize with American soldiers.

♪ ♪

Despite public resentment
of such fraternization,

thousands of Frauleins have been quick
to make the most of their chances

to better their lot
by consorting with GIs

who can pay for their company with both entertainment and food.

I worked to...
to bring home something to eat

at an American Red Cross club.

I was working there
as a painter,

and we did sketches
for the GIs.

They stand in front of us on a-- on a table,
turned the profile like that,

and we made cartoons of them,
and they like it very much, and we were--

Our sign outside our
study was, um, uh,

"In five and a half seconds,
your picture taken."

What about the
anti-fraternization laws?

Weren't you a Fraulein?
I mean, were they 18?

Mm-hmm.
You were a Fraulein.

Mm-hmm. I guess-
I guess so.

♪ ♪

For all the lip service
Germans pay to democracy,

for all their servile
friendliness of manner,

the US military government
faces no obstacle more subtle

than the inherent arrogance
of an egotistical people.

♪ ♪

But at least America is resolved to continue the occupation

until the Germans give conclusive evidence of regeneration.

If necessary, for 40 years.

For of adult Germans deeply affected by Nazism,
little can be expected.

Any hope that Germany will ever become a responsible,
peace-loving nation

centers on the very young,

who have not been corrupted by Hitler's
doctrines of treachery and aggression.

Who may still be taught that Germany can find greatness

only through freedom
and democracy,

in peaceful cooperation
with the rest of mankind.

♪ ♪

Time... marches on!

♪ ♪

I guess my feelings about Americans and the American history

have changed more than feelings
about the Germans.

Uh, the fact of the matter is that, uh, when,
when I began with the Nuremberg trials,

I didn't have strong
anti-German feelings.

This is perhaps the result
of World War I.

You may have noticed that I've got some old posters from World War I,

uh, around here and there.

I was just old enough
at the time

to be aware of a great deal
of anti-German sentiment,

and I discovered also that
a good many of the accusations

about atrocities in Belgium
were more myth than reality,

and therefore, I went
into Germany with the feeling

that the Germans are not
very different from us.

To most of us, it all seemed
to be of a piece,

that, uh, the United Nations was going to be
a better version of the League of Nations.

It would tend to keep
the peace in the future.

Will you state
your full name, please?

Albert Speer.

All law is, um,
created by the victors for the vanquished.

All law!

It is the majority who will lay down--
- Or the society in power.

Or the people in power.
Society in power who lay down the laws.

And I have no doubt
that the first person

who, in the very early
history of our common law,

was prosecuted
and hanged for murder, said,

"You can't do that to me.
It's never been a crime before."

What they've got to do, I think,
is to look at the principles.

Not ask themselves,
"Who laid these down?"

But "What are the principles?"

And then ask themselves,
"Are these principles right or wrong?"

And if they're right,
it doesn't matter a curse who laid them down.

The murderers
are the vanquished.

The law makes murder a crime.

Society makes it a crime. Of course,
a Marxist would also add that

the laws on property
are the laws of those in power

against those who are out of power,
who may be the majority, but that's--

Well, I'm not a Marxist,
I'm afraid.

You won't induce me to enter into an argument about Marxism.

There was quite a big
school of thought in Britain,

and, um, even more so
in the Soviet Union,

when they came into the war,
in favor of what was called "executive action."

Which was that these men
should be, um, caught,

there should be a very
short drumhead court-martial,

and they would be executed, um,
out of hand in the morning.

The Americans were
very much opposed to this.

Americans, in those days,
at any rate, um,

had a great belief in the rule of law and injustice.

That four great nations,

flushed with victory
and stung with injury,

stay the hand of vengeance,

and voluntarily submit
their captive enemies

to the judgment of the law

is one of the most
significant tributes

that power has ever paid
to reason.

I think the British,
in the earlier days,

felt that the thing would not have the appearance of justice,

that it might be said that this was a tribunal composed of the victors,

that the defendants would not be given a proper opportunity of, um,
defending themselves,

and that the trial would look
rather a bogus affair.

I think it was at the,
um, Yalta Conference,

Stalin said that
the proper course

would be to arrest 50,000 members of the German general staff,

and execute them out of hand.

Uh, Roosevelt thought
this was a joke,

and he said,
"Well, perhaps 49,000."

But, uh, Winston Churchill
took it very seriously, indeed,

and he said that he would sooner
be taken out into the garden

and shot at once, himself,

than be a party to such
an act of barbarity.

May it please the Tribunal.

On an occasion to which, um,
reference has and will be made,

Hitler, the leader
of the Nazi conspirators,

who are now
on trial before you,

is reported as having said,
"In starting and making a war,

not the right is what matters,
but victory."

Hitherto...

everybody had been
inclined to feel

that if the thing was done
in the name of the state,

then they who represented the state or who settled the policy

would be able to remain
in a position of, um, anonymity

and escape any
individual retribution.

These crimes with which
we deal are unprecedented,

first because of the shocking
number of victims.

They are even more
shocking and unprecedented

because of the large
number of people

who united their efforts
to perpetrate them.

A thousand little
fuhrers dictated.

A thousand imitation
Goerings strutted.

A thousand Streichers
stirred up hate.

A thousand Kaltenbrunners
tortured and killed.

A thousand Speers
administered.

Did you ever think, uh,
"Perhaps, in that situation,

I might have acted in that particular way,
that particular instance,"

and then have gone on
with the prosecution?

I often wondered
how I and my friends,

and, uh, others
whom I knew back home,

would have reacted under these pressures.
That's certainly true.

Uh, I suppose that,
having wondered,

I didn't pursue
the question further.

There's no way
I could answer it.

I mean, I wasn't tested
in that way and I don't know.

Uh, and, of course,
if everybody gave up the attempt to impose principles on conduct

because they themselves
might yield under pressure,

uh, that would not be a very sensible solution to the situation, practically.

No, all I could do is wonder.
Wonder, doubt...

We cannot make
history over again here,

but we can see
that it is written true.

That must, uh, plague
anybody who has been,

uh, seriously involved in situations that test people very deeply.

♪ ♪

Nuremberg,
the city of Durer

and of National
Socialist rallies.

♪ ♪

The Luitpold Arena.

The remains
of Julius Streicher's house.

Gestapo headquarters.

I drove by car through
the Ruhr to Nuremberg,

and, um, it was shocking to see the damage
that had been done to so many towns.

Although, of course,
in London and Liverpool,

where I'd had to work during the war,
there was also very great, um, damage.

"Is glad."

"Is glad." No?

No? "The Tribunal is glad...

that, uh,
defendant's counsel..."

Oh, he can't hear.

Uh, "The Tribunal
is glad that," uh--

Uh... Give him the microphone.

Give him the microphone,
will you?

Can you hear me now?

Can you hear me now?
Ja wohl.

Tribunal will consider
the best method

of providing
defendant's counsel

with as many
translations as possible.

And all those details
are really unnecessary.

Very well, sir.

Your Honor, please...

this witness does furnish
a complete story

from the head office
to the Final Solution. Uh...

Well, what is he going to prove
about these 50,000 Jews?

Their ultimate disposition,
sir, as far as he knows.

What is he going to prove?

Their ultimate disposition at
Auschwitz, as far as he knows.

Well, you can go on to--

to what ultimately happened to them, then.
- Yes, sir.

After you came to power,
you regarded as necessary,

in order to maintain power,
that you suppress all opposition parties.

That is correct--

Jackson was quite
unused to cross-examination,

and he used the occasion,
as he had hoped,

in order to establish
a number of principles.

Well, you don't do that by cross-examining, um,
a hostile witness,

and the result was that
the cross-examination, um,

became extremely
ineffective and woolly.

The difficulty is that the Tribunal loses control of these proceedings

if the defendant,
in a case of this kind,

where we all know, uh,
propaganda is one of the purposes of the defendants,

is permitted to put
his propaganda in,

and then we have
to meet it afterwards.

Surely-- Surely, it's making
too much of a, a sentence,

which the witness has said,

about whether the United States makes its, uh,

mobilization orders
public or not.

Surely, that's not a matter
of any very great importance.

The defendant
ought not to have,

uh, referred
to the United States,

but it is a,
a matter which I think you might well ignore.

Let me say that
I agree with Your Honor

that, as far as
the United States is concerned,

we're not worried about anything this witness can say about us.

The position was picked up

by a more experienced
cross-examiner the next day,

by my deputy,
David Maxwell Fyfe,

who subjected, um,
Goering to a very damaging cross-examination,

which had been carefully
prepared overnight

in the light of Jackson's own,
uh, lack of success.

Would you look
at document D-5-6-9?

First at the top
left-hand corner,

which shows that it is
a document

published by the
Oberkommando der Wehrmacht.

Uh, I'm so-- I'm sorry.

They've given you
the, the wrong one.

Bring back the document.
Let me have it.

It's a document dated
22nd of November, 1941.

Have you got it?
- Ja wohl.

He only asked questions
to which he knew the answers

and knew that Goering would have to give those answers,

and that is the secret
of all cross-examination.

Never ask a question unless you know what the answer is.

He, uh, wanted me,
pleaded with me,

to come to his cell every day,
so that he could discuss things.

He wanted to know,
"How did I do?"

"Did anybody say if I
put on a good performance?"

I said, "Oh, I suppose
some said you did."

And then he said, "You know,
one thing I couldn't control,"

and he said this
with real annoyance,

"I couldn't control the shaking of my hand, uh,
while I was on the stage,

but look, it's
perfectly steady now."

♪ ♪

Ja.

Ja.

Ja.

Ja, ja.

Ja.

Ja.

♪ ♪

Ja.

Ja.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

We arrived in Berlin
on July the 6th, 1945,

which, uh, except
for billeting officers,

I think was as early
as anybody got there.

One colleague of mine,
also having been in Berlin before,

couldn't stand just going
to bed at that point,

and we wanted to drive
into the center of the city,

and it was a absolutely
ghostly experience.

Ja.
Ja, ja, ja.

♪ ♪

To the German, even today,

the denazification officer
is a hatchet man.

Uh, yes,
I, I can't blame them,

and I would imagine
that there may be some

who recall me in that stance.

At the time that I became
involved in denazification,

I was at the age
of, uh, 27, I guess,

and as a second lieutenant,

the only film,
theater and music control officer in Berlin.

♪ ♪

The Russians wanted to have
something cultural going on.

From the very beginning, that is,
from before the time that we got to Berlin,

artists who were appearing in shows or singing or anything,

had higher ration cards
than the ordinary citizen.

They even got
transportation to places,

so that they
could appear there.

The Russians at that time were very concerned with the suicide rate,

which had been going up.

They were quite willing to provide some circuses,
where they could,

in hopes that it would,
you know, stem a tide

of where too many people would simply quit and kill themselves.

♪ ♪

We came in there,

and I think almost everybody
came into Germany...

Excuse me.

...with the notion that
for a decent German

who had connections
in other countries

to have stayed during
the Hitler years,

alone was a sort of crime,

and I don't think that this
was ever put into any law,

but it was an attitude.
- An assumption.

An assumption that went
through the entire process

of vetting people and licensing people and letting them be active.

Prior to leaving Austria,
it was in 1939,

I had been a student at the state academy in Vienna,
primarily in directing,

and was back in 1945
with the responsibility

to make some judgments
in, in this area,

frequently on people
whom I had known personally.

♪ ♪

The artists who, after all,
we are talking about, for the most part,

when the war started
going from bad to worse,

were expected to work
in defense industry.

Whenever they were not filming,
uh, and I think even on the--

the theater artists,
even on nights where they might be appearing later on the stage,

were still expected to work
in defense work during the day.

Now, there were four reasons,

uh, or four ways in which artists, uh,
reacted to this order,

and I would ask you how, uh,
given these four motivations,

you would then
discover justice.

There were Nazis among them,
who got themselves excused,

because they were influential
and knew other Nazis

and didn't like to get up early in the morning and get their hands dirty.

There were anti-Nazis
among them,

who worked desperately
to be excused from defense work,

because they wanted in no way to support the German war effort.

There were violent Nazis,
who insisted on showing up on the job

as a demonstration of their
loyalty and their sacrifice,

and, finally, there were anti-Nazis,
who insisted on showing up and working

just so that nobody could say they were
taking favors from the government.

So, the question then becomes,
what do you know about that immediately afterwards,

and how do you deal with it?

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

Artists are not habitually
political fanatics.

So that you could,
for example, have an act--

an actor who might see
a chance to play King Lear.

This easily, in his terms,
could be more important

than the German army
taking Paris the same week.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

We have today,
in West Germany, a country,

which is one of the more
humane in the world.

In that sense, we can be quite
well-satisfied with ourselves.

Anybody in a uniform
could be counted on,

uh, on, on being...
authoritarian with the public.

I think you'll find
that less today

than in any country
I can think of, except Britain.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

Halt.

Krause.
Krause.

Danke schoen.
Bitte schoen.

Ja, ja, ja.

Nein.

♪ ♪

Heil! Heil!
Heil! Heil!

Ja.

Ja.

Frank.
Frank.

Oderbruch.

Mord?

Ja.

Ja.

Now, gentlemen, if you'll
raise your right hands

and take the oath with me.

♪ ♪

I swear by Almighty God...

...that I will
at all times...

...establish equal justice
under the law for all persons.

...so help me God.

♪ ♪

Have you ever felt that
prosecuting people for crime

is somehow persecuting them?

No, I can't say that I have.

I have felt that prosecuting anybody for crime,
in a sense, is self-righteous.

And setting oneself
up as competent

to invoke a process
of punishment against them...

there is something
distasteful about it.

I suppose I'd feel the same way if I were a judge.

The judge must think of his judging as being in the name of principles,

and not that
he is peculiarly equipped,

but that he is the instrument through which the voice of principle speaks.

The same thing applies to the prosecutor as to the judge.

Of course,
if other feelings come into it,

if one does, uh, have
a feeling of vengeance...

and many people have,
I think wrongfully, uh,

accused the Nuremberg prosecutors of being motivated by vengeance...

uh, then, of course,
he does become a persecutor.

The whole fabric of guilt and responsibility
is a very intricate and interwoven one,

and I'm not talking now
just about legal guilt,

which you can be convicted
of a crime on, but, uh,

the degree of your
association, knowledge,

the way that you yourself
may feel responsible.

♪ ♪

B. H.
Liddell Hart had interviewed German generals after the war.

When he asked them why they had not resisted Hitler in the earlier days,

he was very struck by the importance in their minds,

that they had teenage sons

who had to be supported
through college.

They were men without
independent means,

who could not afford to lose
their jobs lest they, uh,

lose this ticket to the elite,
to status, for their children.

Keitel was the stereotype
of a German general.

He was a big, handsome man
who looked well in uniform,

uh, very arrogant,
direct bearing, and all that.

He was so rigidly observant
of the military code

that he recognized
my rank as captain

as superior to his because
he didn't have any rank,

and he always stood up at attention
to greet me when I came into the cell.

And I was, myself,
both surprised and moved when I heard him say that.

And I went
to the cells to see

whether there was any danger of any
suicide attempt or anything like that.

And Keitel said...

just gray with horror,

"I have been sentenced
to death by hanging.

The hanging, at least,
I didn't deserve."

And he showed me that he was sending an appeal to the Tribunal

to let him have death
by a firing squad.

And then,
turning to me, he said,

"Captain, I know that it
must be humiliating for you

to be standing in the same cell as a man who
has been condemned to death by hanging."

Vengeance is not our goal,

nor do we seek merely
a just retribution.

We ask this court to affirm

man's right to live
in peace and dignity,

regardless of his race or creed.

I was required to enter
the concentration camps

as they were being liberated,

for the purpose of capturing the alleged war criminals.
- Yes.

We had a long list
of war crime suspects.

I had never seen human beings
in that condition,

where you couldn't tell if the people were dead or alive.

So I don't think the term
"vengeance" is correct,

but surely,
I was not immune from an emotional response to what I had seen.

Local townspeople
visit the Ohrdruf camp,

including prominent
Nazi Party members.

They'll be taken on a forced tour of
the campsite by Colonel Hayden Sears.

Colonel Sears stands by
as the Nazis are informed

that they must see
all the horrors at the camp.

What was the rationale
behind that?

Well, it was really
so horrible,

uh, that it was a form of punishment to even be an observer of it,

and, uh... since many
of the Germans professed,

you know, ignorance
of what had happened,

this was a means of showing them what had happened,

uh, so they would see it,
and perhaps be shocked by it.

But was this a method
of punishment

as an act of vengeance
or was it more rational?

Uh, you know, uh,
there wasn't very much reason, uh, in those days.

When you come into a camp, uh,
you don't react very rationally.

You can rationalize it later.

The day before these
Nazis visited the camp,

the Burgermeister of Ohrdruf
was forced to view the horrors.

He and his wife were later found dead in their home,
apparently suicides.

Under the initial tension of simply having wound up the war,

I think I probably
was all for doing this.

Subsequently, I am sure,
as happened in other areas,

I would have probably said
that many of the people

who will be forced
to look at this footage

don't really deserve to,

and the people who did bear
responsibility for it, uh,

probably were able
to look at it

without getting the shock
that the rest of us got.

Goering, of course,
as you might expect,

had the most cynical
reaction of all,

that the atrocity films had disturbed a great morning's performance,

where there was a lot of levity and some wisecracks,
and then he said,

"No, then that damn film came along,
and spoiled everything."

You did prohibit
all court review

of the causes
for taking people

into what you call "protective custody."
That is right, isn't it?

Yes. Uh...

When it was state necessity
to kill somebody,

you had to have somebody
to do it, didn't you?

Goering was
a dominating figure.

He'd lost a lot of weight.

His, um, uniform
fitted very loosely.

He was off drugs.

He sat at the end of the dock,
and one realized at once

that he was a very
strong personality.

And one also realized, I think,

that although he'd done
terrible and evil things,

he had a sense of humor.

Goering was very
proud of having,

uh, attained the highest IQ up
to the time that I tested him,

and he said that,
uh, this was a proof

that they were very brilliant,
uh, instruments of measurement.

Then later, when he heard that Hjalmar
Schacht got several points higher IQ than he,

he said, "Oh, these American
tests are a bunch of baloney.

That doesn't mean anything.
Nobody has to tell me how smart I am."

He threatened Speer
with murder by

a kangaroo court for daring
to depart from the party line.

You may sit down.

There's no translation
coming through...

Speer was going to testify

to the actual guilt
of the Nazi regime,

and Goering's reaction was,
"Damn that fool!

He's deliberately selling out
to save his lousy neck."

And, uh, the next day
at lunch, he, uh, he said,

"The best defense is to tell the enemy
that it's none of their goddamn business

and I will confine my defense
to just three simple words,

'Lick my ass.'"

Ja, ja.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

We came to Germany
with a great respect

for, uh, the people
that had, uh,

given birth to so rich a civilization in the arts and in music.

I always came in autumn,

and there was something wonderful
about walking in the woods in Heidelberg,

um, or in, uh, the smell
of the sea in, in Hamburg.

I was quite fond of my tours
in Germany as a boy,

but when, uh, Hitler
came into power in Germany,

I severed all contact with Germany and didn't return until after the war.

Uh, Berlin was quite a fascinating place to be in in those days.

That was in what year?

In 1929.
- Mm-hmm.

It was the-- Perhaps the musical capital of the world at the time.

How old were you
when you first came to Germany?

Thirteen.

We always traveled as a group,
my parents and sisters.

I remember coming
to know Bruno Walter,

meeting Einstein,

and of course,
the excitement of my first concert at the Philharmonic

and the success it had.

The old Steinplatz Pension,
where we lived,

where I was amazed at the relics of the previous war,

as they were borne
on the silverware,

which was already stamped,
as if in anticipation of another disaster...

gestohlen from
Pension Steinplatz.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

Ja.

Such as fining them
a billion Reichsmarks?

Is that what you mean?
Right after these outrages?

You know that he
did that, don't you?

Uh. You know that the fuhrer
is dead, don't you?

On the 12th of November, 1938,
you published a decree

imposing a fine of a billion marks for atonement on all Jews.

The last thing I remember
him telling me was,

"Wait, you will see.

I will still have my picture
in the German history books."

Nuremberg was an illustration
on an international level

of whether there is such a thing
as international morality,

and of course,
Goering had plenty of nose-thumbing to do at me over that.

He said, "Oh, of course,
the people don't want war,

but what the hell have they
got to say about it?"

I said, "Now, wait a minute.
In a democracy, uh, the--

only the people through their representatives can declare war.

There's no dictator who can, uh, uh,
just declare, for his own, uh, ambition

that the, uh, the nation
will be plunged into war."

Of course, at that time,
I didn't know about Vietnam.

But anyway, uh, I did ask that question,
and I, uh, got the following answer.

"Well, it makes no difference whether it's
a democracy or a dictatorship or anything.

"All you have to do is tell the people they're being attacked,

"and you throw the pacifists into jail for
threatening the security of the nation,

and then, they'll all clamor for war.
It's as easy as that."

Now to give the devil his due,
the cynic was partly right.

I informed the court

that defendants were not entitled to make a statement.

You must plead guilty
or not guilty.

Um, they were trying
the Germans.

- And where was it?
- Nuremberg.

And from what I've read about 'em,
a lot of it was not done... properly.

Is that what you've
read, too, Phil?

Sure, sure, that's
the general conception, sure.

With, with the victors
really just totally outraged

by everything that
had happened and,

and sort of morally blinded by it, maybe,
or something like that.

So...
- What happened?

Um, well, we were talking about alleged war crimes,
and things like that.

And unfairly, because it was,
uh, a unilateral trial.

It wasn't a trial of the Americans,
who had also committed war crimes.

I guess I was aware

that this was restricted to the
prosecution of Axis criminals.

That, uh,
it didn't therefore cause us to scrutinize our own conduct,

the way we would have had to if it had been
a two-way street instead of a one-way street.

In the Einsatzgruppen trial,

in which, uh, the defendants were SS men who, uh,
went to the Eastern Front,

and picked up all the Jews and commissars and, uh,
and slaughtered them...

uh, in that trial,
defense counsel brought up

the bombing of Hiroshima
and said,

"If that is not criminal,
what is worse, after all, about, uh,

about what we did
in the Soviet Union?"

So at that stage, one,
one had to start thinking about it, if you hadn't already.

What is to be said, even against
the World War II, and was said

by Jews like Milton Mayer, who were,
who were, uh, anti-war at that time, was,

"This war, whatever
can be said for it,

will cause us to become monstrous like the monster we are fighting."

I very clearly remember
a very, very uneasy reaction

to Truman's tone in announcing
the atom bombs on Japan.

It seemed to me that his,
his exuberance at employing

"the power of the sun," as he put it,
on human beings was, um, not right.

From that one second in time
comes a lifetime experience,

a lifelong encounter
with death.

With the survivors
I interviewed,

a lifelong sense of being
a tainted people,

a tainted group of atomic bomb survivors,
something like outcasts.

Do the victims feel guilty?

The victims do feel guilty.

They always do
with any holocaust.

Why?

Prob--
There are several reasons,

but I think the most
overwhelming

and the central reason is the classical question of the survivor.

"Why did I live, while he,
she, or they died?"

And in Hiroshima, that was
a staggering kind of question.

They also had
a sense of shame,

because if you had been
a victim of the A-bomb,

you had, a lot of times,
diseases that were very mysterious,

and that, therefore,
you wanted to keep it a secret that you had been a victim.

Tied in with feeling--

the feelings of shame
that Betty mentioned,

one is ashamed that one has had to be so
brutalized and humiliated by this event.

Can you imagine a situation

where the United States
might conceivably be wrong?

Personally, I can't.

Uh, not from
looking at history,

from the past in the United States,
forward to today.

♪ ♪
But in the Marine Corps hymn,

I believe it's
the third stanza,

the words are to the effect
that the streets of heaven

are guarded
by the United States Marines,

and it goes on,
if the Army and the Navy ever get to heaven's shores,

they'll find the streets are guarded by the United States Marines.

♪ ♪

Your husband was killed
in Vietnam?

It was in May of 1968.

He had gone over in
August the year before.

My husband felt that, I suppose,
it was entirely possible

that he would lose his life
in the service of his country,

and he really believed that he would continue in the Marine Corps

when he was in heaven. Uh...

Well, does this sort
of assume also,

that God is on the side
of the Marines?

I certainly hope he is.

Uh, Louise and I have maintained that
we could never feel any resentment

against whoever it was that set the mine that killed our son.

The Americans deserve just what
they got in that area.

The-the...

The commander of that division is a criminal,
in my book.

He had been responsible for a lot of what went on in the My Lai area.

I think our government
can be proud

that it has consistently looked
into anything of this sort.

I think that's the way
it's got to be.

I don't think that we're
raising, here in America,

young men who are cruel and inhumane.
Just the opposite.

I don't think it's simple
to deal with Calley,

and I think it's interesting that we haven't been able to deal with him.

We're looking for some scapegoat
when we do get caught with our,

um, crimes, exposed--
- Exposed.

Photographs, evidence.
- Yeah.

And we go right down and look for the little guy,
- Yeah.

Who is the least responsible.

Yes, who can try
General Koster?

You know? They-- If--

If we were in another position,
as with the Germans, of course,

we could try
the German generals,

but who is to try Koster?

Would you want to?

No, no, I wouldn't.

I don't know.
I don't, I don't know.

Do you think that trials
in such cases solve anything?

Oh, boy.

At the time of World War II,
after the war was over,

the Nuremberg Trials, uh,

were really actually the victor trying, uh,
the officers,

and the political side of the losers.
- Yes, yes.

And, uh, if you were to bring
that to the Vietnam War,

it would have to be that the United States had lost the war in Vietnam,

and we have not lost
the war in Vietnam.

And, uh, had we lost the Vietnam War,
completely outright,

then you would have to have the North
Vietnamese trying our political leaders,

and that just seems
totally out of the question.

Well, I was so infuriated
by Hitler,

that I tried to volunteer into various branches of the service

while I was still in college,
back in '39,

but their physical standards were terribly high in those days,

and I did wear glasses, so
I had to wait to be drafted.

As a matter of fact,
I was just thinking

it was a remarkable
time to be alive,

because, first of all,
we were newly married.

We deeply believed in
what we were doing.

The people that we were associated with on Army posts

were the cream
of American life.

Marvelous and able
and brilliant young men.

All-- We were--
A, we had enough money.

B, we really believed we were doing what we should be doing,

and, uh, I think that we
really cared a great deal.

You wanted to fight?

Oh, gung ho.

I think I can imagine circumstances in which even I,
at these advanced years,

would, would, would,
would come out again.

Uh, it seems to me that, uh,
we haven't accomplished anything by that war to end all wars.

And even though,
at the time of being involved in it,

there wasn't any question of believing that we had no alternative...

uh, now,
I have very serious questions as to what all that loss of life,

and all that destruction really accomplished in the world.

What was the alternative, Mrs.
Ransom? Well, I don't know.

Having Hitler take over?
No, no.

We were unquestioning,

and, uh, the,
the people that did question were few and far between.

By the time that
the atom bomb came into play,

I was sitting in northern Assam,
up above Burma,

waiting again
to jump into North China,

and, uh, I saw a telegram
on the bulletin board,

and, uh, it reported that the United States had dropped, uh,
an atom bomb on Hiroshima,

and who knew what that was.

Nobody had any concept
that this was a war-ender.

And if it was a good,
big bomb, bully,

we were all for it,

because we probably then wouldn't have to jump into the north of China.

From the day that we got back
and started to think about it,

I think everybody's
had second thoughts,

but at the moment,
I can't pretend to be in that prestigious group

who, who saw immediately, well,

what the dire consequences were
of the start of the nuclear age.

I knew a great deal more about
Dresden at the time it happened

than about Nagasaki and Hiroshima, uh, because, uh,

this was thought about
and talked about

in Air Force circles in
advance of the doing, of course.

And, uh,
I was closely acquainted with a number of British officers

who thought that there was no reason for the bombing of Dresden,

and advised strongly against it.

We had a direct line to all
commanders in the field,

and, uh, I rang up the American commanding general,
General Spaatz,

and I said,
"I hear you are going to bomb Dresden. Why?"

And he said,
"Because these panzer divisions are going through Dresden."

And I said, "Well, our source
shows quite differently.

They're going down
west of Prague."

And he said,
"Well, I accept that.

If you can show me that they are going nowhere near Dresden,

I will not bomb Dresden if the British agree not to bomb Dresden."

Then I rang up,
tried to speak to Air Marshal Harris,

and got his number two,
Air Marshal Saundby.

I spoke to him and said, uh,
"There's nothing there in Dresden to bomb."

And he said, "Well, um,
that does not make any difference.

We are going to bomb Dresden."

They had no accommodations
for burial,

and we would stack these
people like cord wood,

cover them with lime,
and then German squads would come around and burn them,

and then, uh, they would say,
"Do you see what you've done, uh, to this beautiful city?"

Dresden was one of the most beautiful cities I ever saw in my life.

Really beautiful.

When we were captured,
myself and Vonnegut,

we were very happy
to have been sent to Dresden,

because we were told by everyone,
including the English,

who were at the Stalag
Four-B at the time,

that it was, uh,
an unwritten rule

that, uh,
Paris wouldn't be touched and neither would Dresden.

That's right.
That's right.

Because they were monuments
of civilization.

That's correct.

And what a monument
of civilization it became.

But what about Dresden?

I don't think it's ever been a maxim of, um,
law in any civilized society,

that you mustn't punish A,

because B has also committed
crimes, and you can't get at B.

What about when B is, uh,
is sitting in judgment?

Well, that is, perhaps,
unfortunate,

but B's crimes were
not then an issue.

No, as a matter of fact,
I'm, in a way, rather in favor

of civilians
being involved in war.

I think the more you
involve civilians in war,

the less likely
you are to have wars.

Dresden, Hamburg...

these were no doubt,
um, terrible incidents,

but they were the inevitable
consequence of, um,

Rotterdam, and London, and Coventry,
and Birmingham, and Liverpool, and...

In this part of the world,

where I lived at that time,

not a day passed without, um,
German aircraft flying over here,

and in this very garden,
um, one of our barns,

and a large area with farm buildings,
was completely destroyed.

Before the bombing
had taken place,

I worked in a maltzfabrik,
and they made an extract

which supposedly was full
of vitamins or something

for sick people
and pregnant women.

There was a woman that worked in this
maltzfabrik by the name of Mertz, Frau Mertz.

She used to slip
me a sandwich,

not a very good sandwich,
but a sandwich, nonetheless, and it was very good.

It tasted good to me,
uh, about every other day,

and she was always "sags nichts,"
you know, when they--

when she would slip it to me.
- What would she say?

"Sags nichts."
Ah!

Yeah, "Don't say
anything," you know,

and it was very secretive,
the way she would slip this,

and I'm sure it was
at great expense to herself

because, as I say,
they didn't have much food, either.

After the bombing of Dresden,

I saw her about three
weeks afterwards.

Uh, she called me schwein.

I said to her,
"How are you, Frau Mertz?"

She said, "Schwein,"
and just walked away.

And by the way, her mother
was killed in this raid.

Uh, she didn't know--

She wasn't in London
when it was being bombed.

Those who wage
aggressive war

must contemplate
the possibility

that they may be beaten,

and that they will be beaten
by the very methods

that they have chosen
to use themselves.

When you're using
"they" and "those..."

I am addressing a former
prosecutor of Nuremberg...

For Great Britain
and Northern Ireland.

And didn't Nuremberg proceed
on the assumption

of individual rather
than collective responsibility?

The individuals who
are the leaders of the state

have a personal
and individual responsibility.

The great mass of the citizens
must, I'm afraid,

accept a collective
responsibility for that

which governments do in the name of the state to which they belong.

♪ ♪

RAF heavy bombers assist

Marshal Konev's drive
into the Reich.

The target is Dresden.

It was being used
to pump German troops

into counterattacks
against the Russian army,

not many miles to the east.

This strike
put a stop to that.

Static electrical discharge
caused by intense cold

mars these magnificent
bombing shots.

The day after the RAF
strike at Dresden,

B-17 bombers of the Eighth
United States Air Force

gave the city
a repeat performance.

♪ ♪

After these attacks,

the German Overseas
News agency said,

"This city, hitherto almost
untouched, is a heap of ruins.

It has been
smashed to atoms."

Suppose the London Charter
had not specifically excluded

Allied war crimes from the
deliberations in Nuremberg,

and suppose that,
as a consequence of this,

Air Marshal Harris had
been in the defendant's dock.

Would you have accepted
to come to Nuremberg

and testify
about what you knew?

Oh, yes, certainly.
But I must qualify this.

I would have gone to Nuremberg,
and I would have had to listen to what the defense said,

because there might have been
reasons of a military nature

about which I knew nothing.

But, as far as I knew,
it was a crime.

And you have no-- And you
haven't found anything since,

in the 28 years since,
which have made you revise that assessment?

No.

It would have seemed
very cynical

to punish the Germans for bombing Rotterdam and Belgrade

when we were all
walking around loose,

having bombed
Hiroshima and Dresden.

Even the most warlike
of peoples have recognized,

in the name of humanity,

some limitations
on the savagery of warfare.

That not even at the time,

the restrictions
of the London Charter

contradict this high idealism
that Jackson expressed.

I mean,
the fact that Allied war crimes were specifically excluded,

could not be referred to by defense counsel.
Mm-hmm.

Sure,
these were, uh--

These were very, uh, uh, unfortunate, uh,
lapses in the Charter.

What about sharing the
prosecution with the people,

as history seems
to have established,

who were responsible
for the Katyn massacre?

It would have seemed
to me self-righteous to, uh,

refuse to participate in the prosecution with the Russians

simply because I knew
or suspected or thought

that other Russians
might, at other times,

have been involved
in the Katyn massacre.

This would not have seemed
to me to make sense.

With the knowledge
we have, um,

there's very little doubt
that these murders

were in fact committed
by the Russians.

Uh, Justice Jackson
strongly urged the Russians

to leave it out of the in-- leave the Katyn accusation out of the indictment,

because he well knew that this was, uh, a,
a very dubious matter.

...you bring the subject
matter up at that point,

The Russians insisted
on keeping it in.

The Russians
then did introduce evidence

to establish that
the Germans did it.

The German defense counsel
introduced evidence,

and were allowed to introduce evidence to show that the Russians did it.

If that was the true view,

the Russians ought to have been in the dock as well as the Germans.

There, um, is no doubt now

that they were guilty
of these crimes.

Of course, there's no
doubt now that they were guilty

of a great many other
crimes at that time, too.

No, you see, at that time,

I don't think we appreciated, um,
sufficiently that that was the case.

And has your discovery
about the country you love

changed you as an individual?

It certainly has helped
to do that.

And since I read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee,

I guess it was borne
in upon me

that these things
had happened before.

The feeling that I'd had
for a long time, that, uh,

these things didn't go on in
the American armed forces, uh...

Alas, it isn't so.
They sometimes do.

Ja.

Ah, ja.

Ja.

Ja, mm-hmm.

Ah, ja?

Ja.

Ja.

Ja, ja.

Ja.

Ja.

Ja.

The evidence will show
that the defendants knew well

the manner in which
this labor was being recruited.

For these defendants were eager,

aggressive, and successful

in their efforts to obtain
workers from all sources

involved in this
criminal program.

You've mentioned
that Dr.Kranzbuehler

was doing pretty
well out of all this.

Oh, well, I can't say that
it gives me great pleasure

to learn that, uh,
that someone who's, uh, uh,

been involved, like Flick
or someone like that, is, uh,

still, uh, very wealthy
and living in great luxury,

but, uh,
I don't think that means that the lesson is totally lost.

I agree it does dull
the edges a good deal.

Ja.

Ja.

Ja.

Ja.

Ja.

Defendant Friedrich Flick...

Mr. Flick had been one
of the largest contributors

to the personal fund
of Heinrich Himmler.

Himmler had escorted Flick
through the concentration camps.

Flick had seen the
conditions under which

the inmates were required to slave in various Flick factories.

Those who were
the slave laborers,

the concentration camp
inmates who worked for Flick,

uh, most of them
are very poor people today,

and he who played
a leading part in, uh,

responsibility for their
misery, uh, died,

not only the richest man,
but completely unrepentant.

Defendant Friedrich Flick.

How do you plead
to this indictment?

Guilty or not guilty?

Uh, he didn't get a very
severe sentence.

He got a five-year sentence,
and I can't remember exactly how much of it he had served

when Mr. McCloy let him out.

As is often the case, uh,
those who persecute others

consider themselves the victim,

and he considered
himself a victim.

Um...

Perhaps, perhaps he knew
more than he has yet told us.

He said, "I could have known."
- Yes.

And he is uncompromising
in saying

that that creates as much responsibility
- "I should have known."

As if I had known.

Now, that is a,
a thought that can only be frightening to a McNamara.

Uh, to, uh, to anyone
who continues to excuse himself

on the basis of what
he did not, in fact, know,

because, really,
not to know some of these things required a good deal of effort.

It required
turning aside questions.

Uh, it required, um, what Orwell describes very,
very analytically in 1984.

Uh, "doublethink," he calls it.

The ability to stop short of a logical
inference from premises that you do hold.

The ability not to see the logical, uh,
implications of something.

To be-- to be stupid.
Controlled stupidity.

Uh, something
that is trained into us, I--

As in Orwell's 1984,
but we-- we didn't wait that long for it.

♪ No more genocide ♪

♪ No, no, no, no ♪

♪ Now, that's just a lie ♪

♪ It's one of the many,
and we've had plenty ♪

♪ I don't want more ♪

♪ Understand ♪

♪ No more genocide in our name ♪

It is so discrediting
to an American audience

to raise the possibility that
American behavior in the world

can be like that
of Nazi Germany.

That to say it is practically
to show that you are a fanatic,

extremist,
radical anti-American...

uh, someone who hates America,
and is not to be listened to or learned from.

First things first,
there's a lost child here.

Uh, Roberta... Reiling?
Rebecca Reiling.

I was up till three o'clock
last night here,

reading a bestseller that
I got hold of in Washington.

Instant history.

If you look at the taped conversations
of the president relating to Watergate,

on every other page,
we find individuals quite consciously evading knowledge.

Guilty knowledge.

This is, in fact, of course,
political pornography.

It is the pornography of power.

The fantasy life of men who
are stoned out of their minds

on secrets and power,
outlaw power.

One of my points in bringing
out the Pentagon Papers,

one of my desires, was that, at last,
the evidence would be available

to give life to the concept
of high-level,

official crimes of planning
aggressive war,

war in violation of international agreements or against commitments,

and, uh, to reopen the issue.

Now, not of the Calley-type crime,
the crimes of sergeants and lieutenants,

but the crimes of generals
and presidents.

The crimes of--
against the peace.

Assuming that it is so,
that this was the reason he decided to publish them,

uh, that makes sense to me.
That makes sense to me.

I don't know Taylor at all well.

He is a general and sees
himself as such, apparently.

I don't think that, uh,
his defense here is,

is really based on anything
decided at Nuremberg.

It's based on a feeling
that Nuremberg has, uh,

has, uh, portrayed to everyone the importance of, of,
of following one's conscience

to the best of one's ability and standing up against repressive measures.

I'm sure that he sees
himself as an American

having gone, uh, beyond
certain earlier barriers

and being willing to imagine that American soldiers,
like a Calley,

might be like German soldiers and subject to the same kinds of laws,

and perhaps that even,
and this is very far, that a German--

that an American general like Westmoreland could be held accountable,

like a Jodl or someone else.

He has not gotten to the point

where an American civilian
official or president--

that he is willing, I'm sure,
in his own mind, to imagine

could be guilty in the same way that German officials were guilty.

There were individuals in high
places in the government

who saw this as an opportunity
for a military conquest,

and who were aware of the treaty problems and, nonetheless,
went ahead.

Uh, but, uh, if you are asking
me to say that "X" or "Y"

or a "Smith" or a "Jones" is a war
criminal-- Or Westmoreland or McNamara.

Or anybody you should name.
I won't do it.

Uh, you can do it, but you
wouldn't get an answer.

Right.
That's what trials are for.

That's what trials are for.
It's to examine evidence and weigh it.

Telford Taylor...

Uh, I don't agree with the views that I've heard expressed by him,

and I don't think, myself,
that there is any parallel

between the American
intervention in Vietnam,

um, at the request
of the then government,

whatever one may think about the
system of democracy that operated then,

and German aggression
against the rest of Europe.

How about the methods
of waging war?

Oh, the methods
of waging war?

Well, the methods, of course, were much the same.
- Napalm...

It's absolute nonsense
to suppose

that one can conduct
a major war with, um,

rules that you might enforce
in a game of football.

Wars are fought to be won.

One criticism I might make
of the Americans in Vietnam

is that they never
fought that war to win it.

They didn't really go all out,

and use the whole of the weapons at their disposal.

You mean, like, for instance,
the atomic bomb?

They could have used the atomic bomb,
they didn't do that,

but I don't think that we can contemplate another war on a world scale

in which the atomic
bomb is not used.

But it would
certainly be ironic

if an American official goes to jail for illegal entry into a doctor's office

and is beyond accountability and punishment
for illegal entry into three nations,

and illegal entry into this air space of those three nations

by B-52's dropping four and a half million tons of bombs.

You can raise the moral issues,
provided they're abstract.

The problem with the
war crimes issue is

that it relates abstract assertions to concrete individuals,

and you can't avoid
the inference

that if you are saying
war crimes have been committed

and individuals who act on behalf of the
government should be held accountable--

Then who the hell committed them?
Right.

In Vietnam, my, my,
my reactions to going in there were

overwhelmingly practical,
rather than moral, I'm afraid.

Why do you say "I'm afraid"?

Well, I suppose that I would have a
certain enlarged sense of righteousness

if I could say that I had a great moral position against, uh,
becoming involved,

and ever-involved in war,
ever-involved in shooting, ever-involved in killing,

and if I'd made the argument
in those terms--

I must say,
if one made those arg-- the argument in those terms,

one would have gotten nowhere,

because that would have indicated that
you were not in tune with the times.

In the Pentagon Papers,
you will never find anyone saying, "This is immoral."

Or even, "This is illegal."

You were only listened to,

to the extent that you could
develop a valid argument

on grounds of national interest
or even on military grounds.

In weighing pros and cons, to
eliminate such considerations,

uh, uh, may mean that a,
that a totally criminal and immoral consideration,

uh, gets very far in the planning process,
precisely because,

there are no sufficiently practical objections to be made against it.

Uh-huh.
It's merely murderous.

I remember wondering,
"Should I resign?

Uh, or "Should I stay?"
The oldest question.

Uh, I didn't resign then.
Uh, I was very glad I didn't.

I didn't want to have to resign.

So, I don't want to--

You know, I do-- I, I don't want to, uh,
take any credit for myself and blame the others.

I am uneasy about, uh, uh,
passing judgment on people with whom I was associated,

in your phrase,
"in the same power structure."

Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
I think you understand why.

Uh, the fact is, of course, that
no one higher than a lieutenant

was tried even for My Lai,

and of course, uh,
My Lai was comparable

to any field-level
incident in World War II.

Uh, they were not able even to get company commanders and, uh,
battalion commanders.

Over My Lai, General Koster,
Colonel Henderson.

They were flying over-- They were all up-- they were all up there,

in helicopters,
at various levels.

Right.
But all in radio communication.

Every family over there,
just about, in those fields,

lost a brother, a son, a sister,

some way-- to Americans,
in some brutal way,

and I can understand what I would have
become if some army came in here

and did this to my family.

I, too, would
have become a VC.

So we created the VC.

My, uh, father was a coal miner,

and he had
a third-grade education,

but a very intelligent man,
he wa-- you know, he was very swift.

We-- There wasn't, uh,
the money to buy things,

but I think the people who
have money to buy things today

miss many of the very
finest things we had.

The radio together,
the, uh, walking together,

the hills together,
uh, being a family.

It was a very close family.

I had my first, uh,
shotgun when I was six.

I was good,
but I wasn't the best around.

I have never seen my father
miss with a shot in his life.

I see.
We took people from the city.

Uh-huh.
We, we used to guide people.

And the rule was that, uh,
we never fired until they had fired.

If they had missed,
then I could shoot...

and kill the rabbit,
and they got it.

We gave it to them, the game.

I come from a town
of immigrants, really.

These people were, were,
were very fond of this country,

and to prove that
they were Americans,

the ultimate stamp of approval
was you were in the military,

you were wearing the uniform
of the United States.

I don't ever
remember a, a word--

an adverse word ever spoken about the military in my hometown, ever.

When I had started out
with what was wrong in the army,

it was at the very
lowest levels,

and I really could not
bring myself to believe

that the generals were
complicit in it or that corrupt.

I felt that it was being done at the colonel level,
and at one general,

and when the higher-ups knew,
that they would correct this,

and it may be naive,
but this is what happened.

When I get to Saigon,
I find out now General Abrams is in on it.

General Bowers
and many other generals,

and then I became-- It came to me,
"This is only in Vietnam.

When I get back to the United States,
they will correct this."

Then when I get back
to the United States,

I find out it goes up to Westmoreland,
the corruptness.

Because, I mean, I--
- You mean the cover-up.

The knowledge of what
had been going on?

And the threats, too, you know, the,
the actual threats to me, "Shut up or else..."

The very specific
area of your controversy

with the army concerns, uh,
Mm-hmm.

What has become known
as the Valentine's Day Massacre.

Okay, uh, on February the 14th,

I got a call on the radio from Colonel Franklin,
the Brigade Deputy Commander,

and he told me that there was a
Vietnamese National Police unit coming in,

and I would turn
prisoners over.

They had an American officer
with them, a lieutenant.

Then the helicopters
started landing,

and their shooting started,
and as I came south into a clearing--

Let's say I come in
at, at, at six o'clock.

At seven o'clock is standing
the lieutenant.

They've got these people lined up,
and there are four dead laying there bleeding,

and they're already dead.

They've got the other people
lined up right there,

except that up at one o'clock,
right across,

across the circle from me,
is a Vietnamese, and he's got this woman--

This is--
It's hard to say the way it is,

because he had her pulling her
hair back with his left hand,

and he had the right hand with
the knife all the way around,

but not, not across her throat,
but all the way around and dug in over here on her neck,

and there was one child that was holding onto her clothing,

and then they had
a second child, was--

Behind him, there was
another Vietnamese,

had this child's face
buried in the sand,

and was tramping on the back
of his head with his foot.

And the guy who had the knife
looked me right in the eye

and cut her throat,
and let her sink to the sand.

She just sinks--
She just dropped, you know.

I went back and I
reported to Franklin.

There was an American officer in charge,
and I wanted something done about it.

Franklin then told me, "Okay,"
that he would take care of it,

but he didn't want me
talking about it because--

Well, I-I can't remember the exact words,
but what it was is that

he didn't want me to interfere with the investigation,
that he would handle it.

Which, which he never did.
Until the day, I--

Very few days before I was out,
now, I had to sit in the office

of the Under Secretary of the Army,
Kenneth BeLieu,

who I had known
for 20 years,

and have him tell me,
"Yes, it's a cover-up,

"but it's for the good
of the country,

"and don't give ammunition
to the peaceniks.

"Forget about what
happened in Vietnam.

Go on with your own career."
And everything else.

I still couldn't believe it.
Ev-even when-- Even when it was occurring.

I went in, and I had
to resign from the Army,

and, uh, as,
as things never seem to go right in the Army anymore,

a fellow handed me this pen,
and when I went to write, the pen broke.

I arrived at the decision that I
was not going back to Vietnam.

I would, uh,
I would not go,

and the only recourse for me
at that point was desertion.

I deserted, uh, I spent
a very brief time in Canada,

crossed the border,
uh, at Detroit

with the help of my family,

and, uh, went underground
here in the United States.

My father was a disabled
World War II veteran.

He was, uh, unemployed mostly,
due to the fact that, uh, of his disability.

He just couldn't get a job and would end up working mostly menial jobs.

I always, uh,
liked the neighborhood that I grew up in.

It was mostly people
like ourselves,

working poor,
and unemployed poor people.

So our school was fully
integrated, uh, we had...

By force of circumstance.

Right, by force of,
uh, economics.

F all the thousands who,
who left the United States,

um, probably only a certain percentage will attempt to come back,

and I think they should know
that punishment awaits them.

Um, I would be very much
opposed to a general amnesty.

I'm opposed as, as one who
has lost her husband there.

I think I can speak for those
who still have someone missing.

Naturally, they feel
they've given something

and, uh,
they're certainly not going to feel any too pleasant towards someone

who ran out on his duty,
so to speak.

Here, I'd, I'd gone their route.
It was evident.

I, I, I did believe in that war.
I did have medals.

I was a model soldier
for four and a half years.

The criminals in the Nuremberg
situation were saying, uh,

"We were only following
orders in what we did."

And they were tried and convicted,
and now these men are saying,

"We refuse to carry
out those orders."

And they're being
tried and convicted.

This whole argument that
Nuremberg made it a war crime

to join in, in the army in Vietnam is, uh,
is based on nothing.

There's nothing about Nuremberg
that says that.

My court-martial was, I think,

the first law case where
Nuremberg was invoked,

but the peculiar thing about it was that the defense didn't invoke it.

Uh, the military invoked it.

Uh, the military
essentially said,

"Look, we don't care whether what Dr.
Levy did was medically ethical.

"And we don't care whether
he had, uh, freedom of speech.

"The only defense that
we will accept is, in fact,

"if you can show that the order
to train Special Forces men,

"uh, was countermanded by
considerations of Nuremberg."

We brought three witnesses,
um, who, between them,

had had experience in over half
of the Special Forces camps,

uh, in Vietnam and just unequivocally,
I think, showed that Nuremberg was, in f--

the code of Nuremberg
was, in fact, being violated

with great consistency
by the Special Forces.

Uh, there was no way that we could win
with that panel of career Army officers,

and, sure enough, we lost.
Uh, we lost on every count,

and, uh, was ultimately sentenced to, uh,
three years, supposedly, at hard labor

and a, uh, the equivalent
of a dishonorable discharge.

Did you serve them?
Yeah, I served them.

There is evidence in that case
that he was being called upon

to give, uh, to give instruction in the use of
medicine for political and military purposes,

which, uh, is quite contrary to the laws of war,
and that if that were established,

that would be a violation of the laws of
war and he would be justified in refusing.

I can, uh, certainly well
envision fighting in some wars.

Uh, I just simply could not
envision fighting in this war.

We were one of about two dozen,
uh, major hospitals in Vietnam.

One time a,
a VC was brought in.

He'd lost a great
deal of blood.

So we had blood expanders
going in him, uh, plasma,

and a medic,
this is a medic that did that,

came by and shut
the valve off and, uh--

Which would have assured,
assured the man's death.

I turned it back on, told him to leave the,
leave the thing alone.

He shut it off again,
and I turned it back on,

and then he just reached for it,
and I hit him,

and ended up beating
the shit out of him.

As, uh, I saw more
and more similar instances

I, uh, I had to stop and think,
you know? I mean, "What is this?

"What, what is making, uh,
guys that I knew on the block,

"uh, just average guys, mistreat
the Vietnamese so badly?

Hate them s--
with so much passion?"

As a judge, I would
be more lenient

on someone who was repentant.

Someone, um,
who thought over the lives that were possibly lost in his place.

Now, those who, uh, say they
have no sympathy for my boy

or sympathy for my wife,
I respect their feeling.

Look, every man is entitled to his own feeling.
I can't force 'em.

Right now, Louis, uh,
Louis Simon is in a stockade at Fort Dix.

The military-- He did the
very same thing that I did.

He publicly surrendered
to the military.

Came all the way back
from Sweden to do so.

When he deserted,
I had no idea at all.

He did it on his own.
Possibly, he felt there would be great opposition on my part.

Therefore, I had no opportunity
to argue with him at all.

Uh, thinking back on it,

would there have been great opposition on your part,
do you think?

In 1968?
Mm.

There would have been
quite a bit of it. Yes.

My feelings, uh, they waiver.
They're ambivalent.

It's like loving
and hating somebody.

I was proud of him
being in the army.

Uh, I had been in
the Second World War.

I thought it was the proper
thing to do at that time,

but the point is, uh,
should one do what your country asks you to do,

whether it's right or l-- wrong?
Shouldn't one stop for a moment and analyze?

"What am I doing?
What has happened?"

I would far more respect
my son if he--

I would feel I've raised
him right if, if he would go

when his country needs him
to go, uh, without question.

His wife is a Swedish citizen.

She's pregnant now.
She had to return,

'cause she was with us
for a while,

but she had to go back to Stockholm to finish her course.

She's graduating this June,
and she is worried.

She calls constantly,
and we're waiting.

How about your wife?

She's quite affected by it.

This is our first boy, and, uh,
she was quite devoted with him, to him.

She was left with him alone
when I went overseas.

He was born, uh,
while I was away,

and I didn't see him until
I came back two years later.

Louise was about six months
pregnant when I went to Europe.

Uh, you left in August, and, uh,
Mike was born in October. October.

I had this terrible feeling,
and I couldn't reach Bob

to tell him that he had a son,

and we really
treasure the fact

that he finally got a cable,
signed by Eisenhower,

announcing that Robert Crawford Ransom, Junior,
had been born and all was well.

This boy was born
while I was away,

and here we may
have the same thing,

that his child may be born
without him being present.

Quite ironic.
- For opposite reasons.

Isn't it something?

But you did see your son.
I did see my son.

They became very
well-acquainted.

I might say that our second son
was born nine months later.

That was a very happy month.

Very happy month.

I remember somebody
saying to us,

"Well, you can feel so comforted because he died for his country."

And we realized...

that his death had done
his country no good,

and, uh, we realized...
it was a s--

It was a developing process,
but I think that we realized

that his country
had wasted him.

Uh, I guess I had been
an influence on him

that he ought to,
if he was going to serve,

to serve in the highest capacity available to him,
where he could do the most good.

So the draft board held off
long enough for him to enlist,

so that he could go to OCS.

Officer Candidate School.

And then, of course,
when he knew that he had his orders to Vietnam,

we had a lot
of discussion,

and, uh, of course,
at that point,

not to go would have meant a six-year jail sentence for him.

You know, he really
liked people,

and he cared about them and, um,
I think he had to wrestle a whole lot with himself.

Plus, he was on--
you know, 22 years old,

and he didn't want to go
to jail for six years. So--

But when he left the house,
after his terminal leave,

to take his plane to Vietnam,

he told us very frankly that he couldn't tell us at that point

whether he was gonna
get on that plane or not,

and I, I, I've always
kicked myself ever since

for the fact that I didn't
lean on him harder then

to live up to his conscience,
which I could read, uh,

and not get aboard.

All I did was tell him
that we'd understood

and supported him completely
if he didn't wish to,

and that we'd get him the best trial lawyer in the United States

and fight it as hard
as we could,

and, uh, yeah, in that frame
of reference, he left, and uh--

But I-- Bob has always blamed
himself for not saying more,

and I think that he's wrong to do that,
because Mike was his own man, you know.

He, he could make up his own mind,
and it was his decision to go.

He was only there two months

and, uh, but
he did write a lot,

and he said everybody
in the countryside hated him.

He was assigned to the
Eleventh Light Infantry Brigade

and, and the Eleventh was the one that
committed the My Lai massacre, and...

He wrote clearly,
"I just don't understand.

This smiling farmer by day
is my enemy at night."

From the day he got that
assignment to the day he died,

um, the platoon, so far as we
know, and from what he told us,

never fired a shot
in anger, uh,

and they just kept being
twiddled away by, by mines.

He said, "I'd machine-gun every man,
woman and child in that village,"

for having laughed at them
after he'd lost a man.

And the thing that-- as, again,
we understand much more,

in this My Lai episode,
which we didn't understand when we first read his letters,

was that he was experiencing
the outright naked hatred

of the people that he thought he was fighting for.
You know, he--

And, of course,
the United States government didn't bother to tell Mike

didn't bother to tell Mike that My Lai had
occurred the week before and that--

If they had,
he might have expected a little resentment on their part.

Uh, well,
we got a telegram that he had been very seriously wounded,

and, uh, so we instantly,
uh, got on the phone.

Bob wanted to follow up
on the report,

and, uh, he did,
uh, hit a mine

and, uh, he died,
uh, eight days later.

And they said, well,
"Somebody's on the way to see you, Mr. Ransom."

And we knew perfectly
well what that meant,

and then we went through
that gruesome situation,

where they have a couple of officers come and call on you,

and they have a little book that says what to do when a soldier dies,

and they--

I won't, uh, go through
all those horrible details.

Purple Heart.
The National Defense Medal.

Medals that he received
from the Vietnamese government.

The children are too small
to recall their father,

and I wanted them especially to be proud that he served his country.

Especially in a war when it would have been easy to do otherwise.

Every s-- American soldier
who was killed in Vietnam

was posthumously awarded
with two Vietnamese medals

that are just
revolting, and the--

You get a little message
from the president, too,

about cooperating with the,
with his forces in stopping the "Red Menace."

Uh, that wasn't what the war was all about,
as far as, as I'm concerned.

Nobody can charge Lyndon Johnson with anything anymore.

Uh, Robert McNamara, George Bundy,
the best and the brightest,

are certainly not going
to be paying any penalties.

It's in the light of that,
that the cause of amnesty becomes even more important.

We must let those people come back to America.
This is their country.

Who knows which of those men
in Canada has the key

to the preservation
of the ecology?

Who knows which man
has the key to peace?

How many men who really love this country more than men

who went and fought
are among them?

So they all come home.

Those men who,
who want revenge, forgive them,

and they, in turn, must forgive
Nixon, Westmoreland, Calley,

and we must all sit down
and say to ourselves, not,

"I was right and you were wrong," but,
"What went wrong?"

There were many, uh,
drafted young men who lost their lives because someone ran away,

and I, I just don't think
you can let them off scot-free.

Revenge takes more
from the man who gets it

than the man that
it is gotten from.

Both people lose
something in the exchange.

I think we should let them
come home. Yeah. Yeah.

There is a book, uh,
that you may have read,

called, uh,
Military Justice Is to Justice as Military Music Is to Music.

Right. Uh, have you read the
book? Do you agree with it?

I looked through a good
deal of it. Yes, uh, well--

The title seems
very amusing.

The title is amusing, and I'm afraid it, uh,
pinked me in a tender spot,

because, uh, one of, of my hobbies is, is,
doing a little composing,

and most of it has come out as military music,
as a matter of fact.

Yeah, I do have, uh, have one here,
if you would like to hear a bit of it.

Yes.

Those marches are being
played by a band in Central Park

that I was conducting.

♪ ♪

- Your book, Nuremberg and
- An American Tragedy,

has a-- what is it called in English?
A dedi, dedicace?

- Dedication?
- Dedication, yes.

What is the dedication?

To the flag.

To the flag and the liberty and justice for which it stands.

On that trip to Hanoi, you went
with people who don't, perhaps,

share these opinions
about the American flag.

One of them was
an outright pacifist.

One of them was much
more left than I am.

We saw things quite differently,
and on coming out,

we didn't wish to give
an impression of disunity,

and, uh, there was a press
conference in Hong Kong

where the media had asked about the bombing of the Bach Mai Hospital.

We had all four seen the hospital a few hours after the bombing.

We all four knew
that it'd been bombed.

There was no question
about that.

The Pentagon building had denied
that the hospital had been hit,

or said it was only
very slightly hit.

We all four knew perfectly well
it had been totally destroyed.

So we said that.

Can you clarify that, sir?

If the particular hospital
is the Bach Mai Hospital,

it's blown to smithereens.
Completely destroyed.

But the next question was, uh, did,
did we think it was done on purpose?

Reporter

That's a matter that we can't
go into now. Not me, anyhow.

To that question, we would
have given different answers,

and so I did not answer that question until two days later.

I wouldn't know.
I just saw what I saw, and that's it.

I'm sorry, uh,
Mr. Taylor--

I'd like to say, uh,
I just don't think there's any such thing as an accidental bombing.

I think we're all full
of a great many impressions

that we have not had time to digest fully and,
and put in place,

and, uh, a lot of these questions, uh,
require more considered answers

after we've had
time to reflect.

Is this a Hitler,
Hitler-like crime,

as the North Vietnamese
have been describing?

That's another question
of the same kind, I'm afraid.

No, I wouldn't want
to answer that now.

My answer, two days later, uh,
was that I did not think that it had been done on purpose.

Uh, later on, uh,
I obtained what seemed to me perfectly good substantiation of this.

The hospital, which I did
not know at the time,

was only about a quarter of
a mile from a military airport.

So, it seemed highly probable,
if not certain,

that the bombing of the hospital was the result of a miss on the airfield.

This did not mean that the episode, uh, uh,
seemed to me,

because unintentional,
to be an admirable one.

To bomb that close to Hanoi,
and in the vicinity of a hospital,

which they knew they were there-- was there,

was altogether too likely to result in hitting the hospital,
which it did.

I think I've answered enough
questions for this interview.

I'm not gonna speak anymore.
I have too.

It was in Madrid.

I had a few days off at Christmas,
so I bought, uh, five Joan Baez records

and I took a room
at the, uh, officers' BOQ,

and I was playing
them in the BOQ,

and a fellow knocked
on the door in civilian clothes

and he asked me,
"Aren't those Joan Baez records?"

And I said, "Yeah."
He said, "Are you a fan?"

I said, "I don't know.
How many records do you have to have to be a fan?"

He said, "Three." I said,
"I'm a fan. You know, I have five.

I mean, I meet
the requirements."

And he said, "Well, we don't, uh,
we don't permit those records to be played in here."

And I said, "That's ridiculous.
I mean, you now, why not?"

And he said,
"She's a communist, you know."

I said, "No, I didn't know,
you know?"

"But she's a good singer,
and I've already paid for the records.

"I mean, I'm gonna play them."

And he said, "Well, if you play those records,
you're gonna have to leave here."

♪ ♪

They were very willing
to give me a slip.

"Non-availability.
We don't have a room for this guy."

So I went down to live
at the Madrid Hilton.

The Army paid for it
and it was very, very nice.

I liked it
very much, you know,

but, uh, I can thank
Joan Baez for that.

♪ ♪

I had read Henri Alleg's
"La Question,"

uh, when it came out
and had, um, in English,

and, uh, I'd been very happy
at that time that I was not

the citizen of a country that
had to read exposés like that.

That I was-- I felt sorry for the Frenchmen who had to read that book.

Oui.

If the Tribunal had applied
the same standards to Speer

as they applied to Streicher,

he would have
met the same fate.

Actually, the evidence of connection with serious war crimes

on a large scale was far stronger against Speer than against Streicher.

Speer was an attractive man.
He was intelligent,

and I'm sure that this played a part in the reaction of the judges.

He was much the most appealing of
any defendant in the dock in that trial.

One moment...

When you said
only 49 came back,

did you mean that only 49,
uh, arrived at Auschwitz--

No, only 49 came
back to France!

Oh, God. Go on.

Yes?

- Uh, you're going too fast.
- Sorry.

Uh, does any other
of the, uh, German, uh--

of the defendant's counsel wish to ask any questions of the witness?

♪ ♪

The people who came to concerts
at the end, after the war,

uh, had very little to eat and very little shelter,
but music ma--

meant more to them than perhaps it had ever meant before.

It was easier for me
than for other Jews.

My family had not
suffered as others had.

If my wife or my children
had been--

had been destroyed,

I probably couldn't
have done it.

Those who came to my concerts,
came as people in need.

There may well have been
a few Nazis among them, too,

but judgment is a retroactive affair,
and very important it is, too.

I think that so long as people
are guilty of crimes

and perpetrating them,
judgment is essential.

Today, torture has become as
international as anything else.

I mean, the means, the know-how,

is supplied by the United States and Russia,

and is practiced
in Brazil and in Chile,

and, and we must
combat universal evil,

which is no longer confined
to borders or to systems.

When I speak
with the Germans,

I feel that my role
is, is not to judge.

I feel there must be judges.

There must be law.

Law must be enforced,
and law should be universal,

but I am not the judge.

I think it's always embarrassing
if the judge is someone

who himself doesn't
suffer from the action

or is someone who
has just won the battle.

I think judgment should ideally come from
within the person who has committed the crime.

♪ ♪