The title choice of "Prosecuting Evil" is a red flag indicating a very one-sided bias in the movie, in my opinion. The overall feeling from the movie was about praising Ferencz, and instilling in the audience blind support for his role in the Nuremberg trials.
If only this movie's priorities were an impartial look at what really happened, and included the disagreements from other well known people about how it was all handled. Ferencz was in the Third Army under General George Patton, who did not approve of how the Nuremberg trials were handled. For example, many disagreed with using torture to extract confessions for the Nuremberg trials. See below for more info.* Modern standards would render those confessions obtained through torture invalid, because it violates human rights, which Ferencz is supposedly all about. Why didn't Ferencz ensure a humane, ethical and accurate method of obtaining the truth?
Ferencz's views on modern political subjects were also brought up, which seemed off-topic. To push the idea that all nations should give up their sovereignty to an international court led by a few people that are unaccountable and unelected would have been viewed as treason by audiences not long ago. Lofty goals like "peace" and "avoiding war" are simply disguises for what seems like the real agenda - taking power away from countries around the world and placing it into hands of Ferencz and others who hold those positions.
The audience didn't get an explanation as to why some evils were not prosecuted by Ferencz (such as the Soviet genocides, and the Allied terrorb-mbing of Dresden which is covered by the 2015 documentary Hellstorm). If the goal is to "prosecute evil" - then why let these injustices go without prosecution? Does Ferencz only care about some lives, but not others?
*To get a better idea of the overall feeling at the time about the Nuremberg trials, please read the following:
U.S. Senator Robert Taft said America's participation in the Nuremberg trial is a blot on the honor of the United States, for which Europeans will condemn us in the future. Taft criticized the Nuremberg Trials for trying National Socialist war criminals under ex post facto laws. On Oct. 6, 1946, Senator Taft said, "The trial of the vanquished by the victors cannot be impartial no matter how it is hedged about with the forms of justice." -U.S. Senator Robert Taft, Oct. 6, 1946 -Kennedy, John Fitzgerald; Profiles in Courage. Sorensen, Ted (1955). Page 191.
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Harlan F. Stone condemned America's participation in the Nuremberg trials, describing it as a lynch mob and a fraud. Mason, Alpheus Thomas (1968) (1956). Harlan Fiske Stone: Pillar of the Law. Hamden, CT: Archon Books. Page 716.
"The statements which were admitted as evidence were obtained from men who had first been kept in solitary confinement for three, four and five months. . . . The investigators would put a black hood over the accused's head and then punch him in the face with brass knuckles, kick him and beat him with rubber hoses . . . All but two of the Germans, in the 139 cases we investigated, had been kicked in the testicles beyond repair. This was standard operating procedure with our American investigators." "Strong men were reduced to broken wrecks ready to mumble any admission demanded by their prosecutors." - Judge Edward L. Van Roden. Washington Daily News, January 9th, 1949. The Sunday Pictorial, January 23rd, 1949.
Chief U.S. prosecutor Jackson, in a letter discussing the weaknesses of the trial, in October 1945 told U.S. President Truman that the Allies themselves "have done or are doing some of the very things we are prosecuting the Germans for. The French are so violating the Geneva Convention in the treatment of prisoners of war that our command is taking back prisoners sent to them. We are prosecuting plunder and our Allies are practicing it. We say aggressive war is a crime and one of our allies asserts sovereignty over the Baltic States based on no title except conquest." Luban, David (1994). Legal Modernism: Law, Meaning, and Violence. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. ISBN 978-0-472-10380-5. Page 360-361. "The Legacy of Nuremberg". PBS Online/WGBH. 1 March 2006.
Associate Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas charged that the Allies were guilty of "substituting power for principle" at Nuremberg. "I thought at the time and still think that the Nuremberg trials were unprincipled," he wrote. "Law was created ex post facto to suit the passion and clamor of the time." 'Dönitz at Nuremberg: A Reappraisal', H. K. Thompson, Jr., and Henry Strutz, (Torrance, Calif.: 1983). Page 194.
U.S. Deputy Chief Counsel Abraham Pomerantz resigned in protest at the low caliber of the judges assigned to try the industrial war criminals such as those at I.G. Farben. Ambruster, Howard Watson (1947). Treason's Peace. Beechhurst Press. Page 411.
"You'll see. A few years from now the lawyers of the world will condemn this trial. You can't have a trial without law." -Joachim von Ribbentrop, 20 November 1945. Gilbert, Gustave M. (1995) (1947). Nuremberg Diary. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press. ISBN 978-0-306-80661-2. Page 36.
If only this movie's priorities were an impartial look at what really happened, and included the disagreements from other well known people about how it was all handled. Ferencz was in the Third Army under General George Patton, who did not approve of how the Nuremberg trials were handled. For example, many disagreed with using torture to extract confessions for the Nuremberg trials. See below for more info.* Modern standards would render those confessions obtained through torture invalid, because it violates human rights, which Ferencz is supposedly all about. Why didn't Ferencz ensure a humane, ethical and accurate method of obtaining the truth?
Ferencz's views on modern political subjects were also brought up, which seemed off-topic. To push the idea that all nations should give up their sovereignty to an international court led by a few people that are unaccountable and unelected would have been viewed as treason by audiences not long ago. Lofty goals like "peace" and "avoiding war" are simply disguises for what seems like the real agenda - taking power away from countries around the world and placing it into hands of Ferencz and others who hold those positions.
The audience didn't get an explanation as to why some evils were not prosecuted by Ferencz (such as the Soviet genocides, and the Allied terrorb-mbing of Dresden which is covered by the 2015 documentary Hellstorm). If the goal is to "prosecute evil" - then why let these injustices go without prosecution? Does Ferencz only care about some lives, but not others?
*To get a better idea of the overall feeling at the time about the Nuremberg trials, please read the following:
U.S. Senator Robert Taft said America's participation in the Nuremberg trial is a blot on the honor of the United States, for which Europeans will condemn us in the future. Taft criticized the Nuremberg Trials for trying National Socialist war criminals under ex post facto laws. On Oct. 6, 1946, Senator Taft said, "The trial of the vanquished by the victors cannot be impartial no matter how it is hedged about with the forms of justice." -U.S. Senator Robert Taft, Oct. 6, 1946 -Kennedy, John Fitzgerald; Profiles in Courage. Sorensen, Ted (1955). Page 191.
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Harlan F. Stone condemned America's participation in the Nuremberg trials, describing it as a lynch mob and a fraud. Mason, Alpheus Thomas (1968) (1956). Harlan Fiske Stone: Pillar of the Law. Hamden, CT: Archon Books. Page 716.
"The statements which were admitted as evidence were obtained from men who had first been kept in solitary confinement for three, four and five months. . . . The investigators would put a black hood over the accused's head and then punch him in the face with brass knuckles, kick him and beat him with rubber hoses . . . All but two of the Germans, in the 139 cases we investigated, had been kicked in the testicles beyond repair. This was standard operating procedure with our American investigators." "Strong men were reduced to broken wrecks ready to mumble any admission demanded by their prosecutors." - Judge Edward L. Van Roden. Washington Daily News, January 9th, 1949. The Sunday Pictorial, January 23rd, 1949.
Chief U.S. prosecutor Jackson, in a letter discussing the weaknesses of the trial, in October 1945 told U.S. President Truman that the Allies themselves "have done or are doing some of the very things we are prosecuting the Germans for. The French are so violating the Geneva Convention in the treatment of prisoners of war that our command is taking back prisoners sent to them. We are prosecuting plunder and our Allies are practicing it. We say aggressive war is a crime and one of our allies asserts sovereignty over the Baltic States based on no title except conquest." Luban, David (1994). Legal Modernism: Law, Meaning, and Violence. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. ISBN 978-0-472-10380-5. Page 360-361. "The Legacy of Nuremberg". PBS Online/WGBH. 1 March 2006.
Associate Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas charged that the Allies were guilty of "substituting power for principle" at Nuremberg. "I thought at the time and still think that the Nuremberg trials were unprincipled," he wrote. "Law was created ex post facto to suit the passion and clamor of the time." 'Dönitz at Nuremberg: A Reappraisal', H. K. Thompson, Jr., and Henry Strutz, (Torrance, Calif.: 1983). Page 194.
U.S. Deputy Chief Counsel Abraham Pomerantz resigned in protest at the low caliber of the judges assigned to try the industrial war criminals such as those at I.G. Farben. Ambruster, Howard Watson (1947). Treason's Peace. Beechhurst Press. Page 411.
"You'll see. A few years from now the lawyers of the world will condemn this trial. You can't have a trial without law." -Joachim von Ribbentrop, 20 November 1945. Gilbert, Gustave M. (1995) (1947). Nuremberg Diary. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press. ISBN 978-0-306-80661-2. Page 36.
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