"I have the right to remove millions", Adolf Hitler said. Most wars fought throughout history have been brutal for everyone involved, but the second world war was recent enough to have a noticeable effect on the world even to this day. This ten minute film, made in 1945, demonstrates why. That Justice Be Done was made with the inevitable Nuremberg Trials in mind; the international military tribunal that took place right after the war in order to convict former nazi leaders of war crimes and punish them accordingly. Most would be executed or receive long prison terms. That Justice Be Done (directed by George Stevens) starts by showing the statue of Thomas Jefferson located in Washington DC, and a quote by him is shown saying how he was opposed to all types of tyranny. It then shifts to footage taken from Triumph of the Will, in which Hitler is giving a speech. He says how it is not only encouraged, but necessary for germanic peoples to exterminate and displace those deemed to be inferior (especially slavs) so that the wide open expanses of their countries can be used as living space for the Third Reich. Additionally, horrific footage of the death camps is displayed, making sure that everyone in the audience understands the pure wickedness that was the holocaust. The person narrating says how even after all the horrible things the nazis committed, it would be hypocritical of the allies to enact justice on them in certain ways. They're not allowed to inject poison into concentration camp doctors just like how they injected it into their victims. They can't torture the commandant of Auschwitz to death just like how his enlisted men tortured others. In situations like these, the United Nations and america in particular have to uphold a type of democratic justice in order to stop things like this from ever happening again. War criminals such as Joachim Peiper, a colonel in the Waffen SS who served as an advisor to Himmler and ordered his men to slaughter a large amount of surrendering americans in 1944, are having their trials held by courts under american supervision. The film states how these trials aren't to be confused with the Nuremberg Trials. These trials are for nazi war criminals whose acts of terror are so inhumane and atrocious that they can't be confined to just one geographical region. Men such as Hermann Goering, head of the german air force (the luftwaffe) and Hitler's designated successor from 1941 on, are the types of people the Nuremberg Trials were designed to punish. Aside from the fact that he was the leader of a major branch of the nazi military, Goering was also known to pillage artwork from all over europe, and was actually the first person to come to Hitler and propose "a final solution to the jewish question." This makes him fully implicated in the holocaust. Another example would be Albert Speer, Hitler's architect and armaments minister who employed slave labor on a huge scale in order to fuel the v2 ballistic missile program. The film ends ambiguously, without letting the audience know how these men were punished because the Nuremberg Trials did not yet happen. In all, That Justice Be Done is basically what I expected. I already know about most of the material it shows, but some things in it were new to me. The nazis had a very different interpretation of the law than other countries did. In their words, it was nothing but "an instrument in the hands of the Fuhrer, and anything that benefits national socialism is just." The germans didn't really care about the horrible things Hitler and his subordinates were responsible for, but they were perfectly willing to enact "justice" on people for things like not saluting a Wehrmacht officer when his mercedes rolled down the street. With a mentality like this, it's not surprising the free world wanted to make germany pay for its crimes. Unfortunately, it was the average german who paid.
