Justice Comes to Germany

This riveting film captures the real-life drama of the trial of a high-ranking Nazi official by an American military commission in 1945. Filmed in the crowded courtroom of a war crimes branch of the US military administration, the accused listens as an eyewitness gives a horrifying account of the murder itself, enacting the death throes of the victim who, it is alleged, was shot in cold blood, having been captured after his plane crashed near the Czech town of Kaplitz in 1943.

Unusually for the March of Time, this issue is almost devoid of commentary and music: the drama of the situation requiring little embellishment. Notable moments include the depiction of the events leading up to the murder through the sketches of a courtroom artist, as well as the sequence in which the interpreter struggles to translate the description given by the German eyewitness of airman Warren’s last moments, which include a harrowing re-enactment of the victim choking on his own blood. The tension felt in the courtroom at the climax of the film is heightened by the slow tracking shot (a technique very rarely used by the March of Time) towards the men on the tribunal as they prepare to deliver the verdict.