Washington July 13, 1945. My darling Barbara.
Unless there's an unforeseen foul up now
this will be my last letter for a few days.
That damn trip is finally coming up.
Bud has been made project supervisor for the procurement program.
He's on his way over with Bob Parrish and another cutter.
We'll hit about 10 major cities and cover all Bavaria and Southern Germany.
We may even sneak into the French and British zones.
Sometimes I think this job is a few sizes too big for me.
The war was over and a new era in international law was
about to begin. The victorious allies held a series of top-level meetings concerning the
prosecution of war crimes committed by Nazi Germany.
In the summer of 1945 they decided to set up a special court
The International Military Tribunal in the city of Nuremberg.
Further meetings were held in London to determine how this unprecedented and
landmark trial would function.
Meanwhile on the other side of the Atlantic, two young brothers from the U.S
military would soon be embarking on an adventure that would leave a lasting
impression on their lives.
The youngest Stuart Schulberg was only 23 years old at the time
He wrote almost daily to his wife.
His brother navy lieutenant Bud Shulberg was 31.
They were assigned a very special mission to track down and compile film and
photographic records of German war crimes.
The footage would be used as evidence against 24 high-ranking representatives
of the Nazi regime for the upcoming Tribunal.
They were entrusted with the task by none other than hollywood director
John Ford now in charge of a film unit for
the OSS, U.S. military intelligence agency.
As the summer of 1945 began the brothers had just three months to gather evidence
of unparalleled crimes against humanity in the process building the foundations
of our collective memory of this infamous period in history.
While the material that was presented in Nuremberg is famous today, the mission
itself is barely known to the public.
During our research we came across this footage
the sole images of the Shulberg mission known to exist.
In the middle is Stewart the younger of the two brothers.
It's the first time his daughter Sandra has seen the pictures. This is an extraordinary find
I've only seen photographs of my father
when he was a young man. I've never seen motion pictures of my father.
It's so incredible to see this.
I get emotional when I think about how young
Stuart was. He was the youngest member of
the OSS film team how shocking it must have been to be
seeing these atrocity images over and over again. They had to manipulate this
material they had to watch it
you know hundreds of times and yet I'm also struck by their their innocence
their their their belief that they were
doing something very important
and we found further material and
information to help in the reconstruction of the mission.
Most notably a lecture given towards the end of his life by Bud Shulberg
who after the war went on to become an oscar-winning Hollywood screenwriter.
He relived key moments of this exceptional journey into world history.
I had no idea what I was getting into and we started
we first started uh getting all the Fox movie tone newsreels
which actually were German films with with them
with the our the American narrations
I mean we ran that in New York City
day and night day and night
to lull the fears of the little neutrals
propaganda minister after two weeks of
intensive work in a studio, the brothers selected around 30 hours of footage
before analyzing and indexing the material.
This initial selection features film of the first book burnings by the Nazis
as well as a notorious 1935 speech by Hermann Goering in Nuremberg.
First tribe was set for September 15 and
General Bill Donovan who was the head of OSS. Donovan said would you
he dropped a bombshell on us and said by the way
none of that what you did in New York on the Fox movie tone
will be acceptable the trip the
They're being very strict about this.
They don't want to say that film came
from the United States and they and and the um
if you found the defense counsel will knock it out
they could say we tampered with the
film since they were not permitted to
use footage from back home. The brothers
had no choice but to go to Germany in search of the original material used in
American newsreel reports. They found a country in ruins
Nuremberg once an iconic manifestation
and platform of Nazi power was now a ghost town.
The palace of justice though damaged would be the setting for the Special Tribunal.
The chief American Prosecutor was Robert Jackson
a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court who
wanted the trial to be the foundation of a future court of international justice
For the first time, the former political
leaders of a sovereign state were to be tried in court.
The trial would also feature a new kind of testimony
a film projector and screen.
Generally in a common law courtroom the judges sit at the back of the room in
full view of the defendants and prosecution with the public sitting across from them.
The OSS decided to move the judges and install the screen in their place making
it the focal point of the room.
July 16, 1945. Darling I'm now in Germany.
It's odd to be here crazy to walk down the once Nazi streets thinking humdrum
American thoughts.
Only the children are really unchanged.
They race around the streets clamor in and out of the bomb ruins, beg for
chocolate and generally behave like children anywhere. We are beginning to
see more and more German soldiers now walking home in their stained Wehrmacht
uniforms and their army packs still on their backs.
They look exhausted and dirty and they walk stooped over avoiding our eyes.
The Shulberg brothers were based in a requisitioned villa in the suburbs of
Berlin where they set up an editing suite.
One of their first tasks was to examine
Triumph of the Will a bombastic propaganda film made to
celebrate the 1934 Nazi party rally in Nuremberg.
After first analysis of the film Bud Shulberg was ordered to find arrest and
question Lenny Riefenstein, the film's
director and a member of Adolf Hitler's inner circle.
The party rallies included
two valuable things. One was what they actually
said at those violations and also there were people
whose very presence in them
people who said that they were just German officials
but not necessarily Nazi.
Among the senior Nazi figures identified was Hans Frank
the wartime Nazi Governor of Poland and
active advocate of exterminating the
country's Jewish population.
A few weeks later he would be sitting on
the bench in Nuremberg with his fellow defendants.
The strategy of the prosecutors was to
convict the defendants using their own words
and their own uh recording of their uh criminal deeds.
They had access um to a
film that Lenny Riefenstahl and others
had shot. So once again this was
the German's own presentation of what they were doing.
The written word was absolutely inadequate to describing
what had happened an ordinary criminal uh situation.
You know you're walking down the street
and someone puts a gun to your uh chest
and demands your money. we can all imagine that but
you couldn't imagine what happened uh in
in the in the Nazi reign of terror
and the only compelling way to do that I
think really was through film.
Among the countless reels of horrific
footage found and viewed by the Shulberg
team was this film made by the German army and the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942.
The Shulbergs were deeply shocked.
The film contained footage of human beings meeting an unspeakable end.
Later research in the 90s even confirmed
the Nazis used real victims to support their claims of their inferiority.
Someone asked me what was almost like the most
horrifying moment of all the horrifying moments and I
I said I think it may be in the in that German film on
on Warsaw they show that this is whether
the employer emaciated the bodies of being buried
and they have a cameraman, a German
cameraman right down deep in the pit
shooting up as these emaciated naked
bodies are being swung past them they're
actually doing them. This is not exposing
from the other side. This is them
photographing what they were doing
including the most unbelievable I mean
women with infants were being thrown
just doing this as his job was something that
it's hard to ever erase from your mind.
At the Palace of Justice, preparations were now being accelerated
in the hopes of backing up their claims.
Prosecutor Robert Jackson and his team upped the pressure on the Shulberg mission.
We were very very worried about time but we had no time
so I went down to november to talk with the Jackson
legal staff to um get the particulars of the indictments
and find out specifically how the
photographic evidence would dovetail with their actual indictments
From that point on we worked very closely
they were building a case that Nazis had
conspired almost from the beginning from 1933 on
so they had these many different steps of the entire
crimes against the crimes against humanity and crimes
against the existing peace of the world.
While Bud and Stewart were having serious doubts about the success of
their mission, their fortunes took a turn
after the emergence of another close confidant of Hitler
the dictator's personal photographer Heinrich Hoffmann.
The brothers and their film editors including Joe Zigman seen here had
spotted him in one of the German films.
Hoffmann was arrested together with other members of the team who had made
films for Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebels.
Following the arrest Stuart Schulberg
was able to take possession of his entire stock of photographs.
The twelve thousand stills were immediately sent to London to see if
they were suitable courtroom evidence.
In an attempt to prove good faith on their part the prisoners provided the
American Military with valuable information.
We learned from them that the SS had its own
own film unit and that they made
what they call reports. We would call it atrocities
but it was a work that they were very proud of.
They told me that these films they were often two real
two real films would be shown at the
homes of the Nazi leaders like derrals and and Himmler
Hitler and the rest of them and they called them into
desserts because they show them as a sort of
entertainment after dinner.
Thanks to another tip Bud Shulberg learned the existence of a secret cache
where the Nazis had apparently stored some of their most incriminating films.
According to the source the material was
located in a salt mine nearly 600 meters underground.
We went to a long tunnel and at the end of the tunnel was
an incredible unbelievable sight. There were acres like
football fields and fields of film burning
tons and tons tons of film all burned
burning destroyed Hearing about another secret cache in
royrstoff outside Berlin
Bud drove there immediately in the hope
of finding the films intact but he was too late
Again the potential evidence had been set alight shortly beforehand.
At the very least it's a remarkable coincidence that we have all these film
fires such a short period of time it's likely that there was a systematic
policy to destroy incriminating film
but it's quite comparable to what they did with other
evidence of crimes.
Despite the trials having been postponed for logistical reasons the Shulbergs
found themselves in a race against time.
It was imperative that they find other archive stocks before Nazi sympathizers
managed to destroy them.
And now in November 1945 courtroom 600
of the palace of justice was just about
ready for court proceedings.
The brothers had just found out about another hidden cache
but its location in the Soviet zone of
occupation complicated matters considerably.
Major avenarius I never forget him
and he said I don't understand you
why is a young naval officer coming here into
the Soviet-controlled department of
Germany. I just don't understand what you're doing
so I said well it's a long story Major but uh
We're part of the of the um of the
uh Commander John Ford's
uh again about that for and he said
John Ford in one word he said John fours
he said you know John Ford
and I said god we work he's up for us well he says
I said like I have written two books about John Ford
he it turns out that this man is the
biggest expert on John Ford in the world he
He wants to know movies one movie one movie every single one
he got so excited he said remember that
shot and young abe Lincoln when when
Henry father has a foot up on her desk and
really do anything for us he said and he
actually said like bring a truck you can
take anything you want.
Certainly there were some efforts by
German lackeys to destroy evidence. it's
not clear what was destroyed.
It was all stored in bobblesberg
is so interesting because that he had
the keys to the kingdom.
This list drawn up by Bud Shulberg for his superiors includes a number of
documents that his new friend Major avenarrios had agreed to hand over.
Among them a speech by the Nazi's leading racial ideologue Alfred
Rosenberg that would later be a key
factor in his conviction by the Tribunal in Nuremberg.
Further footage would likewise prove invaluable for detailing the regime of
terror unleashed by the Nazis following their rise to power.
Crucially it consolidated the charges of criminal conspiracy and premeditation.
A big event yesterday Rudolf Hess was brought to our
projection room to see himself and the
other top Nazis rant and roar in Triumph of the Will.
He gave a perfect imitation of a man who
has lost his memory by which he hopes to escape any punishment.
Attention The International Military Tribunal will
now enter. November 20th, 1945
a date that would go down in history
the opening of The International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg.
218 days of hearings 5330 documents
236 witnesses and countless hearings
simultaneously translated into four languages.
21 defendants took their places.
A further three were absent. One had committed suicide
another was on the run
and the third was judged medically unfit for trial.
Chief American Prosecutor Robert Jackson
now knew he could count on the films
prepared by the Shulbergs to make a big impression in
court of opening the first trial in
history for crimes against the peace of the world
imposes a grave responsibility.
These defendants arranged frequently to be photographed in action.
We will show you their own films
You will see their own conduct and hear
their own voices as these defendants reenact for you
some of the events in the course of the conspiracy
the real complaining party at your bar is civilization.
Jackson explains that he's going to show the nazi film specifically because the
dignitaries the defendants had
ultimately been so vain as to have themselves filmed.
He explained quite precisely that the
court would be able to hear the words of
the defendants and see them on screen
to revisit particular episodes of the
conspiracy and see how they were planned.
Prosecutor Jackson had also insisted
that the court proceedings themselves be
documented on camera.
What he had in mind was a comprehensive
movie record recounting the principal
phases of the trial to act as a model
an antidote to fascism.
Jackson first turned to the older
Shulberg brother to direct the film.
Bud however was eager to get back to New York to focus on his own writing
projects so the job was left to Steward
to create the first full-length film of the trial
which would become a template for future
real-life courtroom films
no easy task given that cameras and
sound equipment at the time were bulky and noisy
and several judges thought that their presence would disturb proceedings in court.
As a result the equipment was largely kept isolated behind glass panels in
positions specifically converted for the occasion.
There are basically three cameras
one of them in the glass booth to the
left of the judges which enables sound
to be recorded in sync with the images.
Another camera is positioned on the opposite side to the right of the judges
making it possible to film both the
defendants and objections from the prosecutors
and finally a third camera is placed in a booth
again for reproducing sound and images.
400 journalists from around the world
had come to Nuremberg to observe the trial
but with the highly detailed hearings further slowed down by the simultaneous
translations the interest of the media
appeared to gradually wane.
Prosecutor Robert Jackson therefore
decided to move forward the screening of
the Nazi atrocity films by a few days
Stuart Shulberg also checked the lighting conditions.
For Jackson it was vital that they
capture the reactions of the defendants
watching images of their crimes
during a dry run we discovered that the
neon tubing was throwing too much light
and turning the image milky on the
screen a little frantically we began to
stretch some mending tape across the tubing.
At nine o'clock the defendants were
already being led into the dock
as I was nervously securing some tape
Goering and Hess were led in through the back door
I blocked the route of Goering who was
still wearing high black boots.
Goering saw the tubing looked down at me
and said kinema nine
who was still veining insanity at the
time went into his act clapping his
hands together. Goering smiled and
shrugged his shoulders at me.
Half an hour later those smiles were
wiped off their faces.
If the Tribunal pleased we shall proceed
with the projection of the film.
On November 29th the first film prepared
by the Shulberg team was shown to the court.
An hour-long montage of footage filmed
by Allied forces during their liberation
of the concentration camps.
These are the locations of the largest concentration and prison camp maintained
throughout Germany and occupied Europe
under the Nazi regime. This film report covering a
representative group of such camps
illustrates the general conditions which prevail.
Camp is chosen for a high command
inspection led by General Dwight D Eisenhower also present our generals
Omar Bradley and George Patton.
The Fourth Armored Division of General Patton's Third Army liberated this camp early in April.
They see the woodshed where lime covered bodies are stacked in layers and the
stench is overpowering.
The general and his party next see the crude woodland crematory actually
a grill made of railway tracks.
Charred remains of several inmates still lay heap to top the grill.
I was 21 or 22 years old.
It was very disturbing at the start
even among the defendants
who could no longer say that it hadn't happened.
Those images of corpses being hauled away by bulldozers
it was appalling
that must have been a real shock. It was quite the shock
It was a smart move by Jackson
showing these terrible images very early on in the trials.
This was dragon ball
As the lights came on I stared like
everybody else in the courtroom at those twenty-one men.
Field Marshal Keitel wiped tears from his eyes.
Von Ribentrop, the elegant diplomat who had always had
an answer for everything looked down
into his lap and shook his head.
Military commanders Rader and Doenitz
stared straight ahead unseeingly.
Rosenberg leaned his forehead against the top of the dock.
Even Goering who had been winking scoffing laughing and catching the eyes of fellow
defendants in private jokes looked subdued at last.
But the most unexpected reaction of all was that of Hans Frank charged with the
murder of five million Poles.
When all the other defendants had finally risen and passed through the
doorway on their way back to their cells,
Frank continued to sit there motionlessly
until guards began to lift him up forcibly.
He is
He's really moved I have to admit nearly crying
he should have kept this crying
and admitting what he has done.
Do you think they never saw this
this footage before because I don't
I can't say it for all the other defendants
but I would say it's
nearly I'm 100 sure that my father never
had seen this before because he didn't
want to see it he knew exactly what was
going on what was happening to all these
innocent people but to see it personally
like here in this room. That was really new for him
you don't think he had any remorse, no he had not.
On the last evening of his life
he wrote to Mr zeidel's lawyer and to his wife
our mother saying please find out the truth about me.
I never was a criminal.
On December 11th the court was shown the
second film prepared by the Shulberg team
which they barely finished editing
with the support of 15 more to utilize
international law with a running time of 3 hours and
15 minutes. The Nazi plan provided crucial
evidence for the assertion that the war
and the atrocities committed by the
Nazis were premeditated.
The footage in the film still plays a major part in how we picture this era
today. Most documentaries made about the so-called
Third Reich go back to footage that was systemized
and gathered for that film so I mean
the the work of both of the Schulberg's
for for their project at that time
cannot be overestimated in their uh
longtime uh uh effect. The Prosecution's case continued
also using the meticulously
reconstructed timeline from the Nazi plan
the subsequent examinations and
cross-examinations extended to weeks and months.
The prosecutors wanted to show the world that despite the enormity of the crimes
justice had to be impartial
for a trial that would last almost
a year. The decision was issued by the
judges by the Tribunal that
the filmmakers must only film during
35 hours the camera teams inside this courtroom were
U.S. army camera teams they were not from
the OSS as originally planned because
the OSS was closed down so the us army signal corps
they they took over um they are a unit
to provide telecommunication and other
communication and their camera teams
were not able to speak German so another
big problem they were filming sometimes they were um
catching some very important scenes
sometimes not sometimes they were start
stopping too early so the problem was um
the full material that survived
and that Stuart Schulberg could pick out of
was not very good but Stuart Shulberg found a solution
on the sound side the court sessions had
been captured in their entirety on gramophone records.
Film editors Bob Parrish and Joe Zigman
helped Stuart master what was a colossal task.
He was able to use silent footage of the
various parties merely listening to
proceedings by overlaying it with sound bites.
The soviets were also determined to
include the trial in their national narrative.
They undertook their own project
entrusting the task to cameraman and
director Roman Carmian
in the ensuing battle for control over
the historical record these images would
play a decisive role. The Soviets managed to negotiate a
special day of filming showing events
before the session began
Roman Carmien found a prime location
which provided him with an entire series
of close-ups that the Americans had been unable to take.
These shots had a particularly dramatic
effect as seen on October 1st, 1946 when
the verdicts were delivered by the
court's presiding judge Sir Jeffrey Lawrence
will now pronounce the sentences on the
defendants. The International Military bill
sentences you to death by hanging
defendant twelve of the defendants were
condemned to death. Three received life in prison.
Four received terms between 10 and 20 years
and three were acquitted.
Of those sentenced to death 10 were executed two weeks later at the prison
adjoining the Palace of Justice
had committed suicide in his cell the night before
Martin Bormann was sentenced in absentia
Stuart Schulberg would need almost 18 months to complete his movie
documentation of the Tribunal
and his work was delayed considerably by
differences in opinion among the U.S.
authorities over the purpose of the film.
He would have to write 11 different
versions of the script before being able
to tackle the actual editing of the footage.
It was now early 1947
while Stuart Shulberg was still in the
middle of editing his film his Soviet
counterpart Roman Carmien had completed his documentary
in Russian titled Judgment of the Peoples
in English simply the Nuremberg trials.
The Soviets also landed something of a coup in hosting a premiere for their
movie in the heart of New York Times Square.
The local press was highly critical of
the delayed completion of the American film.
One of the big battles that took place
was whether the film should be made
just for a German audience or whether it
should be made for an international
audience. The people in Berlin with military government
really felt that it should be its
primary use should be as a denazification re-education tool.
Stuart Schulberg really felt if you look
through the documents that they were
making a film that was not just for
Germany. They felt that the Nuremberg trial
was a milestone in the history of
civilization and that the whole world
needed to learn the lessons of Nuremberg
not just the German public.
Navigating his way between these
conflicting instructions Stuart
Schulberg finally finished his film in early 1948.
One year after his Soviet counterpart.
Lord Justice Jeffrey lawrence Great Britain
Mr Francis Biddle United States
Monsieur Henry de Vab France
Major General Yona Nikichenko USSR and
their alternates Stuart Schulberg's
80-minute documentary recounts all the
stages of the Nuremberg trials
made at a time when the Soviets
Americans British and French were still
ostensibly allies.
Nuremberg Its Lesson for Today was a
powerful and necessary film.
It presented pivotal moments in the
trial as well as archive material
compiled by Stuart and Bud Shulberg for
Chief Prosecutor Robert Jackson.
On April 23, 1943, SS Chief Himmler
ordered the complete liquidation of the ghetto with the use of utmost force.
The film also included footage taken during the liberation of concentration
camps by the American British and Soviet Armies
but the wider world would not get to see the film.
In June 1948, West Berlin was cut off and
blockaded by the Soviet Military.
The Western Allies had to resort to an
airlift to supply the part of the city they controlled.
The cold war had begun in earnest.
That same cold war
in which now of course Germany was or at
least Western Germany was our ally
and our former ally, the Soviet Union was now our enemy.
Not at all the story portrayed in the film um uh
The film conflicted with that that narrative
but Stuart Schulberg's film did get its premiere
in Germany in November 1948.
Not in Berlin due to the Soviet blockade
but in Stuttgart. After the success of the first
screenings the American release was
scheduled for a few weeks later.
But in the meantime the climate in
Washington had changed.
It had been two years since the Nuremberg
Trials concluded and the implementation
of the Marshall Plan was now a top priority.
During the Marshall Plan, millions
millions and millions of dollars were
invested in not only in Germany, in the
whole of Europe but also in Germany
to help them recover their economy
to bring them forth and this of course
collides with the idea of punishing war criminals.
In December 1948 a fateful decision was made
the film's release in the U.S. was canceled.
The humanitarian goals of Prosecutor
Robert Jackson, Stuart Schulberg and his
entire team who had put so much hope and
energy into the film were dashed by the
new political situation in
Washington. It wasn't just an accident
that this film was not released in
American theaters. It was a government decision
and that decision was made by our
Secretary of the Army at the time Kenneth Royal.
There were a number of high-ranking
American officers who did not feel that prosecuting
high-ranking German military leaders at
Nuremberg was appropriate.
They felt that they were the ones taking orders from
Adolf Hitler and they did not consider themselves
responsible for the Nazi crime. So there
was some degree of solidarity amongst German military
officers and American military officers.
As I was growing up I really knew
nothing about my father's Nuremberg film.
My mother died in 2002 and when we were
clearing out her apartment we found all
these boxes of material about Nuremberg
and we found a 16 millimeter print of
the film so I began to try to make sense of the papers.
Sandra Schulberg spent almost 10 years
reconstructing her father's film
a mammoth undertaking that required
locating the original movie reels and restoring them
both the images that it degraded over
time and the audio part of which had been lost.
Today Sandra travels the world to present the film
now translated into 13 languages.
As I was re-watching Nuremberg's lesson for today
what's amazing is to see how prescient
uh Jackson was I mean tragically uh oppression really
he says what makes this inquest significant
is that these prisoners represent sinister influences
that will lurk in the world long after
their bodies have returned to dust.
We will show them to be living symbols
of racial hatred terrorism and violence
and of the arrogance and cruelty of power.
They are symbols of fierce nationalism
and of militarism and intrigue and war making.
Unfortunately we still have a lot to learn.