Judgment at Nuremberg (Playhouse 90)
1959 American courtroom drama television play
"Judgment at Nuremberg" is an American television play broadcast on April 16, 1959, as part of the CBS television series, Playhouse 90. It was a courtroom drama written by Abby Mann and directed by George Roy Hill that depicts the trial of four German judicial officials as part of the Nuremberg trials. Claude Rains starred as the presiding judge with Maximilian Schell as the defense attorney, Melvyn Douglas as the prosecutor, and Paul Lukas as the former German Minister of Justice.
Several lines by Melvyn Douglas and a scene featuring Claude Rains referring to the Nazis' "gas ovens" were cut from the audio during the broadcast due to an objection by a gas-company sponsor. The gas company did not want gas appliances to be associated with the horror of Nazi Germany.
In 1961, Judgment at Nuremberg was adapted into a film of the same title starring Spencer Tracy and Burt Lancaster, and with Schell, Klemperer and Torben Meyer reprising their roles from the teleplay.
Plot
Act I
The play begins with narration by Telford Taylor describing the Nuremberg trials.
Captain Byers, the court's adjutant, escorts Judge Haywood, a New England country judge, and his wife to their luxurious living quarters in Nuremberg. In scenes interspersed with actual footage of Nuremberg under the Nazis, Byers takes Haywood on a tour of Nuremberg's bomb-damaged ruins and of Zeppelin Field.
The trial begins with Judge Haywood presiding.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q104859137. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1959 and 1961.
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This entry incorporates text from “Judgment at Nuremberg (Playhouse 90)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.