War on Film – Nuremberg

On the evening of 29 November 1943, at a dinner at the Tehran Conference between ‘the Big Three’, the subject came up of how to deal with the leading Nazis after the war. Stalin provocatively proposed that there were just 50,000 who had led the Nazi war effort and that they should all be shot at the war’s end. Churchill was shocked and said that neither he nor the British public would tolerate mass executions. American President Franklin Roosevelt, trying to defuse the tension with humour, said maybe only 49,000 should be shot. His son Elliott, who was also present as military attaché, announced that the US Army would definitely support Stalin’s plan. Outraged, Churchill got up and