Historical Narratives: Andersonville and World War II
I've always been skeptical of the traditional World War II narrative. It's ironic, considering that my generation—millennials—has been bombarded with more World War II propaganda than any other. Not only did we grow up with previous generations' narratives through films like Schindler’s List, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, and Indiana Jones, but we also spent countless hours killing digital Nazis in an endless supply of World War II-themed video games.
Despite Nazi Germany dominating the villainous narratives of my youth, I never connected emotionally with the conflict itself. Maybe it’s because, at an early age, I chose World War I as my historical niche and became familiar with the events leading up to the second world war. However, I think the real reason I’m immune to the conventional World War II narrative traces back to something much earlier—something that clicked for me when I first learned about Andersonville Prison.
Andersonville: The Cracks in the Narrative
It all started around eighth or ninth grade. My history teacher rolled in that big black cart with the TV and VCR—everyone got excited because we knew we were about to watch a movie; we knew class was canceled. That day, we watched a made-for-TV film about Andersonville, the Confederate-run war camp in Georgia. The movie wasn't anything special, but it depicted the commandant as deliberately starving and mistreating Union soldiers. From 10,000 feet and 150 years away, this seemed plausible. We were just supposed to accept that the Confederates intentionally starved Union troops. But something about that story never sat right with me.
Andersonville Prison was a Confederate POW camp located in central Georgia. During the final years of the war, the Lincoln administration suspended all prisoner exchanges, aiming to exacerbate the manpower shortages plaguing the Confederacy. As a result, the South was forced to hastily construct new sites to house the growing number of POWs, one of which was the now-infamous Andersonville Prison.
The 16.5-acre prison, built to house 10,000 POWs, was overwhelmed from the start. The first prisoners arrived in March 1864, and by May of that year, the camp was already at capacity. With no way to exchange prisoners, the number of inmates skyrocketed, and by the war’s end, the camp was had housed 45,000 Union soldiers.
Overcrowding soon led to outbreaks of disease. By June 1864, just three months after the first prisoners had arrived, gangrene and scurvy were rampant. Provost Marshal General John H. Winder, in charge of all prison hospitals in Georgia and Alabama, sought to send excess prisoners elsewhere.1 However, the situation only worsened. Inadequate water supply, lack of food, and unsanitary conditions resulted in nearly 13,000 deaths, mostly due to scurvy, diarrhea, and poor sanitation.
Sergeant Major Robert H. Kellogg, of the 16th Regiment Connecticut Volunteers, described his entry as a prisoner into the prison camp, May 2, 1864:
As we entered the place, a spectacle met our eyes that almost froze our blood with horror, and made our hearts fail within us. Before us were forms that had once been active and erect;—stalwart men, now nothing but mere walking skeletons, covered with filth and vermin. Many of our men, in the heat and intensity of their feeling, exclaimed with earnestness. "Can this be hell?" "God protect us!"2
Confederates at Andersonville suffered similarly. The mortality rate among the guards was comparable to that of the prisoners, and Captain Henry Wirz, Andersonville’s commandant, was on sick leave for a month in the late summer of 1864 while battling gangrene.
The dire conditions at the camp were no secret. Confederate officials were well aware of the suffering and even offered to return sick and wounded Union troops without demanding Confederate prisoners in exchange. However, this request was denied. Col. Robert Ould, Confederate Agent of Exchange, even offered to purchase medicines from the Union with cotton, tobacco, and gold, allowing Northern doctors to bring the supplies and administer them solely to Union prisoners. This offer was ignored as well.
The refusal to consider Confederate requests was deliberate. The Lincoln administration knew that by withholding supplies from their own prisoners, they would exacerbate the scarcity within the Confederacy. They chose to prolong their men's suffering, calculating that the same fate awaited Confederate soldiers and civilians.
After the war, Captain Henry Wirz was put on trial, charged with "combining, confederating, and conspiring to injure the health and destroy the lives of soldiers in the military service of the United States, in violation of the laws and customs of war." He was also accused of personal cruelty, including confining prisoners in unhealthy conditions and providing impure water and insufficient food.3
In early November 1865, the Military Commission found Wirz guilty of conspiracy and several acts of personal cruelty. He was sentenced to death. The night before his execution, Wirz was offered a commutation of his sentence if he implicated Jefferson Davis in the atrocities at Andersonville. Wirz refused, stating:
"You know that I have always told you that I do not know anything about Jefferson Davis. He had no connection with me as to what was done at Andersonville. If I knew anything of him, I would not become a traitor against him, or anybody else, even to save my life."
Wirz was hanged at 10:32 a.m. on November 10, 1865, at the Old Capitol Prison in Washington D.C.
The story of Andersonville has long been used to demonize the Confederacy, often highlighting the alleged cruelty of Confederate officials to instill guilt in Southerners and portray them as inherently evil. However, the harsh conditions faced by prisoners at Andersonville were not solely the result of Confederate actions; they were significantly influenced and exacerbated by the Union. The Lincoln administration was not only aware of the suffering at Andersonville, but it also tacitly encouraged these conditions as a wartime strategy and later leveraged them as powerful propaganda.
When you look at the conditions in Andersonville, you have to compare them with the state of the Confederate army and civilian population at the time. The Confederates couldn’t even feed their own troops, let alone civilians. In that situation, troops got fed first, then civilians, and prisoners were last on the list. What happened at Andersonville was less a Confederate war crime and more a tragedy born of resource scarcity. The Confederates simply didn’t have enough food to go around, and prisoners suffered the most.4
Comparing the facts on the ground with the narrative that’s been told, it’s clear that the Andersonville story served a propaganda purpose: to paint the Confederates as evil war criminals. This was likely done to distract from the Union’s own wartime actions, which included what we would now call war crimes—burning cities, slaughtering cattle, and inflicting as much pain and suffering as possible on the Southern civilian population.
"Some things I saw done in that Campaign" would have shocked a demon, and what more the world will remain ignorant of it, save such as the most important events, but the horrors, atrocities & crimes, I guess they will never be known save as the soldiers relate them to their friends... I never could describe the scenes on that night the light of the conflagration, the shrieking and weeping of women and wringing of hands, the crackling of the flames which tore mercilessly through the doomed city sparing neither the abode of the poor or the magnificent dwellings of the rich, of the shouts and yells of the drunken soldiers, and the indiscriminate plundering and pillaging of houses and stores... it beat anything I ever saw since the War began."
- Private Charles Grundy, 10th Illinois Infantry, describing Sherman’s campaign.
“These villanies summed up, find no equal amongst civilized nations” … [ the Federals] “are the real authors of most of the misery and death”5
R. Randolph Stevenson, Chief Surgeon of Confederate Military Hospitals
Understanding the truth about Andersonville made me more skeptical of the World War II narrative as well. Let me be clear—I’m not denying that atrocities were committed by the Germans. But I do think the story being sold is one with a propagandistic goal. The public narrative doesn’t consider the logistical challenges faced by the German army in feeding, clothing, and taking care of people during the war. It’s easy to look at pictures of a camp at the war’s end and claim everything was intentional. But doing so ignores the reality that German supply lines were obliterated, and they were starving themselves—a condition the Allies encouraged as a wartime strategy.6
The Role of Propaganda in the Andersonville Narrative
The story of Andersonville isn’t all that different from the narrative surrounding concentration camps in World War II. Just as the South was slowly starved by the Union Navy during the Civil War, Germany was starved at the end of World War II. Camps were filled with thousands of starving prisoners, and the narrative that this was all done intentionally was quickly embraced. Many accuse this line of thinking of being revisionist, but the debate between functionalist and intentionalist interpretations of the Holocaust has been ongoing for decades.
During undergrad, a significant portion of my European history studies focused on the interwar years and World War II. In my courses on the rise of the NSDAP and the Holocaust, we discussed different schools of thought. Some of what Darrell Cooper recently discussed on Tucker Carlson’s show echoes what was taught to me from the mainstream historiography. The difference is that when we discuss Andersonville, the memory is far enough removed that I can point out the lies without much pushback. But if I suggest, as I am now, that some accusations about World War II stem from logistical failures rather than intentional cruelty, I risk becoming persona non grata.
My skepticism towards the traditional World War II narrative isn’t about denying atrocities but about questioning the simplicity of the story we’re told. Just as with Andersonville, it’s essential to look at the broader context, pay close attention to the often-overlooked things like the logistical realities that shaped these historical events. History is complex, and it’s critical to scrutinize the narratives that have been handed down to us, recognizing when they serve propagandistic purposes rather than reflecting the messy, complicated truth.
-TJS
Stevenson, R. Randolph. 1876. The Southern Side: Or, Andersonville Prison. Baltimore: Turnbull Brothers
Kellogg, Robert H. Life and Death in Rebel Prisons. Hartford, CT: L. Stebbins, 1865.
Sholty, A. D., ed. A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans. Chicago: Lewis Publishing Company, 1918.
Hess, Earl J. Civil War Logistics: A Study of Military Transportation. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2017.
Stevenson, R. Randolph. 1876. The Southern Side: Or, Andersonville Prison. Baltimore: Turnbull Brothers
Kershaw, Ian. Hitler, the Germans, and the Final Solution. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008
It takes a few years for most, but typically once we remove the MCU storyline of History we begin to see everything is more complex and less intentional. Great read!
“The Lincoln administration knew that by withholding supplies from their own prisoners, they would exacerbate the scarcity within the Confederacy.”
never see much written or discussed about the conditions in the union prisons in the non-blockaded north. conditions weren’t much better there. or on the rez. why is that?