Memorial Day Special - ANDERSONVILLE: THE HENRY WIRZ TRIAL, AMERICA'S FIRST WAR CRIMES CASE & THE 13,000 GRAVES
Published: May 25, 2026
Duration: 21:06
Memorial Day Special — How thirteen thousand Union dead in a Georgia stockade produced the trial that gave Nuremberg its blueprint.
Garret Fisher marks Memorial Day with the first war crimes trial in American history. November 10, 1865 — Confederate Captain Henry Wirz was hanged in Washington for commanding Andersonville prison, where nearly 13,000 Union soldiers died of starvation, disease, and exposure in fourteen months. From the Swiss-immigrant doctor who ran Camp Sumter to the military tribunal that established “just following orders” was no defense — a precedent later cited at Nuremberg. Plus Clara Barton's mission to name 13,000 graves, the Union veterans' order that...
Garret Fisher marks Memorial Day with the first war crimes trial in American history. November 10, 1865 — Confederate Captain Henry Wirz was hanged in Washington for commanding Andersonville prison, where nearly 13,000 Union soldiers died of starvation, disease, and exposure in fourteen months. From the Swiss-immigrant doctor who ran Camp Sumter to the military tribunal that established “just following orders” was no defense — a precedent later cited at Nuremberg. Plus Clara Barton's mission to name 13,000 graves, the Union veterans' order that...