Interesting that this BBC article doesn't mention that the concentration camp was arguably a British invention in the first place -- certainly this Russian camp followed the model developed by the Bitish in the Boer war.
How those two entities went about pursuing those goals varied, but both were needlessly and mindlessly brutal, just like the act that inspired them.
It can be amazing how awful the acts you commit look when you see another entity perform them on another.
I am interested in how the analysis will progress further.
[1]: https://books.google.com/books?id=ZzBkAwAAQBAJ&pg=PT1096&dq=...
Not to defend the US actions in the slightest but their 1940s internment camps were similar to the "villages" they used in Viet Nam in the 1960s (a technique also used by the British during the Malayan Emergency in the 1950s BTW). In a hierarchy of brutality: less than the ones in Russia and South Africa).
(You can be just as brutal without corralling people -- Andrew Jackson and the Cherokee, or Gengis Kahn come to mind as being as evil as, say, Guantanamo. But people have found many ways to be mean to others, and I agree with you that taking one step down that path doesn't automatically make you equivalent to those who have taken many).
But "camp" is like so many things more obvious in retrospect than at the time so be careful of accidental anachronistic bias. In part it exists thanks to technology: it used to be expensive to keep prisoners, so unless they could pay their way (i.e they were nobility) it was simpler just to kill them. The invention of barbed wire and practical guns, as well as, ironically, changing views of the moral worth of people (an increase in valuing life) lead to their development.
You can see the technological aspect in Russia itself: when the Tsars wanted to get rid of someone but not kill them, the victim was simply sent to Siberia. Getting back was so hard they were for all intents and purposes interned there. The Soviets, being more industrially minded, were the ones who set up the Gulag system. (And though it would be facile at this point to say "...and so clearly they got the idea thanks to the British counterrevolutionary efforts" I think that would be an unnecessary stretch).
Or, as one of the great chilling quotes of the 1960s put it: "We had to destroy the village in order to save it"
The Strategic Hamlet program built barbed wire fences and guild posts around existing or purpose-built villages, enforcing curfew, ID checks, etc supposedly by "villagers" but typically by the army. Collective punishment was administered to villages who "failed" to keep out either communists or "communists".
If you don't consider that imprisonment, what is it?
Basically they copied the British "Kampung Baru" (AKA "resettlement") program with even less success than the British. FWIW British ruthlessness in Malaya was more "effective" than the US in Viet Nam -- there were basically no people of Chinese origin left in northern Malaya. A classic "play one side off against another, using troops from yet another outside group" strategy that had been so effective for centuries.
Citation needed. There are tons of Chinese people left in northern Malay(si)a, and cities like Ipoh and Georgetown are majority-Chinese.
My mother grew up in Ipoh. Her brother was drafted by the British in the 1950s for this campaign (as was typical of British colonial practice, he is not malay, chinese or english). His and his buddys' description of the process was pretty clear: 1 - all bumiputrahs into kampongs. 2 - once that's done you are free to shoot anything that moved (which he said was a euphemism for ethnic chinese), with no consequences.
Allegedly the British were fighting communist infiltration from maoist China, so the shape of your body was proof of your guilt. I have no idea if there really was infiltration and the cantonese/fujianese who spread through the British empire were typically hardly of the communist persuasion.
A foreign power from 10.000 miles away, no borders with a country, and no reason to be there, comes there with their army to "protect" the local population?
Trying to distill the 50 year old motives of a superpower can be a challenge in a thread, but consider it like this; if the intent of the US wasn't to protect the local population, wouldn't they have done more than this?
To address each point of your argument, distance doesn't really matter in the 20th Century, or earlier. Global actions occur, well, globally. To imply that a country can't have interests outside of it's border isn't a strong argument.
You can make up your own mind as to the legitimacy of this (you can probably guess what I think) but my comment is intended as a normative response to your question.
Probably because the BBC knows that's not even remotely true. The very term "concentration camp" itself derives from the earlier Spanish reconcentrados (reconcentration camps), used most notoriously in Cuba.
The USA not only employed concentration camps - alongside vast amounts of other barbarism, including waterboarding - in the Philippines, as they had done decades earlier against the native American Indians, and even during the American Civil War, but actually forced an act upon that country, the Reconcentration Act of 1903 to forcibly relocate populations into designated areas.
Aside from the USA and Spain using concentration camps well before the second Boer War, the French also used them in Algeria in the 1830s and 1850s.
There are probably other examples, but the first modern era (last ~200 years) concentration camp is perhaps the one established by the Paraguayan military in 1813.
There is also a long "tradition" in Germany to detach Germans from what they did in past. For example, average Dutch will not tell you "Germans start World War 2", he/she will tell you "Nazis Started World War 2". This goes very far. Before that, it wasn't Germans who were slaughtering Europeans, it was Teutonic Order.
That seems reasonable. A country's government and its population or cultural identity are different. Especially as time goes on.
The German people didn't suddenly become evil in 1931, nor did they suddenly become good in 1946. They were perfectly ordinary people who were complicit or active in perpetrating awful atrocities. It happened there and it could happen here. There are people in your life who would, in the wrong circumstances, be perfectly capable of kicking people into cattle cars or gas chambers. They're not psychopaths or monsters, they're just people who do what they're told. That's the awful reality; blaming some aspect of the German character is an easy get-out from confronting that awfulness.
One could even argue that it did indeed happened "here". Take a look at recent Iraq invasion under President Bush. Least at least 8 years, at cost of 150-650 thousands (!!) of lives lost, about 110,000 civilians included... and what happened other than few street riots and march under White House? Nothing! Absolutely nothing! Average American family continues to live average american life and even as we still don't know why this war was started, life goes on :(
No, they were part of an "superior race" culture both before 1931 and after 1946.
(Not to mention their role in WWI as well).
It went much further than skin color differences, my own ancestors in the Western part of France, were called "animals like people" by Parisian politicians during the 19th century.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_Ferry#Colonial_expansion
"In the nineteenth century, the white man made true men of black people ; in the twentieth century, Europe will make a world of Africa."
http://www.imagesetmemoires.com/doc/Articles/B29paulhachugo....
Some Nazi ideologues were negative towards Christianity, but in general the system were positive towards "German Christianity".
Not at the level of the Jew, but Christian organisations were suppressed and many priests were deported in camps.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_persecution_of_the_Cathol...
There are such things as continuity of state, and also a continuity of culture.
Especially if post-WWII it never sat well with the locals that they lost the war, or that they were in the wrong.
Token gestures like making "mein kampf" illegal post-facto are a dime a dozen.
Especially since most of the post-WWII political and business establishment, in the highest positions, were fervent nazi party members and high ranking officials before 1945:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/from-dictatorshi...
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/feb/17/johnezard
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/books/up-in-smoke-goes-...
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/rape-murder-and-...
One of the heaviest anti-semitic places in Europe, then and now.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-16678772
http://forward.com/news/world/188764/german-hate-mail-comes-...
It indicates a systematic desensitization that occured over time.
Additionally, the article that purports current-day Germany as the heaviest anti-semetic place in Europe, with a few anecdotes, mentions Berlin's thriving Jewish population - one of the few places in the world with such an increase.
I do see many parallels to the current behaviors in the US, unfortunately.
Isn't that orthogonal? There was a huge Jewish community in Germany leading to 1933 as well -- up to 1940 or so.
Yes, Nazis are mentioned when that time is discussed, but never in my experience to avoid a connection between this country and the deeds done.
German national pride, patriotism, is very very low (I personally don't feel any attachment to this country apart from the fact that I know some places and speak the language).
> "For example, average Dutch will not tell you"
How are the Dutch involved now? Is that a weird "I know 'German' is 'Deutsch' in German" mistake? Or are you randomly talking about people from the Netherlands at that point?
Source? I really don't think anything like this is taught in German schools.
However, I have never heard it used in schools. German children will learn in school that these camps were German.
This book has received a lot of criticism from historians but it contains a lot of fascinating information.
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler%27s_Willing_Executioner...
The first modern concentration camps were created in the 1830s and natives/africans were the first peoples put in concentration camps.
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_camp#Native_...
The british are generally credited with creating the first death camp in the 2nd boer war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Boer_War#Concentration_...
We know the nazis admired what the US and britain was able to accomplish with concentration camps and they took it to another level. Though today, concentration camps are associated with nazi germany, it existed more than 100 years before ww2 and it's been used to wipe out populations for 100 years before the nazis came into power.
Every major power ( every european colonial power, russians/soviets, americans, japanese, etc ) used concentration camps to some degree in the 1800/1900s. Some have even argued it was the greatest tool of war in the 1800s and 1900s before the atomic bombs were invented.
Still, I find it hard to believe that the 'concentration camp' is that recent an invention.