The first Concentration camps...............?

Stanley

New member
Why did the British build the first concentration camps in Africa?
What country in Africa was it?

Is this where Hitler got his ideas from?
 
Yes. Hitler got the idea of concentration camps from the British. Lord Kitchener created concentration camps to detain the Dutch "Afrikaners" during the Boer war in the nation of South Africa in the 19th century.

Edit: The first German concentration camp created was Dachau (Not certain about spelling).
 
This happened in South Africa during the Boer War. The British built concentration camps as a means of controlling the the Boers. The Boers mostly lived in small farms and ranches and they were proving to be a dangerous and stubborn enemy. The British decided that the best method to fight the Boers was simply to gather their families up and put them in camps. The big problem with the camp strategy was that the interned Boers were treated horribly and that created more resistance and hatred among the Boers. The Italians under Mussolini adopted concentration camps in North Africa and Ethiopia during the 1930's. Hitler actually had established a series of concentration camps in German before World War II. The first German Concentration camps were used as prisons for German dissidents, trouble makers, enemies of the state, Catholic priests, homosexuals, communists, or just people who got ratted out by their neighbors.
 
Incorrect, your question assumes facts not in evidence. The Lincoln administration operated and built the first concentration camps in the United States, beginning in 1862.

Concentration camps are enclosures where people are forcibly concentrated to die.

Operated as concentration camps were Fort Delaware (Pea Patch Island, Delaware), Camp Douglas (Chicago, Illinois), Camp Butler (Springfield, Illinois), Camp Morton (Indianapolis, Indiana), Johnson's Island (Sandusky, Ohio), David's Island (New Rochelle, New York), Point Lookout, (Maryland), Rock Island (Illinois) and possibly others.

Constructed to be concentration camps were Elmira Prison (Elmira, New York) and Hart's Island (New York, New York).

One is tempted to make the argument that, "Well, these facilities were nothing more than POW camps for Confederate prisoners," but that would be incorrect. These concentration camps of the U.S. government held thousands of U.S. citizens as political prisoners, arrested and imprisoned indefinitely for alleged political offenses. This was possible only because Lincoln suspended the constitutional protection of habeas corpus for his own citizens.

[Perverse is Lincoln's argument that he was President of all of the United States, including the South. I wonder if he thought he was President of his political prisoners dying in his concentration camps.]

In fact the very last prisoners to be released were POLITICAL PRISONERS from Fort Lafayette NY in March 1866, almost a year after the war was over.

Grave marker No. 2532 at Elmira NY reads, "A.S. Colton, Citizen."
 
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