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The comparison is silly. While the Boer War concentration camps were brutal, they were nothing on par with the Nazis. In fact “concentration camp” is largely a
by dcolkitt 6y ago
The comparison is silly. While the Boer War concentration camps were brutal, they were nothing on par with the Nazis.
In fact “concentration camp” is largely a misnomer. The sizable majority of Holocaust victims were killed in extermination camps, like Treblinka. These never even purported to hold any prisoner population, and simply murdered all prisoners immediately upon arrival.
The British have no shortage of problems. But nothing in their history is even remotely comparable to Hitler.
- smcl 6y agoI mean we did have a pretty brutal occupation of many other countries and were directly responsible for the deaths of millions of people in the process. We even had our own fair share of racist leaders - take a look at what Churchill had to say about Indian people for example. The timescales were different - Britain committed its crimes over the course of centuries rather than a decade or so - but it's not accurate to say "nothing in their history is even remotely comparable" to Nazi Germany. The main visible difference nowadays is that Germans of today are hyper-aware of the atrocities committed in the past by their ancestors. Britons are often either ignorant of theirs or are proud of them.
- mrkramer 6y agoThere is no difference between starved Boer children[1] and starved Jewish children[2]. Warning: Disturbing images [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Boer_War_concentration_camps#/media/File:LizzieVanZyl.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Boer_War_concentration_... [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_in_the_Holocaust#/media/File:Zw%C5%82oki_dzieci_getto_warszawskie_05.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_in_the_Holocaust#/med...
- dcolkitt 6y agoWell, there is a slight difference between 26,000 and 7 million.
- mrkramer 6y agoMurder is a murder and it is wrong in both views of the law and the god if you are religious.
- dcolkitt 6y agoAnd I absolutely agree with that. Earl Kitchener is an evil man. But he acted independently to convert humanitarian refugee camps into punitive concentration camps. The British government itself investigated the allegations, and explicitly put an end to Kitchener's abuses after they came to light. The opposition party and subsequent prime minister vehemently denounced his actions. In contrast, Nazi leadership sat in a seaside resort and meticulously planned out the industrial mass execution of millions of people. The entire regime from Hitler down was involved. So while, I'd agree there's a moral equivalence between Kitchener and Heydrich, the Nazi regime itself is far more guilty than the British Empire.
- mrkramer 6y agoI agree and it all comes down to power and monetary gain in both cases of Third Reich and British Empire. I didn't know that trigger for Second Boear War was the discovery of diamonds and gold in the Boer states. [1] [1] https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/boer-war-begins-in-south-africa https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/boer-war-begins-...
- JAlexoid 6y agoYou're right - Hitler was overt, while British still pretend that they are the "good guys" and literally blame the Irish for not joining them in WW2. No wait! The British are worse, because majority have not accepted the horrors that British empire has brought to many people... Not the least being be Bengal Famine of 1943. There's no question that Nazis were evil. Time to realize that many other empires were/are "not benevolent".