Hitler's interest in Wild West's cowboys and Indians 'may have inspired Nazi concentration camps'
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Adolf Hitler was an artist and avid amateur historian before he became one of the biggest mass murderers in history.
He was said to be fascinated by the conflict of cowboys and Indians in North America, avidly reading adventure stories of the Wild West.
One of his particular fascinations was how camps in America contained and eventually changed the Indigenous people of its lands.
And it is this idea, of containing people, scrubbing away their identities by replacing their names with numbers and breaking their spirit with beatings if they veered from the rules that can be seen in the horrific concentration camps later created under the Nazi regime.
It is impossible to point to any one factor to determine what caused Hitler to take certain actions. But he was drawn to the conflict of the American 'Cowboy and Indian' and merged this with his twisted epic vision of an Aryan German Empire - aka the Third Reich.
For many in Europe and all who have studied twentieth century history, the Nazi regime springs to mind as the embodiment of that horror and destroyer of all who opposed them.
Did the Nazis create, amongst other things, the concentration camp? Is it possible that a regime known for its clinical barbarianism could have been inspired by a country like Canada - better known for its wheat fields, Rocky Mountains, and limitless opportunities?
(Image: ullstein bild)
(Image: De Agostini Editorial)
(Image: Hulton Archive)
Hitler was, along with millions of other Germans, a fan of the adventure stories of Karl May. May’s books, still in print, have sold more than 200 million copies to date and at the time, he was as popular as today’s JK Rowling or Stephen King.
As Fuehrer, Hitler kept the entire May collection in his bedroom.
And as a result of May’s works, Hitler was fascinated by all things connected to the North American Indians and the cowboys who tamed the Wild West. Of particular interest was the implementation of camps that contained Indigenous people. In the United States, these were called Indian reservations; in Canada, they are called Indian reserves - the word 'Indian' used to refer to indigenous people.
It is difficult for us to imagine a world without the harrowing images of the Nazi concentration camps. Broken bodies, walking dead, and sallow eyes in striped prison outfits fill our mind’s eye. Forced labour, strict discipline, and winnowing rations kept the prison population in check. Names were replaced with numbers. Identities all but ceased in the camps.
When the Russian and Allied forces liberated these places of death and disease, the world saw a glimpse into the deepest horrors of its collective heart. This was an unthinkable existence perpetrated in and by a modern, liberal European country against its own citizens as well as those it saw as its enemies.
For Hitler, it is difficult to say whether he drew any specific inspiration from Canada’s system of containment of indigenous people. What is striking is how he adopted a similar methodology when processing prisoners in his Nazi camps as the Canadians employed in processing its Indigenous in their camps.
Although the United States government created concentration camps as early as 1838, the use of this method became prevalent from the 1860s as the borders of the United States moved westwards. The US government referred to these concentration camps as 'Indian reservations' - referring to land that the government had to set aside to house the ‘Indians’.
Canada, however, decided to force the assimilation of Indigenous people from its reserves. It concluded that basic education and training in physical work would make its Indigenous people productive members of Canadian society. Boys would be taught agriculture half a day and girls would be taught domestic chores half a day. The other half would be spent in the classroom.
The colonial government decided to try and assimilate the Indigenous people into society, by ‘taking the Indian out of the Indian’. A boarding school system called residential schools was thought to be the most effective way of washing away the unwanted cultures, languages, and customs. Children were taken from their families and placed in these residential schools. They were not allowed to speak their language, act ‘like Indians’ or even wear their familiar clothing.
The residential schools were not happy places for their pupils. It was a time where corporal punishment was the norm and these schools applied it to the point where it was considered abuse even for the times. Children were stripped of their ‘Indian’ name and given a number or a Christian name instead. They were constantly beaten - for speaking a language other than French or English, for doing anything considered ‘Indian’, and for not conforming to the Church-administered curriculum.
(Image: Hulton Archive)
(Image: Hulton Archive)
Eighty thousand survivors of this system are still alive today. Broken from reliving memories, many testified of the horrors to Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Where the Nazi camps lasted a little more than a decade, Canada’s continued for almost 150 years.
At the heart of the problem is poverty and a system that is too quick to give the benefit of doubt to those in power and too quick to dismiss concerns raised by those without.
The story of Canada’s residential schools does not carry the shame history ascribes to Germany’s camps - nor should it. It is a terrible tragedy inflicted on a people who were subsequently forgotten by the world.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission heard the harrowing stories of those who had been taken into the camps.
Campbell Papequash was taken, against his will, to residential school in 1946. The commission heard his evidence: “And after I was taken there they took off my clothes and then they deloused me. I didn’t know what was happening but I later learned about it, that they were delousing me; ‘the dirty, no-good-for-nothing savages, lousy.’”
Murray Crowe said his clothes from home were taken and burned at the school that he attended in north-western Ontario.
And Gilles Petiquay, who attended the Pointe Bleus School, was shocked by the fact that each student was assigned a number. He said: "I remember that the first number that I had at the residential school was 95. I had that number—95—for a year. The second number was number 4. I had it for a longer period of time. The third number was 56. I also kept it for a long time. We walked with the number on us.’
Others reported children being chained together and one boy chained to a bed to be flogged by a teacher.
(Image: De Agostini Editorial)
(Image: Archive Photos)
Official figures show around 3,500 children dying while in care at the schools but unofficial figures estimate tens of thousands of children buried in unmarked graves. The Royal Mounted Police apologised in 2004 for its role in the residential schools. In 2008, the Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, issued a formal apology for the creation of the residential schools and the abuses carried out within it.
Nazis understood the role of their camps. On the surface, it provided a source of free labour, available subjects for their medical experiments, and a place to put dissidents without killing them outright - -initially at least. Nazi camps ensured that all able bodies were put to work - making toys, shoes, counterfeiting foreign currency, as well as munitions
The reality is that it formed a key component of Hitler’s strategy. His war was total - cultural, physical, and emotional. His objective was to cleanse Germany and the world of unwanted people (from Jews to Gypsies) and unwanted cultures. The camps have become synonymous with death but there were things worse than death - people being reduced to the living dead.
Baron Alexander Deschauer is the author of Concentration Camps of Canada, a story of an Indigenous boy (Migizi) who is subjected to the policies of forced assimilation by Canada in the form of residential schools and reserves.
Concentration Camps of Canada is out in audio, paper and hardback as well as e-book, and is available now from Amazon.