WEBVTT - What is a Concentration Camp? 0:00:15.356 --> 0:00:22.436 Pushkin from Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background, the show 0:00:22.476 --> 0:00:25.476 where we explore the stories behind the stories in the news. 0:00:25.876 --> 0:00:30.636 I'm Noah Feldman. Welcome to this week's program, where we're 0:00:30.636 --> 0:00:32.556 going to talk about one of the most challenging and 0:00:32.596 --> 0:00:36.716 controversial topics that I can think of, namely concentration camps. 0:00:37.516 --> 0:00:40.276 The phrase alone is enough to strike terror in your heart, 0:00:40.996 --> 0:00:46.036 and controversially, this phrase, so closely associated with Nazi Germany 0:00:46.036 --> 0:00:48.876 and with the Holocaust, has been used by some critics 0:00:49.076 --> 0:00:52.036 to refer to the current migrant detention facilities that the 0:00:52.116 --> 0:00:55.876 United States government is using to detain people at our 0:00:55.916 --> 0:01:02.196 southern border. To discuss the history and the politics, I'm 0:01:02.276 --> 0:01:05.716 very pleased to be joined today by Andrea Pitzer. Andrea 0:01:05.756 --> 0:01:09.236 is a journalist who loves to unearth lost history, and 0:01:09.276 --> 0:01:12.156 for our purposes today, the lost history that she's uncovered 0:01:12.236 --> 0:01:15.756 is that of the concentration camp itself. Her book, One 0:01:15.836 --> 0:01:19.196 Long Night, A Global History of Concentration Camps is a 0:01:19.316 --> 0:01:23.196 deep dive into the term concentration camp, where it came from, 0:01:23.276 --> 0:01:25.916 and where it's going today. And she's also been an 0:01:25.916 --> 0:01:31.356 outspoken critic of the Trump administration's to tension policy. Andrea 0:01:31.436 --> 0:01:33.796 I want to start just by telling you my own 0:01:33.956 --> 0:01:37.156 story of how I came to expand on the uses 0:01:37.196 --> 0:01:39.956 of the term. I'm Jewish. Like a lot of Jews, 0:01:39.996 --> 0:01:43.356 I grew up hearing the phrase concentration camps and never 0:01:43.396 --> 0:01:47.756 distinguishing it from death camps or anything else that the 0:01:47.836 --> 0:01:49.916 Nazis may have done. And like a lot of people, 0:01:49.956 --> 0:01:53.316 I had teachers who had camp tattoos on their arms, 0:01:53.396 --> 0:01:56.076 and they and others used the term concentration camps in 0:01:56.076 --> 0:01:59.396 a kind of generic way. And then I realized that 0:01:59.436 --> 0:02:01.156 it was a term that originally had something to do 0:02:01.196 --> 0:02:03.916 with a concentration of people, and that got me looking 0:02:03.956 --> 0:02:05.396 into the history a little bit. And then when your 0:02:05.396 --> 0:02:07.156 book came out, I thought, this is so great. Someone's 0:02:07.156 --> 0:02:10.076 actually doing this in a systematic way. So I guess 0:02:10.076 --> 0:02:12.236 I want to start by asking, is it the case 0:02:12.996 --> 0:02:15.316 that the first use in the English language, at least 0:02:15.316 --> 0:02:18.836 of concentration camps dates to the Bore War, the rebellion 0:02:18.876 --> 0:02:22.516 against British authority in South Africa. Well, strangely enough, the 0:02:22.676 --> 0:02:26.116 phrase itself goes back to at least the middle of 0:02:26.156 --> 0:02:29.476 the nineteenth century, at least in the British press, and 0:02:29.596 --> 0:02:32.476 it's possible it's appeared some other language that I haven't found, 0:02:32.476 --> 0:02:34.556 but the earliest version of it in the English language 0:02:34.556 --> 0:02:37.196 press I could find was in the mid eighteen hundreds 0:02:37.796 --> 0:02:40.396 in the Times of London, and it was actually a 0:02:40.436 --> 0:02:43.476 military term that meant something a little different. It was 0:02:43.596 --> 0:02:48.156 literally the concentration of forces, sort of getting ready for 0:02:48.196 --> 0:02:51.316 an offensive or a defensive move or a battle of 0:02:51.316 --> 0:02:55.156 some kind. So it had this military term for military 0:02:55.276 --> 0:03:00.916 people before it transitioned to mean concentrating non military people 0:03:00.956 --> 0:03:04.756 and doing this to civilians and isolating them from society 0:03:04.756 --> 0:03:08.156 in some way. The idea of the concentration of forces 0:03:08.276 --> 0:03:12.956 is usually associated with Napoleon's doctrine of war. Put a 0:03:12.956 --> 0:03:15.356 lot of troops together in the same spot and go 0:03:15.436 --> 0:03:17.516 for it, and you're likely to overwhelm your enemy. So 0:03:17.556 --> 0:03:20.596 it was the term being used by the Times of 0:03:20.636 --> 0:03:23.756 London to describe a place where troops could be brought 0:03:23.796 --> 0:03:26.716 together in preparation for some kind of a very focused 0:03:26.716 --> 0:03:30.596 and concentrated attack. Exactly. There's some connection between those ideas 0:03:30.596 --> 0:03:33.996 of concentration because if so, sort of fascinatingly, that connects 0:03:34.076 --> 0:03:38.636 up the whole idea of modernity and concentration camp, which 0:03:38.636 --> 0:03:42.196 will obviously get to with the idea of modern war doctrine, 0:03:42.676 --> 0:03:46.316 albeit in a very indirect way. Well it is indirect 0:03:46.316 --> 0:03:48.556 in that instance, but it's fairly direct. When we have 0:03:48.676 --> 0:03:52.076 the first decade of camps, they are all sort of 0:03:52.156 --> 0:03:55.516 eighteen ninety six and the ten years that follows. All 0:03:55.556 --> 0:03:59.596 these camps are part of a military objective. Initially, they 0:03:59.636 --> 0:04:02.676 are doing something to civilians as part of a war 0:04:02.756 --> 0:04:05.876 strategy to defeat some kind of insurgency, and so I 0:04:05.916 --> 0:04:08.956 think there's this very natural move that happens. It's a 0:04:09.196 --> 0:04:12.076 very unfortunate move, but you can see the evolution of 0:04:12.076 --> 0:04:15.716 this modern war strategy bleeding over into how civilians are 0:04:15.756 --> 0:04:18.956 going to be treated. And you know, there's this moment 0:04:18.956 --> 0:04:20.756 in eighteen ninety six where we sort of get this 0:04:21.316 --> 0:04:25.756 idea reconcentration of civilians in Cuba under the Spanish Empire. 0:04:26.116 --> 0:04:29.356 But even before that you had Spanish generals and British 0:04:29.436 --> 0:04:32.956 generals talking about rounding people up, talking about using this 0:04:32.996 --> 0:04:35.836 as a widespread policy, and I'm sure it happened sometimes, 0:04:36.396 --> 0:04:41.156 but as a really definite war strategy that was very clear, 0:04:41.196 --> 0:04:43.876 and people understood that it would cause suffering to do 0:04:43.916 --> 0:04:46.596 this to civilians. That's at the very end of the 0:04:46.676 --> 0:04:49.556 nineteenth centuries when that idea emerges, and this eighteen ninety 0:04:49.556 --> 0:04:52.196 six moments in Cuba that you were describing, that's before 0:04:52.276 --> 0:04:54.716 the Spanish American Wars. What was the context and who 0:04:54.796 --> 0:04:56.956 was doing it in what language were they doing it in. 0:04:57.316 --> 0:05:01.316 So the Spanish Empire had Cuba as its colony for 0:05:01.396 --> 0:05:03.916 quite a long time, and Cubans had been resisting that 0:05:03.996 --> 0:05:06.116 for quite a long time, and really from the middle 0:05:06.116 --> 0:05:11.036 of the nineteenth century to the Spanish American War itself, 0:05:11.036 --> 0:05:15.236 and then of course even after the Cuban people peasants 0:05:15.356 --> 0:05:19.836 mostly were seeking independence, and there were several rebellions that 0:05:19.836 --> 0:05:22.396 would sort of flare up and subside, and the eighteen 0:05:22.516 --> 0:05:26.116 nineties one flared up and the governor general there at 0:05:26.116 --> 0:05:29.316 the time said in a letter to Spain, Look, the 0:05:29.396 --> 0:05:31.836 only way we're going to really end this and defeat 0:05:31.876 --> 0:05:35.316 these guys is if we sweep all the peasants off 0:05:35.356 --> 0:05:39.356 the countryside, put them in fortified cities behind barbed wire, 0:05:39.716 --> 0:05:43.636 and burn the countryside. This is kind of a transitional 0:05:43.756 --> 0:05:45.756 version of the camp because what they're doing is they're 0:05:45.756 --> 0:05:49.036 pushing them out of the countryside and into cities that 0:05:49.116 --> 0:05:51.716 they're holding and so people could come and go from 0:05:51.756 --> 0:05:54.316 the town, but they had no means to eat. Their 0:05:54.396 --> 0:05:57.516 labor was basically agrarian labor. They didn't have skills that 0:05:57.516 --> 0:05:59.716 could be used in a city, and so you ended 0:05:59.796 --> 0:06:03.196 up with this very strange, bifurcated town where people on 0:06:03.196 --> 0:06:06.196 the edges were literally collapsing in the street and dying 0:06:06.316 --> 0:06:08.716 from disease and hunger, and the rest of the city 0:06:08.796 --> 0:06:11.356 was going on about its business. And so it isn't 0:06:11.436 --> 0:06:14.836 till the Bore War, which we get to very shortly after, 0:06:15.156 --> 0:06:17.916 that you have those sort of tense cities out from 0:06:17.996 --> 0:06:20.556 towns that we think of as a very classic version 0:06:20.596 --> 0:06:23.076 of what's going to come. What were the British actually 0:06:23.076 --> 0:06:26.516 trying to accomplish with their tense city concentration camps during 0:06:26.556 --> 0:06:30.036 the Boer War as they fought the Afrikaans speaking Boar's 0:06:30.276 --> 0:06:33.916 efforts at establishing their own state. Well, actually, when you 0:06:33.956 --> 0:06:37.516 look back at the war strategy in Cuba in Southern 0:06:37.556 --> 0:06:39.836 Africa at that time, it was quite similar. You were 0:06:39.876 --> 0:06:43.676 trying to defeat these sort of guerrilla forces and they 0:06:43.716 --> 0:06:46.876 were using barbed wire. And it's worth noting that the 0:06:47.156 --> 0:06:50.156 patenting and mass production of barbed wire is a really 0:06:50.236 --> 0:06:53.036 important piece of what made this kind of detention possible, 0:06:53.036 --> 0:06:55.036 because you just didn't need that many guards once you 0:06:55.036 --> 0:06:58.836 could really hold people. But the British were basically using 0:06:58.876 --> 0:07:02.876 barbed wire and the strategy of sectioning off parts of 0:07:02.916 --> 0:07:07.036 the terrain and then clearing it. And so if they 0:07:07.076 --> 0:07:08.916 could sort of clear an area and hold it, then 0:07:08.956 --> 0:07:10.916 they can move on to clear the next area. But 0:07:10.996 --> 0:07:13.156 in order to do that, they needed to make sure 0:07:13.236 --> 0:07:16.316 that people out in the countryside weren't feeding or harboring 0:07:16.396 --> 0:07:19.676 or hiding the people that were fighting them. And so 0:07:19.716 --> 0:07:21.436 the approach that was, well, let's just get rid of 0:07:21.476 --> 0:07:25.236 all the civilians entirely from the district. Andrea, you know, 0:07:25.276 --> 0:07:26.956 you said something fascinating in there. I mean, you've said 0:07:26.996 --> 0:07:29.676 many fascinating thing as already, but you mentioned that barbed 0:07:29.716 --> 0:07:32.436 wire was crucial to the process. That if you could 0:07:32.476 --> 0:07:35.116 put people behind barbed wire, which you could erect presumably 0:07:35.196 --> 0:07:37.516 very cheaply, unlike building a wall, then you could keep 0:07:37.556 --> 0:07:40.876 them there with fewer guards. And so as you were speaking, 0:07:40.916 --> 0:07:43.876 I just quickly googled and discovered what I had not known, 0:07:43.876 --> 0:07:46.196 which is that barbed wire was first patented in eighteen 0:07:46.356 --> 0:07:48.956 sixty seven and then improved with a new patent in 0:07:49.036 --> 0:07:52.356 eighteen seventy four, So barbed wire was pretty new as 0:07:52.356 --> 0:07:54.996 a technology. Would it be an exaggeration to say that 0:07:54.996 --> 0:07:57.676 without the technology of barbed wire we couldn't have had 0:07:57.716 --> 0:08:00.996 the modern concentration camp. And I think that's absolutely true. 0:08:01.036 --> 0:08:02.436 I think the other thing we have to add in 0:08:02.516 --> 0:08:04.636 it wasn't quite as important in the first four or 0:08:04.636 --> 0:08:07.356 five years, but it became quite important later, was also 0:08:07.436 --> 0:08:10.916 the mass production of automatic weapons. Because if the barbed 0:08:10.916 --> 0:08:14.036 wire slows people ability to escape, and then you have 0:08:14.116 --> 0:08:16.356 guards that can kill a lot of people in a 0:08:16.436 --> 0:08:20.356 very short burst, then it sort of locks the prisoners 0:08:20.396 --> 0:08:23.036 inside the detention camp. And so I would say that 0:08:23.156 --> 0:08:26.636 between those two inventions and sort of mass productions, because 0:08:26.676 --> 0:08:29.236 it really had to be able to get a lot 0:08:29.276 --> 0:08:31.476 of it to a far flung place to make this work. 0:08:31.716 --> 0:08:33.996 There were other kinds of detention before, some of which 0:08:34.036 --> 0:08:37.316 were really close to what concentration camps would end up 0:08:37.316 --> 0:08:40.756 looking like Native American reservations in the US. We can 0:08:40.756 --> 0:08:45.116 think of as by far the very common precursor for 0:08:45.356 --> 0:08:48.996 concentration camps, and in some cases almost the only difference 0:08:49.516 --> 0:08:53.156 was this ability to detain people to actually hold them 0:08:53.156 --> 0:08:55.916 in place without assigning a huge guard force. And I 0:08:55.956 --> 0:08:58.396 think that that's where we cross the line over some 0:08:59.156 --> 0:09:02.716 equally horrific, sometimes more horrific versions of detention that happened 0:09:02.716 --> 0:09:08.516 previously slavery forced labor camps, Native American reservations. We cross 0:09:08.596 --> 0:09:11.876 into this modern idea of detention not to steal people's labor, 0:09:11.956 --> 0:09:14.836 not to steal their land, but detention behind barbed wire 0:09:14.876 --> 0:09:19.636 for detention's sake. That marks the concentration camp idea. The 0:09:19.676 --> 0:09:21.236 other thing that I thought was so fascinating when you 0:09:21.276 --> 0:09:23.756 were describing how the techniques of the British Hues and 0:09:23.756 --> 0:09:25.996 the Boer War were similar to those that the Spanish 0:09:26.036 --> 0:09:28.636 hues in eighteen ninety six in Cuba, was that it's 0:09:28.636 --> 0:09:31.796 a reminder that much as is the case today, where 0:09:32.396 --> 0:09:36.796 a theory of counterinsurgency becomes popular and then it spreads 0:09:37.396 --> 0:09:41.676 from one military to another military to another military. Similarly, 0:09:41.956 --> 0:09:45.316 already in the nineteenth century, in the early twentieth century, 0:09:45.676 --> 0:09:50.476 you had experimental military efforts to manage guerrilla warfarewell we 0:09:50.556 --> 0:09:55.636 today call insurgency, and one imperial power would imitate what 0:09:55.676 --> 0:09:58.756 another imperial power was doing. So it's sort of interesting 0:09:58.756 --> 0:10:02.396 to see ideas about military strategy, including the concentration camp 0:10:02.756 --> 0:10:05.556 moving from place to place. Well, there's two things with that, 0:10:05.636 --> 0:10:08.796 And I think that the idea of the moving is important. 0:10:08.836 --> 0:10:12.636 This is an international thing from very early on. At 0:10:12.676 --> 0:10:15.236 the same time, when you have the same tools, when 0:10:15.276 --> 0:10:16.876 you have the same kind of training and you have 0:10:16.916 --> 0:10:20.196 the same technology at your disposal, things also kind of 0:10:20.236 --> 0:10:23.676 independently spring up. So sometimes there's a direct influence and 0:10:23.756 --> 0:10:27.236 sometimes it's just everybody has a hammer at hand, and hey, 0:10:27.276 --> 0:10:29.716 you know what you can do with a hammer. I 0:10:29.756 --> 0:10:32.036 think that that's a fascinating thing. But the other thing 0:10:32.156 --> 0:10:35.876 is that you were talking about counterinsurgency strategy. Today we 0:10:35.996 --> 0:10:41.196 have so much concern and so much infrastructure built around 0:10:41.236 --> 0:10:44.796 dealing with this idea of terror and terrorism. It's important 0:10:44.796 --> 0:10:49.516 to note that concentration camps rise out of counterinsurgency strategy 0:10:49.516 --> 0:10:53.996 and they never really abandon it. What happens is that 0:10:54.556 --> 0:10:58.876 who is game goes from people in battle and people 0:10:58.956 --> 0:11:01.436 who might be actually showing up to shoot you or 0:11:01.516 --> 0:11:04.556 kill people in your view of what's happening in the world. 0:11:04.956 --> 0:11:07.876 It goes to people who are in society next to you, 0:11:07.996 --> 0:11:11.756 who aren't wielding web but are somehow undermining and destroying 0:11:11.756 --> 0:11:14.996 your society. But this idea of rooting out that dangerous 0:11:15.236 --> 0:11:18.676 dissident element that is going to destroy your society is 0:11:18.716 --> 0:11:22.676 at the heart of why concentration camps become acceptable and 0:11:22.796 --> 0:11:26.276 used and are used still today. That seems like an 0:11:26.316 --> 0:11:29.636 excellent point of transition to World War Two. And let's 0:11:29.636 --> 0:11:33.116 start with the Nazis use of concentration camps, and then 0:11:33.156 --> 0:11:36.036 we can also talk about the Japanese American internment camps. 0:11:36.876 --> 0:11:39.396 You hinted. I think, if I'm understanding you correctly, that 0:11:39.516 --> 0:11:44.236 from the idea that you gather up and concentrate and 0:11:44.436 --> 0:11:47.276 imprison behind barbed wire the people who you consider to 0:11:47.276 --> 0:11:50.396 be a threat in a counterinsurgency, you can naturally evolve 0:11:50.476 --> 0:11:52.836 to imprisoning the people whom you see as a threat 0:11:53.436 --> 0:11:56.116 because of who they are, and that could lead to 0:11:56.156 --> 0:12:00.356 the interment of political prisoners, which was the Nazis first move, 0:12:01.116 --> 0:12:03.156 and then ultimately to people who are seen as kind 0:12:03.156 --> 0:12:06.436 of existential enemies like the Jews. Is is that the 0:12:06.516 --> 0:12:11.036 process that took place in Germany? It is, But I 0:12:11.076 --> 0:12:13.236 think there's this transition moment we want to be sure 0:12:13.316 --> 0:12:16.676 not to skip, which is those first far flung colonial camps, 0:12:17.316 --> 0:12:20.596 which I will say held mostly women and children and 0:12:20.956 --> 0:12:23.636 had horrific death tolls I mean tens of thousands, more 0:12:23.676 --> 0:12:26.876 than one hundred thousand. That really shocked the world, and 0:12:26.876 --> 0:12:29.236 it was seen as a barbaric thing to use these camps. 0:12:29.236 --> 0:12:32.116 But what made it reasonable and by the time we 0:12:32.116 --> 0:12:34.036 got to the twenties or thirties for countries to start 0:12:34.156 --> 0:12:36.396 using them again, was that they were used in World 0:12:36.476 --> 0:12:41.116 War One. So it goes from this very discredited brutal 0:12:41.196 --> 0:12:46.396 strategy of military war in the battlefield areas to in 0:12:46.436 --> 0:12:48.956 World War One, the idea sprang up again and it 0:12:48.996 --> 0:12:52.076 moved from out in far flung areas into the centers 0:12:52.076 --> 0:12:54.916 of power. So you had detention camps. Let's say you 0:12:54.916 --> 0:12:57.276 were German and World War One broke out and you 0:12:57.356 --> 0:13:00.996 were in London, you were put into a camp there, 0:13:01.116 --> 0:13:03.436 you were put into a civilian camp in the area, 0:13:03.516 --> 0:13:05.996 and they had them in Berlin. And by the end 0:13:06.036 --> 0:13:09.356 of the war they had literally covered six continents and 0:13:09.436 --> 0:13:13.676 the Red Cross was investigating and visiting hundreds of different 0:13:13.676 --> 0:13:17.596 locations in dozens of countries. You had a bureaucracy of 0:13:17.596 --> 0:13:20.476 detention show up, and the death tolls from these camps 0:13:20.476 --> 0:13:22.676 because everybody wanted to be seen as running the ones 0:13:22.716 --> 0:13:25.516 that were fair and just. It was a real propaganda 0:13:25.556 --> 0:13:28.276 war that was going on. By the end of that war, 0:13:28.796 --> 0:13:31.716 they had rehabilitated the idea of this kind of detention 0:13:31.756 --> 0:13:34.236 and it was called concentration camps at the time. What 0:13:34.276 --> 0:13:36.516 we call it now is internment. And there was this 0:13:36.556 --> 0:13:39.916 idea that internment was a reasonable thing to do and 0:13:39.916 --> 0:13:41.916 that it didn't cause harm and that everybody didn't have 0:13:41.996 --> 0:13:45.996 to die. So after World War One, concentration camps are 0:13:46.116 --> 0:13:50.596 used everywhere. It becomes perfectly legitimate to lock up civilians 0:13:51.156 --> 0:13:54.276 in anywhere in the world, essentially, and that's where you 0:13:54.396 --> 0:13:57.196 end up with the early Soviet camps, and then in 0:13:57.196 --> 0:14:00.396 the thirties the Nazi camps. When they first began, they 0:14:00.436 --> 0:14:03.756 looked very much like something that had been done before. 0:14:03.876 --> 0:14:05.916 And I think the alarm bells did not go off 0:14:05.956 --> 0:14:09.356 in part because the Nazis hadn't yet figured out that 0:14:09.436 --> 0:14:11.396 camps would be at the heart of the genocide that 0:14:11.436 --> 0:14:14.836 they wanted to conduct. But also alarm bells didn't go 0:14:14.836 --> 0:14:16.796 off because people saw this, they had seen it all 0:14:16.836 --> 0:14:19.156 the time. It didn't look that different than things that 0:14:19.196 --> 0:14:21.236 they saw unfold around them in the twenties and thirties 0:14:21.236 --> 0:14:23.596 and during World War One, Andrew, can we talk about 0:14:23.636 --> 0:14:26.716 citizenship in that crucial transitional phase that you just described, 0:14:26.796 --> 0:14:29.516 because during World War One, correct me if I'm wrong, 0:14:29.556 --> 0:14:33.196 it seems as though these slightly better internment camps or 0:14:33.276 --> 0:14:36.356 concentration camps, the ones that were, as you said, rehabilitated 0:14:36.356 --> 0:14:40.836 the reputation of the camps were designed for basically civilians 0:14:40.916 --> 0:14:43.236 who were citizens of a country y're at war with, 0:14:43.756 --> 0:14:48.796 so an enemy's noncombatants. So was citizenship the primary criterion 0:14:48.916 --> 0:14:51.596 during World War One for the creation of these camps. 0:14:52.356 --> 0:14:54.956 It very much was. There's hundreds of years of laws 0:14:54.956 --> 0:14:58.116 on the books about in most countries use them about 0:14:58.156 --> 0:15:01.316 this idea of enemy aliens. If somebody is alien to 0:15:01.396 --> 0:15:04.716 your country and there's a war, you can do just 0:15:04.876 --> 0:15:06.596 about anything with them. And that's been true for a 0:15:06.596 --> 0:15:11.116 long time. But what was different that it had been 0:15:11.116 --> 0:15:14.596 more largely applied to individuals. So if you were an 0:15:14.676 --> 0:15:17.476 individual enemy alien in the eyes of the law, and 0:15:17.516 --> 0:15:20.196 there was some suspicion about you, there was great leeway 0:15:20.196 --> 0:15:22.156 in what could be done to you. But World War 0:15:22.196 --> 0:15:25.676 One marks this moment where you don't have to have 0:15:25.716 --> 0:15:29.356 individual suspicions about that person. We're going to apply that 0:15:29.516 --> 0:15:33.516 alien law to whole groups of people, regardless of their 0:15:33.516 --> 0:15:36.076 motivations or their actions, or whether you think their spy. 0:15:36.796 --> 0:15:39.156 We just are going to sort of push that over 0:15:39.196 --> 0:15:41.636 the brink and use that existing law, and we're going 0:15:41.676 --> 0:15:44.916 to lock up vast numbers of people. So then once 0:15:44.916 --> 0:15:47.036 you're willing to do that to one group of people, 0:15:47.116 --> 0:15:50.396 what history teaches us is you just have to find 0:15:50.436 --> 0:15:52.876 the group you want to target and either take away 0:15:52.916 --> 0:15:57.236 their citizenship or somehow move them outside those protections. And 0:15:57.276 --> 0:16:01.276 so from World War One on, the process really becomes 0:16:01.636 --> 0:16:04.316 how do you strip those rights of citizenship away from 0:16:04.396 --> 0:16:07.036 people so that you can do something to escapegoat them 0:16:07.076 --> 0:16:09.316 and lock them up. You're drawing a straight line year, 0:16:09.356 --> 0:16:11.916 I think too, we'll come back to the Nazis, but 0:16:12.116 --> 0:16:15.356 drawing a straight line here to the Japanese American internment camps, 0:16:15.396 --> 0:16:18.236 because after all, those included a combination of people with 0:16:18.276 --> 0:16:22.916 different kinds of legal status. They were naturalized people from 0:16:22.996 --> 0:16:25.716 Japan who are US citizens, there were some natural born 0:16:25.876 --> 0:16:28.876 US citizens who were the children of people from Japan. 0:16:28.956 --> 0:16:30.436 And then of course there were some people of the 0:16:30.436 --> 0:16:34.596 older generation who were in fact themselves still Japanese citizens 0:16:34.756 --> 0:16:37.236 and fit in some broader way under this enemy alien 0:16:37.276 --> 0:16:39.876 category because after all, the United States and Japan World War, 0:16:40.196 --> 0:16:42.956 but then all of those groups get lumped together in 0:16:42.996 --> 0:16:45.636 the exclusion order from the West Coast and then ultimately 0:16:45.676 --> 0:16:50.396 in the interment camps, which are actually called concentration camps. 0:16:50.436 --> 0:16:53.036 So that sounds like it's in connection with this idea 0:16:53.036 --> 0:16:55.556 of the enemy alien being being locked up. And obviously, 0:16:56.156 --> 0:16:58.996 you know, not to give too much of a spoiler alert, 0:16:59.036 --> 0:17:01.036 but we are going to talk a little bit later 0:17:01.076 --> 0:17:04.236 on about the contemporary camps of the United States is 0:17:04.276 --> 0:17:08.556 using to hold non citizens and undocumented persons. There's obviously 0:17:08.556 --> 0:17:11.476 a citizen ship component that's crucial there as well. Yeah, 0:17:11.516 --> 0:17:14.956 this idea of the alien and the citizen becomes so 0:17:14.996 --> 0:17:17.916 central to all of it. And it's worth noting that 0:17:18.036 --> 0:17:21.116 in World War Two as well, there was very little 0:17:21.116 --> 0:17:22.876 in the way of any threat from this community, and 0:17:22.916 --> 0:17:25.676 in fact, naval intelligence road to report saying we don't 0:17:25.676 --> 0:17:28.636 need to lock people up. And it's fascinating to me 0:17:28.756 --> 0:17:33.876 this history in which you had the Jay Edgar Hoover 0:17:34.436 --> 0:17:37.076 of the FBI against the idea of internment. You had 0:17:37.116 --> 0:17:39.956 the Attorney General at the time against the idea of internment. 0:17:40.276 --> 0:17:44.316 You had Roosevelt initially not wanting to run concentration camps 0:17:44.356 --> 0:17:47.356 to put this whole community in. But it became this 0:17:47.436 --> 0:17:51.236 political fight. It became some people argue an economic fight 0:17:51.356 --> 0:17:54.756 over the really productive and fertile lands that were being 0:17:54.796 --> 0:17:58.876 farmed by this community. And certainly what we see in 0:17:58.916 --> 0:18:02.796 every concentration camp setting arose here too, which was the 0:18:03.276 --> 0:18:06.516 useful vilification of a group of people. So if you 0:18:06.596 --> 0:18:09.676 vilify this group, if you demonize these groups, what can 0:18:09.716 --> 0:18:12.036 you extract from that politically? And it turned out there 0:18:12.036 --> 0:18:14.236 were a lot of people that could extract things politically, 0:18:14.236 --> 0:18:16.956 and so everybody thinks of this as a panic response. 0:18:16.996 --> 0:18:19.276 So we locked these people up in camps. That was wrong, 0:18:19.476 --> 0:18:22.756 but they didn't know better. They knew better, and it 0:18:22.796 --> 0:18:25.196 was this systemic thing that happens again and again with 0:18:25.276 --> 0:18:27.316 camps that sort of steamrolled it and took it the 0:18:27.356 --> 0:18:32.116 other direction toward incarceration. You mentioned earlier that in Nazi Germany, 0:18:32.596 --> 0:18:36.196 the initial concentration of Jews was not focused yet on 0:18:36.196 --> 0:18:38.676 what came to be called the final solution of ultimately 0:18:39.076 --> 0:18:42.316 murdering and eliminating the Jews of Europe, but initially was 0:18:42.396 --> 0:18:45.476 part of a not exactly an anti insurgency strategy, because 0:18:45.476 --> 0:18:47.996 there was no Jewish insurgency, but rather of a let's 0:18:48.036 --> 0:18:50.636 gather up people who might we perceive as hostile to us. 0:18:51.196 --> 0:18:53.476 It's a long and complex story, but would you give 0:18:53.556 --> 0:18:56.796 us just a shortened version, a compressed version of how 0:18:56.836 --> 0:19:00.196 the concentration camps that you've been describing from the eighteen 0:19:00.236 --> 0:19:03.596 nineties through the nineteen thirties sort of bleed into the 0:19:03.596 --> 0:19:07.156 creation of actual death camps in World War Two. This 0:19:07.236 --> 0:19:10.436 is the question that is real at the heart of 0:19:10.476 --> 0:19:13.276 the issue that today people are wrestling with on what 0:19:13.316 --> 0:19:15.796 do you call a concentration camp? What gets to be 0:19:15.876 --> 0:19:19.036 called a concentration camp? And while that issue goes back 0:19:19.036 --> 0:19:21.356 actually more than one hundred years, people have debated this 0:19:21.476 --> 0:19:25.876 question these first years of Nazi camps, I think can 0:19:25.916 --> 0:19:29.076 help make it clearer for us. In those first years, 0:19:29.556 --> 0:19:33.716 it was a terror strategy employed by the Nazis to 0:19:33.916 --> 0:19:38.316 stifle descent, and I don't think most people realize that 0:19:38.916 --> 0:19:42.676 German Jews were not rounded up in groups to be 0:19:42.756 --> 0:19:46.236 sent to concentration camps until Kristallnacht near the end of 0:19:46.316 --> 0:19:50.476 nineteen thirty eight, So those camps existed for five years, 0:19:50.636 --> 0:19:53.716 five and a half years really before you had mass 0:19:53.836 --> 0:19:56.676 round up of Jews. What happens before then is exactly 0:19:56.756 --> 0:19:58.996 what you're saying, the rounding up of dissidents, the rounding 0:19:59.036 --> 0:20:01.676 up actually off homosexuals, the rounding up of people who 0:20:01.676 --> 0:20:05.276 were seen as vagrants, gypsies, what we would now today 0:20:05.316 --> 0:20:07.836 call roma and centie. People were rounded up that way. 0:20:08.276 --> 0:20:11.756 And in those first years, the Jews are being attacked 0:20:11.756 --> 0:20:15.036 by the Nazis in Germany, but it's mostly through the law. 0:20:15.516 --> 0:20:18.036 They are stripping them of citizenship. They are saying you 0:20:18.076 --> 0:20:20.596 can't work in a hospital, you can't use a hospital, 0:20:20.636 --> 0:20:23.356 you can't hold a professorship at a public university. And 0:20:23.436 --> 0:20:26.396 it isn't until I believe, and certainly there's room for 0:20:26.436 --> 0:20:30.116 a lot of different ideas. But after Kristall knocked, when 0:20:30.156 --> 0:20:33.596 they arrested tens of thousands of Jews and held them 0:20:33.596 --> 0:20:37.996 in camps, that the world really didn't do anything, and 0:20:38.076 --> 0:20:40.796 they ended up releasing. Actually those first five years and 0:20:40.876 --> 0:20:43.436 even after Kristall, more than ninety percent of those Jews 0:20:43.436 --> 0:20:46.876 were released, there was horrible violence done. Some people were killed, 0:20:46.876 --> 0:20:49.476 so I'm not minimizing that terror of the Jewish community 0:20:49.476 --> 0:20:52.236 at all, But even then, the camps were not an 0:20:52.236 --> 0:20:56.276 extermination tool at that point. It isn't until they still 0:20:56.316 --> 0:20:59.316 have members of the Jewish community that are not leaving, 0:20:59.316 --> 0:21:01.556 and at that point they can't leave. No countries will 0:21:01.556 --> 0:21:03.716 take them. There's almost no country that is willing to 0:21:03.756 --> 0:21:07.236 harbor Jews at that point, and the Nazis realized that 0:21:07.316 --> 0:21:08.996 they're not going to be able to push this community 0:21:09.116 --> 0:21:11.196 out of Germany. And then, of course, when Hitler invades 0:21:11.596 --> 0:21:15.076 Germany is moving through terrain in which there are whole 0:21:15.116 --> 0:21:17.236 towns that are majority Jewish. So instead of the one 0:21:17.316 --> 0:21:19.476 or two percent that are estimated German Jews who have 0:21:19.516 --> 0:21:22.916 been before the war, they suddenly have these vast Jewish 0:21:22.956 --> 0:21:25.476 communities to deal with, and what are they going to 0:21:25.516 --> 0:21:27.596 do with that? And this is where we end up 0:21:27.636 --> 0:21:30.196 with the debate that resolves in the idea of this 0:21:30.236 --> 0:21:32.956 final solution. And I don't think you can get to 0:21:33.036 --> 0:21:36.436 that death camp system without those concentration camps being opened 0:21:36.476 --> 0:21:40.956 for years beforehand, with them developing strategies, with them looking 0:21:40.956 --> 0:21:44.436 at tactics and techniques of control, and starting to experiment 0:21:44.436 --> 0:21:46.116 with how do you kill a lot of people. I 0:21:46.156 --> 0:21:47.956