Both systems emerged from settler or imperial projects that sought land and resources already occupied by Indigenous or “undesirable” populations.wikipedia+2

In the United States, reservations were used to confine Native nations so whites could seize western lands for settlement, agriculture, and railroads.nebraskastudies+2

In Nazi Germany, concentration camps formed part of a broader plan to remake Eastern Europe as “German East,” clearing out existing peoples for German settlers.si+2

American Indian policy went through Removal, Reservation, and Assimilation eras, all geared toward taking tribal land and concentrating Native peoples in controlled areas.scholarship.law.stjohns+2

Scholars note that these U.S. policies aimed to “remove, concentrate, and exterminate” Indians, even if the rhetoric emphasized civilization and protection.nebraskastudies+1

The reservation system legally defined Native peoples as dependent wards, limiting their freedom of movement, political autonomy, and economic options.wikipedia+1

Nazi concentration camps likewise stripped prisoners of rights and legal personhood, placing them under total SS control with no recourse to normal law.wikipedia+1

Both systems used the language of “protection” or “guardianship” to mask coercive confinement and dispossession.khanacademy+2

U.S. officials justified reservations as zones where Indians would be shielded from settlers, educated, and supplied with food and tools.khanacademy+1

Nazi authorities publicly framed early camps as necessary for the “protection” of German society from internal enemies in “protective custody.”nationalww2museum+1

Both projects drew on racial ideologies that ranked peoples as inferior and in need of control or elimination.si+2

In the U.S., notions of Manifest Destiny portrayed Native Americans as obstacles to national progress, either to be assimilated or removed.scholarship.law.stjohns+2

In Germany, the doctrine of Lebensraum imagined Slavs and Jews in the East as “Indianer” equivalents, to be pushed aside for German expansion.si+1

Hitler and Nazi thinkers explicitly studied U.S. conquest of the West, including Indian wars, removal, and reservations, as models for empire-building.scholarship.law.stjohns+1

A law review study shows Nazis examined American federal and state race laws and Indian policies as precedents for their own racial state.scholarship.law.stjohns​

Comparative historians argue that Hitler saw Russia and Poland as Germany’s “Wild West,” echoing American campaigns against Native nations.si+1

Both systems relied on forced relocation and internment rather than only open battlefield killing.wikipedia+2

Native nations were pushed off ancestral lands, marched to distant reservations, and confined to unfamiliar environments.wikipedia+2

Early Nazi camps concentrated political opponents, then Jews, Roma, and others, before being integrated into vast systems of deportation and forced labor.nationalww2museum+1

Both used bureaucratic treaties, laws, and decrees to legitimize coercion as orderly administration.wikipedia+2

U.S. treaties and acts such as the Indian Removal Act and Indian Appropriations Act created the legal framework for removal and reservations.khanacademy+1

Nazi decrees and emergency laws after 1933 allowed detention without trial and the establishment of camps like Dachau.nationalww2museum+1

Economic exploitation marked both systems from an early stage.nebraskastudies+2

Reservations often made Native communities dependent on government rations, while non-Natives profited from “surplus” lands opened to settlers.wikipedia+1

Nazi camps used prisoners as forced labor for SS-run enterprises and private firms in construction, armaments, and industry.wikipedia+1

In both cases, confinement zones became laboratories for cultural destruction.nebraskastudies+2

U.S. officials and missionaries used reservations to impose boarding schools, Christianity, and bans on Native languages and religious practices.khanacademy+1

Nazi camps and related ghettos aimed to break communities, destroy religious life, and erase cultural continuity, especially for Jews and Roma.wikipedia​

The geography of both systems reflected a desire to push targeted peoples out of desirable spaces.nebraskastudies+2

U.S. reservations were commonly placed on marginal lands, away from fertile regions and urban centers coveted by settlers.wikipedia+2

Nazi planners envisioned Eastern Europe as a colonial frontier, where camps and ghettos cleared the way for future German agrarian settlers.si+1

Early German colonial practice in Africa created explicit “concentration camps” for Indigenous Africans, anticipating later techniques of control.forensic-architecture+1

In German South West Africa, surviving Herero and Nama were rounded up in camps like Swakopmund and subjected to forced labor and extreme mortality.forensic-architecture​

These colonial precedents—alongside U.S. and other empires—helped normalize the idea that populations could be concentrated and exploited outside normal legal constraints.academic.oup+2

Comparative genocide scholars emphasize both parallels and limits in linking reservations and Nazi camps.digitalcommons.unl+3

They stress that Nazi death camps were designed for rapid industrialized mass murder, while U.S. reservation policy mixed goals of land seizure, control, and coerced assimilation.academic.oup+2

Still, both systems participated in wider patterns of settler colonialism, where eliminating Indigenous presence—physically, politically, or culturally—was central.digitalcommons.unl+2

One historian summarizes the shared logic as: secure territory, break Indigenous polities, concentrate survivors, and then reshape or erase them as distinct peoples.digitalcommons.unl+2