The (American) soldiers might not have heard the term concentration camp before, but the term existed in English: Second Boer War concentration camps.
Most colonial powers used similar methods. The American internment camps for Japanese-Americans might have been more humane, but the US policy towards Native Americans with continuous forced relocations and reservations? Not much different from the German concentration camps.
There has also been a lot of discussion here in Sweden about what was known, and frankly, there were well-reported instances of atrocities, forced relocations, and internment/concentration camps already in 1942. And what was known in Sweden would be available in the US and the UK too. It was not lack of knowledge that was the issue, it was willful disbelief and ignorance.
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Most colonial powers used similar methods. The American internment camps for Japanese-Americans might have been more humane, but the US policy towards Native Americans with continuous forced relocations and reservations? Not much different from the German concentration camps.
There has also been a lot of discussion here in Sweden about what was known, and frankly, there were well-reported instances of atrocities, forced relocations, and internment/concentration camps already in 1942. And what was known in Sweden would be available in the US and the UK too. It was not lack of knowledge that was the issue, it was willful disbelief and ignorance.