Want a really good laugh? I've seen it dozens of times but it still makes me laugh.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tms0...

I was actually being ironic. That last sentence, "I did once but I think I got away with it", is a quote from the 1970s British sitcom, 'Faulty Towers', (the famous episode called 'The Germans'). It follows the sentence "Don't mention the war". Most older British people would have got that.

You are, of course, quite correct, Hendrik. It's the mindset that counts.

Yes, many European countries had a colonial empire. What I want to say is, that this mindset of exceptionalism has not disappeared - not yet.

I see this mindset of (mostly racist) exceptionalism in right-wing populist parties with their longing for a rose-tinted past and former greatness.

The British were the biggest but...

Don't mention the Portuguese in Brazil, the Spanish in South America & Africa, the Belgians in the Congo & the Dutch in Indonesia.

I did, once, but I think I got away with it...

Didn't the Romans often do murals of their soldiers brutally slaughtering their 'barberian' prisoners?

I believe that concentration camps already existed long before 1800. This article only gives some examples of those camps before WW II, but the large-scale murder of prisoners of war and ordinary citizens has been going on for thousands of years whether that happened in concentration camps or not.

You're probably correct, there, Hendrik but it probably just depends on one's definition of 'concentration camp'. People were extremely brutal, in warfare, centuries ago.