I have heard before that Hitler's inspiration for the"Final Solution" came largely from Canada's treatment of the largely Ukrainian population of Eastern Europeans in Canada during WWI. While they've been mostly unmentioned in Canadian history until recently, as I understand it Castle Mountain Internment Camp and others like it throughout Canada were making international news in their day due to their poor treatment of prisoners. It makes sense to me that Germany could have exploited this as propaganda during WWI, leading to Hitler having seen it (although I'm sure the concept of POW camps at the time was similar). Is there any evidence that the Canadian camps had any influence on Hitler?
I've seen no evidence of this in my search. The only comparison I've read that Hitler supposedly made was to the Armenian genocide during his Obersalzberg speech in 1939 where he supposedly said:
" Our strength consists in our speed and in our brutality. Genghis Khan led millions of women and children to slaughter – with premeditation and a happy heart. History sees in him solely the founder of a state. It's a matter of indifference to me what a weak western European civilization will say about me. I have issued the command – and I'll have anybody who utters but one word of criticism executed by a firing squad – that our war aim does not consist in reaching certain lines, but in the physical destruction of the enemy. Accordingly, I have placed my death-head formation in readiness – for the present only in the East – with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space which we need. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?"