Anti-tobacco movement in Nazi Germany

[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................[[.................|accessdate=2008-06-01|journal=British Medical Journal|volume=313 |issue=7070 |pages=1450–3 |year=1996 |month=December |pmid=8973234 |pmc=2352989 }}</ref> The Nazi leadership condemned smoking and several of them openly criticized tobacco consumption. Research on smoking and its effects on health thrived under Nazi rule and was the most important of its type at that time. Adolf Hitler's personal distaste for tobacco and the Nazi reproductive policies were among the motivating factors behind their campaign against smoking, and this campaign was associated with both antisemitism and racism.

The Nazi anti-tobacco campaign included banning smoking in trams, buses and city trains, promoting health education, limiting cigarette rations in the Wehrmacht, organizing medical lectures for soldiers, and raising the tobacco tax. The Nazis also imposed restrictions on tobacco advertising and smoking in public spaces, and regulated restaurants and coffeehouses. The anti-tobacco movement did not have much effect in the early years of the Nazi regime and tobacco use increased between 1933 and 1939, but smoking by military personnel declined from 1939 to 1945. Even by the end of the 20th century, the anti-smoking movement in postwar Germany had not attained the influence of the Nazi anti-smoking campaign.

Prelude to Nazi anti-tobacco campaign

Anti-tobacco sentiment existed in Germany in the early 1900s. Critics of smoking organized the first anti-tobacco group in the country named the Deutscher Tabakgegnerverein zum Schutze der Nichtraucher (German Tobacco Opponents' Association for the Protection of Non-smokers). Established in 1904, this organization existed for a brief period only. The next anti-tobacco organization, the Bund Deutscher Tabakgegner (Federation of German Tobacco Opponents), was established in 1910 in Trautenau, Bohemia. Other anti-smoking organizations were established in 1912 in the cities of Hanover and Dresden. In 1920, a Bund Deutscher Tabakgegner in der Tschechoslowakei (Federation of German Tobacco Opponents in Czechoslovakia) was formed in Prague, after Czechoslovakia was separated from Austria at the end of World War I. A Bund Deutscher Tabakgegner in Deutschösterreich (Federation of German Tobacco Opponents in German Austria) was established in Graz in 1920.

These groups published journals advocating nonsmoking. The first such German language journal was Der Tabakgegner (The Tobacco Opponent), published by the Bohemian organization between 1912 and 1932. The Deutsche Tabakgegner (German Tobacco Opponents) was published in Dresden from 1919 to 1935, and was the second journal on this subject. The anti-tobacco organizations were also against consumption of alcohol.

Hitler's attitude towards smoking

Hitler encouraged his close associates to quit smoking.

Adolf Hitler was a heavy smoker in his early life—he used to smoke 25 to 40 cigarettes daily—but gave up the habit, concluding that it was a waste of money. In later years, Hitler viewed smoking as "decadent" and "the wrath of the Red Man against the White Man, vengeance for having been given hard liquor", lamenting that "so many excellent men have been lost to tobacco poisoning". He was unhappy because both Eva Braun and Martin Bormann were smokers and was concerned over Hermann Göring's continued smoking in public places. He was angered when a statue portraying a cigar-smoking Göring was commissioned. Hitler is often considered to be the first national leader to advocate nonsmoking.

Hitler disapproved of the military personnel's freedom to smoke, and during World War II he said on March 2, 1942, "it was a mistake, traceable to the army leadership at the time, at the beginning of the war". He also said that it was "not correct to say that a soldier cannot live without smoking". He promised to end the use of tobacco in the military after the end of the war. Hitler personally encouraged close friends not to smoke and rewarded those who quit smoking. However, Hitler's personal distaste for tobacco was only one of several catalysts behind the anti-smoking campaign.

Reproductive policies

The Nazi reproductive policies were a significant factor behind their anti-tobacco campaign. Women who smoked were considered to be vulnerable to premature aging and loss of physical attractiveness; they were viewed as unsuitable to be wives and mothers in a German family. Werner Huttig of the Nazi Party's Rassenpolitisches Amt (Office of Racial Politics) claimed that a smoking mother's breast milk contained nicotine. Martin Staemmler, a prominent physician during the Third Reich, opined that smoking by pregnant women resulted in a higher rate of stillbirths and miscarriages. This opinion was also supported by well-known female racial hygienist Agnes Bluhm, whose book published in 1936 expressed the same view. The Nazi leadership was concerned over this because they wanted German women to be as reproductive as possible. An article published in a German gynaecology journal in 1943 stated that women smoking three or more cigarettes per day were more likely to remain childless compared to nonsmoking women.

Research

Research and studies on tobacco's effects on the population's health were more advanced in Germany than in any other nation by the time the Nazis came to power. The link between lung cancer and tobacco was first proven in Nazi Germany, contrary to the popular belief that American and British scientists first discovered it in the 1950s. The term "passive smoking" ("Passivrauchen") was coined in Nazi Germany. Research projects funded by the Nazis revealed many disastrous effects of smoking on health. Nazi Germany supported epidemiological research on the harmful effects of tobacco use. Hitler personally gave financial support to the Wissenschaftliches Institut zur Erforschung der Tabakgefahren (Institute for Tobacco Hazards Research) at the University of Jena, headed by Karl Astel. Established in 1941, it was the most significant anti-tobacco institute in Nazi Germany.

Franz H. Müller in 1939 and E. Schairer in 1943 first used case-control epidemiological methods to study lung cancer among smokers. In 1939, Müller published a study report in a reputed cancer journal in Germany which claimed that prevalence of lung cancer was higher among smokers. Müller, described as the "forgotten father of experimental epidemiology", was a member of the National Socialist Motor Corps (NSKK) and the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP, the Nazi Party). Müller's 1939 medical dissertation was the world's first controlled epidemiological study of the relationship between tobacco and lung cancer. Apart from mentioning the increasing incidents of lung cancer and many of the causes behind it such as dust, exhaust gas from cars, tuberculosis, X-ray and pollutants emitted from factories, Müller's paper pointed out that "the significance of tobacco smoke has been pushed more and more into the foreground".

Physicians in the Third Reich were aware that smoking is responsible for cardiac diseases, which were considered to be the most serious diseases resulting from smoking. Use of nicotine was sometimes considered to be responsible for increasing reports of myocardial infarction in the country. In the later years of World War II, researchers considered nicotine a factor behind the coronary heart failures suffered by a significant number of military personnel in the Eastern Front. A pathologist of the Heer examined thirty-two young soldiers who had died from myocardial infarction at the front, and documented in a 1944 report that all of them were "enthusiastic smokers". He cited the opinion of pathologist Franz Buchner that cigarettes are "a coronary poison of the first order."

Anti-tobacco measures

Reine Luft, the main journal of the anti-tobacco movement, used puns and cartoons in its propaganda, such as suggesting smoking was associated with cancer and promoted by the devil.

The Nazis used several public relations tactics to convince the general population of Germany not to smoke. Well-known health magazines like the Gesundes Volk (Healthy People), Volksgesundheit (People's Health) and Gesundes Leben (Healthy Life) published warnings about the health consequences of smoking and posters showing the harmful effects of tobacco were displayed. Anti-smoking messages were sent to the people in their workplaces, often with the help of the Hitler-Jugend (HJ) and the Bund Deutscher Mädel (BDM). The anti-smoking campaign undertaken by the Nazis also included health education. In June 1939, a Bureau against the Hazards of Alcohol and Tobacco was formed and the Reichsstelle für Rauschgiftbekämpfung (Bureau for the Struggle against Addictive Drugs) also helped in the anti-tobacco campaign. Articles advocating nonsmoking were published in the magazines Die Genussgifte (The Drugs for Enjoyment), Auf der Wacht (On the Guard) and Reine Luft (Clean Air). Out of these magazines, Reine Luft was the main journal of the anti-tobacco movement. Karl Astel's Institute for Tobacco Hazards Research at Jena University purchased and distributed hundreds of reprints from Reine Luft.

After recognizing the harmful effects of smoking on health, several items of anti-smoking legislation were enacted. The later 1930s increasingly saw anti-tobacco laws implemented by the Nazis. In 1938, the Luftwaffe and the Reichspost imposed a ban on smoking. Smoking was also banned not only in health care institutions, but also in several public offices and in rest homes. Midwives were restricted from smoking while on duty. In 1939, the Nazi Party outlawed smoking in all of its offices premises, and Heinrich Himmler, the then chief of the Schutzstaffel (SS), restricted police personnel and SS officers from smoking while they were on duty. Smoking was also outlawed in schools.

In 1941, tobacco smoking in trams was outlawed in sixty German cities. Smoking was also outlawed in bomb shelters; however, some shelters had separate rooms for smoking. Special care was taken to prevent women from smoking. The President of the Medical Association in Germany announced, "German women don't smoke". Pregnant women and women below the age of 25 and over the age of 55 were not given tobacco ration cards during World War II. Restrictions on selling tobacco products to women were imposed on the hospitality and food retailing industry. Anti-tobacco films aimed at women were publicly aired. Editorials discussing the hazards of smoking and its effects were published in newspapers. Strict measures were taken in this regard and a district department of the National Socialist Factory Cell Organization (NSBO) announced that it would expel female members who smoked publicly. The next step in the anti-tobacco campaign came in July 1943, when public smoking for persons under the age of 18 was outlawed. In the next year, smoking in buses and city trains was made illegal, on the personal initiative of Hitler, who feared female ticket takers might be the victims of passive smoking.

Restrictions were imposed on the advertisement of tobacco products, enacted on December 7, 1941 and signed by Heinrich Hunke, the President of the Advertising Council. Advertisements trying to depict smoking as harmless or as an expression of masculinity were banned. Ridiculing anti-tobacco activists was also outlawed, as was the use of advertising posters along rail tracks, in rural regions, stadiums and racing tracks. Advertising by loudspeakers and mail was also prohibited. 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