anti-smoking NAZIS not just a figurative term

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[ARCHIVED THREAD] - anti-smoking NAZIS not just a figurative term

Posted: 10/23/2006 8:19:48 PM EDT

somehow i stumbled upon the wikipedia article about the history of tobacco. i never knew that the third reich was so ahead of it's time with regards to recognizing the hazards of tobacco, as well as the fact that the pejorative term "anti-smoking nazis" may actually have a bit of truth to it:

Tobacco products were included in military rations during World War I.[1] After the war, cigarette smoking was portrayed in advertising as part of a glamorous carefree lifestyle, and became socially acceptable for women. In the 1930s Nazi medical and military leaders became concerned that tobacco might prove a hazard to human health, concluding that the "extraordinary rise in tobacco use" was "the single most important cause of the rising incidence of lung cancer," the first scientists to confirm this link. From 1933 to 1945 Germany had the world's strongest anti-smoking movement, with the full support of Adolf Hitler, who disapproved of smoking. He characterised tobacco as "the wrath of the Red Man against the White Man for having been given hard liquor." He also associated smoking, along with drinking, as affects of liberal decadence. Nazi propagandists even had a campaign to discourage smoking during pregnancy, which was medically progressive for its time. [1] Germany's defeat in 1945 meant that its aggressive anti-tobacco movement declined. Hitler and the campaigners behind the movement were dead, had been silenced, or were later executed for crimes against humanity. Much of the science on the dangers of tobacco had been gathered through brutal experimentation on concentration camp prisoners. In the post-World War II period, German physician Knut-Olaf Haustein was known for his work studying the effects of tobacco smoking.

Posted: 10/31/2006 2:31:01 PM EDT

[#1]

Quoted:
somehow i stumbled upon the wikipedia article about the history of tobacco. i never knew that the third reich was so ahead of it's time with regards to recognizing the hazards of tobacco, as well as the fact that the pejorative term "anti-smoking nazis" may actually have a bit of truth to it:

Tobacco products were included in military rations during World War I.[1] After the war, cigarette smoking was portrayed in advertising as part of a glamorous carefree lifestyle, and became socially acceptable for women. In the 1930s Nazi medical and military leaders became concerned that tobacco might prove a hazard to human health, concluding that the "extraordinary rise in tobacco use" was "the single most important cause of the rising incidence of lung cancer," the first scientists to confirm this link. From 1933 to 1945 Germany had the world's strongest anti-smoking movement, with the full support of Adolf Hitler, who disapproved of smoking. He characterised tobacco as "the wrath of the Red Man against the White Man for having been given hard liquor." He also associated smoking, along with drinking, as affects of liberal decadence. Nazi propagandists even had a campaign to discourage smoking during pregnancy, which was medically progressive for its time. [1] Germany's defeat in 1945 meant that its aggressive anti-tobacco movement declined. Hitler and the campaigners behind the movement were dead, had been silenced, or were later executed for crimes against humanity. Much of the science on the dangers of tobacco had been gathered through brutal experimentation on concentration camp prisoners. In the post-World War II period, German physician Knut-Olaf Haustein was known for his work studying the effects of tobacco smoking.

Hmm. Hitler was a veggitarian as well, IIRC.