Reprising this fascinating short article in the British Journal of Medicine by Robert N. Proctor, professor of the history of medicine at Penn State University: “The anti-smoking campaigns of the Nazis: a little known aspect of public health in Germany, 1933-1945” [pdf].
The campaign was mounted despite the arguments that (1) taxes on tobacco were a significant source of income for the German government and (2) the tobacco industry provided thousands of jobs. Political principles were at stake.
The chief anti-smoking activist, one A. Hitler, stated that “Nazism might never have triumphed in Germany had he not given up smoking.”
I gave the Nazi anti-smoking campaigns a passing mention in Nietzsche and the Nazis, in the context of discussing the Nazis’ socialization of the body politic. Proctor has developed the anti-smoking theme in much greater detail.
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