Measures against smoking in the Nazi state

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Smoking German paratroopers (1943)

After German doctors were the first to recognize the connection between smoking and lung cancer, the world's first public anti-tobacco campaign was initiated in the German Reich .

Anti-tobacco movements emerged in many countries in the early 20th century, but had little success with the exception of Germany, where the campaign was supported by the government. The anti-smoking movement in Germany was the strongest in the world in the 1930s and 1940s. The National Socialist leadership disapproved of tobacco consumption and several members publicly criticized tobacco consumption. Studies of the effects of smoking on health were promoted during the Nazi era and were the most important of their kind at the time. Adolf Hitler's personal rejection of smoking and Nazi racial hygiene were among the reasons behind the campaign against smoking. The campaign was linked to anti-Semitism and racism .

It included smoking bans on trams, buses and suburban trains. Furthermore, health education was promoted, cigarette rations were restricted in the Wehrmacht , lectures on health for soldiers were introduced and the tobacco tax increased. The National Socialists also imposed restrictions on tobacco advertising and smoking in public spaces and in restaurants and cafes .

Per capita cigarette consumption per
year in Germany and the USA
year
1930 1935 1940 1944
Germany 490 510 1022 743
United States 1485 1564 1976 3039

The campaign was unsuccessful in the regime's early years. Tobacco consumption rose from 1933 to 1939, but tobacco consumption in the military decreased from 1939 to 1945. Even at the end of the 20th century, the anti-tobacco movement in post-war Germany did not achieve the influence it had The time of National Socialism in Germany.

Researches

Investigations and studies of the influence of tobacco on public health were more advanced in Germany than in other countries at the time Adolf Hitler came to power . The connection between lung cancer and tobacco smoking was first established in Germany. The term passive smoking was coined in Germany. The research projects funded by the National Socialists revealed many harmful effects of smoking.

The National Socialists supported epidemiological research to investigate the effects of tobacco on health. Hitler personally supported the Scientific Institute for Research into Tobacco Dangers at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena under the direction of the race researcher Karl Astel . Founded in 1941, it was the most important institute in Germany for research into the dangers of smoking.

Franz Hermann Müller and Dietrich Eberhard Schairer were the first to use epidemiological case-control studies in 1943 to investigate lung cancer in smokers. In 1939, Müller published a report in the Zeitschrift für Krebsforschung on the study that lung cancer was more common among smokers. Müller's 1939 study, his dissertation, is considered the world's first epidemiological control study of the relationship between tobacco consumption and lung cancer. Müller emphasized that, in addition to the causes of lung cancer such as dust, car exhaust fumes, tuberculosis , X-rays and factory exhaust fumes, “the importance of tobacco smoking has increasingly come to the fore”.

Doctors of the Third Reich knew that cardiomyopathy was the most serious disease caused by smoking. Tobacco consumption was also sometimes blamed for the increasing myocardial infarction in Germany. In later years of the war, researchers saw nicotine as one of the causes of heart failure from which a not insignificant number of soldiers on the Eastern Front suffered. An Army pathologist recognized myocardial infarction as the cause of death in 32 young soldiers and documented in a report from 1944 that all of them were enthusiastic smokers. He referred to the opinion of the pathologist Franz Büchner that cigarettes are a “first rate coronary toxin”.

After the Second World War

Black cigarette market in Berlin in 1949

After the collapse of the German Reich at the end of the Second World War, American cigarette brands were quickly on the German black market of the post-war period on. Tobacco smuggling was widespread. In 1949 around 400 million cigarettes illegally entered Germany from the United States every month. In 1954, almost two billion Swiss cigarettes were smuggled into Germany and Italy.

As part of the Marshall Plan , the US sent free tobacco to Germany. The amount of tobacco delivered to Germany was 24,000 tons in 1948 and 69,000 tons in 1949. The American cigarette manufacturers also benefited from the 70 million dollars spent by the federal government of the United States .

The annual per capita consumption in Germany rose from 460 cigarettes in 1950 to 1532 in 1963.

See also

literature

  • E. Bachinger, M. McKee: Tobacco policies in Austria during the Third Reich . In: The International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease . tape 11 , no. 9 , 2007, ISSN  1027-3719 , p. 1033-1037 , PMID 17705984 ( ingentaconnect.com ).
  • Alexander Brooks: Guest Column: Forward to the Past. In: The Daily Californian. January 1996.
  • Richard Doll: Commentary: Lung cancer and tobacco consumption . In: International Journal of Epidemiology . tape 30 , no. 1 , 2001, ISSN  1464-3685 , p. 30-31 , doi : 10.1093 / ije / 30.1.30 .
  • Knut-Olaf Haustein: Fritz Lickint (1898–1960) - A life as an educator about the dangers of tobacco, addiction medicine in research and practice. In: Suchtmed. 6, No. 3, 2004, pp. 249-255 ( ecomed-medizin.de ).
  • Robert N. Proctor : Why did the Nazis have the world's most aggressive anti-cancer campaign? In: Endeavor . tape 23 , no. 2 , 1999, ISSN  0160-9327 , p. 76-79 , doi : 10.1016 / S0160-9327 (99) 01209-0 , PMID 10451929 .
  • Robert N. Proctor: Racial Hygiene. Medicine under the Nazis . Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Massachusetts) / London 1988, ISBN 0-674-74578-7 .
  • Robert N. Proctor: Blitzkrieg Against Cancer. Health and Propaganda in the Third Reich. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2002.
  • Francis R. Nicosia , Jonathan Huener: Medicine and Medical Ethics in Nazi Germany. Berghahn Books, 2002, ISBN 1-57181-386-1 .
  • Wendao Liang: The NSDAP anti-smoking party . Friday , June 11, 2014, accessed on July 16, 2020 . (a translation from Chinese), In: Common Sense. Guangxi Normal University Press, Guilin 2009, pp. 210-211.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ AH Roffo: Carcinogenic tobacco effects (PDF; 2.8 MB) JF Lehmanns Verlag, Berlin. January 8, 1940. Retrieved September 13, 2009.
  2. ^ A b Young, T. Kue: Population Health: Concepts and Methods. Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 252.
  3. ^ A b Richard Doll: Uncovering the effects of smoking: historical perspective . In: Statistical Methods in Medical Research . tape 7 , no. 2 , June 1998, ISSN  0962-2802 , p. 87–117 , doi : 10.1177 / 096228029800700202 , PMID 9654637 (English): “Societies were formed to discourage smoking at the beginning of the century in several countries, but they had little success except in Germany where they were officially supported by the government after the Nazis seized power. Efforts outside of Germany were hampered by the backlash against NAZI Germany who's anti-Semitic ideology alienated other European countries as well as most of the rest of the world ”
  4. ^ Gene Borio (1993-2001): Tobacco Timeline: The Twentieth Century 1900-1950 - The Rise of the Cigarette , accessed November 15, 2008.
  5. ↑ a b c d e f Robert N. Proctor : The anti-tobacco campaign of the Nazis: a little known aspect of public health in Germany, 1933–45. In: British Medical Journal . tape 313 , no. 7070 , December 1996, ISSN  0959-8138 , p. 1450-1453 , PMID 8973234 , PMC 2352989 (free full text).
  6. ↑ William F. Bynum, Anne Hardy, Stephen Jacyna, Christopher Lawrence, EM Tansey: The Western Medical Tradition 1800-2000 . Cambridge University Press, New York, NY 2006, ISBN 0-521-47524-4 .
  7. ^ Robert N. Proctor: Nazi Medicine and Public Health Policy. Dimensions, Anti-Defamation League, 1996 adl.org , accessed June 1, 2008.
  8. ^ A b c d George Norman Clark, AM Cooke, Asa Briggs: A History of the Royal College of Physicians of London . Clarendon Press for the Royal College of Physicians, Oxford 1964, ISBN 0-19-920031-9 .
  9. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Robert Proctor: The Nazi war on cancer . Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey 2000, ISBN 0-691-07051-2 .
  10. ^ George Davey Smith: Lifestyle, health, and health promotion in Nazi Germany . In: BMJ: British Medical Journal . tape 329 , no. 7480 , December 2004, ISSN  0959-8138 , p. 1424–1425 , doi : 10.1136 / bmj.329.7480.1424 , PMID 15604167 , PMC 535959 (free full text).
  11. ^ Sander L. Gilman, Xun Zhou: Smoke: A Global History of Smoking . Reaction Books, London 2004, ISBN 1-86189-200-4 .
  12. ^ Johan P. Mackenbach: Odol, Autobahne and a non-smoking guide: reflections on the innocence of public health . In: International Journal of Epidemiology . tape 34 , no. 3 , June 2005, ISSN  0300-5771 , p. 537-539 , doi : 10.1093 / ije / dyi039 , PMID 15746205 .
  13. ^ Margit Szöllösi-Janze: Science in the Third Reich . Berg Publishers, Oxford 2001, ISBN 0-585-43546-4 .
  14. ^ W. Timothy Coombs, Sherry J. Holladay: It's not just PR. Public relations in society . Blackwell Publishing, Malden, MA 2006, ISBN 1-4051-4405-X .
  15. ↑ Hans Ulrich Schairer: Commentary: In memoriam of my father, Prof. Dr. med. Dietrich Eberhard Schairer . In: International Journal of Epidemiology . tape 30 , no. 1 , January 28, 2001, ISSN  1464-3685 , p. 28–29 , doi : 10.1093 / ije / 30.1.28 (obituary).
  16. ^ A b Franz Hermann Müller: Tobacco abuse and lung carcinoma . In: Journal of Cancer Research . tape 49 , no. 1 , 1940, p. 57-85 , here p. 57 , doi : 10.1007 / BF01633114 .
  17. ↑ Waldemar Hort (Ed.): Pathology of the endocardium, the coronary arteries and the myocardium. Springer 2000, p. 327 ( books.google.de ).