Saturday, January 23, 2010



Anti-tobacco movement in Nazi Germany

The National Socialist leadership condemned smoking[7] and several of them openly criticized tobacco consumption.[6] Research on smoking and its effects on health thrived under Nazi rule[8] and was the most important of its type at that time.[9] Adolf Hitler's personal distaste for tobacco[10] 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.
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Reproductive policies
The Nazi reproductive policies were a significant factor behind their anti-tobacco campaign.[11] 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) said that a smoking mother's breast milk contained nicotine,[20] a claim that modern research has proven correct.[21][22][23][24] 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.
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Association with antisemitism and racism
Apart from public health concerns, the Nazis were heavily influenced by ideology;[28] specifically, the movement was influenced by concepts of racial hygiene and bodily purity.[46] Nazi leaders believed that it was wrong for the master race to smoke[28] and that tobacco consumption was equal to "racial degeneracy".[47] The Nazis viewed tobacco as a "genetic poison".[46] Racial hygienists opposed tobacco use, fearing that it would "corrupt" the "German germ plasm".[48] Nazi anti-tobacco activists often tried to depict tobacco as a "vice" of the "degenerate" Africans.[46]

The Nazis claimed that the Jews were responsible for introducing tobacco and its harmful effects. The Seventh-day Adventist Church in Germany announced that smoking was an unhealthy vice spread by the Jews.[48] Johann von Leers, editor of the Nordische Welt (Nordic World), during the opening ceremony of the Wissenschaftliches Institut zur Erforschung der Tabakgefahren in 1941, proclaimed that "Jewish capitalism" was responsible for the spread of tobacco use across Europe. He said that the first tobacco on German soil was brought by the Jews and that they controlled the tobacco industry in Amsterdam, the principal European entry point of Nicotiana.[49]

... with the problems of world overpopulation ...
... maybe smoking should be given incentives ...
... like in China ...
... unless you want to stand the side of the cannibals ...
... that is where overpopulation leads to ...





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