Elsevier

Public Health

Volume 122, Issue 5, May 2008, Pages 497-505
Public Health

Original Research
Tobacco policies in Nazi Germany: Not as simple as it seems

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.puhe.2007.08.005Get rights and content

Summary

Objective

Reluctance to develop effective tobacco control measures in Germany has been attributed to the anti-smoking stance taken by the Nazis, which has encouraged pro-smoking groups to equate tobacco control advocacy with totalitarianism. This paper reassesses the scale and nature of tobacco control in Germany during the Third Reich.

Study Design and Methods

Analysis of documents and reports about the situation in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s supplemented by a review of Reich legal ordinances, party newspapers, health behaviour guidelines issued by Nazi party organizations, and interviews with expert informants.

Results

While there was considerable opposition to smoking in Nazi Germany, there was no consistent Nazi policy to combat smoking, and what did exist built on pre-existing policies. Although extreme measures were taken in isolated localities or by overzealous party members, there was a marked ambivalence to tobacco control at the highest levels. Many policies were contradictory; measures were often not enforced, and cigarettes were actively distributed to ‘deserving’ groups.

Conclusion

Policies on tobacco in Nazi Germany are much more complex than is often represented by those who invoke them to condemn those seeking to reduce the burden of disease caused by smoking.

Introduction

The tobacco industry and its supporters have linked contemporary proposals for tobacco control measures with Nazi policies. Recent examples often draw selectively on the descriptions by Davey Smith et al.1, 2 and Proctor3, 4, 5, 6 of Nazi campaigns against tobacco in Germany, even though Proctor warned specifically against this selective interpretation. In a section in his book entitled ‘Playing the Nazi card’, he suggested that the industry's use of such arguments was likely to increase as tobacco control efforts gathered strength.3 Even when he was writing in the late 1990s, he was able to identify a number of examples, such as a 1995 advertisement by Philip Morris showing a map of Amsterdam with a small walled-off area marked ‘smoking section’, clearly intended to invoke the concept of a ghetto. Proctor's prediction has proven correct, with tobacco control activists being attacked as fanatics while tobacco control measures widely accepted elsewhere are presented as unimaginable totalitarian attacks on individual liberty, comparable to those during the fascist regime in the 1930s and 1940s. For example, a search on the pro-smoking website, www.forces.org yields over 200 hits with the word ‘Hitler’. Other attempts to link the image of Nazism with tobacco control include ‘tobacco Gestapo’7 or ‘tobacco Nazis’.8

The message contained in them is exemplified by the following quote from the Forces website referring to a paper by Davey Smith et al.1:

This commentary depicts with great precision and accurate bibliographical references the astonishing similarity of the Nazi propaganda against smoking with the current propaganda of the antismoking industry. Had we removed the references to the Nazis, the reader would think that this is contemporary material…The resurgence of fascism under the guise of health is not new, and we better learn the lesson of history once and for all, or the price to pay for our ignorance will be dear indeed.’9

In a description of organizations active in the field of tobacco control on the same website, the US Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are accompanied by a picture of a Nazi swastika, symbolizing that they are considered ‘Dangerous organizations and social programs—usually state-endorsed—aimed at population behaviour conditioning and control by all means necessary, including intimidation, repression, force, regulation, etc.’10 These are not isolated incidents. A search on Google using the word ‘nico-Nazis’ yields over 1000 hits, including one where the term is used to label two of the authors of this paper. It should, however, be noted that these references are overwhelmingly in websites from the USA or the UK, and where they appear on German sites, it is almost always to express curiosity or surprise about their use.

While some senior Nazis, including Hitler, were strongly opposed to smoking and some Nazi policies did seek to discourage smoking, the authors concur with Proctor that the reality was more complex than is often portrayed and, in reality, there was considerable ambivalence at the highest political levels; an argument also advanced cogently in a recent paper by Lewy.3, 11 This paper will build on the earlier analyses to look in more depth at the extent of this ambivalence, and provide new insights into the differing views taken by senior Nazi party officials.

Section snippets

Methods

The starting point was the seminal research by Davey Smith et al. and Proctor.1, 2, 3, 5 Initial searches on PubMed and Google were followed by searches in, among others, the archives of the Institute of Contemporary History in Munich and the Bundesarchiv (Federal Archive) in Berlin. In brief, these included manual searches of legislation enacted between 1939 and 1945 (Reichsgesetzbücher), official publications (e.g. Deutsche Arbeitsfront) that may describe anti-smoking campaigns or guidelines

History of tobacco control in Germany

As has been noted previously, long before the Nazis came to power (1933), Germany was a leader in both epidemiological studies on smoking-related diseases and policies against smoking.3, 6, 13 As early as the 18th Century, there were prohibitions on smoking in, for example, towns, forests, barns and bedrooms. The restrictions were primarily designed to reduce the risk of fire but there was also a strong undercurrent of morality, with smoking by women seen as socially unacceptable.14 These

Discussion

While Nazi Germany did have policies on smoking that were in advance of those in other countries, such as an age limit of 18 years for smoking, partial advertising restrictions and bans on smoking in some public places, these built on policies that existed before the Nazis came to power. These restrictions did not always represent a concern for health. For example, some were designed primarily to prevent fires and others reflected social norms concerning ‘respectable’ behaviour. Furthermore,

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Austrian law historian, Dr Heinrich Gallhuber, for his expertise and his help in finding the respective Reich laws and ordinances, Dr Klaus Lankheit from the archive of the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich for his research and expertise, and Dr Norbert Hirschhorn, Professor George Davey Smith, Professor David Simpson and Dr Thilo Grüning for helpful comments on an earlier draft.

Ethical approval

Not required.

Funding

AG is supported by a Health

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