[A Republican? Why stop there? (Cheap shot follows -- reader discretion advised.)]
Tobacco in the Reich
One topic that has only recently begun to attract attention is the Nazi anti-tobacco movement.[4-6] Germany had the world's strongest antismoking movement in the 1930s and early 1940s, supported by Nazi medical and military leaders worried that tobacco might prove a hazard to the race.[1 4] Many Nazi leaders were vocal opponents of smoking. Anti-tobacco activists pointed out that whereas Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt were all fond of tobacco, the three major fascist leaders of Europe - Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco - were all non-smokers.[7] Hitler was the most adamant, characterising tobacco as "the wrath of the Red Man against the White Man for having been given hard liquor." At one point the Fuhrer even suggested that Nazism might never have triumphed in Germany had he not given up smoking.[8]
German smoking rates rose dramatically in the first six years of Nazi rule, suggesting that the propaganda campaign launched during those early years was largely ineffective.[4 5] German smoking rates rose faster even than those of France, which had a much weaker anti-tobacco campaign. German per capita tobacco use between 1932 and 1939 rose from 570 to 900 cigarettes a year, whereas French tobacco consumption grew from 570 to only 630 cigarettes over the same period.[9]
Smith et al suggested that smoking may have functioned as a kind of cultural resistance ...
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Carl
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