1996/12/07 by Robert N. Proctor · 55 citations
Arts and Humanities · Medicine · #Medical History and Research #Historical Medical Research and Treatments #Nazism #Public health #Tobacco use #Political science #Tobacco industry #Tobacco in Alabama #Tobacco control #Environmental health #Advertising #Medicine #Law #Tobacco harm reduction #Business #Politics #Population
paper · doi:10.1136/bmj.313.7070.1450
published in BMJ 313(7070), 1450-1453
openalex publication_date 1996/12/07 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/07
Historians and epidemiologists have only recently begun to explore the Nazi anti-tobacco movement. Germany had the world's strongest antismoking movement in the 1930s and early 1940s, encompassing bans on smoking in public spaces, bans on advertising, restrictions on tobacco rations for women, and the world's most refined tobacco epidemiology, linking tobacco use with the already evident epidemic of lung cancer. The anti-tobacco campaign must be understood against the backdrop of the Nazi quest for racial and bodily purity, which also motivated many other public health efforts of the era.