Document KGY5DmrjVnY7DkD1ZG8karMLN

198 CHAPTER 6 the Galois of tobacco science*--came to pioneer the field of tobacco epidemiology, only to vanish into obscurity. We do know that his pathbreaking article was sometimes cited in the 1950s, when Ernst Wynder and Evarts Graham in the United States, along with Richard Doll and A. Bradford Hill in England, confirmed the lung cancer-tobacco link.82 The U.S. surgeon gen eral's report of 1964 cited Muller's paper, along with Schairer and Schoniger's, to which we shall turn in a moment. What is not often recognized, however, is that leading German physicians by the 1940s--more than a decade earlier than their English and Ameri can counterparts--were convinced that smoking was both addic tive and the major cause of lung cancer.83 Fritz Lickint concluded in 1935 in Germany's leading medical weekly that there was "no longer any doubt" that tobacco played a significant role in the rise of bronchial cancer.84 Max de Crinis, one of the era's most influen tial psychiatrists (and a notorious architect of the murderous "eu thanasia operation"), in 1941 stated that the question of whether tobacco was behind the explosive rise in lung cancer "can now be answered in the affirmative."85 That consensus86 died with the Nazi regime and would be rekindled only after the war under the leadership of Anglo-American scientists. Moving into Action Armed with the requisite scientific expertise and political power, Nazi authorities moved to limit smoking through a combination of propaganda, public relations, and official decrees.87 The Ministry of Science and Education ordered elementary schools to discuss the dangers of tobacco, and the Reich Health Office (the "Roland" of Reich health leadership, in Reiter's boast) published pamphlets warning young people not to smoke. Public lectures sponsored by the Reich Health Office--on maternal health or vaccination, for example--were declared "smoke-free," and the Reichsstand des * Evariste Galois was the nineteenth-century French mathematician who pio neered the field of group theory, only to die in a duel at the age of twenty (in 1832). THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST TOBACCO 199 Deutschen Handwerks, the now-Nazified craft guild, advised its members against smoking while at work.88 A Bureau against the Hazards of Alcohol and Tobacco was established in June of 1939 from the remnants of Germany's leading antialcohol association; a Bureau for the Struggle against Addictive Drugs (Reichsstelle fur Rauschgiftbekampfung) performed similar work against mor phine, sleeping pills, Coca-Cola, Pervitin (the prescription stimu lant), and occasionally tobacco. Fifteen thousand people attended a March 5-7,1939, congress in Frankfurt on the hazards of tobacco and alcohol, at which Reich Health Office president Hans Reiter and other Nazi luminaries--including Leonardo Conti, Robert Ley, and Ferdinand Sauerbruch (standing in for Gerhard Wag ner)--attacked both vices as reproductive poisons and drains on the German economy.89 Throughout this period, magazines like Die Genussgifte (Poisons of taste or habit),* Auf der Wacht (On guard), and Reine Luft (Pure air) published a regular drumbeat against this "insidious poison," along with articles charting the unhealthful effects of alcohol, teen age dancing, cocaine, and other vices. More than a dozen books denounced the "smoking slavery" or "cultural degeneration" feared from the growth of tobacco use.90 Tobacco was branded "the enemy of world peace," and there was even talk of "tobacco terror" and "tobacco capitalism."91 Karl Astel of Jena proclaimed tobacco "an enemy of the people" (Volksfeind), and at least one medical thesis--on tobacco addiction--characterized cigarettes as "coffin nails."92 Hitler himself in 1941 denounced tobacco as "one of man's most dangerous poisons."93 Antismoking activists repeat edly reminded readers that Hitler neither smoked nor drank hard * The German term Genussmittel is notoriously difficult to translate. David Jacob son has rendered it "articles of pleasure," especially those which "are eaten, drunk, or inhaled to create pleasures of the senses, as opposed to those foods and bever ages consumed as necessities." Included are all spices and condiments, but also stimulants, intoxicants, and narcotics such as tobacco, coffee, tea, alcohol and opium. "The word Genussmittel therefore also implies that these substances are lux uries for sybaritic enjoyment, means for creating epicurean delights and, by exten sion, a state of sensual bliss." See the translator's note in Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Tastes of Paradise: A Social History of Spices, Stimulants, and Intoxicants (New York: Pantheon Books, 1992), p. xiii.