Hitler on 11 March 1942, night --
"I am convinced that if I had been a smoker, I would never have been able to bear the cares and anxieties which have been a burden for me for so long. Perhaps the German people owes its salvation to the fact. So many outstanding men have been lost to me through tobacco poisoning."
Nazi physicians, notorious for euthanasia of the mentally ill and for gruesome experiments in concentration camps, were pioneers in research against cancer, which they viewed as a form of race pollution. Their work is written up in
For best appreciation, the following should be read aloud with a bogus "Hogan's Heroes" accent, eg of the character "Major Hochstetter."
From Hitler's Table Talk, 2nd Edition, translated by Cameron and Stevens, pp. 360-361:
[In front of the house of a Nürnberg merchant, with a sign reading "Smokers are requested to stay away from this house."]
Note to the humor-impaired: This is not intended as a serious argument that smoking opponents are Nazis.
"I had the same thing put up at my home. I said to the Reichsmarshal quite recently: 'Goering, do you think that it makes a good impression when people see you smoking a pipe? What would you think of a statue that represented you with a cigar in your mouth?'
Curious historical sidelight:
Robert N. Proctor, The Nazi War on Cancer, Princeton University Press, 1999?; 380 pp.
Return to HSC index page.