Nazis and Tobacco

Always the champions of public heath, Nazis in Germany held the first public anti-smoking campaign in modern history. Hitler, once a heavy smoker, considered smoking to be a waste of money and responsible for the deaths of many good people. He believed tobacco to be the "the wrath of the Red Man against the White Man, vengeance for having been given hard liquor." Nazi scientists were the first to discover the link between smoking and lung cancer.

Another motivating factor behind the anti-smoking campaign was tobacco's effect on the reproductive health of women. Nazis wanted their women to be as fertile as possible, and research by Nazi scientists revealed significant health effects of smoking on pregnant women and their children. They correctly theorized a mother who smokes will have nicotine in her breast milk, as well as found connections between pregnant women who smoke and failed pregnancies.