Just a small anecdote that I fell upon and that I thought fits well in our Hitler and Holocaust week.
I've been reading this French essay that is, in very short, some sort of apogee of smoking. One of the sections mention the humane dimension of the cigarette. Apparently Hitler used to be a big smoker during his youth in Vienna but he suddenly stopped and never smoked again. Hitler said of his old habit that if he hadn't stopped smoking Germany would've never known its present glory. The message the author was trying to convey here is that a cigarette or the deliberate act of doing something that has no other purpose than indulging and pleasure is a tie to humanity, once Hitler gave it up, he gave up his humanity as well.
I hope you enjoyed this little parenthesis!
The name of the essay by the way is Fumer Tue: Peut-on Risquer sa Vie? ( Smoking kills: Do we have the right to risk our lives?)
Robert Proctor has quite a good book called "The Nazi War on Cancer" (1999), which shows how the Nazi regime had one of the strongest public health policies that the world had ever seen, including a very aggressive anti-smoking campaign. Nazi scientists were the first to link smoking with lung cancer. They also instituted a large number of environmental safeguards. The book raises provocative questions about what it means to try to keep the "nation" healthy and why we try to do so...
ReplyDeleteWow, that's actually so interesting! I wonder if when Hitler made that comment, he was consciously reflecting on the notion that he "gave up his humanity," and so was able to become so powerful. Or maybe he only saw it as a weakness...
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad you posted this, I'm going to have a look at that essay!