How War Made the Cigarette
Summary
TLDRThis video explores how the cigarette transformed from a symbol of vice to a patriotic emblem, largely due to its widespread use by soldiers during WWI and WWII. Militaries distributed cigarettes to boost morale, inadvertently creating a new generation of smokers. Post-war, tobacco companies capitalized on this by marketing cigarettes as symbols of freedom and masculinity, leading to a dramatic increase in consumption. The video also touches on the cigarette's role in post-war Europe, influenced by the Marshall Plan and the stigmatization of anti-smoking campaigns in Germany.
Takeaways
- 🚬 The cigarette's image transformed from a vice of the underclass to a symbol of patriotism during the First World War.
- 🔥 World War I saw a significant increase in cigarette consumption among soldiers, with militaries using them to boost morale and manage stress.
- 🌟 The U.S. Army, in particular, recognized the importance of cigarettes, with General John Pershing equating tobacco with bullets in necessity.
- 🎯 Post-war, cigarette companies capitalized on the association between smoking and patriotism to market their products to returning soldiers and the public.
- 📈 The interwar period saw a dramatic rise in cigarette consumption, with per capita rates increasing over 1,000 percent between 1900 and 1920.
- 🔗 The cigarette's popularity was further solidified during World War II, with the industry experiencing a boom in production and consumption.
- 💡 Cigarette advertising strategies during the wars included linking the product to wartime patriotism, sacrifice, and support for soldiers.
- 🌍 The Marshall Plan inadvertently contributed to the spread of cigarette smoking in Europe by distributing American tobacco products.
- 🚭 Despite the Nazi Party's anti-smoking stance, cigarettes were still considered important for German soldiers' morale during World War II.
- ♻️ The cigarette industry's growth was not solely due to the wars, but these conflicts significantly accelerated its acceptance and spread globally.
Q & A
How did the perception of cigarettes change during the First World War?
-During the First World War, cigarettes transitioned from being seen as a vice of the underclass and a threat to health to becoming associated with patriotism and support for soldiers. The military included cigarettes in soldiers' rations to boost morale, which contributed to their popularity and acceptance.
What role did the military play in popularizing cigarettes?
-The military played a significant role in popularizing cigarettes by including them in soldiers' rations during both World War I and II. This practice was intended to improve soldiers' morale and calm their nerves amidst the horrors of war, effectively addicting them and spreading the habit upon their return to civilian life.
How did advertising strategies contribute to the rise in cigarette consumption after World War I?
-After World War I, advertising strategies played a crucial role in increasing cigarette consumption by associating smoking with patriotism, freedom, and modernity. Advertisements depicted soldiers smoking, making it a symbol of patriotism, and this connection was further reinforced by the inclusion of collectible cigarette cards in packs.
What was the impact of World War II on the cigarette industry?
-World War II had a substantial impact on the cigarette industry, with per capita consumption in the U.S. nearly doubling from 1939 to 1945. The war effort saw a significant increase in cigarette production and consumption, as well as aggressive marketing campaigns that linked smoking with patriotism and support for the troops.
How did cigarette companies target women during World War II?
-Cigarette companies targeted women during World War II by encouraging them to buy cigarettes as gifts for their husbands or boyfriends in the military. Advertisements in publications like 'Vogue' depicted women in war-related roles endorsing specific cigarette brands, positioning smoking as a patriotic act and a symbol of support for the war effort.
What was the significance of the Marshall Plan in the spread of cigarette consumption in Europe?
-The Marshall Plan played a significant role in the spread of cigarette consumption in Europe by including tobacco products as part of the relief aid. Approximately 4.4% of all products shipped to Europe under the plan were tobacco-based, which not only supported the U.S. tobacco industry but also reinforced the postwar culture of smoking.
How did the Nazi Party's stance on smoking influence postwar attitudes towards cigarettes in Germany?
-The Nazi Party's opposition to smoking and their public health campaigns against it led to an interesting postwar dynamic. After the war, anti-smoking efforts in Germany were often conflated with the authoritarianism of the Nazi era. This association may have contributed to an increase in cigarette consumption as health efforts against tobacco were stigmatized.
What were the health concerns associated with cigarettes before their popularity increased?
-Before the popularity of cigarettes increased, health concerns included the belief that they were unhealthy and could enfeeble a generation of young Americans. Early health reformers and temperance activists likened the cigarette to alcohol, associating it with destructive side effects and societal ills.
How did the cigarette's image change from a symbol of immorality to a symbol of masculinity and patriotism?
-The cigarette's image changed from a symbol of immorality to one of masculinity and patriotism primarily through its association with soldiers during the world wars. As soldiers were seen as heroes and patriots, the act of smoking became linked with bravery and sacrifice, transforming the cigarette into a symbol of American masculinity and patriotism.
What was the role of the YMCA in changing public perception of cigarettes during World War I?
-The YMCA, which was initially against smoking, changed its stance during World War I. It began handing out cigarettes to soldiers on the front lines and in military canteens, viewing smoking as a lesser evil compared to alcoholism, prostitution, and harder drugs. This shift helped to change public perception, associating cigarettes more with support for soldiers than with immorality.
Outlines
🚬 The Transformation of Cigarettes from Vice to Patriotism
This paragraph discusses the significant shift in the perception of cigarettes during and after World War I. Initially viewed as a vice associated with the underclass, criminals, and foreigners, the cigarette's image changed dramatically as it became associated with patriotism and soldiers. The war played a pivotal role in this transformation, with militaries inadvertently acting as large-scale distributors of cigarettes, leading to a surge in popularity and acceptance. Post-war, advertisers capitalized on this new image, and the United States promoted cigarettes globally, marking the beginning of the cigarette's rise to worldwide dominance.
🌍 Global Impact of World War I on Cigarette Consumption
The paragraph highlights the substantial increase in cigarette consumption during World War I across various countries. It details how the inclusion of cigarettes in soldiers' rations to boost morale led to a surge in popularity. The narrative emphasizes the psychological and physiological benefits of nicotine in the context of war, and how this contributed to the normalization and acceptance of cigarette smoking. The transformation of the cigarette from a symbol of vice to a symbol of masculinity and patriotism is also discussed, with the Young Men's Christian Association's shift in stance towards cigarettes being a notable example.
🎖️ Post-War Marketing and the Continued Rise of Cigarette Popularity
This section delves into how the end of World War I led to a strategic marketing push by the cigarette industry to capitalize on the returning soldiers' new smoking habits. It outlines the efforts of companies like Chesterfield to associate their brand with patriotism and the military, effectively rebranding cigarettes as a symbol of freedom and modernity. The paragraph also discusses the broader societal changes, including the shift in gender norms and the rise of cigarette consumption among women, as the industry targeted new demographics and continued to expand its market.
🔥 World War II and the Cigarette Industry's Meteoric Growth
The paragraph explores the impact of World War II on the cigarette industry, noting a significant increase in both military and civilian consumption. It discusses the role of the cigarette as a morale booster during the war and the aggressive marketing strategies employed by companies to link their products with patriotism. The paragraph also touches on the global effects of the war, including the Marshall Plan's role in spreading American tobacco products to Europe and the subsequent influence on European smoking culture. It concludes with a reflection on the lasting impact of these events on the cigarette's popularity and the industry's growth.
🌬️ The Lasting Legacy of Cigarettes in Post-War Society
This final paragraph examines the enduring legacy of cigarette smoking in the post-war era. It discusses how the cigarette's association with solidarity and conformity during the wars became ingrained in peacetime social culture. The paragraph also addresses the unintended consequences of World War II in Europe, such as the reinforcement of smoking habits through U.S. initiatives like the Marshall Plan and the stigmatization of anti-smoking efforts in Germany due to the Nazi's anti-cigarette stance. It concludes by reflecting on the cigarette's continued global presence and the health risks it poses, despite its waning popularity in some regions.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Cigarette
💡World War I
💡Patriotism
💡Addiction
💡Marketing
💡Health Reformers
💡Temperance Activists
💡YMCA
💡Marshall Plan
💡Nazi Germany
💡Globalization
Highlights
Cigarettes were once considered a vice of the underclass and a threat to public health and morals.
The First World War marked a turning point, with cigarettes becoming popular and associated with patriotism.
World War I saw a significant increase in cigarette consumption among soldiers, who found solace in smoking.
Nicotine in cigarettes was recognized for its calming effects on soldiers' nerves during wartime.
Military rations included cigarettes to boost morale, effectively addicting soldiers to tobacco.
Post-war, soldiers returned home with smoking habits, which began to normalize cigarette use in society.
Cigarette companies capitalized on the post-war market, targeting returning soldiers and the general public with advertisements.
The cigarette became a symbol of American masculinity, displacing the pipe as the preferred method of tobacco consumption.
World War II further increased cigarette consumption, with the industry producing record numbers to meet demand.
Cigarette advertising during World War II was heavily associated with patriotism and support for the war effort.
The Marshall Plan inadvertently promoted cigarette smoking in Europe by distributing American tobacco products.
In Germany, post-war anti-smoking efforts were conflated with Nazi authoritarianism, leading to increased smoking rates.
The cigarette industry's growth was not solely due to the wars, but they significantly accelerated its acceptance and popularity.
Cigarette smoking became a tribal act during conflicts, signifying conformity and solidarity among soldiers.
The globalized post-war world facilitated the spread of cigarette smoking and its associated health risks.
The cigarette's rise to prominence was intertwined with military strategy, marketing, and societal shifts in the 20th century.
Transcripts
- When the First World War began,
everything was about to change,
and the cigarette was no exception.
Before 1914, the cigarette was considered
the vice of the underclass, of criminals, foreigners,
outcasts and rogues.
It was seen as a blight
on the health of the average American,
and a harbinger of the collapse of the Republic.
But when the war ended, four years later,
the cigarette suddenly exploded in popularity,
no longer was its smoker a pariah, but a patriot.
How did this happen?
How did the cigarette go from nothing
to a titan of the world?
It has everything to do with war.
It's the story of how the world's militaries
briefly became the largest cartels in the world,
addicting millions of soldiers
and sending them back home to spread their habits.
It's how advertisers exploited that fact,
and how the United States sold the cigarette
to a world ravaged by conflict.
This is the story of "How War Made the Cigarette."
But first, this video is made possible by DeleteMe,
a data-privacy company that makes removing
your personal information from the internet
as simple and easy as possible.
If you don't live in a country that's protected
by European Data Regulations,
your data has likely been vacuumed up by data brokers
and is being sold to third parties for profit.
Usually, they use that data to target you with specific ads,
but that same data can also be used
to discriminate against you
when applying for health insurance
or when being offered a job.
Basically, out there right now is a profile on you
that any company can pay to see.
This data can also be used by fraudsters and criminals
if any data broker is hit by a leak,
which means that your personal information
suddenly becomes a valuable tool in the arsenal
of somebody trying to scam, defraud, or impersonate you.
DeleteMe believes in the right to privacy
and the right to removal, and they make
removing this information from the internet a lot easier,
with just a few clicks, you're ready to go.
Unlike other companies, DeleteMe's sole focus
is removing your personal information from the internet,
so their services are a lot more targeted and effective.
Get 20% off DeleteMe US's consumer plans
when you go to www.joindeleteme.com/IMPERIAL
and use the promo code IMPERIAL at checkout.
That's joindeleteme.com/IMPERIAL.
Anyway, that's all.
Let's get back to the video.
Society in the late eighteen and early nineteen-hundreds
was not particularly fond of the cigarette.
It was a mysterious novelty that most were ignorant of,
and in the dim light of ignorance
is born fear and prejudice.
In Great Britain, cigarettes were linked
with a lack of manliness and effeminacy.
In the United States, it was associated
with immoral miscreants, up to no good, or criminals,
or foreigners whose customs may as well have been alien
as far as the American middle class was concerned.
Reflecting that mood, one particularly alarmist
1886 "New York Times" article wrote that, quote,
"The decadence of Spain began
when the Spaniards adopted cigarettes,
and if this pernicious practice
obtains among adult Americans the ruin of the Republic
is close at hand."
Influential Americans such as Henry Ford
also railed against the cigarette,
in this 1914 pamphlet, he argues that,
"If you study the history of almost any criminal,
you will find that he is an inveterate cigarette smoker."
Early health reformers too criticized the product
on the basis that it was unhealthy, and that it threatened
to enfeeble an entire generation of young Americans,
who were seen to smoke it disproportionately.
Temperance activists likened the cigarette vice
to that of alcohol and its destructive side effects,
creating the unenviable association with a product
that would soon be outlawed in the entire country
under prohibition.
But of course, the cigarette never met that fate.
Between 1895 and 1921, 15 states banned cigarette sales,
but those bans were short-lived,
by 1927, they had all been repealed.
In fact, in the face of all that opposition
between 1900 and 1920, per capita consumption
saw an increase of more than 1,000 percent.
The war against the cigarette never reached the same heights
as the war against alcohol,
another conflict rudely derailed it
before it could reach its peak, the First World War.
The First World War caused a massive uptick
in cigarette consumption in most participating countries.
In the United Kingdom, consumption of the cigarette
nearly doubled, between 1914 and 1920,
coming to represent the majority of tobacco sales.
In France too, cigarette sales rose
from 3.7 to 4.9 billion from 1913 to 1919,
a 31% increase in six years.
A year before war broke out in 1914,
Germany produced roughly 13 billion cigarettes,
when records become available again in 1925,
they were producing 30.5 billion.
The U.S. was no exception, its per capita consumption rates
more than doubled between 1915 and 1920,
some estimates say it tripled.
A significant cause of this increase
was the popularity of cigarettes among soldiers.
They were included in the rations of U.S., British,
French and German servicemen
as a means of improving morale in the trenches.
It was recognized early on that the nicotine present
in a cigarette was an effective means
of calming the nerves of soldiers,
who were inescapably surrounded in every waking moment
by all manner of calamity and catastrophe.
The cigarette was a solace in a sea of mayhem,
a slim white and brown soldier standing rank and file
in a trench-like box of its own,
helping to wash away the misery of war.
So, militaries became drug dealers,
addicting their soldiers to cigarettes
hoping to keep spirits high.
Reflecting the importance the U.S. Army placed on smoking,
General John Pershing, the commander
of the American Expeditionary Forces in Europe stated,
"You ask me what we need to win this war.
I answer tobacco as much as bullets.
Tobacco is as indispensable as the daily ration.
We must have thousands of tons without delay."
The British Minister of Food, David Thomas,
also sang its praises,
he said, "Our men would eat a great deal more
if they did not have tobacco,"
acknowledging that smoking reduced the appetite
and thus lowered the amount of food
required by the average soldier.
The cigarette just happened to be the most effective vehicle
for the delivery of tobacco and nicotine, small and compact,
it was the natural choice over cigars or pipes
in a logistics calculus.
This along with psychological and physiological effects
that would deemed beneficial in wartime
meant it suddenly became a product very much in vogue.
Indeed, even former temperance activists
who had opposed cigarettes just prior to the war
had suddenly changed their tunes.
The Young Men's Christian Association, or YMCA,
a formerly ardent opponent of smoking
whose founder stated cigarettes
were, quote, "a growing evil,"
was now actively handing them out
to soldiers on the front lines and in military canteens.
What was the rationale behind this change of heart?
Well, smoking cigarettes was seen
as relatively less harmful, compared with the likes
of alcoholism, prostitution, harder drugs and gambling.
The YMCA reasoned that cigarettes
could be used to keep soldiers away
from these more sinister activities.
As for the concerns about health,
well, denying cigarettes to soldiers
on the basis of health risks seemed rather ridiculous,
considering they stood amidst shell and shrapnel
day after day on the front.
One YMCA member explained the absurdity of the matter
in a brutal fashion.
"Hundreds of thousands of men in the trenches would go mad,
or at least become so nervously inefficient
as to be useless, if tobacco were denied them.
Many a sorely wounded lad has died
with a cigarette in his mouth, whose dying was less bitter
because of the poison pill.
The argument that tobacco may shorten the life
5 or 10 years, and that it dulls the brain in the meantime,
seems a little out of place in a trench
where men stand in frozen blood and water
and wait for death."
While the cigarette helped soften the tedium
and trauma of life in the trenches,
it addicted hundreds of thousands of men
to a harmful stimulant that they did not need
during peacetime.
World War I did eventually end, and when it did,
the U.S. Army sent home a new generation of addicts
it had made dependent on the cigarette and like clockwork,
the Western World's markets smelled an opportunity,
an opportunity to sell more product.
Benedict Crowell, the Assistant Director of War Munitions
in the United States, estimated that 95%
of all American soldiers used tobacco,
in one form or another, during the war.
Cigarette companies were aware of this,
and they were eager to capture these potential new customers
as soon as they came home from service abroad.
The cigarette manufacturer, Chesterfield,
released this set of adverts in January of 1919,
just two months after the end of hostilities in Europe.
They depicted servicemen from the Air Force, Navy,
and Military, puffing away at a mild Chesterfield,
creating an explicit association
between the cigarette and the soldier.
In doing so, they managed to make smoking patriotic,
where once cigarettes were lumped together
with America's ills and immorality,
they were now associated with far more positive values,
freedom, democracy, and modernity.
War had just popularized the cigarette.
Just as importantly, the war and these ads
disrupted the perception of the cigarette
as an effeminate vice
meant mainly for, quote, "boys and women,"
as one 1884 "New York Times" article put it.
Prior to the First World War, the pipe was seen
as the manliest means of consuming tobacco,
but now, the cigarette had taken its place.
By becoming the soldier's habit,
it had transformed itself into the quintessential symbol
of American masculinity.
But it wasn't just in the United States that the cigarette
became associated with war and patriotism.
In March of 1917, the British tobacco manufacturer Wills
released a set of 24 cards
included in their cigarette packs.
Each card depicted servicemen from different branches
of the military, and on occasion,
the less famous supporting casts of the war.
A masterstroke of marketing, this connected cigarettes
with the bravery and sacrifice of the average person
toiling away in the machine of war,
whether they be on the front lines or in the factory,
every drag and puff of a Wills cigarette
was henceforth imbued with patriotic fervor.
Another clever element of including cigarette cards,
although Wills definitely weren't the first to do so,
was that it encouraged smokers to buy more packs
until they completed the full set of 24,
it gamified the addiction.
Despite these innovative tactics,
cigarette advertising and the cigarette industry itself
was still in its infancy at the time,
in many ways, World War I was just the beginning,
the Second World War was when the cigarette
really turned on its afterburners.
The impact of World War II
on the popularity of cigarettes seems obvious,
one only needs to look at this graph.
It shows an increase in the U.S.
from roughly 1,800 cigarettes in per capita consumption
in the year 1939, to nearly double that in 1945.
We should, however, be careful
not to conflate correlation with causation.
The cigarette industry,
as historian Richard Tennant outlines,
experienced consistent growth throughout the decades
between World War I and II and was only hampered
by external events such as the Great Depression.
That is to say, the cigarette
looked to be on an upward trend even before World War II.
That trend would've likely continued
even in the absence of the conflict
as industrialization ramped up
and the increasing convenience
and fashionableness of the cigarette grew as well.
The Second World War, although not essential
to the success of the cigarette,
transformed its tempered rise into a meteoric one.
During World War I, a mere total of 7.5 billion cigarettes
were shipped abroad for military use,
that number had skyrocketed to 92 billion per year
in World War II.
The number of cigarettes being consumed
by the average American soldier was so high
that one December 1944 defense report wrote that, quote,
"30% of the total available supply of cigarettes
is going to our armed forces overseas."
This coupled with a sharp increase
in civilian demand for cigarettes led to a cigarette famine,
ultimately resulting in hoarding and panic buying.
This prompted the American cigarette industry
to go into overdrive to keep up,
pumping out a quantity of cigarettes
once thought unfathomable.
Yearly output climbed from 172.5 billion in 1939
to 267.6 billion in 1945,
an increase of 55% over six years.
Even more than in the First World War,
cigarette marketing became associated
with wartime patriotism and sacrifice.
Adverts like this one encouraged the reader
to buy cigarettes and war bonds
in support of the war effort,
as if trying to conflate the two
as similarly patriotic acts.
Ad campaigns also started targeting women,
who had been drafted in droves
into the US's war support industry.
This advertisement in a November 1944 edition of "Vogue"
depicted four women, each in different
war-related vocations, praising Camel cigarettes
as their smoke of choice,
"With so many women in the war, as with so many men,
their cigarette is Camel."
Cigarette manufacturers also began encouraging women
to buy gifts for their husbands or boyfriends
in the military, as if the number of free cigarettes
included in the rations of every soldier wasn't enough.
Two of the largest brands, Camel and Chesterfield's,
both published advertisements promoting the practice,
each trying to convince female buyers that their product
was the most savored smoke in the service,
and that they should send them off as gifts overseas,
sometimes by the carton.
Another war-related marketing ploy
saw the cigarette company Lucky Strike
claim to have swapped out their old branding colors,
green and red, for a new red and white look,
because green contained copper,
a metal increasingly needed for war manufacturing.
They painted this shift as a patriotic move
of self-sacrifice, initiating a marketing campaign
with the tagline, "Lucky Strike Green has Gone to War!"
In actuality, the green they used contained chromium,
not copper, and Lucky Strike had known
their existing color schemes to be unpopular for some time.
In the 1940s, sleek and minimalistic branding
was gaining popularity, and Lucky Strike likely planned
to change its packaging colors regardless of World War II.
The U.S. joining the war
was probably just a fortuitous opportunity
to link their product to the armed forces and patriotism.
To further drive home the association
between Lucky Strikes and the military,
they included "Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco,"
rendered in a style similar to Morse code,
next to the packaging in its adverts.
This sort of aggressive marketing wasn't present everywhere.
In Germany, cigarette advertisements
were heavily restricted.
The Nazi Party trumpeted anti-smoking rhetoric
and banned public smoking in a number of places
on the basis of public hygiene and social purity.
Despite this, cigarettes were declared
a war important product under their government.
Much like in the U.S. during World War I,
moral and health reservations about the cigarette
were relegated in favor of their benefits
as wartime morale boosters.
In 1941, Joseph Goebbels,
head of Germany's propaganda ministry,
blocked attempts at instituting a campaign
against smoking during the war,
citing the fact that millions of soldiers
were currently provided cigarettes by the state
for use on the front.
Despite this, the Nazi Party's position
was generally that of opposition to smoking,
even if in practice they were somewhat flexible,
and this would have a pernicious legacy.
As a result of the Nazi aversion to the cigarette
and their public criticism of the practice,
postwar anti-smoking efforts became conflated
with the authoritarianism of Nazi Germany.
Pro-tobacco cigarette activists and marketers
were quick to label public health campaigns
against the cigarette as fascistic throwbacks
to the Nazi Era.
This is theorized to have led to an increase
in German cigarette consumption in the postwar period
as health efforts against tobacco were stigmatized.
Elsewhere in Europe, the cigarette
became more commonplace too.
Under the Marshall Plan, a relief program
designed to boost capitalist democracies
and impede Soviet communism, 4.4% of all products
shipped to Europe were tobacco-based
between 1948 and 1951.
One Virginia congressman, John W. Flannagan,
a long-time industry advocate and lawmaker
on account of his state being a large tobacco producer,
argued that the distribution of the product
would, quote, "Aid in eliminating or retarding
the spread of ideologies antagonistic to democracy
and to world peace."
This, however, happened to be a great boon
for the U.S. tobacco industry,
who in their attempts to meet demands, overshot them
and now had plenty of product lying around
with few buyers in sight.
Luckily for them, the U.S. government
was here to save the day.
It bought excess supply and sent it off to Europe for free,
hoping luxury goods such as tobacco
would soften austere standards of living
and restart the European economy.
The flooding of American tobacco into the European market
had its adverse effects though.
It undercut domestic manufacturing,
most drastically in Greece
which saw one of its backbone industries
threatened by cheap, subsidized tobacco.
When Greece protested, the ECA, the organization
tasked with carrying out the Marshall Plan,
stated they were unable to make any accommodations
due to pressure from the Southern tobacco lobby.
Aside from that, the influx of this tobacco
also helped reinforce a postwar culture
of smoking the cigarette as many governments
came to rely on taxing it
as a major source of their income.
Between 1945 and the late 1980s,
the cigarette came to represent around 80%
of the world's tobacco consumption,
while it has seen a decline in the United States since then,
Europe remains to this day in the thrall
of the little white and brown stick.
While we may never know what the cigarette's growth
would have looked like in the absence
of two gigantic twentieth-century conflicts,
we can say with a high degree of certainty
that they certainly boosted its popularity.
Many militaries in both World War I and II
included cigarettes in the basic rations
they gave to soldiers, from the Japanese to the Americans,
the British to the Germans.
The army became an incubator all around the world
for the smoking habit, addicting generations of soldiers
and releasing them into the world upon war's end,
only to get their friends, families,
and loved ones hooked on the stuff.
In the process, the cigarette became socially acceptable,
even patriotic, a fact advertisers exploited.
After all, how could the cigarette be so bad
if it helped the soldier fight against evil?
Smoking during conflict became above all a tribal act,
a signifier of conformity and solidarity,
and a means by which to bond in difficult times,
that culture was brought into peacetime as well.
Being a cigarette smoker gave you credentials,
made you part of an in-group,
it was a means of unspoken social assimilation
that spread all over the world.
World War II specifically had some unforeseen consequences
in Europe.
The victorious United States
intentionally helped to reinforce the cigarette habit
through the likes of the Marshall Plan.
Germany's defeat led to its population's rejection
of fascism, and anything even remotely resembling it,
it just so happened that the Nazis
weren't fans of the cigarette and as a result,
opposition to smoking acquired a burdensome association
with authoritarianism, helping it grow unopposed in Germany.
Finally, both world wars led to an increasingly globalized
and interconnected world, opening new markets
and facilitating an intercontinental cigarette trade
that was primed to spread the habit
and its myriad health risks all over the world.
The cigarette burned brightest in the twilight of war,
but it still burns on today,
dragging the hand that smokes it to an early grave.
تصفح المزيد من مقاطع الفيديو ذات الصلة
5.0 / 5 (0 votes)