re: #139 The Ghost of the Vanishing Commissar

You mentioned the KdF vacations, and I recall reading from Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich that he went on one of those junkets as a reporter and he noticed a substantial amount of Nazi propaganda being disseminated.

But you’re quite right - as far as the Nazis and their anti-smoking campaigns, the fundamental assumption behind it was healthy soldiers for the conquering Reich and healthy women to breed healthy future soliders for the ever-conquering Reich. It had very little - if anything at all - to do with individual health.

One thing I didn’t know until I’d read up more about it was that Hitler himself was quite the heavy smoker during his halcyon days lounging about in Vienna, and he quit out of economic necessity; he was living in a men’s hostel as I recall, because he was pretty much broke.

I’ve quit because I was finding it well-nigh impossible to breathe. I figured in a few more years - I’m 45 now - I’d be lugging around one of those little oxygen tanks with tubes up my nose and it would certainly limit my mobility.

No thanks. So far, BTW, the quitting’s going easier than I thought. Maybe because this time, I really do want to quit.