THE NAZI WAR ON CANCER
By Robert N. Proctor
Princeton University Press. Princeton 1999. 380 pages
Reviewed by Ken Setter

It came as a surprise to me to find that that Reichsmarcall Hermann Göring had ordered the banning of vivisection as ‘unbearable torture and suffering in animal experiments’, and threatened to commit to concentration camps ‘those who still think they can treat animals as inanimate property’. Nor did I know that of Nazi Germany’s foresighted and advanced legislation on such widely diverse areas as, worker safety, asbestos regulation, anti tobacco campaigns and truth in advertising. I had heard that Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian but did not know that Himler joined him in his eating preferences or that Himler encouraged the Waffen SS to adopt a vegetarian life style.

Not that any of the above forgives the unforgivable crimes committed in the dozen years of Nazi rule. However The Nazi War on Cancer was an eye opener. Even considering the book offers no explanation as to how such evil could exist among such seemingly good things. We are left wondering how the self same people who so enthusiastically herded Jews into the gas ovens, who were happy to condemn tens of thousands of communists and trade unionists to concentration camps, who sterilised the mentally defective, who persecuted gypsies, who sort to enslave the peoples of the East, and waged a war that killed millions. Well may we wonder, the question is unanswerable.

These are just a few of the insights I discovered when reading The Nazi War on Cancer, yet Robert N. Proctor is no apologist or Holocaust denier -- one of his earlier books, Racial Hygiene is a scathing account of Nazi atrocities -- but he clearly wants to engage in the complex moral discussions surrounding the fascist production of science and Holocaust studies. Proctor's thorough research, excellent examples, and dozens of illustrations are complemented by his authoritative prose. The Nazi War on Cancer is a fine addition to our knowledge and understanding of the period and a caution tale to the future the more heinous aspects of Nazi medical crime

As a child of World War Two I recall, at age fifteen, viewing the horrific, unforgettable images of British soldiers at Bergen-Belsen bull dozing piles of dead bodies into open pits for a hasty burial. How could the Germans be so terrible we asked, doubly disturbing, as I had often sat next to German and Italian prisoners of war (POW’s) at the movies none had cut my throat in the dark. German POW’s wore British army uniforms died chocolate brown with contrasting circles sown on the back, we jokes it was the target we aimed at when the tried to get away, but that was only the immaturity of youth speaking, where would they run to? How was it that such ordinary seemingly reasonable people could do such things? Such questions were beyond us.

Then a few years later I found myself in uniform. As part of the British army of occupation I was stationed at an ex-Panzer camp, the home base of some of Nazi Germany’s favourite sons. Less then fifty meters from the front gate, I discovered a larger than life size stone crucifix the out stretched arms of Jesus were moss covered and pitted with the wind and rain of centuries. Why was it still there I wondered we had been told the Nazi’s were against Jesus. It would have been so easy to divert one of the clumsy tanks, a slight correction would have sent the crucified Christ into rubble and eternity, but it remained, why had they not given it a ‘bit of a nudge’ and sent it on its way? Clearly fascism is a good deal more nuanced and complex than we were told during the war

The Belsen dead, the POW’s, the stone Christ were all part of my questioning the ‘truths’ of authority figures, and the conventional wisdom. So The Nazi War on Cancer was a fascinating book to read, another eye opener. I have long discovered that, no society has an all-encompassing ideology, all are multi-faceted, complex and there are many twists and turns in policy, what attracts some people repels others. Few things are what they appear on the surface. I can well remember a group of Welsh miners gathered out side my uncles window, (my uncle had the only radio in the street), to listen to a speech by one Adolph Hitler shouting into a microphone, berating something or other, none could understand a word he said, all stood captivated by his speech, something was going on I did not then understand, even the most evil of men have some appeal and penetrated a deeper level of understanding, unconscious’s even went deeper than we are usually willing to admit, something else was going on.

Nazism was popular not just because Germans hated Jews. Anti-Semitism was central to Nazi ideology, as was anti-communism, but it was not the only or even the main reason people flocked to the Nazi cause, the respectable middle class retires had experienced a dramatic decline in the value of their pensions as hyper-inflation gobbled their superannuation and pension entitlement, there was a break down of law and order, youth unemployment and a loss of respect as well as the need to rejuvenate the decline in public services, public health, there was violence in the streets, police and in other spheres as well. But there was more to the Nazi’s than racial, purity. The question of national pride, honour and dignity was foremost in the minds of many. Following World War One. Germany faced the real possibility of crippling reparations following the war, originally the allies demanded reparations for 59 years, until 1984, (yes that’s right until 1984, it’s not a typo).

Like most areas of human endeavour the Nazi period was plagued with inconsistencies But we also get a better sense of why so many Germans and especially German doctors welcomed the Nazi movement. Nazism was not about just Nordic supremacy or humiliating and then killing the handicapped; it was not only about territorial expansion or murdering Jews, Gypsies and Communists. It was all of these things in spades, but it was also about making jobs and cleaning up the streets and long term care for the "German germ plasm."

From time to time we need a book such as The Nazi War On Cancer to disturb us from our comfortable consumer lifestyles. I did not know for instance that Dachau prisoners produced organic honey, or that Nazi health activists launched the world's most powerful antismoking campaign? Neither did I know that the Nazi war on cancer was the most aggressive in the world, encompassing restrictions on the use of asbestos, bans on tobacco, and bans on carcinogenic pesticides and food dyes? Or that soybeans were once declared "Nazi beans," or that Nazi bakeries were required by law to produce whole grain bread? We have a bit to catch up on that ourselves. And truth in advertising legislation was high on the Nazi agenda, another law we could do well to consider. Knowing this, however, does not in anyway sanitise the twelve frenetic years of Nazi Germany?

If Nazism was the low water mark of the 20th century, sadly then the tide is still out, as similar moral questions remain to be answered. The respectable scientists today with his (they are mostly men) wife, and 2.4 children, and the obligatory pedigree dog, who regularly attends church each Sunday, whose working hours are consumed designing better and more effective cluster bombs that kill women and kids, considers his life ‘normal’. It took R.D. Laing to remind us that ‘normal men have killed perhaps 150,000,000 of their fellow men in the past fifty years’, alienated from the natural world, their behaviour reflects experience, they acted as they experienced, and when experience is destroyed they act destructively.

The US military, having condemned the Nazi doctors as monsters at the post-war Nuremberg trials, promptly proceeded to import some of the worst offenders to contribute to their own programs. The top secret Operation Paper Clip, by-passing immigration clearances, brought to the US 1,600 Nazi scientists compromised by their research activities. However those who worked on the anti-cancer health area were not required. At wars end the anti smoking movement is crushed and the Americans import over 100,000 tons of cigarettes free under the Marshal plan, how that for government helping industry to promote a product The American military documented a 50 volume set of ‘work’ done by German military scientist, none from the health perspective, bring to mind the ‘we don’t do peace’ statement

Those who today are quick to condemn and ridicule anything good about the Nazi regime would do well to consider the morality of colouring cluster-bomb-lets yellow to resemble food packages, or an occupying army that holds Palestinians in ghettoes, selectively killing at will, and using children as human shields, or maybe he is busy improving the cancer dust of DU shells a kind of moral drama the sort that boils down to questions such as whether "good can come from evil." A troubling question, in my life I have witnessed ordinary men do the most evil things, and wrap them in self righteous moral platitudes, then blame their victims branding them evildoers.

We should question the ethics of those who occupy the seat of power and influence portrays science and technology as a neutral faithful neutral servant of humanity. It is not. It is an integral part of the economic and military power structure, even the most casual historical study of technology clear shows that many if not most technical advances are the result of the armaments business in one form or another. Science and technology serves most faithfully those who own the factories, the laboratories, technology, it is not blind to politics. In our globalised world all eyes and ears are tuned to the spin doctors of corporations, the cheering squads for the new fascism, just as they did in the 1930’s on a grander scale but just as frightening are the legions of subservient who continued to work quietly, reassured by the myth of cloistered neutrality.

We need to question also the greed of corporate power that forced our Australian asbestos victims had the chase their former employer James Hardy Industries half way across the world, to secure decent compensation, they dragged oxygen bottles behind them, whereas the senior managers waxed fat on outrageous salary packages, spoke softy and smiled at the cameras, while beneath the green based table their feet, unseen, entwined with a shifty compliant government. Yet such dangers to human health was known before the Nazi government banned it used in the 1930’s The corporation chose to use the best efforts of science and technology, as best suited their needs.

Corporations used the Nazi state in much the same way as they do now; we have an image of fascism as a totalising ideology: yet we have seen our own society distort and lie when it suits them. Nazi rhetoric and values are seen as having penetrated every crevice of German intellectual life. But that is a misconception, at least in part. Corporate power, was then and remains the greatest threat to democracy.

Despite the tyrannical powers of the state, despite even the war, power was never completely centralized in Germany, contentious issues continued to be debated (at least within the Aryan tribe), cancer research was pursued, and the tobacco industry fought tooth and nail against the prohibitionists.

The tobacco corporations formed the Tobacco Institute to counter the Nazi anti smoking campaigns, they, as now, claimed that the science/proof was not in and ploughed massive amounts of money to dispute the scientific arguments of the scientist and doctors. There is some who belief that the American tobacco industry learned something from the Nazi experience. They went all out to condemn t world’s first epidemiological study that shows the smoking causes lung cancer

The Tobacco Institute was in the forefront of cigarette promotion, they can also be said to have played a large part in financing the Nazi party, but to be fair one must also say that they also promoted the Social Democrats and the Jews before the Nazi gained power. Each party had their own brand of cigarette, pushed, and promoted by the tobacco companies. We need also say that at the beginning of the 20th century cigarettes were a new item and as such the move from pipes, which caused cancer of the lip and tongue, cigarettes brought cancer of the lung, a rarity at that time, however the smoke was able to draw deeper with the introduction of cigarettes, hence lung cancer flourished.

The tobacco industry in defence of profits, hired and financed, ‘opposition’ doctors and specialist; a practice they repeated in the US, a policy they are currently doing in regard to global warming, indeed many are the same people. I guess when the ‘hired gun’ proves able to retard, delay, and disrupt legislation with minimum interruption to profit flow there is little incentive to stop paying the ‘gunmen’.

We should never loose sight of the high level of interest and high esteem the British ruling class held Nazi ideology, to say nothing of Henry Ford, awarded the highest medal Hitler was permitted to award a foreign civilian and many of the now MNC that carry the founders name

If I have any criticism of this book it is that the writer is too kind, he fails to acknowledge the role of greed and the market economy, the drug companies had become more powerful by the end of World War two and were able to dictate the rules by insist that ‘large’ epidemiological studies were carried out, the end of clinician was at hand.

Greed and the drive for profits became the driving force rather than the willingness to seek out solutions and the nations health declined as a result, witness the mass of uninsured American today, maybe we should take a close look at the share portfolios of the doctors and compare them with private hospital ownership If it were not for a few powerful unions who were, in earlier times, able to bargain for health cover in contracts many more Americans would be without decent health cover.

The book asks why certain kinds of science such as the anti cancer research and truth in advertising as regards food additives and smoking, and worker safety, banning the use of asbestos in work places flourished under Hitler and why they are not better known post World War two, lost from the historical record.

I never for a moment thought I would consider anything worthy of a few words of praise for the Nazi regime. Even stranger to many coming to the facts of Nazi science and cancer, health and worker safety programs instigated by Hitler’s thugs. Be that as it may credit where credit is due they did some good things.

The truth is that Nazi Germany had the worlds most aggressive anti cancer program yet devised, they also led the world in banning food additives, were years ahead in worker safety in asbestos regulations, they had an anti smoking campaign, and truth in advertising decades ahead of the rest of the world considered the possibility.

Theses are the truths the powerful tobacco lobby has chosen to ignore and suppress, one question remains to be asked. Who are the criminals? ‘Only those with no arms have clean hands’.