How War Made the Cigarette

0:00 when the first World War Began everything was about to change

0:04 and the cigarette was no exception before 1914 the cigarette was considered

0:10 the vice of the underclass of criminals foreigners outcasts and Rogues it

0:15 was seen as a blight on the health of the average American

0:18 and a harbinger of the collapse of the Republic but when the war

0:23 ended 4 years later the cigarette suddenly exploded in popularity no longer

0:29 was its smoker a pariah but a patriot how did this happen

0:36 how did the cigarette go from nothing to a Titan of the world

0:41 it has everything to do with war it's the story of how

0:45 the world's militaries briefly became the largest cartels in the world addicting

0:50 millions of soldiers and sending them back home to spread their habits

0:55 it's how advertisers exploited that fact and how the United States sold

1:00 the cigarette to a world ravaged by conflict this is the story

1:07 of how war made the [Music] cigarette but first this video is made

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2:37 to the video Society in the late 18 early 1900s was not

2:47 particularly fond of the cigarette it was a mysterious novelty that most

2:52 were ignorant of and in the dim light of ignorance is born

2:56 fear and Prejudice in Great Britain cigarettes were linked with a lack

3:01 of Manliness and effeminacy in the United States it was associated

3:07 with immoral miscreant up to no good or criminals or foreigners

3:12 whose Customs may as well have been alien as far

3:15 as the American middle class was

3:17 concerned reflecting that mood one particularly alarmist

3:21 1886 New York Times article wrote that quote the decadence of Spain

3:27 began when the Spaniards adopted Sig ettes and if this pernicious

3:32 practice obtains among adult Americans the ruin of the Republic is

3:37 close at hand influential Americans such as Henry Ford also railed against

3:43 the cigarette in this 1914 pamphlet he argues that if you

3:48 study the history of almost any criminal you will find that he

3:52 is an inveterate cigarette smoker early Health reformers too criticized

3:57 the product on the basis that it was unhealthy and that it

4:00 threatened to enfeeble an entire generation of Young Americans who were

4:04 seen to smoke it disproportionately

4:07 Temperance activists likened the cigarette Vice

4:11 to that of alcohol and its destructive side effects creating the unenviable

4:16 association with a product that would soon be outlawed in the entire

4:20 country under prohibition but of course the cigarette never met that fate

4:26 between 1895 and 1921 50 states banned cigarette sales but those bans

4:33 were short-lived by 1927 they had all been repealed in fact

4:40 in the face of all that opposition between 1900 and 1920 per

4:45 capita consumption saw an increase of more than a [Music] th%

4:50 the war against the cigarette never reached the same Heights as the war

4:55 against alcohol another conflict rudely dered naed it before it could

5:01 reach its peak the first world [Music] war the first World War

5:10 caused a massive uptick in cigarette consumption in most participating countries

5:15 in the United Kingdom consumption of the cigarette nearly doubled between 1914

5:20 and 1920 coming to represent the majority of tobacco sales

5:25 in France too cigarette sales Rose from 3.7 to 4.9 9 billion

5:30 from 1913 to 1919 a 31% increase in 6 years a year

5:38 before war broke out in 1914 Germany produced roughly 13 billion cigarettes

5:44 when records became available again in 1925 they were producing 30.5

5:51 billion the US was no exception its per capita consumption rates more

5:56 than doubled between 1915 and 1920 20 some estimates say it

6:04 tripled a significant cause of this increase was the popularity of cigarettes

6:09 among soldiers they were included in the rations of us British French

6:14 and German servicemen as a means of improving morale in the trenches

6:19 it was recognized early on that the nicotine present in a cigarette

6:24 was an effective means of calming the nerves of soldiers

6:28 who were inescapably Sur rounded in every waking moment by all manner

6:32 of Calamity and catastrophe the cigarette was a solace in a Sea

6:38 Of Mayhem a slim white and brown soldier standing Rank and file

6:44 in a trench-like box of its own helping to wash away

6:48 the misery of War so militaries became drug dealers addicting

6:55 their soldiers to cigarettes hoping

6:58 to keep Spirits High reflecting the importance

7:02 the US Army placed on smoking General John persing the commander

7:06 of the American expeditionary forces in Europe stated you ask me what we

7:11 need to win this War I answer tobacco as much as bullets

7:16 tobacco is as indispensable as the daily ration we must have

7:21 thousands of tons without delay the British minister of food David

7:27 Thomas also sang its praises is he said our men would eat

7:32 a great deal more if they did not have tobacco acknowledging

7:36 that smoking reduced the appetite and thus lowered the amount of food

7:41 required by the average Soldier the cigarette just happened to be

7:47 the most effective vehicle for the delivery of tobacco and nicotine small

7:52 and compact it was the Natural Choice over cigars or pipes

7:56 in a logistics calculus the this along

8:00 with psychological and physiological effects

8:02 that were deemed beneficial in Wartime meant it suddenly became a product

8:07 very much in Vogue indeed even former Temperance activists who had opposed

8:13 cigarettes just prior to the war had suddenly changed their Tunes

8:17 the young men's Christian Association or YMCA a formerly Ardent opponent

8:23 of smoking whose founder stated cigarettes were quote a growing evil

8:28 was now ly handing them out to soldiers on the front lines

8:32 and in military cens what was the rationale behind this change

8:37 of heart well smoking cigarettes was seen as relatively less harmful compared

8:42 with the likes of alcoholism prostitution harder drugs and gambling the YMCA

8:48 reasoned that cigarettes could be used to keep soldiers away from these more

8:52 Sinister activities as for the concerns about health well denying cigarettes

8:58 to soldiers on the basis of health risks seemed rather ridiculous considering

9:03 they stood amidst shell and trapnel day after day on the front

9:08 one YMCA member explained the absurdity of the matter in a brutal

9:13 fashion hundreds of thousands of men in the trenches would go

9:17 mad or at least become so nervously inefficient as to be

9:21 useless if tobacco were denied them many a sorely wounded lad

9:26 has died with a cigarette in his mouth whose dying was less

9:30 bitter because of the poison pill the argument that tobacco May

9:35 shorten the Life 5 or 10 years and that it dulls

9:38 the brain in the meantime seems a little out of place

9:42 in a trench where men stand in Frozen blood and water and wait

9:47 for death while the cigarette helped soften the tedium and Trauma

9:53 of life in the trenches it addicted hundreds of thousands of men

9:57 to a harmful stimulant that they did not need during peace time

10:02 World War I did eventually end and when it did the US

10:07 Army sent home a new generation of addicts it had made

10:11 dependent on the cigarette and like

10:14 clockwork the Western world's markets smelled

10:17 an opportunity an opportunity to sell

10:21 more product Benedict Crowell the assistant

10:29 director of War Munitions in the United States estimated that 95%

10:34 of All American soldiers used tobacco in one form or another

10:38 during the war cigarette companies were aware of this and they were

10:43 eager to capture these potential new customers as soon as they

10:46 came home from service abroad

10:49 the cigarette manufacturer Chesterfield released this set

10:53 of adverts in January of 1919 just 2 months after the end

10:57 of hostilities in Europe they depicted servicemen from the Air Force

11:02 Navy and Military puffing away at a mild Chester Field creating

11:07 an explicit association between the cigarette and the soldier in doing so

11:13 they managed to make smoking patriotic where once cigarettes were lumped

11:19 together with America's ills and immorality they were now associated with far

11:24 more positive values Freedom democracy and dity War had just popularized

11:33 the cigarette just as importantly the war and these ads disrupted the perception

11:39 of the cigarette as an effeminate Vice meant mainly for quote

11:43 boys and women as one 1884 New York Times article put it

11:49 prior to the first world war the pipe was seen

11:51 as the manliest means of consuming tobacco but now the cigarette had taken

11:57 its place by becoming the solders Habit it had transformed itself

12:02 into the quintessential symbol of American masculinity but it wasn't just

12:08 in the United States that the cigarette

12:10 became associated with war and patriotism

12:13 in March of 1917 the British tobacco manufacturer Wills released a set

12:19 of 24 cards included in their cigarette packs each card depicted

12:24 servicemen from different branches of the military and on occasion the less

12:29 famous supporting casts of the war a master stroke of marketing

12:35 this connected cigarettes with the bravery and sacrifice of the average person

12:39 toiling away in the machine of War whether they be

12:42 on the front lines or in the factory every drag and puff

12:47 of a will cigarette was henceforth imbued with patriotic fervor another clever

12:53 element of including cigarette cards although

12:56 Wills definitely weren't the first to do

12:58 so was that it encouraged smokers to buy more packs until

13:04 they completed the full set of 24 it gamified the addiction despite

13:10 these Innovative tactics cigarette advertising

13:14 and the cigarette industry itself was

13:16 still in its infancy at the time in many ways World War

13:20 I was just the beginning the second world war was when

13:24 the cigarette really turned on its afterburners the impact of World War

13:33 II on the popularity of cigarettes seems obvious one only needs

13:38 to look at this graph it shows an increase in the US

13:42 from roughly 1,800 cigarettes in per capita consumption in the year

13:45 1939 to nearly double that in 1945 we should however be careful

13:51 not to conflate correlation with the causation

13:55 the cigarette industry as historian

13:57 Richard tenant outlines experienced consistent

14:00 growth throughout the decades between World

14:02 War I and 2 and was only hampered by external events

14:07 such as the Great Depression that is to say the cigarette looked

14:11 to be on an upward Trend even before World War II

14:15 that Trend would have likely continued even in the absence of the conflict

14:19 as industrialization ramped up

14:21 and the increasing convenience and fashionableness

14:24 of the cigarette grew as well the second world war although not essential

14:29 to the success of the cigarette transformed its tempered rise

14:33 into a meteoric one during World War I a mere total of 7.5

14:38 billion cigarettes were shipped abroad for military use that number had

14:42 skyrocketed to 92 billion per year in World War II the number

14:49 of cigarettes being consumed by the average American Soldier was so

14:53 high that one December 1944 defense report wrote that quote 30%

14:59 of the total available supply of cigarettes is going to our Armed

15:02 Forces overseas this coupled with a sharp increase in civilian demand

15:08 for cigarettes led to a cigarette famine ultimately resulting in hoarding

15:14 and panic buying this prompted the American

15:17 cigarette industry to go into overdrive

15:19 to keep up pumping out a quantity of cigarettes once thought

15:24 unfathomable yearly output climbed from 172.5 bli ion in 1939 to 267.8

15:33 billion in 1945 an increase of 55% over 6 years even more

15:40 than in the first world war cigarette marketing became associated with wartime

15:46 patriotism and sacrifice adverts like this one encourage the reader

15:50 to buy cigarettes and war bonds in support of the war effort

15:56 as if trying to conflate the two as similar patriotic acts

16:01 ad campaigns also started targeting women who had been drafted in droves

16:06 into the US's War support industry this advertisement in a November 1944

16:11 edition of Vogue depicted Four Women each in different War related vocations

16:17 praising Camel cigarettes as their smoke of choice with so many women

16:22 in the war as with so many men their cigarette is camel

16:29 cigarette manufacturers also began encouraging women

16:32 to buy gifts for their husbands

16:34 or boyfriends in the military as if the number of free

16:37 cigarettes included in the rations of every Soldier wasn't enough two

16:42 of the largest Brands camel and Chesterfields

16:45 both published advertisements promoting the practice

16:49 each trying to convince female buyers that their product was the most

16:54 savored smoke in the service and that they should send them

16:57 off as gifts over overseas sometimes by the carton Another War

17:02 rated marketing Ploy saw the cigarette company Lucky Strike claimed to have

17:07 swapped out their old branding colors green and red for a new

17:10 red and white look because green contained copper a metal increasingly

17:15 needed for war manufacturing they painted this shift as a patriotic

17:20 move of self-sacrifice initiating a marketing

17:23 campaign with the tagline Lucky Strike

17:26 green has gone to war in actuality the green they used

17:31 contained chromium not copper and Lucky Strike had known their existing color

17:36 scheme to be unpopular for some time in the 1940s sleek

17:41 and minimalistic branding was gaining popularity

17:45 and Lucky Strike likely planned to change

17:47 its packageing colors regardless of World War II the US joining

17:52 the war was probably just a fortuitous opportunity to link their product

17:57 to the Armed Forces and patriotism to further drive home the association

18:03 between Lucky Strikes and the military they included Lucky Strike means

18:08 fine tobacco rendered in a style similar to Morse code next

18:12 to the packaging in its adverts this sort of aggressive marketing wasn't

18:19 present everywhere in Germany cigarette advertisements

18:23 were heavily restricted the Nazi party

18:26 trumpeted anti-smoking rhetoric and banned public smoking in a number of places

18:31 on the basis of public hygiene and social Purity despite this cigarettes

18:36 were declared a war important product under their government much like

18:41 in the US during World War I moral and health reservations

18:46 about the cigarette were relegated in favor of their benefits as wartime

18:51 morale boosters in 1941 Yosef gas head of Germany's propaganda Ministry

18:58 blocked a atts at instituting a campaign against smoking during the war

19:02 citing the fact that millions of soldiers were currently provided cigarettes

19:06 by the state for use on the front despite this the Nazi

19:10 party's position was generally that of opposition to smoking even if

19:15 in practice they were somewhat flexible and this would have a pernicious

19:21 Legacy [Music] as a result of the Nazi aversion to the cigarette

19:31 and their public criticism of the practice post-war anti-smoking efforts became

19:36 conflated with the authoritarianism of Nazi

19:39 Germany prot tobacco cigarette activists

19:43 and marketers were quick to label Public Health campaigns against the cigarette

19:48 as fascistic Throwbacks to the Nazi ERA this is theorized to have

19:53 led to an increase in German cigarette consumption in the postwar

19:57 period as Health efforts against tobacco were stigmatized elsewhere in Europe

20:03 the cigarette became more commonplace too under the Marshall Plan a relief

20:08 program designed to boost capitalist

20:10 democracies and impede Soviet communism 4.4%

20:14 of all products shipped to Europe were tobacco based between 1948 and 1951

20:21 one Virginia congressman John W Flanigan a longtime industry Advocate

20:26 and lawmaker on account of his being a large tobacco producer argued

20:31 that the distribution of the product would quote Aid in eliminating

20:36 or retarding the spread of ideologies

20:38 antagonistic to democracy and to World Peace

20:43 this however happened to be a great Boon for the US

20:46 tobacco industry who in their attempts to meet demands overshot them

20:51 and now had plenty of product lying around with few buyers

20:55 in sight luckily for them the US government was here to save

21:00 the day it bought excess Supply and sent it off to Europe

21:05 for free hoping luxury goods such as tobacco would soften AER

21:11 standards of living and restart the European economy the flooding of American

21:16 tobacco into the European market had its adverse effects though it undercut

21:22 domestic manufacturing most drastically in Greece which saw one of its

21:27 backbone Industries threatened by Cheap subsidized

21:30 tobacco when Greece protested the ECA

21:34 the organization tasked with carrying out the Marshall Plan stated they

21:39 were unable to make any accommodations due to pressure from the southern

21:42 tobacco Lobby aside from that the influx of this tobacco also

21:47 helped reinforce a post-war culture of smoking the cigarette as many governments

21:52 came to rely on taxing it as a major source of their income

21:57 between 1945 in the late 1980s the cigarette came to represent

22:02 around 80% of the world's tobacco consumption while it has

22:05 seen a decline in the United States since then Europe remains

22:09 to this day in the thr of the little white and brown

22:14 [Music] stick while we may never know what the cigarettes growth would

22:20 have looked like in the absence of two gigantic 20th century

22:24 conflicts we can say with a high degree of certainty that they

22:27 certainly boosted its popularity many militaries in both World War I

22:33 and 2 included cigarettes in the basic rations they gave to soldiers

22:37 from the Japanese to the Americans the British to the Germans

22:42 the Army became an incubator all around the world for the smoking

22:46 habit addicting generations of soldiers and releasing them into the world upon

22:51 War's end only to get their friends families and loved ones hooked

22:56 on the stuff in the process the cigarette became socially acceptable

23:01 even patriotic a fact advertisers exploited after all how could the cigarette

23:08 be so bad if it helped the soldier fight against evil smoking

23:13 during conflict became above all a tribal act a signifier of Conformity

23:18 and solidarity and a means by which to bond in difficult

23:22 times that culture was brought into peace time as well being

23:27 a cigarette smoker gave you credentials made you part of an ingroup

23:32 it was a means of unspoken social assimilation that spread all over

23:37 the world World War II specifically had some unforeseen consequences in Europe

23:43 the Victorious United States intentionally

23:45 helped to reinforce the cigarette habit

23:47 through the likes of the Marshall Plan jy's defeat led to its

23:52 population's rejection of fascism and anything

23:55 even remotely resembling it it just

23:57 so happened that the Nazis weren't fans of the cigarette

24:01 and as a result opposition to smoking

24:04 acquired a burdensome association with authoritarianism

24:09 helping it grow un opposed in Germany finally both world wars led

24:15 to an increasingly globalized and interconnected

24:18 World opening new markets and facilitating

24:21 an InterContinental cigarette trade that was primed to spread the habit

24:27 and its Myriad health risk discs all over the world the cigarette

24:32 burned brightest in the Twilight of War but it still burns

24:36 on today dragging the hand that smokes it to an early grave