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The Nazi War on Cancer
The Barnes & Noble Review
Asking probing questions about why science thrived under fascism, Robert Proctor explores the advances made in cancer research and public health in Hitler's Germany.
Asking probing questions about why science thrived under fascism, Robert Proctor explores the advances made in cancer research and public health in Hitler's Germany.
Several hours before the Germans launched the deadliest campaign in military history in 1941, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels, the minister of popular enlightenment and propaganda, were discussing the timing of their imminent invasion of the Soviet Union. According to Goebbels' journals, the two worked on Hitler's speech, and marveled at the ways in which they were planning to defeat communism and change the map of Europe. But that night, Hitler and Goebbels also discussed the recent advances in cancer research made by Nazi doctors in their pursuit of a "sanitary utopia." As science historian Robert N. Proctor exposes in his provocative new book The Nazi War on Cancer, the Nazi medical establishment was years ahead of the rest of the world in public health reform and research.
Proctor is far from being a revisionist historian, and recognizes the extreme sensitivity of his subject matter. In fact, he is a cautious and elegant writer who frequently reminds readers of his earlier book, Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under the Nazis, in which he documents the horrors of Nazi medical experiments. In this book, however, he finds that some Nazi scientific research was actually path-breaking and may have developed some of the era's most successful cancer prevention programs. As Proctor is careful to distinguish, The Nazi War on Cancer is not a book that champions Nazi medical practices; rather, it is "abookabout fascism, and a book about science," as the author seeks to understand how "fascism suppressed certain kinds of science&[and] how fascist ideals fostered research directions and lifestyle fashions that look strikingly like those we today might embrace."
Until now, historians' focus on Nazi medical research has traditionally concentrated on political and racial ideology, because "little might appear to be gained by pointing to Nazi success in fighting food dyes, tobacco, or occupational dust." But the extraordinary work conducted during the Wilhelmine and Weimar eras was undeniable German medicine and public health was the envy of the world at that time. In what is perhaps one of Proctor's most astounding revelations, evidence of the link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer was published as early as 1929 by Nazi physician Fritz Lickint, though cigarette incriminating studies didn't appear in England and the United States until 1950. Hitler was a virulent anti-smoker, and his regime launched one of the most aggressive anti-tobacco campaigns of the twentieth century. By 1938, smoking was banned in many offices, hospitals and rest homes, and "no-smoking" cars were established on all German trains by the following year. According to one propaganda poster, Hitler attributed his "performance at work" to his ability to resist both nicotine and alcohol.
Diet was also important to the Nazis, and public health officials strongly promoted the consumption whole-grain breads, vegetables, and fruits, and other foods that were low in fat, high in fiber, and free of artificial colorings and preservatives. Germans were also encouraged to consult their physicians regularly for early cancer detection, and women were taught how to perform breast self-examinations as early as 1936. As one poster caption read: "Every automobile gets a regular checkup; that is obvious. Shouldn't the much more complicated machine of the human body also get regular checkups?"
Why were Nazis so concerned with cancer prevention? Proctor notes that cancer "expressed larger cultural idioms" and became "a metaphor for all that was seen as wrong with society." Because of this, the German body "belonged" to the Führer, and good health was considered a citizen's duty. Because Nazi public health workers attributed improper diet as a major contributor to cancer, the effort to become the master race could only be achieved through healthy living. As one Hitler Youth manual asserted, "Nutrition is not a private matter!"
It is far from Proctor's intention to express the simplistic and irresponsible sentiment that "good can come from evil" by bringing readers' attention to the progress made by Nazi scientists. Instead, this brave and sophisticated account brilliantly evokes the nuances of ethical paradoxes, as Proctor successfully points out our "need to better understand how the routine practice of science can so easily coexist with the routine exercise of cruelty."
Kera Bolonik
380 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1999
10 people are currently reading
356 people want to read
About the author
Robert N. Proctor
12 books36 followersAmerican historian of science and Professor of the History of Science at Stanford University.While a professor of the history of science at the University of Pennsylvania in 1999, he became the first historian to testify against the tobacco industry.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
October 1, 2025
Nazi scientists were the first to look at the link between cancer and cigarette smoking: but because they were Nazis the science was largely dismissed. This book will make you think about what 'scientific truth' really means when it is presented to the general public. Deeper questions of about the intersection of science and politics are presented as a question that seems to be unanswered to this day.
March 21, 2017
A provocative book with a provocative thesis. When one thinks of science during the Nazi era, the prevailing images that comes to mind are Joseph Mengele and other pseudo-scientific atrocities that happened in Auschwitz and Dachau. The other is Wernherr von Braun and the scientists behind the V-2 rocket who had their records expunged and were later rehabilitated through the success of the American space program.
But there was also good science, especially in the field of cancer research. Scientists in Nazi Germany were the first to prove a definitive link between smoking and cancer, between poor diet and cancer, and they built on Paul Ehrlich's theories of immune therapies, which are now, more than 70 years later, being made into therapies accessible to patients with the most deadly cancers. Proctor makes a strong argument that when we dismissed good science of this age along with the well-known garbage "science" that made headlines, we threw out the proverbial baby out with the bath water. Cancer science was set back as a result of this short-sightedness.
But there was also good science, especially in the field of cancer research. Scientists in Nazi Germany were the first to prove a definitive link between smoking and cancer, between poor diet and cancer, and they built on Paul Ehrlich's theories of immune therapies, which are now, more than 70 years later, being made into therapies accessible to patients with the most deadly cancers. Proctor makes a strong argument that when we dismissed good science of this age along with the well-known garbage "science" that made headlines, we threw out the proverbial baby out with the bath water. Cancer science was set back as a result of this short-sightedness.
September 16, 2019
Robert Proctor is an historian of science. His book is a study of medical science under the Nazi administration in Germany, emphasizing public health policy and research. As suggested by the title, cancer is a major focus, especially cancers related to tobacco use, but other matters are treated at length as well, topics such as diet, environmental disease, occupational disease, alcoholism, food additives and so on.
The fact that Germany was far in advance of most countries as regards public health policy and that what had become common sense science there by the thirties didn't take traction in the United States for another thirty years or so, tobacco's role in lung cancer being a case in point, is one of the issues brought out and discussed in the book, such instances leading to broader questions as regards the relationship between science and ideology and politics.
The fact that Germany was far in advance of most countries as regards public health policy and that what had become common sense science there by the thirties didn't take traction in the United States for another thirty years or so, tobacco's role in lung cancer being a case in point, is one of the issues brought out and discussed in the book, such instances leading to broader questions as regards the relationship between science and ideology and politics.
January 3, 2009
This book was engaging and brought up some very interesting points. I had read a biography of Winston Churchill previously and was surprised that Nazism was so revered throughout the world before and even during the early parts of WWII. This book does a great job of addressing why that may have been along with other interesting issues.
February 21, 2025
Fascinating and nuanced take on the "fertility of fascism"
February 26, 2025
pretty enjoyable, easy to digest, author did a good job of explaining topics and i was not often left confused (im a bit slow sometimes). really interesting topics and you get to learn a new side of nazi germany that people don’t acknowledge or talk about
June 10, 2016
This fascinating book shows a different side to the usual picture of Nazi medicine - the shocking experiments carried out in the name of racial purity, with little concern for the victims. Proctor reveals that the Nazis were also far in advance of other countries in terms of their understanding of public health issues, often by decades. In essence, he argues that the Nazi period saw a fundamental shift from healthcare towards health, from cure to prevention, and from mere extension of life to increase in wellbeing - all themes that increasingly lie at the heart of the recent shift in thinking within, for example, the NHS. But Proctor also shows that the Nazi motivation was profoundly different from that driving us today. The Nazis valued health, prevention and wellbeing not because of the benefits for the individual but because of their implications for the state. Healthy people work harder and longer and so contribute more to the state. From this perspective, those who were unable to work, or who came from 'undesirable' racial groups, did not contribute to the state and so were of no value - Proctor also shows how these individuals were a particular focus of the Nazis' 'euthanasia' programmes. In short, Proctor has extended our understanding of how perverted ideologies can generate positive outcomes - but only for a section of society.
February 3, 2015
A really good picture of Germany before the war, as well as during. Many illustrations of propaganda posters showing how Hitler was able to get the people on his side. They say that those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it, and this book is Exhibit A of that argument. An excellent resource for history buffs and everyone interested in political science should own a copy of this book.
December 10, 2021
Proctor carefully explores the policies and underlying cultural currents flowing into cancer policies and carcinogens during and preceeding the Nazi regime.
He investigates some interesting topics, such as the German fascination with; and desire to return to; the natural. Also gives food for thought on the conflict between the tobacco industry and health administration.
He investigates some interesting topics, such as the German fascination with; and desire to return to; the natural. Also gives food for thought on the conflict between the tobacco industry and health administration.
December 24, 2010
This was a fascinating, in-depth study of medicine and public health during the Nazi regime. They got so much right, but they got much bigger things wrong in their general society.
November 15, 2017
A fascinating historical account.
May 28, 2025
In June 1941, hours before Operation Barbarossa, Hitler discussed the latest results on cancer research with Goebbels.
“What was cancer in the Thousand Year Reich that set it apart from other health obsessions of the hour?”
“My focus here is on the activities of health activists lost to memory by virtue of their association with a terrible time.”
“This is a book about fascism, and a book about science. We think we know a lot about both topics, and many of the most horrific images are surely familiar: bodies being bulldozed into pits, gold being stolen from human teeth and buried in Swiss vaults, human hair bundled for recycling, scattered ashes, shattered families. The twisted science of the time is no less notorious: the horrific experiments in the camps; the Luftwaffe killing dozens of men by subjecting them to icy cold or very low pressure; SS doctors like Josef Mengele in Auschwitz injecting dyes into living eyes to see whether brown eyes could be changed into blue.
How many of us know, though, that Dachau prisoners produced organic honey, or that Nazi health activists launched the world's most powerful antismoking campaign? How many of us 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? How many of us know that soybeans were declared "Nazi beans," or that Nazi bakeries were required by law to produce whole-grain bread?”
“The point is not to rescue lost gems of wisdom or to exploit the past for the present, but rather to explore the troubling phenomenon of “quality science” under Nazism: science that we might well celebrate as pathbreaking were the circumstances of its origins peeled away, but also run-of-the-mill science that, like Hitler’s watercolors, is not obviously and indelibly a Nazi product.”
“The participation of doctors in Nazi racial crimes is disturbing, but it is equally disturbing that Nazi doctors and public health activists were also involved in work that we, today, might regard as "progressive" or even socially responsible-and that some of that work was a direct outgrowth of Nazi ideology.”
“What are we to make of the Nazi antitobacco campaign or the public health initiatives launched to control cancer? How do we understand the efforts to curb asbestos exposure or exposures to X-rays and radium - or the campaign to secure food quality and
"truth in advertising"? Did the Nazis do good work? Was some of that good work motivated by Nazi ideals?”
There is a tendency in Nazi science historiography to treat the survival of science such as there was - as proof of the indomitable spirit of the intellect, but my concern is more to ask: what is science that it so easily flourished under fascism? What was it about German fascism that encouraged the progress of (certain kinds of) science, and why has this part of the story been lost to historical memory?
There is an image we have of fascism as a totalizing ideology:
Nazi rhetoric and values are seen as having penetrated every crevice of German intellectual life. But that is a misconception, at least in part. Science was often tolerated as a faithful and neutral servant, an engine of economic and military power, blind to politics.
Many fields of scholarship did turn out cheering squads for fascism, but just as frightening are the legions of subservients who continued to work quietly, reassured by the myth of cloistered neutrality. Through this lens, the “good science” of the Reich becomes evidence not of heroic ideological innocence but of a blind-eyed failure to reflect and resist - “irresponsible purity” in Herbert Mehrtens’s aptly crafter phrase.”
“Accurate and absurd fears blended promiscuously in the Nazi view of the world: there is a kind of homeopathic paranoia pervading the Nazi body ethos, a fear of tiny but powerful agents corroding the German body, a fear that is sometimes cruel and vicious, sometimes eerily on target. This jarring mix of the sensible and the insane is surely one of the most disturbing aspects of Nazism. but it also provides another key, I think, to understanding the Holocaust.”
“Could one of the most murderous regimes in history actually have succeeded in lowering cancer rates for certain segments of its population? Who benefited and who suffered?”
“What was cancer in the Thousand Year Reich that set it apart from other health obsessions of the hour?”
“My focus here is on the activities of health activists lost to memory by virtue of their association with a terrible time.”
“This is a book about fascism, and a book about science. We think we know a lot about both topics, and many of the most horrific images are surely familiar: bodies being bulldozed into pits, gold being stolen from human teeth and buried in Swiss vaults, human hair bundled for recycling, scattered ashes, shattered families. The twisted science of the time is no less notorious: the horrific experiments in the camps; the Luftwaffe killing dozens of men by subjecting them to icy cold or very low pressure; SS doctors like Josef Mengele in Auschwitz injecting dyes into living eyes to see whether brown eyes could be changed into blue.
How many of us know, though, that Dachau prisoners produced organic honey, or that Nazi health activists launched the world's most powerful antismoking campaign? How many of us 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? How many of us know that soybeans were declared "Nazi beans," or that Nazi bakeries were required by law to produce whole-grain bread?”
“The point is not to rescue lost gems of wisdom or to exploit the past for the present, but rather to explore the troubling phenomenon of “quality science” under Nazism: science that we might well celebrate as pathbreaking were the circumstances of its origins peeled away, but also run-of-the-mill science that, like Hitler’s watercolors, is not obviously and indelibly a Nazi product.”
“The participation of doctors in Nazi racial crimes is disturbing, but it is equally disturbing that Nazi doctors and public health activists were also involved in work that we, today, might regard as "progressive" or even socially responsible-and that some of that work was a direct outgrowth of Nazi ideology.”
“What are we to make of the Nazi antitobacco campaign or the public health initiatives launched to control cancer? How do we understand the efforts to curb asbestos exposure or exposures to X-rays and radium - or the campaign to secure food quality and
"truth in advertising"? Did the Nazis do good work? Was some of that good work motivated by Nazi ideals?”
There is a tendency in Nazi science historiography to treat the survival of science such as there was - as proof of the indomitable spirit of the intellect, but my concern is more to ask: what is science that it so easily flourished under fascism? What was it about German fascism that encouraged the progress of (certain kinds of) science, and why has this part of the story been lost to historical memory?
There is an image we have of fascism as a totalizing ideology:
Nazi rhetoric and values are seen as having penetrated every crevice of German intellectual life. But that is a misconception, at least in part. Science was often tolerated as a faithful and neutral servant, an engine of economic and military power, blind to politics.
Many fields of scholarship did turn out cheering squads for fascism, but just as frightening are the legions of subservients who continued to work quietly, reassured by the myth of cloistered neutrality. Through this lens, the “good science” of the Reich becomes evidence not of heroic ideological innocence but of a blind-eyed failure to reflect and resist - “irresponsible purity” in Herbert Mehrtens’s aptly crafter phrase.”
“Accurate and absurd fears blended promiscuously in the Nazi view of the world: there is a kind of homeopathic paranoia pervading the Nazi body ethos, a fear of tiny but powerful agents corroding the German body, a fear that is sometimes cruel and vicious, sometimes eerily on target. This jarring mix of the sensible and the insane is surely one of the most disturbing aspects of Nazism. but it also provides another key, I think, to understanding the Holocaust.”
“Could one of the most murderous regimes in history actually have succeeded in lowering cancer rates for certain segments of its population? Who benefited and who suffered?”
September 13, 2023
"Нацистката война срещу рака" е задълбочен, научно базиран анализ на медицината в Третия райх. Книгата засяга слабо изследвани теми, за които не подозирах, въпреки сериозните ми интереси към конкретния исторически период.
Малко преди началото на Втората световна война нацистката партия обявява за свой "основен враг" не какво да е, а рака. Последват мащабни кампании за превенция на онкологични заболявания, които се изпълняват с типична германска решителност. Оказва се, че нацистки лекари са първите, които публикуват научни статии и доказват връзката между тютюнопушенето и рака на белия дроб. Това се случва поне десетилетие преди същите открития във Великобритания от далеч по-известните Остин Брадфорд-Хил и Ричард Дол. Статистически анализи на огромен брой пациенти (тип случай-контрол) категорично показват по-висока честота на злокачествени заболявания при пушачи. Нацистите доказват и канцерогенния потенциал на азбеста (за мезотелиом), анилинови бои (за рак на пикочния мехур) и прекомерното излагане на радиация (за кожни и други тумори). Министерството на пропагандата започва кампания за ограничаване на пушенето и постига сериозни успехи. Учудващо, през деветдесетте години водещ производител на цигари сравнява противниците на пушенето с нацисти, а пушачите - с евреи...
Нацистите първи започват примитивни (от съвременна гледна точка) кампании за скрининг срещу рак на правото черво (чрез ректоскопия) и на шийката на матката (чрез колпоскопия). Мобилни рентегнови апарати правят снимки на жителите на цели градове за търсене на ранни форми на белодробен рак. Особено внимание е обърнато на диетата - препоръчва се ограничена консумация на месо и производство предимно на пълнозърнест хляб. Самият Хитлер е бил почти строг вегетарианец и често е даван за пример на широката общественост. Германците са били предупреждавани за опасността от "празните калории", а соята е препоръчвана като заместител на месото. Превантивната и трудовата медицина търпят бурно развитие в рамките на Третия райх. Силикозата, причинена от кварцов прах, е разпозната като професионално заболяване на миньорите. Посочените мерки, разбира се, не са провокирани от някакъв универсален хуманизъм, а от престъпната идеология за доминираща арийска раса, без заболявания и недъзи.
Алкохолизмът е бил обект на особено внимание от нацистите. Той е разглеждан като заплаха за продуктивността на работниците и за издръжливостта на войниците. Алкохолиците са възприемани като социални маргинали, а някои от тях са стерилизирани или хвърлени в концлагери, без да са извършили никакви престъпления. Наказанията за пияни шофьори са били жестоки. Суровата реалност на войната, за разлика от COVID-19 пандемията днес, води до категорично приоритизиране на научно базираната медицина. Шарлатани, като "астролози, магнетопати, антропософи, ясновидци и т.н." са арестувани, като никой от тях не е предвидил собственото си задържане.
Историкът на науката Робърт Проктър е изключителен автор, който заслужава по-широка публика. Със сигурност до края на година ще прочета и другата му книга за престъпленията на лекарите в концлагарите. А "Нацистката война срещу рака" получава заслужена максимална оценка 5 от 5. Прочетете я, ако сте изкушени от медицината и историята.
Малко преди началото на Втората световна война нацистката партия обявява за свой "основен враг" не какво да е, а рака. Последват мащабни кампании за превенция на онкологични заболявания, които се изпълняват с типична германска решителност. Оказва се, че нацистки лекари са първите, които публикуват научни статии и доказват връзката между тютюнопушенето и рака на белия дроб. Това се случва поне десетилетие преди същите открития във Великобритания от далеч по-известните Остин Брадфорд-Хил и Ричард Дол. Статистически анализи на огромен брой пациенти (тип случай-контрол) категорично показват по-висока честота на злокачествени заболявания при пушачи. Нацистите доказват и канцерогенния потенциал на азбеста (за мезотелиом), анилинови бои (за рак на пикочния мехур) и прекомерното излагане на радиация (за кожни и други тумори). Министерството на пропагандата започва кампания за ограничаване на пушенето и постига сериозни успехи. Учудващо, през деветдесетте години водещ производител на цигари сравнява противниците на пушенето с нацисти, а пушачите - с евреи...
Нацистите първи започват примитивни (от съвременна гледна точка) кампании за скрининг срещу рак на правото черво (чрез ректоскопия) и на шийката на матката (чрез колпоскопия). Мобилни рентегнови апарати правят снимки на жителите на цели градове за търсене на ранни форми на белодробен рак. Особено внимание е обърнато на диетата - препоръчва се ограничена консумация на месо и производство предимно на пълнозърнест хляб. Самият Хитлер е бил почти строг вегетарианец и често е даван за пример на широката общественост. Германците са били предупреждавани за опасността от "празните калории", а соята е препоръчвана като заместител на месото. Превантивната и трудовата медицина търпят бурно развитие в рамките на Третия райх. Силикозата, причинена от кварцов прах, е разпозната като професионално заболяване на миньорите. Посочените мерки, разбира се, не са провокирани от някакъв универсален хуманизъм, а от престъпната идеология за доминираща арийска раса, без заболявания и недъзи.
Алкохолизмът е бил обект на особено внимание от нацистите. Той е разглеждан като заплаха за продуктивността на работниците и за издръжливостта на войниците. Алкохолиците са възприемани като социални маргинали, а някои от тях са стерилизирани или хвърлени в концлагери, без да са извършили никакви престъпления. Наказанията за пияни шофьори са били жестоки. Суровата реалност на войната, за разлика от COVID-19 пандемията днес, води до категорично приоритизиране на научно базираната медицина. Шарлатани, като "астролози, магнетопати, антропософи, ясновидци и т.н." са арестувани, като никой от тях не е предвидил собственото си задържане.
Историкът на науката Робърт Проктър е изключителен автор, който заслужава по-широка публика. Със сигурност до края на година ще прочета и другата му книга за престъпленията на лекарите в концлагарите. А "Нацистката война срещу рака" получава заслужена максимална оценка 5 от 5. Прочетете я, ако сте изкушени от медицината и историята.
March 4, 2025
I don't think I was the target audience of this book. The main idea is "Evil people can do good work", an idea I didn't find particularly groundbreaking. The author proves this by detailing various public health protocols the Nazi regime implemented, advances Nazi doctors made, and the legacy of their work.
Here are some key takeaways I learned from the book:
- Doctors and researchers who supported the Nazi regime, i.e Nazi doctors, still quoted and used the findings of earlier Jewish authorities
- Nazi propoganda of "New Germany"; the idea that Hitler was bringing on a revolutionary rebirth for the German nation, sparked a health panic and an obsession with making the German race as perfect as possible. The regime was especially concerned with making sure German mothers and the young male, working force were particularly healthy.
- A lot of scientific progress was stalled in the post war period due to a hesitancy to use Nazi discoveries and research
Here are some key takeaways I learned from the book:
- Doctors and researchers who supported the Nazi regime, i.e Nazi doctors, still quoted and used the findings of earlier Jewish authorities
- Nazi propoganda of "New Germany"; the idea that Hitler was bringing on a revolutionary rebirth for the German nation, sparked a health panic and an obsession with making the German race as perfect as possible. The regime was especially concerned with making sure German mothers and the young male, working force were particularly healthy.
- A lot of scientific progress was stalled in the post war period due to a hesitancy to use Nazi discoveries and research
February 27, 2025
Read it for a history class on Nazi Germany. I really liked the chapter on food especially. Did you know Rudolf Hess would annoy Hitler by bringing his own vegetarian meals to Nazi meetings? Or that German scientists were the first to establish a link between smoking and lung cancer?
March 2, 2012
Nopietns pētījums par pretvēža propagandu nacistu Vācijā - bija arī tur "baltā propaganda"!
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews