WI: During WWI, the military doesn't haze people and doesn't give out cigarettes

Apparently the military hazing people during WWI contributed to the rise of fraternity hazing and the military giving out cigarettes during WWI resulted in those who tried to warn of the dangers of smoking being declared unpatriotic.
 
OTL's anti-smoking* attitudes are imo very contingent on 1) the US's healthcare system being as minimal as it is OTL 2) something like OTL Reaganism popping up to break unions in the early 80s using workplace smoking as a thin end of the wedge 3) all the tobacco companies SOMEHOW in asb-level luck not pointing out nazi antismoking mentalities 4) a southern good ol' boy democrat who was both able to sound like a man of the people(to get away with) and have picked up umc anti-smoking mindsets like OTL Bill Clinton. There's other prudish southern dems ofc but only clinton could have pulled it off, much like how only Ronald Reagan could have gotten away with both amnesty and expanding immigration in the 1980s for another issue.

AH.com's recurring consensus of timelines where the US has if not universal healthcare a significantly broader healthcare system wouldn't see the rise of anti-smoking atittudes to the extent of OTL in the US, and other western nations influenced by them.

* and various other puritanical things like high drinking ages, retaining anti-marijuana laws, having porn technically felony-level illegal outside of california, doing mass incarceration against drugs instead of say rehab type approaches, etc
 
OTL's anti-smoking* attitudes are imo very contingent on 1) the US's healthcare system being as minimal as it is OTL 2) something like OTL Reaganism popping up to break unions in the early 80s using workplace smoking as a thin end of the wedge 3) all the tobacco companies SOMEHOW in asb-level luck not pointing out nazi antismoking mentalities 4) a southern good ol' boy democrat who was both able to sound like a man of the people(to get away with) and have picked up umc anti-smoking mindsets like OTL Bill Clinton. There's other prudish southern dems ofc but only clinton could have pulled it off, much like how only Ronald Reagan could have gotten away with both amnesty and expanding immigration in the 1980s for another issue.

AH.com's recurring consensus of timelines where the US has if not universal healthcare a significantly broader healthcare system wouldn't see the rise of anti-smoking atittudes to the extent of OTL in the US, and other western nations influenced by them.

* and various other puritanical things like high drinking ages, retaining anti-marijuana laws, having porn technically felony-level illegal outside of california, doing mass incarceration against drugs instead of say rehab type approaches, etc
I'm pretty sure no country had any government healthcare programs before WWI (if any besides the USSR had any before WWII). In fact, America was one of the few countries that allowed people who didn't own property to vote. No wonder Marx thought a workers' revolt was neccesary and inevitable.
 
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Probably would have to do it under the explanation that smoking hurts your athleticism and thus isn't something you want to give soldiers. This was known back then, just have Pershing or someone have a bad experience smoking or something and demand that no cigarettes get passed out.

OTL's anti-smoking* attitudes are imo very contingent on 1) the US's healthcare system being as minimal as it is OTL 2) something like OTL Reaganism popping up to break unions in the early 80s using workplace smoking as a thin end of the wedge 3) all the tobacco companies SOMEHOW in asb-level luck not pointing out nazi antismoking mentalities 4) a southern good ol' boy democrat who was both able to sound like a man of the people(to get away with) and have picked up umc anti-smoking mindsets like OTL Bill Clinton. There's other prudish southern dems ofc but only clinton could have pulled it off, much like how only Ronald Reagan could have gotten away with both amnesty and expanding immigration in the 1980s for another issue.

AH.com's recurring consensus of timelines where the US has if not universal healthcare a significantly broader healthcare system wouldn't see the rise of anti-smoking atittudes to the extent of OTL in the US, and other western nations influenced by them.

* and various other puritanical things like high drinking ages, retaining anti-marijuana laws, having porn technically felony-level illegal outside of california, doing mass incarceration against drugs instead of say rehab type approaches, etc

IIRC tobacco companies did in Germany use Nazi anti-tobacco campaigns to try and protect themselves. By the 80s it probably wouldn't have worked in the US, no more than saying that smoking bans were taking away freedom and trying to make a smokers rights movement.

And it's worth mentioning the highest percent of smokers in the US was in the 60s (although highest total number/cigarette sales was in the 80s).
 
I'm pretty no country had any government healthcare programs before WWI (if any besides the USSR had any before WWII). In fact, America was one of the few countries that allowed people who didn't own property to vote. No wonder Marx thought a workers' revolt was neccesary and inevitable.

Imperial Germany had a rudimentary universal healthcare system. Churchill actually remarked it as being admirable and that it should be adopted in Britain
 
imo citing the nazis doing restrictions to undo government taxes/bans on tobacco and make proposing them radioactive seems far more plausible than OTL. OTL's well on the low probaibltiy on alot -- the fact the US lacks even a low-end of oecd universal healthcare system is one biggie, the sheer level of INCOMPETENCE in the pro-marijuana moement, the tobacco thing, the US "left" such as it is being SO closely friendly with corporate power etc
 
I wonder if the push for patriotism led to "cowardice" being demonized, which led to hazing, which led to "peer pressure".

FWIW, Woodrow Wilson and FDR were "wets". I wonder if a "dry" President would be more skeptical of handing out cigarettes.

@interpoltomo Didn't C. Everett Koop also play a big role? I'd bet that Koop was motivated by disgust at adults forcing kids to breathe their smoke in. I'd also bet Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" rhetoric helped. As for Clinton, I wonder if his goal was to seem less "neoliberal", to counter the claim that there was "no real difference" between him and Dole, etc.
 
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I don't think WW1 made more people smokers. Most people already smoked before the war (usually cigars or pipes or chew) the war just changed smoking habits because in the trench war a relatively quick and small cigarette was a lot more convenient then having to fill a pipe or smoke an entire cigar.
 
It is the difference between a restaurant and McDonald's. Cigarettes made it convenient and consumption went up.
 
This seems relevant for this thread:

46-0.png

1942:

"Heil Hitler! You are not allowed to smoke here!"

"Why, this is sheer Fascism!"

As for the OP itself.... With the OTL attitudes to smoking in the 1930s, and with how little joys the ordinary soldiers had on the front, I don't think WWII militaries would have had it easy to enact anti-tobacco policies. To read Finnish wartime stories about the tobacco shortage and the huge effort people went to growing it at home and buying it from the black market, I'd say that not giving tobacco to the troops would seriously lower morale in comparison to the OTL situation. Forcing the men to fight at the front and risk their lives daily, and not even allowing them the luxury of a quiet smoke now and then? It would be bound to cause trouble among the troops.
 
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imo citing the nazis doing restrictions to undo government taxes/bans on tobacco and make proposing them radioactive seems far more plausible than OTL. OTL's well on the low probaibltiy on alot -- the fact the US lacks even a low-end of oecd universal healthcare system is one biggie, the sheer level of INCOMPETENCE in the pro-marijuana moement, the tobacco thing, the US "left" such as it is being SO closely friendly with corporate power etc

It didn't work in Germany, even though Germany still has high rates of tobacco use. And comparing your enemies to Hitler/the Nazis is a tactic which dates to after WWII, the same as comparing your opponents to the big bad of the day, the Soviet Union and communism. OTL Big Tobacco tried to appeal to American values, freedom, and "smokers rights" in the 80s, yet this didn't stop the decline of sales. I'd have to go check again to see how much Big Tobacco used comparisons to the Nazis to their advantage. They definitely latched onto libertarianism, the Republican Party, etc., and any other sort of "freedom" thing to fight regulations against indoor smoking/second hand smoking and such.

And I don't see the role of universal healthcare. In fact, I'd suggest the opposite, since the government getting involved in healthcare means that government now needs a much larger role in public health since tobacco, alcohol, obesity, etc. means increased costs to the healthcare system which is passed onto the taxpayer. Sure, taxpayers might not like to pay a few more dollars per pack of cigarettes or bottle of liquor, but the savings on their taxes (less lung cancer, heart disease, liver disease, DUI-related injuries, etc.) could make up for it.

I don't think WW1 made more people smokers. Most people already smoked before the war (usually cigars or pipes or chew) the war just changed smoking habits because in the trench war a relatively quick and small cigarette was a lot more convenient then having to fill a pipe or smoke an entire cigar.

It helped disassociate the anti-smoking movement from the Prohibition movement, as part of how WWI helped kill a lot of the residue of the Victorian era (including Victorian attitudes toward smoking cigarettes, which was based on a mix of observable facts--this hurts your lungs and thus your performance--and pseudoscience/moralism). Prohibitionists during WWI, including some who had opposed tobacco before the war, helped promote smoking and passed out cigarettes for soldiers. That killed the anti-tobacco part of the movement for good. In the 1920s, cigarettes appealed to the "modernist" sensabilities of the era, and having many of the heroic soldiers hooked on nicotine didn't help. Pipes, cigars, and chew never captured as large of a market as cigarettes would from the 1920s onward. So there's definitely an argument to be made that WWI helped accelerate smoking habits.

The tobacco industry is mostly a construction of brilliant marketing, since the 19th century saw a huge increase in tobacco use, the invention of the Bonsack machine, etc. Cigarettes helped push things over the top, beyond the expectations of the main players in the industry.

I wonder if the push for patriotism led to "cowardice" being demonized, which led to hazing, which led to "peer pressure".

FWIW, Woodrow Wilson and FDR were "wets". I wonder if a "dry" President would be more skeptical of handing out cigarettes.

@interpoltomo Didn't C. Everett Koop also play a big role? I'd bet that Koop was motivated by disgust at adults forcing kids to breathe their smoke in. I'd also bet Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" rhetoric helped. As for Clinton, I wonder if his goal was to seem less "neoliberal", to counter the claim that there was "no real difference" between him and Dole, etc.

Yep, Koop sure did play a major role, but he wasn't the only surgeon-general who took aim at smoking. Surgeon General Luther Terry led a committee which published a very notable report against smoking in 1964. And since it was known that tobacco was dangerous since the 1950s (building on earlier research), employees like airline flight attendents sued the industry and got the smoking bans in place. While Americans are understandably not sympathetic to arguments that the industry's advertising made them smoke, Americans were more sympathetic to people who had no choice but to breathe in tobacco smoke, like children, flight attendents, restaurant staff, etc.

Prohibition was related to early anti-tobacco movements (one Prohibitionist said something to the effect of "tobacco is next once liquor is banned"), but fighting tobacco was never the focus of the movement. That said, there were always plenty of reasons to oppose smoking, and if Pershing, Wilson, or any other high authority decides that smoking degrades the performance of American soldiers, they won't let cigarettes be passed out. It was too early for real studies to be conducted, and a lot of the Victorian anti-tobacco movement was pseudoscience, but there was always the knowledge that smoking probably wasn't good for you. I have older relatives who never smoked (much) because they simply didn't like it, and thought it hurt their performance when they were playing sports.
 
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Yep, Koop sure did play a major role, but he wasn't the only surgeon-general who took aim at smoking. Surgeon General Luther Terry led a committee which published a very notable report against smoking in 1964.
Luther Terry was the famous Surgeon General's Report that made the dangers of smoking clear, Koop was second-hand smoke and the idea that it's morally wrong to smoke.
 

MuttDaniels

Banned
I think if you had been shelled for 7 days straight a cigarette will help calm your nerves. As for the hazing ,they were training soldiers not social media managers.
 

SsgtC

Banned
There's a reason hazing is a thing in the military. You're training to fight a war. Not go door to door selling magazines. The thinking was, "if you can't handle being hazed or knocked down in training, how the hell will you ever handle combat?" Some hazing, in the military, is, IMO, a good thing. The problem was, in a lot of cases, it got taken too far or used as an excuse to assault someone. But used correctly, it does help make a tougher fighting man. Outside of the military though, it really doesn't have any place.
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
Apparently the military hazing people during WWI contributed to the rise of fraternity hazing and the military giving out cigarettes during WWI resulted in those who tried to warn of the dangers of smoking being declared unpatriotic.
Hazing in the military? During the War?

Where?

The Soviets had a huge problems with that due to the way they conducted their induction of conscripts post WW II (Russians still do, although not quite as bad). That was a symptom of a couple of factors, crappy NCOs (the Soviet system didn't really use the non-commissioned officer ranks the way the West did/does) and too many troops who were treated like shit and left effectively unsupervised for long periods of time during peacetime.

During the War conscripts came in, were trained and shipped off to parts unknown like sacks of flour. There was no TIME to haze people. What some civilians see as "hazing" is part of building discipline and unit cohesion. The goal of recruit training it to get the recruit to a point where he's (at the time it as always a "he") is a blank slate/sponge that you can overwrite/soak up infomation with. That includes things that the uninformed may see as hazing (like doing push-ups until the Senior Instructor is tired or referring to the yourself in the third person) but are actually anything but casual harassment.

Smoking? Ya, getting the two free cartons during in-processing and being able to buy more for about 90% off retail price, definitely get a couple generations well and truly hooked, but there is also a reality that folks don't like to admit. Tobacco is one hell of an effective stimulant, even today more than a few troops use smokeless tobacco to help them remain alert during watch standing (more than a couple guys I know got hooked on dip because of this). Staying awake on watch is sort of important. Anything that helps with that is going to be seen a positive.
 
This seems relevant for this thread:

46-0.png

1942:

"Heil Hitler! You are not allowed to smoke here!"

"Why, this is sheer Fascism!"

As for the OP itself.... With the OTL attitudes to smoking in the 1930s, and with how little joys the ordinary soldiers had on the front, I don't think WWII militaries would have had it easy to enact anti-tobacco policies. To read Finnish wartime stories about the tobacco shortage and the huge effort people went to growing it at home and buying it from the black market, I'd say that not giving tobacco to the troops would seriously lower morale in comparison to the OTL situation. Forcing the men to fight at the front and risk their lives daily, and not even allowing them the luxury of a quiet smoke now and then? It would be bound to cause trouble among the troops.

Yeah, dying in 30 years of cancer has less meaning if you are wondering you will survive next month.
 
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