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Did Adolf Hitler Care More About His Workers Than We Did?

It is a little known fact that 1930s German medical research was the first in the world to recognise the occupational link between many harmful substances and cancer.

Nazi scientists proposed a link between cigarettes and cancer at least 30 years before the famous US Surgeon General report in 1964 and of course Hitler was notoriously anti-smoking.

But perhaps the most interesting area of German research relates to occupational illness. Hitler’s scientists made the connection between rock dust and silicosis during the 1930s. Screening and precautions were put in place for miners. Most remarkable of all is the research work done in Nazi Germany on asbestos. The rest of the world was still in thrall to the so called “magic mineral” with its myriad industrial and domestic uses. (By way of example the famous poppy scene in “The Wizard of Oz” where Dorothy falls asleep in the meadow was filmed in the 1940’s using asbestos flakes.) But by this time in Germany scientists had already made the link between asbestos and cancers. Hitler restricted its use in shipyards during re-armament. Asbestos related disease was made an occupational illness for which compensation was payable in Germany from 1943.

All of this was swept away after Hitler was defeated. Germany joined the rest of the world in promoting the magic mineral and an epidemic of asbestos related disease with catastrophic consequences for worker health. If you want to learn more read “The Nazi War on Cancer” by Robert Proctor.

It is estimated that throughout the world one person dies of an asbestos related disease every five minutes.

In the western hemisphere things began to change in the 1960s. US litigation against asbestos producers began to be successful. In the famous Manville Williams trial , (the first victory for asbestos victims) , the plaintiff lawyers used the Nazi research to prove the connection between asbestos and cancer.