From youth protection to individual responsibility: addressing smoking among young people in post-war West Germany

This article draws on health education material produced on smoking in the 1950s and 1960s in West Germany to question the extent to which smoking and health disappeared from the agenda in the post war decades, following the experience of anti-smoking propaganda during the Third Reich. It suggests that continuities can be seen in anti-smoking literature and campaigns both before and after the Third Reich around the notion of youth protection. In the early 1960s, there was a more decisive break with the past with the foundation of the Ministry of Health and a growing determination to make health education a federal responsibility. There was an evident shift towards notions of individual responsibility and rational choice, informed by a growing body of international epidemiological evidence on smoking and health. There were also some attempts to engage with youth culture in the 1960s, rather than seeing youth culture as a threat to the social order, as had been the case in older youth protection arguments against smoking.