Racial hygiene -cleansing the Volk of those deemed undesirable by the regime such as anti-socials, biologically defective individuals and races -was at the heart of Nazi policy. This essay will explore whether the Nazi wrath was also directed against drug addicts; or, in other words: was drug addiction considered a biological disease to be eradicated? The answer is no. The Germans believed that drug addiction, unlike mental defi ciency and alcoholism, was not hereditary. Not being hereditary, it presented no danger to the master race but could be cured, despite patients' relapses. Those who were not considered a threat to the race were deemed worthy of life and were treated relatively well.

Alcohol and tobacco use did not fit well with National Socialist aesthetics. However, these substances were not proscribed in Nazi Germany in spite of the heavy penalties for excessive use: Alcoholics were sterilized, and smoking by children was a criminal offense. This article argues that the great demand of the German people for these products prevented the authoritarian regime from alcohol and tobacco prohibition but measures were taken by the Nazis to reduce tobacco and alcohol consumption in the next generation.

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, historians and doctors have claimed that the ‘army disease’ of both the Union and the Confederate armies was morphine addiction. But since drug addiction was not yet fully understood in medical texts of the mid-1860s, addiction as the army disease could have been perceived only in hindsight. Whether addiction was prevalent among veteran troops or not, one thing can be firmly ascertained: after the Civil War, every other war in American history has brought with it a drug problem, whether real or imagined.

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