Hemp Against Hitler: How Cannabis Helped America Win World War II

[narko]

dude all i said was nazis used hemp for their war machenery and they wanted german farmers to grow hemp. there is proof(german books again...tkheres noting i can do about that) that hemp was grown around ~10000 ha before ww2 and while ww2 it increased to ~30000 ha. why should i be lying about stuff like that ? there were no movies made i never said that . plus about that pamphlet thing: it was written in 1943 from german agricultere department (you can read that) which was part of the whole nazisystem.

but really its funny how your trying to bring hemp to the good side. its a plant. a cheap and powerfull plant. why wouldnt anybody use it. they didnt smoke the hemp they used it for oil ropes and other stuff.

 

[DiscoBiscuit]

the nazis were huge film makers.

I always forget the name of the woman who filmed the nazi olympics, I watched many of her films, she became an influence for many future film makers in terms of 'picture'. a friend of mine who teaches at a film school made me watch a lot of nazi films about ten years ago.

if nazi 'hemp for victory' was big, there must be more evidence than just a pamphlet written in german.

I see your reasoning and you didn't necessarily ask for mine but here it is. There's little to suggest that Germany had to pro-propagandize hemp with the German people (similar to what happened in America.)

Germany may not have needed what was necessary in America, a campaign to counter the previous, manufactured mentality of 'evil weed'. In the US, weed was already illegal for two decades. Add to that the indeterminate amount of propaganda years which began as soon as Mexicans migrated north for agricultural work.

Compare that to Germany who was already in the midst of fervent nationalism, off the heels of one of Germany's worst depressions. As late as 1850 hemp was the most traded commodity, globally. Hard to imagine folks having to be cajoled into growing a plant that was most likely necessary for militarization.

America has documentation that shows how corporate barons blackballed hemp. Standard Oil and IG Farben were trading partners. Hemp had the potential to lower profits for each, so they put the kibosh on hemp pre-WWII. War has a way of dissolving international trade agreements.

Can't say with certainty whether Germany grew or imported hemp. However, Germany is an agricultural powerhouse and it wouldn't make sense to buy what you could grow, unless of course you imperialize and warp trade aspects in your favor. Even though one acre of land may produce as much as 3 to 8 tons of raw hemp fiber alone, world war may have made both domestic production and imports necessary.

With the advent of synthetic fiber, one could argue that hemp wasn't needed. But Germany had shortcomings besides Adolf Hitler. One was a finite supply of petroleum. Considering that food, oil, fiber, fabric and plastic could be manufactured from a single plant, I find it hard to even speculate that any country would take on the world and not utilize hemp.

 

[Stoner4Life]

a dream come true if they legalized hemp production in the US again, there'd be no denying its usefulness as a renewable fuel source and of course many other competitive industrial uses as well.

science and industry would once again converge here to strengthen our economy and to further cut our dependence on foreign oil.

I'm a bit of an optimist when it comes to future hemp production here, I consider it a big stepping stone in cannabis' overall acceptance.

 

[DiscoBiscuit]

Sure hope so. Something tells me hemp may be more responsible for prohibition than it's psychotropic cousin. If Standard Oil considered hemp it's nemesis in the 30s, hemp threatens everybody from Exxon to the Koch brothers today.

This article may already be linked. It's worth a read as the author indicates economic aspects, not social stigma led us to prohibition.

http://www.ukcia.org/research/TheElkhornManifesto.php

There's something I still don't understand. Hearst was obviously invested in PNW wood pulp. Why wouldn't Hearst et al do more with less by utilizing hemp? Enter social stigma? Perhaps. I get an impression there's something that prohibitionists won't admit. Law enforcements wholesale, asset-seizure business is a relatively new tactic.

IMO, it's not folks growing their own weed that scares government. It's the few who maximize profits enough to the point of taking over. When Calderon approached HRC over the legalization of weed at the UN, Clinton said, "but there's so much money in it."

Advocates of repeal say we can regulate, even tax hemp, if not marijuana as a whole. I'm not so sure. We'd have to flood the market with weed to the proportion of other legal vices to deter criminal gangs from seeking weed profits. And then you have a society full of dope heads. If it ain't one thing it's another.

 

[DiscoBiscuit]

Ken Burns has a new documentary about alcohol prohibition. He was on Morning Joe this morning, describing the hypocrisy of absolute mentality and forcing prohibition on society to control minorities. Yet the absolutism forced all to drink under the table.

Sound familiar? Weed prohibition propaganda serialized black men sexing white women. The inference was that weed might force white women to succumb. And you know they never go back, lol.

A few white, greedy, capitalist prudes stole away our favorite plant.

 

[bombadil.360]

but really its funny how your trying to bring hemp to the good side. its a plant. a cheap and powerfull plant. why wouldnt anybody use it. they didnt smoke the hemp they used it for oil ropes and other stuff.

if you read the first post I made in this thread, I clearly stated that if the nazis did grow hemp, it would only show the impartiality of nature; how then am I trying to "bring hemp to the good side" ?

what I'm questioning is the nazi-version of 'hemp for victory'; it just seems odd they even had the need for such movement.

anyway, the pamphlet you speak of was written by a nazi institution in the early 1940s, so yes, it shows the nazis also had their own 'hemp for victory'. an idea that was most likely stolen from the americans, since it would also be very odd that the nazi intelligence did not know about the american hemp for victory.

 

[bombadil.360]

There's something I still don't understand. Hearst was obviously invested in PNW wood pulp. Why wouldn't Hearst et al do more with less by utilizing hemp?

this is also something many of us have wondered.

it is a very good question.

imo, these guys would not care about social-stigmas if they were to use hemp, afterall, big corps can and do change the way society can view certain very subjective moral issues.

from my perspective, not only hemp and cannabs, but also most if not all pyche-active plants were banned to restrict people from exploring their own inherent consciousness and its potentials.

why? who knows, it is creepy to think some people are interested in not allowing other people to do such a thing, which many of us would argue is a right every one is entitled to have after birth.

peace