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The Marshall Plan included $1 billion in American cigarette aid and represented a third of all monies earmarked for food in 7.7% of the entire aid package. You're listening to War College, a weekly podcast that brings you the stories from behind the front lines. Here are your hosts. Hello, welcome to war college. I'm Matthew Galt.

And I'm Derek Gannin.

Drugs in the battlefield go together like peanut butter and jelly.

The Third Reich soldiers ran on methamphetamine,

and American soldiers smoked like chimneys. The picture of the USGI with a burning cigarette press between their lips is so iconic that few people question it or realize how young that image really is.

Joel R. Bias did question it.

He's the assistant professor of National Security Studies at the U.S. Air Force Command and Staff College,

and he's here to help us today dispel the myth of the great American military

cigarette and walk us through the fascinating story of how cigarettes ended up in the U.S. military

kit and how they left.

It's the subject of his new book, Smoke

If You Got Him, the rise and fall of the military cigarette

ration. Joel, thank you so much for joining us.

Hey guys, it's good to be here. Thanks for having me.

All right, well, let's start with some really basic stuff.

It was one of the things that I thought was really interesting about the, especially the beginning of your book,

is that pre-World War I, America had a really different relationship with cigarettes and nicotine.

Can you talk about that a little bit?

...