Episode 132 – Norman Ohler, Blitzed – Drugs in the Third Reich

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welcome to the human experience of live show we have an incredibly entertaining show for you planned for you guys today so sit back grab a drink enjoy this conversation my guest for today is mr. Norman Oller Norman Oller is a journalist novelist and screenwriter his articles have been printed in many high-level publications today we’re gonna be covering his first non-fiction book titled blitzed drugs in the Third Reich a book that looks at how

methamphetamine was utilized by the Nazi war machine his book has since gone international bestseller and has been translated into over 25 different languages Norman it’s a pleasure sir welcome to hxb thank you for having me it’s good to be on your show yeah thanks so much for making the time for this it’s pretty late for you over there you’re based in Berlin isn’t that right yeah it’s midnight here in Berlin there’s a rain shower coming down

because it was a very hot day so I think everyone in the city is still awake because it’s just been too warm and it’s actually the shortest night of the year tonight okay I mean that sets the stage for sure what why don’t you why do you paint a little picture about your background you know get us started into how how you decided to write this book as well please I always wanted to write something about those dark Nazi times because it’s the most fascinating

in our history well at least no German history but I never really knew what to write about it and so much has been written about it so it’s kind of kind of hard to figure out what would take you wanna you want to go into so when I spoke to my grandfather when I was a teenager about the so called Third Reich that right by the ways it was a Nazi propaganda term so I actually don’t like to use it that often when I first spoke to him about it

asking him what his role was and heard stories of a country that was ruled by an orderly leader and a system that was very disciplined and Nazi myths like that that he was still transporting in the late 80s I thought that really at one point I want to have a closer look at this but as I said before I didn’t really know what I should what I should examine until about when was that like fired no no longer ago nine years ago a friend of mine told me that the Nazis

used all these drugs and it was completely contrary to what my grandfather has always told me would like if you listened to his stories and then you hear my friends saying the Nazis used all these drugs it didn’t match up so I was I started to do research well first of course first of all I asked my friend why what makes you say that what what gives you this impression and my friend who told me this he’s a DJ in Berlin and he’s quite knowledgeable

about drugs and also about Nazi Germany’s interested in history but how would he make the connection that there had been a lot of drug use and he told me this very unusual story he said that a friend of his an antique dealer in Berlin had found an old medicine cabinet in an old East Berlin apartment which had a couple of packages of medicine called pervitin inside and this friend of mine he swallowed some of these pills and said that they still had a very potent

effect on him so this is kind of curious story that there was a medicine called pervitin and that it was that these pills even though they were 70 years old were still having a stimulating effect that kind of got me interested and then I researched what was the content of pervitin and then it got really interesting because the content of perversion is methamphetamine so I had to conclude that methamphetamine had been used in Nazi Germany in a normal

medicines that were being that were being sold apparently legally sold and that got my research started hmm okay and I mean you you sure did I mean in the opening pages of your book you you went and visited the the temblor Factory right yeah Temne was the manufacture of methamphetamine it was a at the time medium sized pharmaceutical company in Germany that actually became a large pharmaceutical company in Germany because methamphetamine was such

a successful product when they started out with developing methamphetamine they had no idea actually what it really was they just realized that if you take it you feel somehow energized and to be energized was the big buzzword of those times I guess just like it is today I mean we all need as much energy as we can the whole day in order to perform at our best so this was a really true in Nazi Germany so tamela put created or paid for a huge advertisement campaign

they thought methamphetamine could become as popular as coca-cola which was the number one drink in Nazi Germany not only because it was brown which was the colour of the Nazis but also because it gave you that can extra a little boost so Tamara thought with methamphetamine you got a much bigger boost so they they advertised across the board and it did become a big success to the company and 1938 it came on the market and it quickly flooded

Nazi Germany so that’s in Nazi Germany methamphetamine was illegal very popular product so this is a very unusual situation I thought Soperton was the brand name what was the active ingredient in perfect end methamphetamine oh okay and I mean you if we just take a step a little bit back I mean was this available over-the-counter without a prescription yes it was when the Nazis took power in 1933 one of the first things they did was to outlaw all drugs

they were they posed as the first anti-drug government in Europe claiming that the Jews in Germany the the minority of the Jews they were all into drugs and this is poisoning the German people so they they kind of used anti-drug policy as a policy to to outlaw or to criminalize Jews and and and and and other people that they that they didn’t like the irony then is that in 1938 as I mentioned before methamphetamine comes onto the market

and is not recognized as a drug it’s it’s seen as something like aspirin or something like like a coffee coffee in a pill form so you could just go to any pharmacy and buy a thousand packages of methamphetamine there’s no problem with that children could buy it that no one thought it had it would be regulated yeah so this was so methamphetamine in a way substituted all those drugs that the Nazis had made illegal so it was like a

cure-all for so many different things yeah it was it was supposed to be good against hay fever against a flu against fatigue obviously it was used for losing weight because you can’t really you’re not really that hungry and methamphetamine I suppose it was supposed to be good for the for the sex drive so it was also used as like type of stimulant private stimulants it was really used was at praise to be good for basically anything the cure-all as you

said hmm so if you were to compare prep attend to the methamphetamine on the street today what would be the potency comparison if we were to analyze that well one pill of pervitin contained three milligrams of methamphetamine and methamphetamine orally and it was produced by tenly and uh i suppose very good conditions it was a professional pharmaceutical company making very pure methamphetamine so that’s very different from the street crystal meth that is

cooked in and I don’t know yeah trailer parks or whatever it’s cooked or slums and check in the Czech Republic if we talk about Europe so I guess taking a line of crystal meth is much more dangerous than swallowing a pill of perverting at the time because the the substance was controlled it was you know it was every pill at the same amount and it was you know clean and the quality was assured all of that stuff so I guess for crystal meth consumer these days it

would have been it would be a dream to take a perverted bill of course perverted methamphetamine was addictive at the time just like it is today so it was a very dangerous pill but this was not realized for quite some time so for a few years pervitin was on the market and people became addicted without really knowing it I mean they appreciated the product and they took more and more but people weren’t so aware of the problem of addiction I mean

addiction was connected to morphine and cocaine but if people use perverting they never thought that would that would also create an addiction that changed a little bit later during during the so-called Third Reich it’s really fascinating to go over the history of when this drug was sort of invented and and was available so so readily who was professor rank he was sort of the driving force of getting the German army army to make use of burton specifically

what did what role did professor rank a play in this process well rank pronounced danke in german but we can call him rank that’s fine rank was the professor of physiology employed by the german vm a– their mother’s the german army at the time his job was to find ways to improve the performance of the german soldier so he was responsible for making suggestions such as should the soldiers eat white bread or brown bread or what kind of

cloth should the uniform be made of when they fight in tropical in the tropical climate so he was concerned with all kinds of things and one of his main interest was to combat fatigue because he said and he wrote about it even before parrot in before I discovered perverted he wrote that a tired soldier is not a good soldier he because the tired soldier doesn’t shoot accurately anymore and it’s not good in combat and unfortunately human beings do get time

in the evening or after a lot of hours of daytime we just we humans do get tired so he thought wouldn’t that wouldn’t be great to find a way to make a soldier combat ready for like 24 hours and then when pervitin came on the market and people talked about it and you know probably some friends of his talked about it or he had you saw an ad by the Temne company and in the subway car in berlin or it’s not clear how he first heard about 13 but 13

was very known in 38 in germany there was even chocolate on the market that was laced with methamphetamine so he knew about it and he then started doing some research and there were some universities in germany that had done exam research on methamphetamine and that and they some some of these papers that had been written on methamphetamine had included the fact that methamphetamine makes you less tired so he became ranked became very interested

in methamphetamine and did tests among young medical officers in his Institute and concluded after he had done these tests with with these with these young students giving them either methamphetamine cough caffeine or placebos he found out that the people on meth were actually able to stay awake longer and he was in he was thrilled with those results and he suggested this to his superiors he said we have to use this this will give us an advantage over

our enemies because at the time no one had thought about using something like methamphetamine to keep a soldier from sleeping I mean that was in a way a genius idea that he had so he he he made it his job to make sure that methamphetamine would be introduced to the German army and that’s how the army became interested in the medication okay so so so fast-forwarding a little bit in April 1940 the World War two kicks off in 1938 or so right – starts

September 1st 1939 a churning attack Germany attacking Poland and in April 1940 the stimulant decree was issued so that that was sent out to all the medical doctors in the army advising them on how to use methamphetamine what what information did the D Creek contain what it was in this decree that that people needed to know well when rank suggested that methamphetamine should be used on a large scale this was in summer 39 just before Germany attacked Poland

his superiors had no clue really what he was talking about the German Surgeon General he basically declined that he said that this was not really of concern to the German army to now use Parrott and he didn’t really he didn’t get it basically and then when Germany attacked Poland and Anka wrote to all the medical officers in the field asking them to report back to him their experiences with pervitin because he knew that many medical

officers brought pervitin on a private basis they had they just bought it from from pharmacies and distributed it but there was no regulation and for ranky that was in a way a nightmare because he knew that methamphetamine is a strong drug and to have millions of soldiers out there in the field fighting a lot of them using a very strong drug without any regulation for him that was a very risky thing so before Germany attacked France he again made the point and he

said we have to regulate this and we have to actually stimulate the the consumption of methamphetamine and this had to do with the strategy that Germany was applying in their attack on the Western Allies in their attack on Belgium the Netherlands and France which started in May 1940 because that attack was the real it was the the it it was the the the blueprint for the so-called blitz blitz creek blitz creek is a german invention which

which translated means speed war so the idea is to overrun the enemy within a short period of time the first couple of days you you advanced so quickly into enemy territory that the that the enemy forces are overwhelmed and are beaten within the within the span of like it’s a week or two that was the bed was the plan that they implied in France and they wanted to go through the are Denton’s which is a mountainous terrain and in Belgium that the French and the

British didn’t really defend because they thought no army could go through this very difficult terrain especially not with tanks because you have to move very slowly and you have to rest at night and it would be for an army would be very dangerous to go through that terrain but this was exactly what the Germans did and with the help of methamphetamine they didn’t have to rest at night so they were able to race through those mountains within three

days and three nights without stopping reaching friends within those three days and three nights one of the British and French allies were still in the north of Belgium expecting the attack of Germany to come from there so the Germans completely surprised the West and they were only able to do that because they were taking thirty five million dosages of methamphetamine so that whole advancing army did not need to sleep for several days and nights so Rankin was

envisioning that he said because detected that the plan had already been laid out in February and February Hitler had decided we will go through the addendum ount ins our soldiers will not sleep because there’s yet that German superheroes who don’t need to sleep the generals all said well they have to sleep they’re just human beings and then right then Franky’s our kind of came because he said well I have something that can turn

them into those super humans that don’t need to sleep so he wrote down the what you mentioned the stimulant decree which is a two page paper it’s the first paper in medical in in military history that describes how a whole army should use a very powerful synthetic stimulant in this case methamphetamine it describes to the medical officers what officers what is methamphetamine namely a stimulant that keeps you that keeps you from sleeping that keeps you awake and

then describes also some other effects that happen on methamphetamine for example that you become more aggressive that you lose some of your fear some of your inhibitions so it it kind of explains the medical officers what methamphetamine is and how much they should give out they should start with the pill then they should give the next pill after six hours and they should give the next pill after another six hours so this was three pills in the

span of twelve hours which is nine milligrams of pure methamphetamine which is quite a lot and certainly enough to to make a soldier aggressive and functioning and well make the whole war machine well-oiled hmm okay so I mean different branches of the the military were taking different amounts right I mean how many how many total dosages would you say went out did you say millions of dosages of this drug went out well there’s a paper in the military

archives of Germany which gives the exact number of pills that were honored by the V AMA from the Temne company and these are 35 million dosages just for this Western campaign there are no records of how many pills of those 35 million were actually taken I assume that most of them were taken because there’s a lots of reports of how the drug was distributed so it’s it’s pretty clear that the pills were distributed to the tank troops especially because the

German strategy was to use the tanks as the leading weapon in the attack which was a very unusual tactic usually the tanks would stay behind the infantry would would race forward and the artillery would fight and then the tanks would kind of come from the back but the Germans kind of reversed that that line up and said we’re gonna use the tanks kind of as race cars they should race into enemy territory as fast as they could and as

far as they could and tanks actually are quite fast machines so that’s what what the Germans did and with so the tank troops basically were all messed up and in fact didn’t stop racing until they had reached the Atlantic so when they had after three days and three nights reached the French border town of sedan they should have stopped this was Hitler’s plan we get there and then we stop and we regroup and then we see how the battle continues but they were so

hopped up that they just continued to race forward through the whole country of France until the reach day of the Atlantic that basically couldn’t stop anymore they were just fighting and conquering and there were an unstoppable unstoppable force and the first rumors of the unbeatable Vama made their rounds the French became really scared that basically gave up very quickly the Belgium forces gave up the Dutch forces gave up nothing could stand in the way

of those crazy German of this crazy German war machine that was fuelled with drugs but also that had a brilliant strategy so you cannot say that it was just the drugs that made the German victory in the West it was the drugs combined with the strategy with the extremely good training of the soldiers with the the Luftwaffe coordinating their attacks with the tanks on the ground so the overall package was was very effective but the drug methamphetamine played a

crucial role in this in this setup okay a question just popped up in our chat box I think it’s relevant here did the soldiers have a crash after they took all this stimulant to March for three days and any health effects for them well one of the most famous tank generals his name is GU de Leon he he had had the idea of this campaign through the addendum Alton’s together with Rommel and fun launched and these three kind of unconventional tank

generals suggested that to hit that coup de Leon after France was taken said to his man on record he said quote I have asked you to stay awake for three days and three nights you managed to do so for 17 days and 17 nights this is act this is of course a crazy number even on methamphetamine I think it’s impossible to stay awake for such a long time but I think they did stay awake for a very long time and then had short breaks of rest and sleep and then

again they would go for a very long period of time so that’s what Guderian means with these 17 days and 17 eyes were basically they they had hardly any pause so it is of course no surprise that after those few weeks they did crash they they came down big time but at that time France was already beaten so the victory was theirs and then they could really rest and and ranky drove to the front because he wanted to see how his perverted how his idea basically

worked how his pervitin worked and he took photos and first I was surprised when I saw those photos that he took of soldiers because he photographed sleeping soldiers only so all the photos he took in France were of sleeping German soldiers so they were just sleeping then for days and nights they just they just had to kind of regain their their energy by sleeping but this was not a problem because French France was already beaten so you can see that

pervitin really works in a you know in a war that only lasts for like two three weeks there were some casualties on top of just sleeping some officers died but only like a handful so methamphetamine increases your heart your heart starts racing so some of some officers actually had heart attacks and died but really not many and Ronco reported this and the army said well this is unfortunate obviously but it’s just a few men so this is nothing

compared to the overall you know glorious victory we have just achieved we have to take these casualties into account mm-hmm and I mean we’re talking about methamphetamine what effect is it having on the brain when you’re taking it methamphetamine lets your brain release a lot more neurotransmitters than the brain usually releases or you could say in a situation of extreme danger your brain will release everything it has to put you on

the highest alert it can put you if you are attacked now if you’ve walked through the woods and a bear attacks you this is a this is a methamphetamine moment in a way without taking methamphetamine you’re fully you’re fully there trying to figure out how can I get out of the situation or how can I beat the bear or how can I run away and if you take methamphetamine even if you sit in a chair at home it kind of simulates a similar situation so methamphetamine

puts it kind of energizes you but for high-cost obviously because after a while you have to replenish you have to take a rest your brain has to replenish those neurotransmitters at that they have to be read it has to refill basically sure so so it doesn’t really make sense to take methamphetamine sitting in a chair doing nothing and be totally overexcited but it does make sense for fighting a fighting soldier and that’s why the Nazis were the first

army in the world to take methamphetamine but in a way they set the example other armies have very carefully studied what the Germans did and have found their own stimulants to supply to their soldiers in order to also make them more combat ready but the Germans really we’re the first Army to do so and for the for the first two years of the of world war two they were the only ones because it took the Allies a while to realize what’s going on here

hmm yeah that was that was my next question actually was you know let’s say that a German plane goes down the Allies discover pervitin a in the plane and I mean how when did the allit did the Allies ever dose their soldiers with drugs has this been recorded at all yeah absolutely right German planes were shut down over England and British the Brits found methamphetamine in in those planes and examined it and also had knowledge

obviously of amphetamines because mfit amines which in the streets liner is called speed was already available before methamphetamine was coming on to the market and fed Amin Benzedrine as it was as the brand name was was an American product benzene was an American product of the 30s and which was still sold you know decades later the beatnik generation they always talk about the Benzedrine pills that they pop so also the Brits knew that what stimulants are

but methamphetamine was a stronger drug so they examine it and they they wondered whether they should also use it for their pilots then decided against it because they thought it’s too strong the side effects are too strong but they they realized that maybe they have to do something at least so they they decided to use amphetamines later in the war for their pilots and also for their ground troops so when German troops and the British

troops Montgomery and battle in North Africa Ramos people on meth and Montgomery’s people are on speed okay okay so we’re starting to paint a picture of what was going on during World War two and I mean the huge role that methamphetamine was playing in in the blitzkrieg and how you know how it was driving the the German forces right so there there was a point in in the war the blitzkrieg reached done Dunkirk and but they were they

failed to to trap the the the British soldiers were trapped and they they failed to attack the Germans failed to attack what what role did the methamphetamine play in this scenario well before I mentioned that the tank generals were unstoppable they just raced and raised and raced through enemy territory until they reached the the Atlantic coast and Don Kirk is on the Atlantic coast it was the last port that the the German forces had

not taken yet so it was the last point that the Allies could use the the British army could use to flee back to to Great Britain but the Germans could have easily taken the port and destroyed the whole British Army and they would have won World War two already at this point but Hitler made a fatal mistake yeah I mean it was a good mistake but for the Nazi war machine it was a fatal mistake he ha he he ordered the so called he issued the so called halt

order hail to the field he ordered the German tanks to not take Dunkirk this is a an order that has puzzled historians since the order was given out I mean the British couldn’t believe that luck the German tanks could have destroyed them and they just stopped and waited for the British to enter Dunkirk and then evacuate by way of of ships through the channel back into back to Great Britain what is an explanation for this halt order is that Hitler felt

extremely uncomfortable with the tank general’s racing faster than he could orchestrate the campaign he was he was sitting at at his at his in his map house looking at the map of France and his adjutant just told him where the troops were and Hitler was always be high lacking lacking behind he was not controlling the campaign any more so giving talent attempts to stop now was a way for him to get back in control so he was a serious control freak so having

control of his army was more important to him than letting his army go and destroy the enemy the second point is that Goering number two in the Nazi state and head of the Luftwaffe the Air Force and going was a morphine addict he regularly used morphine since 1923 so he often was not in the most realistic mindset that you can imagine but he was often in a trance like more morphine induced a state and he had the completely impractical idea that the

British forces should be finished off by his forces by the Luftwaffe not by the ground troops not by the tank generals he said to Hitler if you let these tank generals finish the job now they will get too powerful and you will lose power but if you let me do the job with my Luftwaffe we can say this is all our genius work together and this is a much better way to finish off this campaign and Hitler believed Gerling which was a

big mistake and the British could flee back to Great Britain could re regroup and the war continued okay so dr. marell was a really interesting character in in the war what what part did he play in regards to Hitler and and the treatment for Hitler Morel was a celebrity doctor in Berlin treating actresses and aristocrats and wealthy people he was a dr. feelgood and in 1936 he treated the photographer of Hitler and photographer of Hitler that

guy called Hoffman was so happy with the treatment of Morel that he introduced Hitler and morale because Hoffman knew that Hitler was suffering from severe stomach cramps all the time bloating and gas and Hitler really had problems with this extreme pain and Morel was able to cure that very quickly because Morel was very liberal with applying a drug called Yuka doll Okada the main ingredient in a kadhai is oxycodone it’s a it’s an opioid that

Morel was liberally very liberally applying and if you have stomach cramps and you inject oxycodone those crimes immediately go you don’t have that you don’t have that problem anymore and Hitler immediately was cured of his severe pain and mate morale his personal physician this was in 1936 so and from 1936 to 1945 Morel was the personal physician of Hitler and basically didn’t leave his side any more stayed with him every day gave him injections every day

and this very much changed the way or the the character and personality of Hitler who had always been very proud to be a teetotaler and abstinent person that didn’t even drink coffee no alcohol vegetarian a total health freak but this changed in a big way when morale became his personal physician hmm so so the first thing that dr. Morell treated Hitler for was his cough right and what were there other things that dr. Morell was treating Hillier for well

hit the morel basic usually didn’t treat people for any diseases Morel treated people so they would feel better because if you inject oxycodone in a very high dosage it’s stronger than heroin you have an extremely strong high so hit experience this high and wanted to repeat this high because he liked it and he became addicted to opioids so Morel didn’t really treat him against any diseases except that the the bloating and the stomach problems but what really

happened is that Hitler became dependent on those at daily injections by his personal physician hmm there was this video that I saw I think it was on Twitter or something where Hitler is at the Olympics I think and he’s rockin in his chair really quickly it was was Hitler on pervitin as well was he on methamphetamine as well it’s not clear whether he was on methamphetamine as well Morel took notes every day and his notes are all kept in the federal

archives in Germany and to study these notes is actually a big task because there a lot there are lots of notes and they’re complicated and there but they they and they but they can be deciphered and I I spent a lot of time with these notes and only in one occasion does Morel write down that he gives Hitler methamphetamine that he actually injects Hitler with methamphetamine which is quite strong to be get injected with pure methamphetamine but he only does

this one time or he rights this one time but what he does do is morale develops a medicine that he produces himself he has a he has a pharmaceutical company himself and he produces a medicine called Vita mu teen which is a supplement you could say of several vitamins so he kind of invented the vitamin supplement this was his idea and said if you take this every day you won’t be sick at all and it’s good for you and this despite this Vita mu teen

that he developed he developed a special form of this vitamin teen for Hitler it was always wrapped in gold and foil and Hitler received one of these supplements each day for with lunch so whenever he ate a lunch there was a vita more teen next to his plate and there was there’s one report of an SS doctor that gets ahold of one of these gold and this golden wrapped vita machine and lets them have has them examined in a lab and the lab results

shows that these vitamin supplements contained methamphetamine but i did not see this lab report because unfortunately or I don’t know if it’s unfortunate fact is that the SS doctor lost this report so we cannot really be sure if methamphetamine really was included in vitamin teen but it’s it’s possible and it I would say it’s probable but as a historian or as a researcher I cannot say that it’s guaranteed that he used methamphetamine

as well it’s guaranteed that he used lots of drugs especially opioids which also make you euphoric if you take them in high dosages intravenously you also took quite a bit of cocaine whether he did take methamphetamine as I just said is unclear okay so other than Cain and meth and and unsure about methamphetamine and the the opioid you could all what what else was he taking that well I mean cocaine and and heavy opioids is already quite a lot but but

he took in fact over 90 medications on a regular basis including some crazy stuff like the extracts of testicles of bulls to increase his stamina he took he really liked picks liver extract which in a way doesn’t make him a vegetarian anymore he actually uses a lot of hormones that are harvested from slaughtered animals at the time I mean it sounds it sounds crazy but at the time people did believe that animal hormones and probably still people

believe that today eating things like liver like it’s kind of old school to eat liver but people eat liver because people say it’s full of neutrons and it it probably is but to get like a liver extract injected into your veins is somewhere I considered as crazy sure and but Morel did this on so Hitler received a lot of steroids hormone preparations his his drug cocktail is completely insane and is the absolute opposite of being an absent person which

was the very image that he tried to portray the whole time to the to the world especially to the German people what’s the bunker mentality that that Hitler had and do you think the drugs that he was on affected his reasoning and and you know the reason that the bunker mentality happened or existed for him well he’s thinking in a way never changes Hitler is a racist criminal already when he’s a when he’s already in the 20s when he writes his

hateful book mine Kampf which is a racist book which already outlines his policies and I do not think or at least there’s not there are no records that at this time he was using drugs to come up with these ideas so we cannot really say that drugs form his racist look on the world but we can say that he later on especially as the war turns very bad for him and for Germany he uses lots of euphoric making stimulants especially the opioids in order to keep his

confidence and as there’s a few notes by Morel they’re typical notes read like Fela fearless leader that’s other hit that was called Fela has to go into very important military briefing about difficult situation on the Eastern Front needs needs something to boost his performance for this important meeting I inject you could all twenty milligrams Fela extremely happy after injection goes into meeting comes out of meeting tells me meeting weren’t really well

because of application of the medication so Hitler used the drugs to kind of keep his keep his keep his way never never questioned himself never change his way of thinking so the drugs he used the drugs to stay narrow mind it in a way that’s why uses very specific drugs he uses he doesn’t use like he doesn’t smoke weed in order to kind of have new creative ideas it I certainly didn’t do that he takes drugs that kind of keep him on track and keep him functioning so

the drugs do play they don’t change his thinking but they do play away in his decision-making because staying on track for Hitler means removing yourself more and more from reality because reality outside was changing the war was changing it was going bad for Germany Hitler was on the wrong track but he kept staying on track that is the bunker mentality he didn’t really look at the world at the war situation with a clear head said he didn’t rationally

rationally discuss with his generals what they should do in 43 and 44 when the Soviet Union was becoming the Red Army of the Soviet Union was becoming more and more powerful advancing towards Germany Hitler just stayed in his bunker the bunker be his head was the bunker he just he just he just said yeah we never gonna you know we’re never gonna retreat we’re the superhumans we’re gonna win there’s no question about this anyone

who doubts this will be shot so this was all bullshit but this is but this is what he what he state what he stayed true to and this led to the final defeat of Germany so 1945 the was when World War two ends in late 1944 the Allies decided to bomb pharmaceutical factories in Germany how did this affect Hitler supply and you know what what did he have to do because of this well Hitler had become physically addicted to oxycodone so you could by the end of

1944 he used it every other day in the fall of 1944 in a dosage of 20 milligrams injected intravenously this is a very high dosage which makes you very high and it also makes you extremely addicted so you cannot stop using it problem for him was that when the merck company company that still big player today who was who had the patent on you potala oxycodone at the time gets destroyed in an air raid by the air force in December 1944 Uchitel

suddenly it’s not available anymore to Hitler I mean morale probably had a few you know amped ampules left but he did have a huge supply because he would always whenever he needed it he would go to one pharmacy in Berlin the Engel a partaker and he would get his supplies from that pharmacy but suddenly this pharmacy couldn’t get the supplies anymore from the factory so a prompt this was a problem for Hitler and Morel tried to combat this problem solve his

problem in the beginning by sending out his aides on motorcycles through bombed-out girl in racing from one pharmacy to the next trying to find the last you know supplies of oxycodone but at one point there was just none to be found anymore which created an awkward situation in the bunker I hit that being a junkie by now not having his fix anymore the relationship between the two men soured and in late April 1945 Hitler fired Morel it was very very angry at

Morel and this was very unusual to fire someone out of the bunker because Hitler was happy for anyone who would stay with him in the bunker in those last days but he did fire Morel kicked him out of the bunker because Marella couldn’t supply the drug in him or that he made it addicted to wow it’s such a fascinating story I can I can see why the book became so popular I mean it’s it’s highly intriguing the whole story hearing about it and from the historical

perspective it’s it’s a it’s a crazy story I mean when I researched it myself if I found it extremely interesting because it does give you the whole the whole narrative of of world war ii under a new angle and it it tells a new story but it’s still the same story that it that the old story that we knew just becomes more plausible we understand it better and it becomes more vivid more colorful that’s why I think the book is very successful

and is of interest to people all around the world yeah so after the war ended what happened with burbot and it stayed in use for a little while right it did I mean many soldiers who returned home we’re still addicted to it or used to it tenly still produced it in in February 1945 – still produced millions of pills so when Germany collapsed in May 1945 those pills that were still out there flooded the black market they were very

popular on the black market in Berlin and in other cities we have the phenomenon that women cleared away all the rubble in in the destroyed German cities they are called rubble women and these rubble women also used them per button in order to have that boost of energy because there was not a lot of food at the time so people and they had just experienced the most horrible war in human history their cities have been had been destroyed no food

totally difficult very difficult living conditions and then they have to really labor hard in order to rebuild the country so keratin was still helpful because it does give you an extra boost even though if you then you know you might completely crash but without perfect in you know they wouldn’t have he probably wouldn’t have even gotten out of bed anymore so it was it was still popular a product and it was actually manufactured in Germany all the

way up until 1980 but its popularity really was during Nazi times and then in into the 50s what you said about Hitler it wasn’t like he was going out like searching for himself you know he wasn’t like Hitler was trying to drink ayahuasca or something he was just he was focused on his mission which was conquering the world right yes the Nazis and Hitler used a lot of drugs but a certain certain types of drugs they didn’t use and this was the

helis antigenic drugs or psychedelic drugs or marijuana they didn’t use those drugs because those drugs chained did they make you more aware of yourself and ayahuasca is considered by many people to be very healthy substance to take because it connects you to your body to your mind to your soul this was not something that Hitler was interested in it was interested in conquering killing you know very different things you hear the war machine not in

psychedelic experiences not at all normal this was a fascinating read my friend where can people find the book where can people find more of your work you can find the book in any bookshop of the United States you couldn’t it was very easy to get a hold of blitzed the book you could also follow me on Instagram Norman Oller you can follow me on Twitter you will get more information on my work and also on the next book which is called the

Bohemians which will come out in the United States in June 2020 so stay tuned and as we all should at all times right is there a website that people can go to where where most of your work is or just the social media platforms yeah you can go to Norman nola.com and you will find my books and my work and some of the film work that I’ve done so that also gives a good impression of my work Norma nola.com okay guys you heard it here the book is

called Blitz drugs in the Third Reich my guest Norman Oller written by my guest Norman Oller if you’re listening to this on you to make sure you click subscribe click the little Bell so that you’ve notified notified when we go live if you’re listening to this in the podcast version please go over to get over to iTunes leave us a review it really helps us reach more people and one of the biggest compliments that you can give us

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