Latest / The Joe Rogan Recap / Norman Ohler (2024) - Psychedelics and Methamphetamine in World War II

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Norman Ohler (2024) - Psychedelics and Methamphetamine in World War II · The Joe Rogan Recap

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  Welcome to the Joe Rogan Recap. Today, we're diving deep into
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  the surprising history of drug use in Nazi Germany and the dawn
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  of the psychedelic age, all sparked by a conversation on The
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  Joe Rogan Experience with author Norman Oehler.
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  Yeah, it's a fascinating kind of hidden corner of history.
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  Absolutely. Our mission is to unpack the
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  most fascinating and unexpected revelations from this extensive
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  discussion, connecting the dots between methamphetamines in the
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  Third Reich, the discovery of LSD, and, well, the unexpected
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  role of American intelligence. Right.
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  And how these substances really influenced major historical
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  events and, you know, how their legacies still shape our
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  understanding of drugs today. OK, let's unpack this then.
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  The initial foray into this hidden history for the speaker,
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  Norman Ohler, was his research for blitzed drugs in the Third
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  Reich. What was the the core of that
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  initial investigation? Well, what's really compelling
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  is that his starting point was uncovering the Nazis extensive
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  reliance on methamphetamine, you know, Pervidin, to basically
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  fuel their war machine. Right.
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  Fuel the war machines, yeah. And it wasn't just like a few
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  soldiers here and there. This is a systemic thing.
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  But the story took a really interesting turn when, while he
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  was researching blitzed in the Dachau concentration camp
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  Memorial archives, of all places.
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  Yeah, he unexpectedly found these documents detailing Nazi
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  experiments with psychoactive substances.
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  Not stimulants, but psychedelics.
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  Psychoactive experiments in Dochao that, that definitely
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  sends a shiver down your spine. What did those documents
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  actually point to? Well, they revealed that the
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  American military actually confiscated this psychedelic
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  research after liberating Dochao.
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  OK, so the US military takes this research.
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  Why? Exactly.
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  That's what propelled the Speaker on this journey to the
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  National Archives over here in the US, trying to figure out why
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  American intelligence would be so interested in Nazi
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  psychedelic research. And this whole quest ultimately
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  became the basis for his 2nd book Tripped Nazi Germany, The
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  CIA, and The Dawn of the Psychedelic Age.
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  It just shows how one thread can lead somewhere completely
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  unexpected, doesn't it? Totally.
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  One thing leads to another and suddenly you're in a whole new
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  area of research. So the widespread meth use was
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  the initial hook, the blitzed story, but the psychedelic angle
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  became this deeper, maybe more unsettling narrative later on.
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  Before blitz came out. What back in 2015, what was the
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  general feeling about drug use in Nazi Germany?
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  Were they seen as this like super discipline drug free
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  regime? Exactly.
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  That was the dominant image right before blitzed the
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  prevailing understanding even inside Germany, pretty much
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  ignored the pervasive use of drugs by the Nazis.
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  The image was all about, you know, extreme discipline,
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  ideological purity. Yeah, the speaker even tells
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  this striking story about a friend who found a 70 year old
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  proviton pill. That's the Nazi era meth and it
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  still had psychoactive effect. 70 years old?
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  No way. Yeah, you just powerfully showed
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  how deeply buried this whole aspect of their history was.
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  Makes you wonder what else is hidden, right?
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  Definitely so. Perviton seems really central to
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  the Blitz narrative. How did methamphetamine become
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  such a, well, such a widely adopted thing in Nazi Germany?
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  Not just for soldiers, but civilians too.
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  OK, so here's where it gets kind of dark.
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  There was this company, Theodore Temmler's company, after the
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  1936 Berlin Olympics. You know, Jesse Owens's success
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  really irked the regime, fueled all sorts of racist stuff.
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  Right, I remember that connection.
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  So there was this push to create a more potent stimulant.
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  Their chemist, Fitz House Child, synthesized methamphetamine.
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  It was patented in 37 and hit the market as Pervitin in 1938.
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  So a reaction to the Olympics indirectly leads to this
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  powerful drug? And how did people react?
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  Was it seen as dangerous? Not really.
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  Not at first. Methamphetamine pervidin was
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  available over the counter in Germany.
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  Seriously. Over the counter like aspirin.
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  Pretty much, and he had this booming economy but limited
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  access to coffee for a lot of people.
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  So it was embraced as a performance and answer for work,
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  studying, staying alert, even just socially.
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  There wasn't this stigma we have now, it was just seen as a tool.
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  That normalization is kind of wild considering what it is.
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  It really is. And then, of course, the
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  military got interested. Naturally, how did that happen?
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  There was this guy, Professor Otto Ranky, head of the
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  Institute for Defense Physiology.
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  He basically zeroed in on meth to combat soldier fatigue.
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  He had this kind of strange idea that sleep was the enemy sleep.
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  Is the enemy, yeah. His research concluded meth kept
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  soldiers awake all right, but also maybe made them slightly
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  less capable of complex thought, which he actually thought was
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  good for following orders. Oh, that's disturbing.
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  Easier to control, pretty much. And despite some initial
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  pushback from the army, Surgeon General Ranky kept pushing it
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  and it led to widespread adoption.
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  They ordered get this 35,000,000 doses just before the invasion
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  of France. 35,000,000 doses before 1 campaign.
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  That's staggering. What kind of impact did that
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  actually have on the battlefield?
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  It played a huge, if hidden, role in the Bliss Creek, that
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  lightning war strategy. It allowed tank crews to just
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  keep going, push forward relentlessly, sometimes for days
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  without proper rest. It completely baffled the French
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  Army. You know, their soldiers were
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  famously given red wine rations. Red wine versus meth, yeah, I
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  can see how that would be a mismatch.
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  Definitely. And the German Air Force, the
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  Luftwaffe used it for pilots too.
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  Their ally Japan used it as well, even more tragically for
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  kamikaze pilots. God.
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  And even though the so-called health fear in the regime
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  initially opposed it, the military demand just one out.
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  But, you know, it's hard to remember.
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  Other allied nations like Britain also explored stimulants
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  during the war, just maybe not on quite the same industrial
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  scale. So it wasn't just a Nazi thing,
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  but they definitely went all in on it.
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  What about the soldiers though? The long term effects.
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  Yeah, there's an account from a medical officer who served at
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  Stalingrad, you know, brutal fighting.
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  He talked about the diminishing returns of providing in a long
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  war it. Stops working.
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  Or rather, the boost it gives just can't overcome sheer
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  exhaustion, the psychological horror, the need for real rest.
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  It's a temporary fix with limits.
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  And interestingly, you see echoes today, meth analogues
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  like Captagon reports of it's used by groups like Hamas, the
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  Syrian regime apparently involved in production.
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  Right. Captagon keeps popping up in
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  news about conflicts over there. Exactly.
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  And even closer to home, a former Navy SEAL confirmed on
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  Rogan's show that amphetamines are used in certain high stakes,
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  long duration U.S. military operations.
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  Which brings us back to that societal question, doesn't it?
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  Military use, Historical use? And then we have things like
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  Adderall, another amphetamine legally prescribed everywhere in
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  the US. It's a complex relationship we
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  have with these substances for sure.
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  A real contradiction sometimes. OK, so shifting gears a bit, the
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  speaker's research then moved from the stimulants from
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  purvatin into psychedelics. What was the Nazi interest
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  there? If it wasn't about performance,
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  what was it? Well, this is where it gets
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  maybe even more unsettling. While the meth was about
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  performance depressing fatigue, the Nazi interest in
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  psychoactive stuff seemed to point towards manipulation
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  interrogation. Like a truth serum.
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  Exactly. The speaker found they were
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  exploring these drugs as potential truth serums.
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  They already knew about mescaline, you know, from peotic
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  cactus. A German scientist named
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  Barringer had studied it back in the 1920s, so the idea of
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  altering mental states wasn't totally new to them.
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  OK, mescaline. And this leads us towards LSD,
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  right? Which wasn't discovered by the
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  Nazis, no. Not at all.
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  Albert Hoffman synthesized LSD in 1943.
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  He works for the Swiss pharmaceutical company Sandoz,
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  and he was actually researching lysuridic acid derivatives for
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  potential stimulant effects, ironically enough.
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  So he wasn't even looking for a psychedelic.
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  Nope, it was an accidental discovery.
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  His famous accidental self experiment revealed it's
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  incredibly potent psychoactive properties and initially Sando
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  saw LSD. They marketed it as dulicid as
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  potentially A psychiatric drug, therapeutic uses.
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  There were even early anecdotal reports about it helping with
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  depression. So Sandoz saw medical potential.
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  Yeah, the CEO, Arthur Stoll, he was big in developing ergot
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  based medicines, which is what LSD is right from.
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  So you have this Swiss company, seemingly separate, accidentally
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  creating this incredibly powerful substance.
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  OK, so how does the Swiss discovery connect back to the
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  Nazis and their search for a truth serum?
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  What was the link between Sandoz and the Third Reich?
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  That's what Oller tried to figure out in the Novartis
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  archive. Novartis bought Sandoz later.
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  It wasn't easy, apparently. Archival hurdles.
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  The archivist was skeptical. I can imagine you're looking for
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  what? Exactly.
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  But the key discovery was finding letters between Arthur
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  Stoll, the Sandoz CEO, Richard Kuhn.
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  Kuhn was the Nazi chemist in charge of finding this truth
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  drug, and these letters showed that Stoll sent ergotamine,
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  which is a precursor chemical needed to make LSD.
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  He sent it to Kuhn in October 1943.
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  Wow, so that's the proof they had access to the ingredients?
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  Concrete evidence, yeah, that the Nazis had access to the
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  necessary materials to potentially produce or at least
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  study LSD. Did they actually do it?
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  Did they experiment with LSD? Disturbingly, yes, it seems s s
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  experiments involving mescaline and also another substance
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  described as odorless, colorless, which sounds a lot
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  like LSD, were conducted inside Dachau.
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  Back to Dachau again, Chilling. Yeah, but these experiments were
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  cut short when the camp was liberated, so we don't know the
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  full extent or what they found or hope to find.
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  It's horrifying to contemplate. And then after the war, this
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  research falls into American hands.
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  How did that happen? There was this US unit called
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  the Also's Mission. Their job was basically to grab
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  German science, nuclear tech, biochemical research, anything
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  useful. They interviewed Richard Kuhn,
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  the Nazi chemist, after the war. And Kuhn spilled the beans.
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  Apparently so. He disclosed the Nazi interest
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  in LSD and you have to remember the context.
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  The Cold War is heating up. There are these intense fears
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  about Soviet brainwashing techniques.
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  Right, the Manchurian Candidate idea.
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  Exactly. So Eric and military
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  intelligence and the brand new CIA got very interested in LSD.
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  Could it be a truth serum? Could it be weaponized?
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  CIA Director Alan Delays actually called it brain
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  warfare. Brain warfare.
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  That sets the tone, doesn't it? This sounds like the start of M
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  culture. Precisely.
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  Sidney Gottlieb, head of the CI as M Culture program, and its
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  main goal was exploring LSD for mind control.
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  Gottlieb bought a huge amount of LSD from Sandoz, even made a
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  deal to basically monitor where else it was going.
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  So the CIA cornered the market, essentially.
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  In a way, yeah. And Mcultra funded all this
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  research, often unethical at universities, other places,
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  sometimes funneling the money through foundations like the
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  Rockefeller Foundation, which kind of raises questions about
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  scientific neutrality, doesn't. It definitely.
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  And the stories from Impaltra are just awful.
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  What kinds of things were they doing?
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  It was really wide-ranging and often deeply unethical, like
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  dosing unsuspecting people with LSD in these CIA save houses.
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  Even in brothels. Operation Midnight Climax, they
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  called it. Midnight Climax.
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  Seriously. Seriously, all trying to figure
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  out how to use it for manipulation.
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  And mostly, these experiments didn't yield much practical
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  Intel on mind control, but they caused immense harm to the
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  people involved. A really dark chapter.
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  You can see how that whole sordid history contributed to
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  LSD becoming illegal dominized. Oh, absolutely.
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  Nixon pushed for its illegality in 1966, and that basically shut
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  down most of the legitimate scientific research into its
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  potential therapeutic benefits, which is ironic because there
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  were promising early findings for things like depression, and
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  now, decades later, there's renewed interest in its
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  potential for Alzheimer's, depression, PTSD.
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  Yeah, the research is slowly coming back online.
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  Now it makes you think how much time was lost.
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  A lot. The shadow of M Cultra and the
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  whole counterculture panic was long and damaging for legitimate
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  science. OK, so beyond the meth and the
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  psychedelics, the Rogan conversation also got into
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  Hitler's personal drug use. What did Oler uncover there?
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  Yeah, this was based heavily on the meticulous records kept by
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  Hitler's personal physician, Dr. Theodore Morrell.
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  Right, Morrell. So from about 1936 to 1941,
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  Hitler was mostly getting, well, seemingly tame stuff, vitamins,
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  glucose, A probiotic for his stomach problems.
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  Oler actually questioned the whole image of Hitler being
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  constantly jacked up even back at the 36 Olympics, based on
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  these early records. So the early image might be
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  wrong. According to Morels notes from
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  that time, yeah, Hitler apparently appointed Morrell
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  because Morel helped his chronic digestive issues.
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  But things changed dramatically in 1941 during the invasion of
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  the Soviet Union. What happened?
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  Hitler got sick and he asked for something stronger than
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  vitamins. Morel gave him to Lantern for
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  the first time. That's pathidine, A potent
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  opioid. An opioid, OK, that's a
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  significant shift. Definitely.
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  And from 41 to 43, Morel started giving Hitler all sorts of weird
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  stuff. Animal hormones, organ extracts,
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  he was even monopolizing organs from animals slaughtered and
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  occupied Ukraine for Hitler's injections.
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  Hitler was basically Morel's Guinea pig for these untested
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  things. That's bizarre.
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  And his health. By 1943, Hitler's health was
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  noticeably declining. Makes sense, yeah.
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  And then came the stronger stuff.
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  Before a really crucial meeting with Mussolini in July 43,
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  Mussolini wanted Italy out of the war.
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  Morel gave Hitler in the fee injection of Eucodol.
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  That's oxycodone. Oxycodone.
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  There's that name again. Yep.
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  And apparently it became Hitler's favorite drug.
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  Made him feel euphoric, calm, his dominating non-stop talking
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  in that meeting with Mussolini. Oler attributes that to the
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  eucodle kicking in. Wow, and the link to the modern
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  opioid crisis is just chilling. It really is.
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  The patent for Eucodol made its way to America after the war
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  became the basis for oxycodone. Obviously Hitler was getting it
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  intravenously, which is different from the pills later,
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  but still that Direct Line is staggering.
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  Did it affect his decision making late in the war?
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  It seems very likely. Even in 1944 when the war was
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  clearly lost, his eucotal use apparently gave him this kind of
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  artificial confidence in meetings, maybe convinced
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  generals he knew something they didn't.
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  It might even prolong the fighting, which is a horrible.
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  Thought so. His addiction was potentially
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  shaping strategy, Yeah. And after the July 20th
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  assassination attempt in 1944, the bomb plot immediately gave
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  him Mucaddol. Then another doctor, Geising,
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  started giving Hitler cocaine to treat his injured eardrums from
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  the blast. Cocaine on top of oxycodone?
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  Exactly. Hitler started demanding more
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  and more cocaine, and this combination likely fueled some
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  of his most irrational late war decisions, like the disastrous
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  Second Ardennes offensive, the Battle of the Bulge.
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  Morel and Giesing were basically giving him speedballs in late
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  44. It's almost unbelievable, a
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  world leader making those decisions in that state.
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  It gets Wilder. Apparently British intelligence
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  decided against assassinating Hitler around this time.
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  Why? Because they figured his drug
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  addled state and erratic decisions were actually
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  weakening the German war effort more effectively than killing
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  him and risking a more competent replacement.
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  That is quite a calculation. Isn't it?
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  And then the bombing of the Merck pharmaceutical plant
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  disrupted eucodal production. So in the final days in the
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  bunker, Hitler was likely going through withdrawal on top of the
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  whole 3rd right collapsing around him.
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  His last documented drug seemed to have been Harmine, another
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  psychoactive. Plus, he was apparently
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  demanding tons of sugary cakes and sweets.
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  What a grim, bizarre end. The whole picture is so much
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  darker and stranger than you usually hear.
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  The Rogan Chad also touched briefly on JFK, didn't it?
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  Any substance use there? Yeah, briefly Aller mentioned
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  the reports about JF KS chronic pain and maybe using
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  amphetamines from a doctor. Feel good character.
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  Right, those stories have been around.
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  But maybe more intriguing was the discussion about a story
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  from Timothy Leary's autobiography.
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  It's a single source, mind you, but Leary claimed that Mary
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  Pinchot Meyer approached him in 1963.
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  Mary Pinchot Meyer. Who was she again?
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  She was a friend of Jackie Kennedy, an artist and also
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  rumored to be JF KS lover. Anyway, Leary claims she asked
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  him about setting up an LSD experience for a very powerful
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  friend, heavily implying it was JFK.
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  LSD for JFK, that's a big claim. Huge claim and unconfirmed
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  beyond Leary, but Pinchot Meyer did visit Leary shortly before
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  JFK was assassinated. And then, very tragically, she
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  herself was murdered just months after JFK.
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  Her apartment was broken into and her diary vanished.
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  Vanished. Wow, that adds fuel to the fire.
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  It does Older speculated purely speculatively whether maybe an
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  LSD experience could have shifted JF KS thinking on things
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  like the arms race and if that's somehow contributed to his
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  assassination, but again, that's deep speculation.
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  Pure speculation, but fascinating nonetheless.
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  There are also reports of JFK and Pinshaw Meyer smoking
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  cannabis in the White House, right?
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  Yeah, those reports exist too. Adds another layer to the whole
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  picture of that era. Man this whole deep dive into
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  drugs, war, power, it really opens up a hidden side of
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  history. It really does.
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  This whole intersection unveils a history with really profound
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  ramifications. You know, from the meth fueled
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  blitz creed, Hitler's opioid addiction, the CIA playing with
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  LSD. The impact of these substances
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  in the 20th century is just way more complex and significant
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  than people generally realize. And as you said, the story of
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  LSD itself is just remarkable. From potential medicine to
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  weapon to well, back to potential medicine again.
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  Exactly. It's whole trajectory, promising
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  therapy, then weaponized tool, then banned, now slowly re
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  emerging in research. It forces you to really question
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  drug Policy, Research ethics, and all the societal forces that
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  shape how we see these things. It really makes you think about
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  the echoes, the lasting impact today.
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  For sure you've got the opioid crisis, which has this bizarre
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  historical link back to Hitler's.
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  You could all you've got the whole debate around psychedelic
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  therapies restarting and these enduring questions about mind
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  control, government research ethics.
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  It's all still relevant. So as we wrap this up, what's a
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  final thought to leave people chewing on?
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  Well, it just makes you wonder, doesn't it, what other hidden
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  factors, maybe like widespread drug use, might have shaped
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  other key moments in history? And maybe more importantly, what
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  can we learn from all this from this really complicated past?
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  How can we better navigate our relationship with drugs with
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  consciousness going forward? This is really only scratch the
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  surface. You know, there's so much more
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  there.