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The bizarre history of DRUG USE in NAZI GERMANY, with Norman Ohler · The Smart Cookies podcast

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Norman Ohler is a German New York Times bestselling author, novelist and screenwriter.
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He is the author of a number of novels such as Mitte and Ponte City, as well as nonfiction
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books The Bohemians and Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany, which we're going to discuss today.
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Norman, welcome.
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Very happy to be talking to you.
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Not just Nazis and not just drugs, but Nazis on drugs.
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What an unbelievable way to open the 2024 season of the Smart Cookies podcast.
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And of course, what a deliciously demented topic in general.
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I mean, one would certainly think that these two terms are pretty, pretty much mutually
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exclusive, right?
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But your book not just proves otherwise, it kind of details how almost symbiotic the two
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actually were.
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But maybe before we go to tripping Wehrmacht soldiers and the story of Adolf, the drug
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addict, let's create just a little bit of a backdrop to the story.
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Nazis came to power in 1933, succeeding the infamous Weimar Republic, which they derided
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as being totally decadent with its cabaret shows, open attitudes towards sexuality and
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flourishing of what they called degenerate art.
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But what did Nazis think of drugs and drug use in general?
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Well, Nazis basically hated drugs because they connected drugs with the excesses of
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the Weimar Republic and the Weimar Republic was not a system that they appreciated.
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The only drug that the Nazis, in fact, embraced was alcohol.
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They started to attempt to get into power in Germany already in the 20s.
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And this is the so-called Beer Hall Putsch in Munich, where they were all drunk, except
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Hitler would never drink.
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And then in the morning after a drunken night, they tried to take the Bavarian capital and
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miserably failed.
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So the Nazis, in fact, do come out of a drug.
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They come from beer drinking.
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But all the other drugs were highly suspicious to them.
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I read that during the Nazi regime, a general principle was that neighbors were encouraged
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to denounce drug users.
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Is that true?
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It is true.
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The anti-drug stance of the Nazi government was very important to their ideology.
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And they connected the anti-drug policy with their anti-Semitic policies, claiming that
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Jews in Germany were using, were heavy drug users, were using more drugs than the non-Jewish
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German population.
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And the Nazi regime was not only an authoritarian regime, it was a totalitarian regime.
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So it tried to get into the homes of each and everyone, trying to control and regulate
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individual, even intimate behavior, including sexual behavior and including using narcotics
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or getting into some form of intoxication.
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So yes, they were encouraging on Germans to rat on each other.
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What would happen to these people, to drug users when they were busted?
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Would they force them into some sort of like mandated rehabilitation centers or were they
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just shipped off to some work camp or something even worse?
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Do we know?
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Well, they were sent usually to concentration camps.
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In the beginning, these concentration camps were not extermination camps yet, but they
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were a new form of prison that was used for all types of people who would behave differently
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than the government desired them to behave.
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For example, if you were of a different political opinion, if you were leftist or even a communist,
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you were sent to one of these concentration camps that were already starting in 1933.
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Or if you were using drugs or if you were homosexual.
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For drug users, they had labels.
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So depending on what drug you used, you got a certain label.
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You could have the cocaine label or the opioid label.
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Basically, drug abuse was seen as morally degenerate behavior that should be punished.
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Did they have like a classification?
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Which ones were the least offensive and which ones were the most offensive?
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Well, they just labeled you.
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They didn't have like a ranking which drug is the worst.
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But the Nazis installed a countrywide regime of a drug control system.
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The doctors were supposed to actually inform the officials if anyone had a drug problem
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and then the doctor had to say which drug problem it was.
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Oh no, so the doctors were snitching on their patients as well.
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Yeah, which was quite unusual or like it was novel.
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Because before that, usually there's a secrecy between doctor and patient that is not reached
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by the government, but this was also changed by the Nazis.
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So doctors had to report on their patients if a drug problem or drug use was detected.
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Which drugs did people use, for example, in the Weimar Republic the most?
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Was it cocaine?
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Did people smoke a little bit of weed?
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Was it something harder?
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Weed was actually not so popular in Germany.
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Popular drugs were basically drugs that were normal medicines developed by German companies.
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For example, heroin was actually legal for a long time in Germany because it was developed
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by the German company Bayer, which also invented aspirin.
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For example, aspirin and heroin were the two top brands of the Bayer company.
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And best sellers.
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Yeah, they were both best sellers.
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The same chemist of the Bayer company actually found these two or developed these two substances,
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these two medicines, aspirin and heroin within the span of 10 days.
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Yeah, I would imagine that he would have gotten a raise, but I didn't find records about that.
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But he developed this one person alone within 10 days developed two extremely famous medicines
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or drugs.
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We have to understand that after the defeat in the First World War from 1918 onwards for
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actually until the Nazis took power in 1933, there were lots of morphine users in Germany
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because many men came back from the front lines injured or had received morphine injections
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during the war and became addicted to morphine.
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So morphine or any opiates were problems or were widely used in Weimar Republic.
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So the Nazis actually started to control these opiate use.
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So even with veterans from the First World War, they could go like, oh, they're addicts
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off to the camps?
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Or were they being a bit more lenient when it came to them and still provided morphine
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or was there a way for them to get morphine legally?
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Not really.
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It was quite harsh that even former soldiers could be punished for still using morphine.
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I mean, when the Nazis took power, the war was already over for 15 years.
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So the attitude was that by then you should have overcome your pain or your problems.
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But in fact, many people because opiates are addictive, still were addicted and still were
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using it and had formed a habit.
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So these people were now suddenly being punished for it.
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Okay.
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As you recount in the book, the tables eventually turn and they turn quite dramatically in the
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span of just a couple of years after they kind of take power in 1933.
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A big chunk of the population under the Nazi regime will not only get a bit stoned legally,
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they will get stoned legally on meth out of all things.
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Could you please tell us the pretty bat shit crazy chronicle of pervitin?
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Well, the Nazis never officially shifted their position on drugs.
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But the irony is that a very potent drug was then developed by a Berlin based company,
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the Temmler company, which they branded as pervitin.
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And the pervitin was nothing else but methamphetamine.
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So the content of pervitin was methamphetamine.
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It was developed by the head chemist of Temmler and patented in Germany in 1938, brought onto
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the market in 38.
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And this pervitin was not seen as a drug.
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I mean, it was a normal medicine that you could buy even without a prescription in any
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pharmacy anyone could buy it over the counter.
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And because meth has such a unique way of functioning, it became quite notorious very
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quickly in Germany and a lot of people started using it and started to rely on this artificial
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energy boost that would help them to stay on track or perform well in the workplace.
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So pervitin was kind of like the oil and the engine of the fascist society.
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Wow.
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So what kind of ailments was pervitin supposed to cure or at least alleviate or was it just
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an energy boost like you said?
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The Temmler company wasn't sure at all because it was for them also new.
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There was amphetamine called benzadrine on the market, which was still on the market
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in the US later after the Second World War.
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But benzadrine was not so popular in Germany.
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Pervitin became very popular because Temmler made a huge ad campaign around it, a big marketing
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effort.
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They wrote letters to each doctor in Germany sending each doctor three pills of pervitin
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and asking the doctors to report back to them what the pills could be used for.
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And so the doctors tried them themselves and found that they enhanced their mood and made
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them work more, longer hours.
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So it was kind of unclear what pervitin was supposed to be good for.
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So it was quickly seen as like a panacea, like something that's good for everything
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basically.
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Then German universities became interested in it and in the late 30s made the first studies
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on pervitin, tried to find out what it actually does.
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And they, for example, found out that it reduces the need to sleep and that it reduces in higher
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dosages fear and anxiety and promotes self-confidence.
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So people thought it's actually great to use it.
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Negative side effects were not found by German universities at first.
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So from diarrhea to depression, people are like, let's go have some pervitin.
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Yeah, it was used by all segments of society.
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Then there was even a pervitin-laced chocolate on the market, which contained quite a high
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amount of methamphetamine per individual small piece.
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And this was marketed especially for women.
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So women who had to stay home in right-wing Nazi regime had more fun cleaning the house
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or had more energy to do the boring chores at home.
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While men would use it in the workplace mainly to perform better.
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It was also claimed that it increases libido, which is actually, I guess, true for crystal
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meth.
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That's why people take it also today now as a party drug and as a sex drug.
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So this was also advertised or spoken about that it would increase the libido, especially
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of the woman, which was a good thing for the dictatorship because they wanted to create
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more Germans, more babies.
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So it seemed like crystal meth, which was not called crystal meth at the time, but simply
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methamphetamine or pevitin seemed to have been the perfect drug for a capitalist performance-driven
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modern society, which was Nazi Germany.
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This is absolutely astounding.
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If I remember correctly, people didn't even need prescription for the first couple of
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years, right?
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One could just walk into a pharmacy and buy as much pevitin as he or she wanted.
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Even children could buy it.
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Only the German health minister later then became skeptical of pevitin because he realized
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that it's quite a potent substance.
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Right.
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And in 1939, you had to have a prescription from your doctor.
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I mean, imagine going to your local pharmacy and getting some candy for your sore throat,
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a couple of band-aids and then literally crystal meth for a really good time.
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I mean, people must have begun to use it recreationally as well, right?
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Are there any reports of pevitin parties in Nazi Germany?
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Like, I don't know, people bringing their own pills and then going to Grunewald forest
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to get bamboozled or something.
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I didn't find any reports on that.
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Today we think of going to parties and taking pills or taking drugs, but at the time it
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wasn't like that.
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So pevitin was not seen as a party drug or anything like that.
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It was more like drinking coffee or it didn't have any aura of being like a drug.
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And also the nightlife was, especially when the war started, the nightlife in Germany
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was not as free anymore, not at all actually.
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Clubs had to close and dancing was prohibited at a certain point in time.
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So I think that the pevitin was more used to get by during your normal life.
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It was also used as an antidepressant or just to cope with your anxiety during very extreme
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dictatorship.
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It's just so difficult for me to wrap my head around this fact that if you change the word
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pevitin for crystal meth, which is what it is, and in our conversation you just get a
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completely different picture of what was going on.
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We also have to take into account that if we think of crystal meth today, we have a
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lot of horror images in our head that are the product of American anti-drug propaganda
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that with crystal meth you're going to lose your teeth and you're going to become totally
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crazy.
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I mean, all of these things are probably true if you consume black market crystal meth that
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was cooked up in some kind of Breaking Bad lab or even worse, like some dude in some
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garage somewhere in the southern United States makes this bottle.
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They make it in plastic bottles and mix some kind of things and then out comes crystal
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meth.
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I mean, it was not like this in Germany because the crystal meth that they consumed, I mean,
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the methamphetamine that the Germans consumed was made by the Temmler company.
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So it was a very clean product and each pill contained three milligrams of methamphetamine.
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If you took one pill, the effect was not as strong as if you, for example, snored one
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line of crystal meth.
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The effect was more subtle.
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It was still a strong effect and if you took two pills or three pills, you were pretty
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high, but still the methamphetamine consumed orally from a pharmaceutical company is different
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than snorting black market crystal meth, which it's a little different, but basically it's
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the same substance.
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I have less respect for Walter White from Breaking Bad now hearing that a German Walter
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White already existed and he made like premium grade crystal meth in the 30s.
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I mean, Walter White was probably pretty good, but Fritz Hauscher who invented methamphetamine
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for sure was better because he also had better equipment and he didn't have to run away
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like in a trailer or a drive around some desert.
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Where's Breaking Bad set in New Mexico?
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You did a lot of research in the German archives yourself for the book.
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Did you perhaps come up with any sort of a number about how many ordinary folks occasionally
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dabbled or regularly purchased pervitin during those years?
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No.
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I found the production numbers, like how much was made and the first actual consumer numbers
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I found were dated from 1940 onwards and they were the numbers that the German military
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reported.
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We know these numbers accurately.
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For example, for the attack on France, which started May 10th, 1940, 35 million dosages
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of methamphetamine were being used.
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We know pretty well how many pills the German soldiers actually consumed.
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But that's the military, right?
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There are no numbers on the civilian population.
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At least I didn't find them and I looked very carefully.
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That just the reports on how much money the company made with pervitin and how much they
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produced and stuff like that.
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But I don't know out of the 80 million Germans, how many actually use pervitin.
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These numbers do not exist.
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Like you said in 1939, I believe it was Leonardo Conti, the head of the Reich Health Office
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expressed a bit of an alarm at the drugs addictive properties and moved to make it prescription
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only.
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I wonder, were there any riots or protests on the streets of major cities or something?
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Since meth is highly addictive, I imagine folks who were getting it for almost two years
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weren't all that happy that they were suddenly cut off.
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Well the interesting thing is that the numbers actually started rising after it became a
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prescription drug.
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So more people used it once it became a prescription drug, which is something that also puzzled
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me.
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But I guess pervitin became more and more known.
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And I guess doctors just prescribed it when the people wanted it.
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So no one was cut off.
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You just had to go to…
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It was just a little bit more difficult to obtain it because you had to get a prescription
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from your doctor, but that didn't seem to have stopped people from using it.
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To the contrary, they used it more after 1939 than before.
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You couldn't do riots anyhow in Nazi Germany because you would be arrested immediately.
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Right, makes sense.
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As you said, in any event, the order did not apply to the military.
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How did the love affair between the German army, the Wehrmacht and major quantities of
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crystal meth begin?
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Well, there was one guy responsible for it.
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His name is Otto Ranke.
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He was a German professor and the head of the so-called physiological institute of the
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German army.
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And he was responsible for performance enhancement of the soldier.
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So he was constantly looking for ways to improve the fighting capability of the German soldier
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before the war started.
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And when he read the first reports that methamphetamine prevents sleep or makes you able to stay awake
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longer, he thought that this might be of tactical advantage in a combat situation if your own
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men can fight for longer hours than the enemy because every human being obviously gets tired
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in the evening.
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So he made tests in 1938 and 1939 at the medical academy of the German army with young medical
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officers.
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He gave them pavitine and caffeine and placebos and then checked out.
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These tests started at eight in the evening and went all through the night until the next
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day in the afternoon.
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And he found that even the people who took caffeine at one point fell asleep while the
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people on pavitine actually didn't fall asleep and could stay awake easily for the whole
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night.
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And he concluded that this would create an advantage for the German army in case they
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would attack.
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So he proposed it to the surgeon general, his superior, to supply pavitine officially
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to the German troops, which his superior actually declined the attack against Poland because
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he didn't understand it or he didn't get it.
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But in the attack on Poland, which started World War II in September 1st, 1939, many
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German soldiers already had it kind of privately in their pockets and took it with them to
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the front.
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And this professor then made, he sent out questionnaires to divisions and said, did
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you use pavitine?
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How was the effect?
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Many soldiers and commanders wrote back to him that it was actually beneficial for the
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so-called work they did at the front lines.
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And backed with those reports that are now all stored in the German military archive
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in which I read, backed with those reports, he made another suggestion in the spring of
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1940 to now officially supply the German army with methamphetamine before the attack against
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the West.
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And this time his superior actually greenlit the project and then these millions of dosages
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were ordered from the Temner company and shipped to the German troops and distributed.
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And then they were being used from day one on.
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And Ranke actually wrote the so-called stimulant decree, which was an official guideline that
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every medical officer of the German army received and it detailed when an attack starts, when
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you take the methamphetamine, how many pills each soldier should take, after how many hours
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they should take the next pill, what are the side effects and stuff like that.
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What a great name, the stimulant decree.
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This was actually the first time in military history that an army had such a stimulant
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decree or had some kind of official regulation on a synthetic drug and its use.
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Before armies also had used drugs, basically since this war, there's drugs in war, but
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these drugs that had been used before were somehow harmless compared to methamphetamine.
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They were for example, alcohol or tobacco.
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So there have been regulations for armies before concerning, for example, alcohol, but
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never before had there been a regulation on such a potent substance.
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Did they distribute pervitin to ordinary soldiers or to tank battalions and crews or just to
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everybody who wanted it or how did that work?
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Because it was for the purposes of the Blitzkrieg, right?
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So the soldiers could march or drive their tanks for longer.
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Well, the problem with attacking the West was that the Western allies had more manpower
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and better weaponry and to launch a successful invasion, you basically have to have superior
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manpower and weaponry, which the Germans didn't have.
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So the only way they could win this campaign was to surprise the enemy, the British and
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the French armies by marching through the Aden Mountains within three days and three
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nights.
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That was the goal of the campaign and therefore, you know, advance so quickly into enemy territory
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that they would cut off the British and French armies that were in the north of Belgium because
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they thought the Germans would attack there and they were in the south of France.
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The Aden Mountains are in the middle of these defense positions of the allies.
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So the trick was to march through the mountains very quickly and not stop at night.
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And this was seen as basically impossible because you cannot stay awake for three days
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and three nights.
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And this was only possible because this methamphetamine was used.
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So basically the Blitzkrieg was a strategy to overpower an enemy that's more powerful
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than yourself by surprise.
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And this methamphetamine was kind of fueling this surprise tactical movement.
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Were there any reports or can we conclusively say that the drugs helped the German army
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advance so fast?
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Is there any way of us actually saying that with any degree of certainty?
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What got me interested was the sentence by one of the leading German historians, medicine
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historians, like he's into the history of medicine.
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And this guy said that without methamphetamine, the Blitzkrieg is unthinkable.
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So I kind of tried to find what does that mean by studying all the reports.
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And we can actually see, and this goes back to your previous question, that the drugs
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were distributed in a way that would help the tank divisions to move very quickly.
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And this had never been done before in military history, that the tank divisions were leading
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the attack.
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Usually the tanks were kind of slowly coming after the men who stormed into enemy territory.
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And then the tanks were kind of backing up their advance, but the Germans used the tanks
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in the forefront.
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So the tanks were leading and speeding into enemy territory.
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And this was the big surprise to the Western allies.
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They never thought that tanks could lead an attack, especially not through mountainous
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territory where tanks usually were thought of as moving very slowly.
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But the Germans were using these tanks almost as like race cars.
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And the tank divisions were consuming the most methamphetamine.
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So we can see that the methamphetamine distribution was asymmetrical.
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Most of the meth went into the tank division.
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So the tanks were basically full on meth.
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The tanks were...
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Well, I don't know if tripping is the right word because I always connect tripping with
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the psychedelics.
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And I don't know if you're tripping on meth, but certainly fueled.
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The tanks were certainly fueled by not only gasoline, but also by crystal meth and drove
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very quickly, the tank drivers behaved erratically.
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They were not behaving like it is assumed in the military handbook.
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So the allies were completely stunned by these very strange and quickly moving German tank
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divisions.
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And they would never have moved in this fashion without crystal meth.
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So crystal meth was, at least my research, I think shows it one of the decisive factors.
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I mean, the whole idea of going through the Aden Mountains, that was the decisive idea,
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but the idea wouldn't have worked without methamphetamine.
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So without methamphetamine, the Western campaign would have been very different.
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And maybe Germany would have lost the Western campaign.
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It's not clear because of speculation, but it would have been very different.
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And then of course, the whole World War Two would have been very different.
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Did they repeat the exercise in the Eastern Front?
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Yes, of course, because they were extremely successful on the Western Front.
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So they did the same thing on the Eastern Front when they attacked the Soviet Union
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and had the same success in the beginning, the first three months showed huge victories
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and territory gains.
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And in October 1941, the German army was only a few kilometers west of Moscow.
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But then the winter came and the Blitzkrieg basically got stuck in the mud and then froze
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in the harsh winter conditions of Russia.
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And then the Pevitein actually wasn't so helpful anymore because they couldn't use the extra
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energy to advance because the tanks just got stuck.
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Also the Russian defense was much better than the French defense.
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The Red Army actually put up a fight while the French quickly gave up.
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So despite their successes in the beginning, it wasn't enough to beat the Soviet Union
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and it dragged on into this year-long war.
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And in this year-long war against the Soviet Union, Pevitein was not really helpful anymore
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because Pevitein is only good for short periods of time.
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You can use it to stay awake even for two, three weeks with occasional sleeping phases,
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but you cannot sustain such an energy level for two, three years.
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So then it backfires and soldiers become depleted, depressed, addicted.
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And this is exactly what happened to the German army.
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Now the drug use was not limited to ordinary folks or soldiers.
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It reached all the way up to the very top.
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Hermann Goering, the chief of the Luftwaffe, the German Air Force, was a notorious morphine
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addict.
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And of course, even Hitler, who was otherwise, as you said, he didn't drink booze.
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He was a vegetarian, presented himself as a celibate man almost.
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And as far as we know, didn't have any previous experience with drugs.
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He himself became, should we say, infatuated with or even addicted to drugs.
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But maybe let's spend a moment talking about the man who introduced these substances to
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him first, his personal doctor, Theo Morel.
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Who was he?
36:17
Theo Morel was an overweight, avant-gardeistic VIP doctor in Berlin in the thirties.
36:31
And he had a somewhat well-going practice on the main boulevard of Berlin, attracting
36:40
wealthy patients that basically had no disease but wanted to feel better.
36:50
Or actresses would go to this guy before they had to go on stage and he would give them
36:58
mood enhancing medicines.
37:00
So he was kind of a doctor feel-good, not really a quack, but not really a serious doctor.
37:06
So he was kind of an unusual guy at the time because there were not these doctors that
37:14
then became quite fashionable, for example, in the United States in the fifties and sixties.
37:22
This kind of doctoring was not so known at the time.
37:26
But Morel was this kind of a doctor.
37:30
And he believed in vitamins.
37:31
He was a vitamin specialist and vitamins also were not known really at the time.
37:39
So he would give his patients injections of vitamin C, for example, intravenous injections
37:46
of vitamin C or other vitamins.
37:50
And these injections actually led to a boost in the mood or also in performance.
38:02
And he treated one man called Hoffman, who was the photographer of Hitler.
38:10
And Hoffman thought that this is a great guy and then introduced Hitler and Morel to each
38:16
other and Hitler had suffered for years from stomach cramps.
38:20
This was in 1936 when they met for the first time.
38:25
And Morel then gave Hitler his first injections and Hitler loved these injections and quickly
38:33
appointed Morel as his personal physician.
38:38
And then in a way became addicted to these almost daily injections.
38:42
So Morel gave Hitler thousands of injections in the course of the nine years that they
38:49
spent together.
38:50
They became good friends and Morel was probably the man that Hitler talked to or consulted
38:58
with the most.
39:00
Many people were in the higher echelon of the Nazi regime, were very suspicious of this
39:06
guy because he was a bit weird or a bit unusual.
39:10
And he was around Hitler all the time and he gave him these vitamin injections all the
39:15
time.
39:16
So in the beginning, he didn't give Hitler hardcore drugs, but he gave him vitamins.
39:24
And this actually helped Hitler's health for quite a while.
39:28
He never became ill.
39:30
He was always in good shape and his belief in his doctor was basically limitless.
39:38
When did he start to add a little bit more than just vitamins to Hitler's injections?
39:46
And what were these substances?
39:48
This started in August 1941.
39:52
This was the first time that Hitler became ill since he met Morel.
39:56
So the first time he became ill in five years, he had the so-called Russian flu, which is
40:05
basically a very severe flu, which made him stay in bed in a critical phase of the campaign
40:15
against the Soviet Union.
40:18
So he couldn't go to the military briefing and Hitler was very skeptical always of his
40:24
generals.
40:25
He always thought that they make bad decisions.
40:30
So he asked Morel to give him something stronger than vitamins so he could attend the daily
40:35
military briefing.
40:38
And for the first time, Morel gives him more than just vitamins.
40:41
He gives him Dolantin, which is an opioid, a German brand made by a German company.
40:53
And he injects this opioid into Hitler and Hitler immediately feels better because these
40:59
opioids are very strong, very powerful agents.
41:07
So Hitler could actually go to the military briefing.
41:09
He was quite impressed by this medicine and asked for it more and more often until in
41:21
1943.
41:22
He receives for the first time an even stronger opioid, which was called Oikodal, which is
41:29
today known as Oxycodone, which is the very opioid that created the opioid crisis in the
41:34
United States.
41:35
So this had been a German product before the end of the war.
41:41
And Hitler really gets addicted to this Oikodal opioid in 1944 and uses it in quite high quantities,
41:53
20 milligrams per injection during some phases of the war every second day.
42:02
So that's a very typical behavior of an addict basically.
42:09
Did it stop there?
42:10
Or did Hitler start receiving even more potent drugs even more regularly?
42:17
How did this addiction then spiral?
42:21
Oikodal is the most potent drug you can take.
42:24
If you inject 20 milligrams intravenously of Oikodal, then you experience the strongest
42:32
high that you can imagine.
42:34
It's a stronger high than heroin.
42:37
So this was already a peak experience for Hitler.
42:42
But he also took, he then became, he started liking potent substances.
42:50
He also consumed other things like hormone.
42:52
Morel was very experimental with the substances and he gave Hitler quite a lot of hormone
43:03
injections which he thought and Hitler thought as well that they would boost his immune system,
43:08
even though they did actually the opposite.
43:13
Then there was a time after the bomb attack against Hitler on July 20th, 1944, which left
43:21
Hitler quite injured.
43:24
His eardrums were blown and he had received many wood splinters into his body.
43:30
After that attack by Stauffenberg on July 20th, 1944, the so-called Operation Valkyrie,
43:39
Hitler started using also cocaine until October.
43:46
From end of July till October, he regularly consumed cocaine against the pain in his ears.
43:54
So he became basically a polytoxymannic drug user and he loved to experiment with all kinds
44:04
of things.
44:05
So then, after that, the very potent opioid stayed his favorite drug until the end.
44:13
So basically he was receiving oxy and cocaine, what, on a daily basis or every second day?
44:20
After the Operation Valkyrie, he received cocaine on a daily basis and then oxy every
44:26
other day.
44:27
So that was a pretty drug-intense phase of the dictator's life.
44:34
It was basically what later was called speedball.
44:37
If you consume an upper, which is cocaine, and a downer, which is an opioid, at the same
44:45
time you have a very strong drug experience.
44:51
So Hitler basically removed himself more and more from reality and moved into artificial
44:57
worlds where his mood was still somehow intact despite the catastrophic news that he received
45:07
from his generals from the front.
45:09
I mean, it's kind of mental that because Hitler was a bit gassy in the beginning, he ended
45:14
up becoming basically a full-blown drug addict.
45:17
Did no one in Hitler's inner circle connect the dots kind of between Hitler's taking
45:26
these injections and his sudden outburst of energy and elevated mood, as you put it?
45:33
Well, people did become quite suspicious of Morel, especially after 1943.
45:39
There are more and more critical reports that I found on the doctor because Morel would
45:46
never disclose what he gave Hitler and Hitler's health, which had been quite good until 1941
45:56
and 1942.
45:57
It started to shift and at the same time, like in 1942 and 1943, the success of the
46:04
German army started to stop.
46:08
So Hitler made more and more irrational and catastrophic decisions, actually, while before
46:16
until 1942 he was quite successful.
46:20
So no one questioned anything.
46:24
But people started questioning, especially after the defeat in Stalingrad, which was
46:30
a turning point in the Second World War.
46:35
And it was hard to criticize Hitler himself because you quickly ended up dead if you criticized
46:40
the leader, the Führer.
46:43
But you could criticize Morel.
46:45
So Morel got more and more of the blame.
46:48
For example, Goebbels, the Minister for Propaganda, he became quite skeptical of Morel.
46:57
And Himmler, the head of the SS, became very skeptical and critical of Morel.
47:02
And they actually tried to remove Morel from Hitler.
47:09
But Hitler stuck to his personal physician until the end.
47:13
And I mean, Hitler called the shots, so all the attempts to remove Morel were unsuccessful.
47:21
Are there some instances when you can pinpoint exact moments when you believe Hitler's drug
47:26
use contributed to poor or even, as you said, erratic decision making that proved detrimental
47:32
to the war effort?
47:34
Or was it just a general decline from 1942 onwards?
47:39
Well, fortunately, the notes that Morel left, which are stored in the Federal Archives of
47:47
Germany now, are quite elaborate and precise so we can connect certain decisions.
47:59
Or we can say that certain decisions were made while Hitler was on certain drugs.
48:04
And obviously we cannot prove that without the drugs he would have come to a different
48:11
decision.
48:12
But we can say that we can see and prove that, for example, his decision in the fall of 1944
48:22
to launch a second offensive in the West, the so-called Second Aden Offensive, which
48:27
was catastrophic for the German army.
48:31
He made this decision against all military judgement and against reality, basically,
48:39
while he was high on cocaine.
48:41
And obviously we know that cocaine changes your decision making.
48:47
It makes you overconfident.
48:54
So in that case, that was a very bad decision.
48:56
I mean, the better decision would have been to secure positions and retreat.
49:04
And he did the opposite.
49:07
He said, we have to go into the offensive again.
49:09
And you don't go into the offensive if you don't have the military means to do so.
49:16
And the German generals were shocked when he announced in late October 1944 that they
49:20
would go into the offensive again in the West against the advancing United States army.
49:27
So you can link this decision, which basically led to the final defeat of the so-called Third
49:34
Reich to the cocaine use.
49:38
Or another example is a decisive meeting he had with Mussolini, the Italian dictator,
49:44
who was his closest ally.
49:47
He met him for a meeting in July 1943 when Mussolini wanted to talk with Hitler about
49:55
ending the war, about making a truce with the West.
49:59
And Mussolini actually wanted to break away.
50:02
He wanted to stop the war, basically, because he saw that it was a lost cause.
50:08
And for this meeting, actually, Hitler for the first time used Oikodal, and it made him
50:12
extremely euphoric, and there are reports about this meeting that Hitler talked for
50:20
several hours nonstop without letting Mussolini say one single word.
50:28
So this was a very clearly drug-induced state that led to a result in a very important meeting
50:37
that probably would have been very different if the two would have sat together and rationally
50:44
discussed the situation on the battlefield.
50:48
Hitler moving units that don't exist anymore on the map is, of course, immortalized in
50:55
the movie Der Untergang or The Downfall, but they don't show any drug use there, of course.
51:03
Did Hitler take drugs up until the end, up until his suicide in the bunker in Berlin?
51:09
Well, I think this is one of the big problems of this movie that it doesn't show Hitler's
51:15
drug use and therefore cannot really explain Hitler's behavior at all.
51:21
So that's why the movie is not really accurate.
51:25
But it is actually quite interesting what happens in the bunker, where the movie also
51:30
is set and focuses on these times in the bunker.
51:34
The bunker into which Hitler moved in January 1945 under his office in Berlin only had two
51:45
bedrooms.
51:46
So only Hitler had a bedroom and his doctor, Morel, all the other high Nazis were not staying
51:54
in the bunker.
51:55
So it kind of sheds a light already on what Hitler prioritized there.
52:01
I mean, he didn't take Himmler or Goebbels or Goering into the bunker.
52:08
He took Morel into his bunker.
52:10
So his doctor would be next to him and could supply him at all times.
52:16
And Morel's reports from this time are quite interesting because he has problems finding
52:24
the drugs that Hitler has become addicted to because the Allies, especially the British,
52:31
started bombing German pharmaceutical companies late in the war.
52:35
And in December 1944, the Merck company who produced Eukodal was completely destroyed
52:44
and suddenly supplies ran out even for Hitler.
52:49
And Morel then hops on a motorcycle, which is quite unusual for him because as I stated
52:57
before, he was quite overweight.
53:00
He drives on a motorcycle through bombed out Berlin, driving from pharmacy to pharmacy
53:05
to try to find the medicines or the drugs that his patient A, as he called Hitler in
53:11
his notes, needed.
53:15
So also the bunker time was quite an intense pharmaceutical episode.
53:24
I just have a couple of questions left.
53:27
A lot of historians are convinced that Hitler suffered from Parkinson's disease.
53:31
That bit is kind of implied in the movie with the Hitler's famous shakes behind his back.
53:38
Do you think the deteriorating mental state was a result of the disease or long term drug
53:46
use or both?
53:47
Well, I mean, Morel was a trained doctor, so he knew what Parkinson's is obviously.
53:54
And he always writes when Hitler has a disease, he always writes it in his notes.
53:59
He never writes that Hitler has Parkinson's and he never gives Hitler any drugs that you
54:07
give to a Parkinson's patient.
54:10
So I think that historians later on interpreted the shaking of Hitler as Parkinson's because
54:18
they didn't have the information or didn't look for the information that the shaking
54:24
was actually, the tremor was actually coming from withdrawal from opioids, which I think
54:31
is more plausible explanation.
54:34
I mean, he could have had Parkinson's also and maybe Morel didn't detect it.
54:40
It's possible, but I think it's more plausible that this comes from drug withdrawal.
54:48
What happened to Morel after Hitler's suicide?
54:51
Well Goebbels became more and more skeptical of Morel and he has a conversation with Hitler.
55:01
He's telling Hitler that Morel made him addicted to opioids and that's where his failing health
55:09
is now coming from.
55:11
And Hitler at one point must have believed Goebbels because on April, I think it was
55:17
the 22nd, a few days before he committed suicide, he fired Morel, yelling at him, you have been
55:25
giving me opioids all the time.
55:27
You made me, it turned me into a drug addict, I'll get the hell out of the bunker.
55:33
And he actually pointed a gun at Morel, but he didn't shoot it.
55:38
But he did send Morel out of the bunker and then Morel manages to catch one of the last
55:45
planes out of destroyed Berlin and flies to Bavaria where he had kept a private lab all
55:52
these years.
55:54
And he goes into this lab and basically stays there until the end of the war and stays there
56:00
also in May 1945 when the Americans start occupying Bavaria and then arrest Morel and
56:12
then question Morel for quite a long time.
56:15
Like he stays in American custody for over a year because the Americans try to figure
56:21
out whether he's also a war criminal, whether they should put him on trial in Nuremberg,
56:26
which they don't because the only crime, if crime is the right word, that Morel committed
56:35
was that he gave drugs to Hitler.
56:38
And so maybe he was even a hero in a way because he destroyed Hitler's health involuntarily.
56:46
So the Americans never put him on trial.
56:49
Just once they are done with him, once they're done interrogating him, they drive him to
56:56
the Munich train station and dump him outside the Munich train station and just leave him
57:02
there.
57:03
And he lives out the rest of his life as a practicing doctor somewhere around Munich
57:07
or?
57:08
I guess the Americans didn't treat him very well during custody.
57:14
And his health was not very good when they dumped him outside the Munich train station.
57:21
He claimed later on that they actually tortured him, that they removed his fingernails and
57:26
toenails so he would talk.
57:29
But I don't know if that's true.
57:32
That's only what he claimed.
57:33
And he actually dies in a hospital in Bavaria a few months after the Americans release him.
57:40
So he never recovers from the American custody fully.
57:46
He died in his late 50s.
57:50
Last question.
57:51
At the end, we come to the very tricky subject of responsibility.
57:56
Maybe less in the case of Hitler since he detailed his ideas and plans already in Mein
58:00
Kampf, which was published in 1925, long before he even met Theo Morel.
58:06
But if indeed, as you said, large chunks of population found themselves in a chemically
58:14
altered state, the case of diminished collective responsibility could potentially be made.
58:22
How do you deal with that?
58:23
I don't really see how this case can be made.
58:28
I mean, if you look at the law, and my father was quite a high judge in Germany, and I spoke
58:37
with him at length about this.
58:40
And he said that if you commit a crime under the influence of a narcotic, for example,
58:48
under the influence of methamphetamine, it does not really lessen your responsibility.
58:58
The only way it would be lessened was if you were planning a crime while you were intoxicated
59:05
and you didn't really know what you were doing at all.
59:09
But even if you plan a murder and then you commit the murder while you are on methamphetamine,
59:15
it does not get you off the hook at all, actually.
59:19
That's at least how the German law works.
59:22
And this is also how I feel.
59:23
I mean, the perpetrators during the so-called Third Reich, they always knew what they were
59:31
doing.
59:32
And if you're on crystal meth, you know what you're doing.
59:34
I mean, it's not that you're like...
59:36
I mean, if you drink a lot of alcohol, there might be a point where you don't know exactly
59:41
anymore what you're doing, but the effect of crystal meth is quite different.
59:47
You're always very clear in your head.
59:49
You can think very clearly, actually.
59:53
So to me, it does not lessen the responsibility at all, actually.
1:00:01
And as you said, the Nazi ideas and ideology was formed without the use of drugs.
1:00:11
It was pre-drug.
1:00:16
And let's say you have a concentration camp guard who has to make it through his 12-hour
1:00:25
shift.
1:00:26
I mean, he's a concentration camp guard.
1:00:30
He knows what's going on in the concentration camp.
1:00:32
It does not lessen his responsibility if he uses pevitine so he could be on a higher alert
1:00:40
during his shift.
1:00:44
I don't actually see this argument at all.
1:00:47
Right.
1:00:48
I think maybe a lot of the confusion comes from, like you said before, the American sort
1:00:54
of campaign against these drugs.
1:00:57
Because I also thought that crystal meth makes you trip like a psychedelic or something.
1:01:03
No, I guess with the psychedelic, it would be different if you take a strong psychedelic
1:01:07
and you kind of actually don't know anymore what you're doing, even though also in psychedelics,
1:01:13
I mean, usually you're even more clear of what you're doing than...
1:01:18
Yeah.
1:01:19
It's an interesting discussion.
1:01:21
Norman, thank you so much.
1:01:22
This was a fascinating, absolutely fascinating conversation.
1:01:25
I wish we could talk even more.
1:01:28
I really urge everybody to get Blitzed.
1:01:30
It's such a fantastic read.
1:01:33
Where can people get it?
1:01:34
I'm assuming all fine e-bookstores everywhere, right?
1:01:38
Yeah, I think you can get it in each bookshop.
1:01:43
Do you have any social media that you would like to put out there where people can follow
1:01:47
your work?
1:01:48
Yeah, I guess on Instagram, you can follow me on Norman Ohler.
1:01:55
But I think the best is not to use social media and just read books.
1:01:58
So you don't need to follow me, you can just read the books.
1:02:02
You're not the first guest to say that.
1:02:04
All right.
1:02:06
And what are you working on right now?
1:02:08
I hear you're working on something super interesting again.
1:02:11
I am interested in psychedelic substances, actually.
1:02:15
And I was looking at LSD in particular because I read reports that LSD can be beneficial
1:02:24
against dementia, for example.
1:02:27
And dementia is one of the pressing problems of the near future.
1:02:34
So I was curious about the question of why LSD actually became illegal.
1:02:41
And I researched the very early history of LSD.
1:02:44
It was developed in 1943.
1:02:48
And the Swiss company who developed it, Sandos, which today is Novartis, they make some crucial
1:02:55
decisions in the mid and late 40s and early 50s, which actually made the whole psychedelic,
1:03:06
the whole group of psychedelic substances illegal.
1:03:11
Things happened in America that were very, actually very interesting to research.
1:03:17
And so this is my new book.
1:03:20
And it's called Tripped in English, and it will appear in the US in April 24.
1:03:28
All right.
1:03:30
I really hope we get to talk about it once you release the book.
1:03:35
It was an absolute pleasure.
1:03:36
Thank you, Norman.
1:03:37
Pleasure is on my side.
1:03:38
I also thank you for the interest and have a good day.
1:03:43
Oi, thank you for listening to the episode.
1:03:45
If you've enjoyed it, please subscribe and follow on YouTube, Apple podcasts and Spotify.
1:03:51
As always, eternal glory and gratitude to my producers who are supporting this show
1:03:57
on Patreon, the Kings and Queens, Gordon, Yurechuk, Lorenzo, Veronica, Mila, Carmen
1:04:04
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1:04:05
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1:04:09
If you'd like to become a certified tovarish or tovarishitsa of the show too, head to Patreon,
1:04:15
find Smart Cookie's podcast on there and become one.
1:04:19
It's as simple as that.
1:04:21
Thank you.