Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany

The Nazis presented themselves as warriors against moral degeneracy. Yet, as Norman Ohler's gripping bestseller reveals, the entire Third Reich fueled itself with drugs. Examples include, cocaine, heroin, morphine and crystal meth. Everyone had access from factory workers to housewives, and crucial to troops' resilience.

The book describes that before World War 1, research efforts enabled the German corporate sector to secure a virtual worldwide monopoly on drugs. The unprecedented casualties of World War I brought the need for treatment of acute and chronic pain. This inspired the Weimar and Nazi governments to adopt an attitude of tolerance toward the use of drugs. These were to relieve pain, increase performance, and avoid withdrawal. Most of the drug addicts in 1920s and 1930s Germany were First World War veterans. They required addictive drugs for pain relief and/or medical personnel who had access to such drugs. During the Weimar era, addiction was seen as a curable disease. Following the advent of Nazism, addiction continued to be viewed as curable for all, but members of disfavored ethnic or social groups. Nazi's attributed drug addition among members of such groups to other conditions. For example, an inherent predisposition or genetic /cultural weakness.

Drug use in the German military during World War II was encouraged and widespread. This is especially true during the war's later stages of the war. To get its front-line soldiers and fighter pilots to fight longer, harder, and with less concern for individual safety, the German army ordered them to take military-issue pills. These were methamphetamine or cocaine-based stimulants. After Pervitin, a methamphetamine drug developed by the Berlin-based Temmler pharmaceutical company, first entered the civilian market in 1938, it became a top seller among the German population. The drug was brought to the attention of Otto Friedrich Ranke, a military doctor. The substance increases self-confidence, concentration, and willingness to take risks. While at the same time reducing sensitivity to pain, hunger, thirst, and the need for sleep. Cocaine was later added to the formulation to increase its potency through the effects of drug interaction and to reinforce its use by individuals.

Adolf Hitler was addicted to drugs initially prescribed to treat chronic medical conditions. After Doctor Theodor Morell prescribed cultures of live bacteria, Hitler's digestive ailments eased, and Hitler made him his primary physician. Dr Morell's popularity skyrocketed, and he was sarcastically dubbed by Goering “The Reichsmaster of the Injections.” Dr. Morell went on to prescribe powder cocaine to soothe Hitler's throat and clear his sinuses. When Hitler's drug supplies ran out by the end of the war, he suffered severe withdrawal from serotonin and dopamine, paranoia, psychosis, rotting teeth, extreme shaking, kidney failure and delusion.

And it wasn't just confined to Hitler. Hermann Goering, Hitler's closest aide, had served in the Luftstreitkräfte during World War I and suffered a severe hip injury during combat. He became addicted to the morphine prescribed to relieve the pain from this injury and the gunshot wound received while taking part in the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch in Munich. When Göring was captured near the end of the war, he was addicted to dihydrocodeine and was weaned off it.

These are only a few of the areas that the book describes in detail. There are lots of other examples showing how the promiscuous use of drugs at the highest levels impaired and confused decision-making. While drugs cannot on their own explain the events of the Second World War or its outcome, Ohler shows, they change our understanding of it.

The book itself is well written but it does have a tendency to jump back and forwards in time. Reading would have been made easier if it followed a linear timeline. But this is a minor criticism. All in all it presents a fresh insight into the toxic mind of a toxic man and a toxic culture. The scale of his dependency, and the dependency of the people who surrounded him is mind blowing.

A great book which is worth your time. Read it!