142: Norman Ohler | Blitzed - Meth, Nazi's & Hitler In WWII

🎙️: https://atlasgeographica.com/norman-ohler/

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Norman Ohler is a German screenwriter, author and journalist.

Norman is most widely known as the author of Blitzed, an incredible book that documents the role of Pervatin (methamphetamine) and drugs during Nazi Germany and WWII.

In this podcast with Norman, you can expect to hear about…

• The moment of serendipity that lead to writing blitzed in the first place.
• A bit about the crazy debauchery of Berlin pre WWII.
• A brief history on drug synthesis including heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and even Aspirin.
• The prevalence of meth in the nazi army and as well Hitlers codependency on his doctor.
• Norman addresses some of the criticism of the book.
• + as well he speaks about what the overall lesson is he hopes people take away from reading the book.

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Curious Things Mentioned During The Episode

• David De Jong

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

An interesting format for for a detective novel. So my first uh novel, which is a detective novel, was first published online by myself in nineteen ninety-five with a clickable map of Manhattan and you could, you know, access the story at different points and therefore come to different conclusions. That was kind of the idea. It was like a literary experiment.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

Yeah. But I think it really emphasizes the sort of um um inference I'm trying to make as well that we didn't mention just then. You published the last interview Yasser Arafat gave shortly before his death. Blitz does a historical work. I get the sense that you've just managed to follow your interests over time and allow that to direct you.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

I guess there are some writers who always write the same book and they become real masters in it, and there's absolutely, you know, that's absolutely uh okay. Uh but I just happen to not be such a writer. My books are I guess every book is a is a is an experiment for me in a way. I'm an experimental writer or I'm an art I I see myself as an artist basically who uses words because I'm I I'm I just can't paint, but um I can write. So every book is like an art project, and that's why also my books have different styles. There's not there's uh I mean maybe the styles become more maybe the style kind of finds itself by now, but at least in the last 25 years, every book is wildly different, not only in content, but also in style, because the style is every content somehow determines the style, at least for me. So I'm quite open to new subjects and experiments. Like after I published Blitz, which is about drugs in Nazi Germany, I wrote a historical novel which was set in the 18th century. I mean, it doesn't really make sense why you jump from one to the other, but for me it made per perfect sense because I just was interested in this rather boring 18th century story after the most unboring story in the world, which is Hitler on drugs. But I think that's the freedom that literature actually gives you. You can just um it's a very free art form, actually.

SPEAKER_01 2:09

What was the moment of serendipity that led you down the avenue that became blitzed?

SPEAKER_00 2:16

It was presented to me by a friend of mine who was a DJ in Berlin's underground club, club of visionaries. His name is Alex. Um, and he said, this was in 2010 when I asked him what I should write about now. He said you should write about Nazis and drugs, which I thought was a ridiculous idea because I have been taught a lot about Nazis being German in school and through my you know grandparents and parents, and drugs was never even never mentioned. You know, we all know about the evils of Nazi Germany, but also it was always portrayed as a system of discipline and order. I mean, that is basically Nazi propaganda that we still believed in, that at least, you know, not at least, I mean it was brutal and mass murderous, but there was like an order to it and it was disciplined, and so this kind of contradicts the idea that everyone in Nazi Germany was taking drugs. I mean, it just that doesn't make sense. So but after researching like a little bit online and then speaking to a medical historian who actually confirmed that the German army was using uh methamphetamine, I became quite interested in it, in the topic, because I always wanted to write a book about the about the Nazi times, and but I never knew which book that should be because every book's been written on the subject. And I always found drugs extremely fascinating uh as a topic. Combining the two was alluring, and then I mean combining the two, knowing or researching that actually there is such a true, such a such a true such a such a valid reason for researching this, then became very fascinating. And uh at one point I was sitting in the Federal Archives of Germany reading the original notebook of uh Theo Morel, the personal physician of Hitler. I mean I had this thing in my hand, which was kind of fascinating because it was this actual notebook with handwritten notes, and I wrote like what he gave Hitler, and when I read certain sentences, like it was immediately clear that this is a a big, big story that for some reason no one's ever really discovered and examined. So I had kind of kind of something on my hands there in the archive, and it was quite exciting.

SPEAKER_01 4:28

So you mentioned early on in the book, I forget who the person was, but there was been, as you said, every angle of Nazi Germany attacked and written about and uncovered. Yet the personal physician of Hitler in one of his biographies was mentioned something like only seven times, and the idea of Hitler being, and let alone the rest of the uh Nazis being dependent, if not addicted, to Pervotin and these other methamphetamines and drugs, never came up. So is that because they didn't have access to this sort of sort of smoking gun that you found in the in the German archives? How did you give an explanation for that in hindsight that no one else managed to discover and therefore write about this detail?

SPEAKER_00 5:07

Well, Nazi Germany is a very serious topic because it's connected to the genocide um against the Jews and connected with 50 million dead people in World War II. So that led historians to a very conservative, maybe uh conscientious research. And I spoke to a leading historian who was kind of a mentor for me for the book, Hans Mommsen, who passed away by now. He was an older gentleman who basically knew everything about National Socialism, but he'd never concerned himself with drugs. And when I found when I showed him all the copies I'd made in the archives, he just was he was blown away and he said, Well, we historians, we just don't know anything about drugs. Because they don't take drugs. Historians, at least maybe now they do, but a few decades ago that the main historians who who you know examine National Socialism, they live in a glass tower or an ivory tower, not in you know contemporary Berlin in the club scene like I used to uh 20 years ago or 10 years ago. So drugs, they don't know what drugs are. Most people don't know what drugs are, except people who use them themselves or have some kind of personal relationship to them. Uh so no one like for example, I also didn't know what it meant when I read the notes of Morel that Hitler received 20 milligrams of oikodal intravenously. I read that and I had no idea what that meant, and I didn't take it seriously, and then I showed it to the same DJ that uh brought me to the topic in the first place, and he said, Are you insane? You don't know what this means. Oikodal is a very strong euphoric making opioid, which it is, you know. He immediately recognized it because he had taken it himself. So he said, 20 milligrams intravenously, that is like the strongest possible dose that you can, you know, still, you know, stomach and and and and and so so that changed my perspective. And I guess historians didn't have that access. I mean so historians were not really they didn't have the toolkit to um evaluate this particular topic. So it was left to an outsider basically, which was me. This is the explanation.

SPEAKER_01 7:29

I love it, and I can totally map onto why that why that makes sense as a potential reason why there's been that oversight as well. And in response to um the criticism of the book, I didn't necessarily I thought that it was such a weak commentary because it was sort of saying that because the Nazis were under the influence of the drugs, that it's somehow excusing the way that they behaved. And it's like, are you kidding me? Well, what a horrible thing to say. Like someone is excused of their behavior just because they got high. Are you crazy? So I could not understand necessarily why that was even ever taken seriously as a type of criticism.

SPEAKER_00 8:07

It was only taken seriously because the guy who wrote it is a famous historian, Richard Evans, but he's basically his criticism was full of shit. It was it doesn't stand up at all. It's ridiculous. My father, for example, is a was a very high judge in Germany. Uh just from a judicial standpoint, if you're high and you commit a crime, it's not that you're not excused. Um and I didn't excuse, I didn't excuse the Nazis uh at all. I just painted a more exact uh picture. This was basically jealousy by historians. Uh they had to find something against my um my work. You know, it's it's it's that yeah, that's it is jealousy actually. It's a f it's a small field of Hitler experts, and uh they want to protect their um their claims, and it's it's it's it's rather ridiculous, actually. But I guess the that's the academic world also. That's why they don't, you know, they don't think out of the box, so they cannot really appreciate other historians uh obviously did, you know, there was lots of historians who said this is this is great that finally someone looked out of the box. So you could also see from the reaction of the historians kind of how open-minded they are, and some were not.

SPEAKER_01 9:15

Okay, Norman. So to set the scene for us, I loved in the opening chapter, first you described a bit of a history of methamphetamine synthesization, but then as well the totally debaucherous description of Berlin between World War I and World War II. So could you set that context for the period by starting with a brief history of methamphetamines?

SPEAKER_00 9:36

During the Weimar Republic, which lasted from the end of the First World War, 1918 to 1933, when Hitler took power, there was that was the first democracy on German ground, and uh was a kind of chaotic, liberal, free society where experiments were you know encouraged or were just happening, cultural experiments, also drug experiments. It was a very druggy time. Berlin shook itself free from the you know the emperor's uh the emperor times with Willem II. You know, he was gone, he was in exile, he lost the war, so Berlin became like this famous city, basically, that it's somehow still is this free, excessive place. Babylon, Berlin. So drug use was kind of rampant. Um, you could buy all the drugs in the world for very little money. So there was also a drug tourism. People from England came to take drugs and have sex, which they couldn't do. They could do things in Berlin they couldn't do in London. Same from same same applies to Paris or other European metropolis, metropoli. Um and the Nazis always hated that because they are of a very different breed. They don't come from the big cities. The Nazis are a small town, a village, a mountain movement, basically. So urban craziness is not to their liking. They branded it as Jewish and as degenerate. So they were basically enemies of the Weimar Republic. That's why they tried to bring it down and actually were successful in bringing it down. So when the Nazis took power in 33, for the first time in German history, the drug laws were strictly enforced, and uh the Nazis were proud to call themselves a uh, you know, they they tried to create a drug-free society, and among the first concentration camp inmates were actually drug users. So drug drugs were not neutral seen as neutral anymore, but they were seen as bad. So they kind of set the tone, even you know, they they were one of the first prohibitionist governments in the world. Hitler, for example, was also against smoking, and he he tried to, and I think he did, install a ban on advertisement for cigarettes Europe-wide once he conquered Europe. So the whole regime of the Nazis were very much was very much an anti-drug regime, which of course makes the irony even bigger that then this regime turned out to be the greatest drug-using, abusing regime of all times. If we just look at methamphetamine, it wasn't conceived or it wasn't labeled as a drug when it came out. It was just it was just a medicine, basically. So it came out in 38, it was developed in Berlin in 1937, after the Olympic Games, um, in 1936, when uh there was rumor that the American athlete Jesse Owens had used benzidrine, which was already in the on the market in America. There were no doping checks at these Olympic Games. So you could basically take whatever you wanted. Um the Nazis said an Afro-American cannot be faster than an Aryan, so he must he must have been on something. So the Tembler company tried to develop a better amphetamine and developed actually methamphetamine, which is, I wouldn't say better, but it's certainly stronger. Uh they used the um the work that had been done in Japan already in 1917. A Japanese chemist had synthesized methamphetamine. Nagai is his name. But the Temla company in Berlin found a new way of synthesizing methamphetamine and was therefore able to patent it and bring it onto the market as their own development. And then in 38 it became quite successful in Germany. You could just walk into any pharmacy and buy like 20 packs of methamphetamine and it was, you know, a good product. It was clean. It made you and the people didn't think it made you high. I don't want to say it made you high. It didn't mean make you high, it made you alert, made you awake, it made you uh capable of doing your work. So these were all things they were using it as a sexual stimulant as well, right? Also, not mainly. I mean, mainly it was a neutral performance-enhancing substance. So you can use it to enhance your performance on all levels, and that's that's what Nazi Germany was all about. Maybe even in the bedroom, because Hitler said we need to, you know, to have a lot of sex to make a lot of German babies. So everything pervitin, methamphetamine, pervertin was the brand name. Everything methamphetamine does was basically good for the Nazi idea. The only problem was that it was a drug and that the Nazis had the ideolog ideology of being a drug-free, creating a drug-free society. That's why it was not even labeled as a drug. It was just, you know, today we don't really stigmatize people who drink coffee or Coca-Cola. So it was quite similar to Pavitin. It was part of the capitalist performance-oriented society that was Nazi Germany.

SPEAKER_01 14:34

How do you explain the hypocrisy of the Nazi party being so Puritan? You know, they wanted to abstain from all types of drugs, cigarettes, I think even alcohol and you know. But they excuse this other drug that changes your behavior, your alertness, maybe your abilities or capacities. How do you explain the hypocrisy there?

SPEAKER_00 14:58

At first it wasn't a hypocrisy because it takes a while for a society to understand what it is because there's there had never been such a type of product on the market. So it wasn't obvious that this is a drug, and now we're all taking a drug, even though we say we don't take drugs. So it took a while for the society to register what's going on, and this was impersonated in the uh health minister of Nazi Germany, Leo Conti. He realized it in 39, in November of 1939, so about a you know, 18 months after the product was on the market, he introduced the prescription. He said it must can only be given out with a prescription. So he he realized this is not something that anyone should be able to take all the time. Uh but the prescription, the prescription mode did not actually decrease uh the consumption. And he became quite agitated about it, and and he thought he's the man to stop this madness. So he tried to um really curb the consumption of peptide, and he said this is hypocritical, especially when the German army started using it. He had you know angry letter exchanges with the surgeon general of the German army saying we are superhumans, we don't need this. So there was counter-reactions within the regime due to the hypocrisy, but finally, in the end, the performance enhancement or the military advantage that Pevin gave the German soldiers, at least in the beginning, not later on, but in 1940, it gave the German soldiers advantages. They were considered as more important than ideology. And this is, I guess, a very practical approach. If you're in a war, you know, you just use whatever helps you best. You don't care about any Nazi party program that says you should not take drugs. You know, even and and prevatin was not even a clear drug. It wasn't like it wasn't like they were using morphine or heroin or cocaine, they were using some medicine that a German company legally manufactured. So Conti had a it wasn't easy for Conti to kind of convince the army to not take this because the army just said this gives us an edge over our sleepy enemies.

SPEAKER_01 17:17

And as you go to explain, it was uh quite a significant edge. But perhaps you could just qualify, for example, you said you could do things in Berlin that you couldn't in London or Paris or other great cities. Can you really give with maybe a few examples just how sleazy Berlin was in during this time period before the Nazis uh took over power?

SPEAKER_00 17:42

I wasn't there, so I can only rely on sources. And I guess there's also people romanticized that period, so I guess also the hedonism it's is is maybe exaggerated, but for sure, for sure it had a strong effect that the established rule of law and of society and everything was shattered by losing uh the first world war. Traditions were destroyed. So Berlin was open to everything basically. And it had a lot of people that were desperate for you know anything. There was people who were out of work, people were addicted to drugs still from the First World War. There were many morphine addicted soldiers. So the drugs were drugs were cheap, the the the there was no the money had no value. So for example, for a British person, it was really cheap to come to Berlin. If he dared to like, you know, go there, he would be basically in paradise because his pound can buy you know so much. So I guess it was just a wild night it it had a wild nightlife. I mean there were lots of clubs that didn't exist anywhere else. Like Berlin just has this a very elaborate club scene. Or it started then in the Weimar Republic, very promiscuous clubs, there were sex parties that you like you walk through the center of Berlin and you would find flyers posted on the walls, inviting you to private apartments with sex parties, and I guess this was quite unusual for Europe, which was still a conservative place, but because in Germany everything was destroyed, not everything was destroyed, I mean there was no combat in in Berlin was still totally intact, but the society, the structure, the m the moral, the moral was destroyed. So people had no inhibitions, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 19:32

What is it about Berlin? Because even today, a hundred years later, people will still go from all over the world just to go to that city for some of the most intense nightlife that you can't really see in other places.

SPEAKER_00 19:45

I mean it starts there. Uh it's a tradition that was especially revived in the 90s when the wall fell, and lots of abandoned buildings between east and west where the wall had been standing became available for club venues, and the techno scene that became such a big part of the cultural scene in general of the 90s, had a very strong base in Berlin. Very famous clubs like the Trezor started, and now Berlin has the so-called best club in the world, which is the Berkhein. I guess if you take away the Berghein, it wouldn't be so attractive anymore. So there's like this myth around the Berkheim. Will you get in? You know, if you don't get in, you have to go to a club nearby that will still let you in. Yeah, I mean, it's still it's also like a marketing tool for the city. Um and for me, the c the city's nightlife is told is basically over. I thought it was interesting in the 90s, in the late 90s, mid-90s, but that's of you know, because I was that's just me, you know, because Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:47

But your son when he's, you know, in his late twenties or maybe even when he's in his fifties, he's gonna look back and say, Yeah, I mean when I was there it was fun. I don't know what it's like anymore. Isn't that also something perennial? People always like back in my days when it was really punk.

SPEAKER_00 21:03

Yeah, maybe. Maybe. But there is, I mean, there is a fact that the nightlife in the nineties was very special, and certainly better than today, that's like for sure. But some people say the nightlife in the eighties was even better than in the nineties. I don't know, but it certainly it certainly declined after Berlin became the official capital of Germany again, which was in the late nineties, because then the city became more gentrified, and uh gentrification and nightlife don't go well together.

SPEAKER_01 21:32

Okay, so methamphetimedum was developed directly in response to um uh an American athlete uh outperforming the the Aryans in um in the Olympics. Fascinating sort of small detail about why, you know, what the incentives were behind a sort of stimulant coming into the market. Then that stimulant takes on a life of its own, obviously, that is still uh extremely prevalent. What are some of the sort of mind-blowing insights you discovered about drug development and the history of drugs during your research for this book?

SPEAKER_00 22:09

Well, I wanted to start the book uh in 1933 when Hitler takes over power and Hans Mommsen, the mentor I mentioned, who helped me conceive the book, he said you have actually have to look uh you have to look in the past. How did the drug development actually start in Germany? And I thought it was quite fascinating what I discovered there, that it's basically happened in the in the second half of the 19th century when the mass society developed after the French-German War in 1871. There was an economic boom in Germany. The German economy really caught on, and um there was a need in the society for for medicines basically, and medicines before and and then big pharmaceutical companies developed in Germany, which are still big players today, like Bayer. Bayer developed heroin. So heroin was a product that Bayer, I guess you say it in English, Bayer developed heroin, Merck, which is still a global player, had the patent for cocaine. So these companies in the last decades of the 19th century had very potent uh products. Because at the time there were no drug laws, so you could get heroin. It was marketed as a cough syrup against the flu for babies so they've sleep better. Jesus Christ. I mean, heroin is not really it's not really uh bad for your health. I mean, opium, the poppy plant is uh is a is good, you know, it's it helps you against your against pain and whatever. The only problem obviously is that it makes you addicted. So the knowledge about the about addiction was not so developed at the time. So this guy the his name was Hoffman, he developed heroin for the Bayer Company. And ten days earlier he had developed aspirin. So the same guy within 10 days invents first aspirin and then heroin. So I hope he I hope he got a promotion or something. But like his his bosses were really happy, you know, so they and they didn't know is what is what is now more lucrative. Is it aspirin against headache, or is it heroin against all kinds of flu and cold medicine? So this was a time of innovation. Germany also did not have, unlike the other European powers, important colonies. Because colonies were basically created in order to import spices and drugs that these colonies have, which don't, you know, tea doesn't grow in England, but tea is a great drug. I use it every day, and uh it just gives you a little boost for the this this stimulant stimulating the stimulant you can take like in the afternoon or in the morning is actually quite important. If you don't have tea or coffee, your day is kind of dull, at least you know, for most people. So this is actually a big reason to have a colony. But this the same goes for spices. If you don't have any spices, it's not so much fun, you know. France, Britain, Holland, Portugal, Spain, they all had colonies. Germany didn't really have them because Germany was not a nation state until you know that war against France in 1870, 71. And then most of the colonies were already taken. So Germany had to kind of invent their own stimulants. That's where the pharmaceutical companies come in and invent heroin or invent patent cocaine, bring it onto the market. And so that's why Germany became such a drugs drug place, basically.

SPEAKER_01 25:42

That's an incredible detail. So Germany synthesized meth, created heroin, created cocaine. Which other of the world's great drugs are, and I use great in the terms of more so like just extremely prevalent and influential, can Germany lay credit for?

SPEAKER_00 26:00

I think beer, maybe.

SPEAKER_01 26:02

I don't know about that one.

SPEAKER_00 26:04

Well, Germany had the first uh actually the first anti-drug law was the purity law of 1512. It's it was created in Bavaria. It was the law that determined what you can put into beer and what is not allowed in the beer. Because before that beer was a much more much more crazy brew. People put in like nightshades plants, which had stro much stronger effects. Like there was a beer that was hallucinogenic. And then basically the church said this is this is no go. This is a no-go. We have to create the purity law. So, in a way, this beer, the beer that we know today is in fact a bavarian or a church invention that comes out of the monasteries in Bavaria. But you asked about synthetic drugs. I guess methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin are the main um I mean, what other trips are there? There's certainly a lot of drugs coming out of the city. Oh, aspirin? Aspirin, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:00

Yeah. So we've really set the scene, I think, for the role of maybe drugs in society, but particularly Germany. Now enter the Nazis, enter Hitler. Can you talk a little bit about the prevalence of drugs and particularly Pervutin, which is this synthesiz this methamphetamine synthesization during World War II?

SPEAKER_00 27:18

Uh Pervutin became kind of the talk of the town in Berlin in the late 30s, and not only in Berlin, it was then also examined uh in universities. Studies were being made. What is methamphetamine? Is it good? For what is it good? Because the Tembler company had no clue basically what this medicine they put on the market is good for. They just, you know, realized that once you are on meth, you feel kind of good. Uh that was basically all they could say. But the universities found out that it reduces your fear, it reduces inhibitions, it reduces sleep. So it has interesting effects, quite strong effects. And uh this became known to a professor in Berlin called Otto Ranke, who was the physiologist of the German army, and he was looking for a way to combat fatigue. And when he heard that methamphetamine does that, he made uh tests with young medical officers in the in the military academy in Berlin, and uh he found out that they actually can stay awake longer on methamphetamine, and then he tried to push this with his uh superior in order to have methamphetamine become an official drug or you know, supplied officially to the troops for their um for their you know campaigns, and this is exactly what happened. So that's how methamphetamine then became a war drug.

SPEAKER_01 28:50

And then the prevalence of it throughout World War II.

SPEAKER_00 28:53

Interesting fact is that the strategy that the Germans used against France and against the West basically was a strategy that's based on surprise and time. Like they knew that they could basically not win this campaign because the West had superior fighting power and more men. And also the West was trained very well. The French army was supposed to be the strongest army in the world at the time. The British military was also not bad, you know, and they combined obviously would beat the Germans. But then three tank generals had an idea to break through the Ardennes Mountains within three days and three nights and kind of cut off the Allies who were expecting the German attack in the north of Belgium and in the and more south in the in France. So in the middle where there was this mountain region, no one thought that the whole German army would go through the mountains, which is kind of a ri ridiculous idea. But the m the army on meth actually can do that. So that strategy, which was very risky, worked with meth. So it was kind of really uh a very unusual situation, this Western campaign, and I I really develop it in my in my book to to figure out what actually happened, and it's quite fascinating. This military victory is very unlikely, but it happened.

SPEAKER_01 30:15

There's a Churchill quote um which I haven't written down, but hopefully you remember it, where he sort of comments on how surprised he was at the speed of the of the Nazis. Was it the Wehrmacht? Is that what they were called?

SPEAKER_00 30:28

Well, the Wehrmacht is the name for the German army. So the Wehrmacht is just the army of Germany. Flitzkrieg is kind of a nickname for this type of fast war where you surprise your enemy by gaining a lot of territory in a short amount of time, and you can uh gain that, especially if you don't stop marching at night, which you usually usually have to stop because people need to sleep. But if you take a lot of methamphetamine, you you don't need to sleep. So there was there's a quote by Guderian, who's a famous tank general. After the campaign in the West, he said to his soldiers, I asked you to stay awake for three days and three nights, and you stayed awake for 17 days and 17 nights, which I think is a bit of an exaggeration, but it shows that actually for 17 days and 17 nights the German army did not stop. They just it just kept going. It was like something that has never happened before in military history, something that the Western Allies were completely unprepared to, you know, defend themselves against. So it was actually brilliant what the what the Wehrmacht did. It was it worked. What about that Churchill quote? Well, I mean Churchill was surprised as anyone. Uh do you have certain uh uh rules for for warfare, which all come from the First World War, and the rules mean that at night the troops have to rest. So Churchill could not understand you know, he was surprised. But he was quicker in his mind than the French, you know, generals were very you know, they didn't comprehend anything anymore. Or they were just they just collapsed while you know Churchill was able to correspond somehow. But they, you know, also the losses by the British military were huge in the beginning.

SPEAKER_01 32:16

From your research, how prevalent was Pervuton subscribed and distributed across the entire army?

SPEAKER_00 32:22

It's a little bit hard to say because there's no numbers of like there's a total number of 35 million dosages for the Western campaign. And then you have obviously the total number of soldiers who took part, which is I don't know, I would have to look it up in my own book, but maybe let's say 2.4 million. And so you can kind of average it out how many pills each, and then you can you know the days it took. But my research actually shows that the meth was distributed asymmetrically and was mainly or it was prioritized to the tank troops. The German army was the first army ever to use the tank units as the leading units of the advance. Usually in World War I, there weren't so many tanks there at all, anyhow. But the tanks were like kind of like the elephants walking behind and kind of backing up the whole thing. But the Germans used the tanks like kind of like as race cars that were racing ahead and totally confusing and surprising. Uh the allies. And these tank divisions, for example, Rommel division, this famous tank general Rommel, who was then later fighting in Africa against Montgomery Rommel, I guess you call him in English. He was among those who received the most paveteen. So these advantageous tank generals, they like were really getting a lot of meth and taking the meth and then just speeding in their tanks and creating chaos and just, you know, gaining ground and conquering enemy territory. This this avant-garde of the tank troops, they were given most of the methamphetamine. So I don't think you would find a tank in this Western campaign which was not high on meth. The five or four people inside who like were speeding through the first the mountains and then the whole of France within like a few days and never slept and just fired away at everything that was in front of them, they were all high on math. Well, this obviously created also a certain mood this in the in the German army. They they kind of developed it's not very nice to fight in a war. You don't really want to do it. You get depressed, you get scared, but if you're if you are high on math, it doesn't exactly turn into a party, but it turns into an intoxicated event. So it really it really helped them to do this crime, commit this crime basically, because obviously it's a crime to go with weapons into a country that you know you should respect. So the meth really changed their minds.

SPEAKER_01 35:03

The details of Hitler at the end just being a total fiend, his body shutting down, such was his abuse of the various drugs. What research what what evidence do we have of the hundreds of thousands of other Nazis who were abusing these drugs, how their bodies coped after the war ended? I just wonder if there is any anything you uncovered concerning that.

SPEAKER_00 35:28

The devastation in Germany during the last months of the war and then when the war ended was so great that no record or no examination was being done because there was no body existed that could have done such an examination. Also, the soldiers who had taken pavitin did not really think about that all too much because they thought about different things like horrors they had been through on the battlefield. And also you don't become physically dependent on methamphetamine really. I mean, you do to some extent, but it's not like heroin where you actually become physically addicted. So I read a study about drugs in general on the it was drugs on in during war, which said that many people, soldiers who I think it was on the Vietnam War, they take drugs during the war situation, and then once the war situation is over, they don't need the drug anymore. Um I mean fact is that cavity was still around in the 50s in Germany, and I guess quite a few people took it, but I never saw a statistic. Um, because a lot of it was then black market, it was just like uh stacks that the army still had that somehow made their way to the black market and people used it. Um but I there's no official the Wehrmacht, the Wehrmacht tried to the Wehrmacht tried to set up a rehab program during the war, but they never had the funds because they, you know, used the funds for something else to buy ammunition or whatever. So it was never really put into practice. There was a rehab program for Luftwaffe pilots, Air Force pilots. They could like take a few days off after they've taken too much PVT and flown too many missions, but that's about it.

SPEAKER_01 37:20

The some some details about Hitler and his dependency on his Dr. Morrell, which really is sort of the core theme or at least storyline of the book. It's the sort of yeah, it's the codependency of those two on each other. Morel on Hitler for status and and and self-worth and I suppose addiction as well, and then Hitler because Morel was the first doctor who came around and um sort of solved all of his physical ailments. Hitler seems to have been an extremely sickly person, but just some details of the doctor always walking shortly behind Hitler with his bag, you know, ready to administer Hitler on some upper if, you know, he basically turned around and gave him the wave to come and do it. You know, stopping uh a convoy of trains just so the needle could be administered safely into Hitler's arm. Little details like this add so much colour to the book, but then as well, one gets a sense of sort of Schadenfreuder at Hitler's description of his addiction to drugs and his dependence on his doctor, and there's this vision of him itching his arm like a junkie through and through, suffering with draw delusion, all the rest. So I'd just like to ask you to add colour into all of that and describe this codependency between Hitler and Morrell. Well, we just didn't. For example, how prevalent is the relationship? Give us some some some stats, like how often is Morel filling Hitler with various drugs? Talk about some of these crazy cocktails he was giving him, the unbelievable dosages, you know, Hitler needing Hitler go just kind of withdrawing into madness, getting waking, going to bed at 6 a.m., you know, speaking to a room for three hours with no one responding to him. Incredible details like him with Mussolini. Again, maybe I'm doing it, but give us some some colour on this sort of stuff.

SPEAKER_00 39:06

Hitler was basically a healthy person. He had stomach problems and he was farting all the time. That was like his main problem. But he was he was quite fine and he was also not so ugly as in the end. He was young and energetic and he was a great speaker, and um he liked his doctor in the beginning because the doctor gave him vitamins. Morel was convinced that vitamins are healthy, which I think we still believe in today, but at the time this was kind of new, so he was kind of avant-garde with his vitamin uh this vitamin idea. And Hitler was a health freak. I mean, he was a vegetarian, he didn't smoke, he didn't drink coffee. Receiving injections of vitamins seemed like a natural uh thing for him. But receiving daily injections is also kind of crazy, and it made Hitler in a way dependent on the injection itself. So from 36 when they first met until like 41, he received daily injections. So whenever he didn't get his injection, he thought that something was missing. Um and then he got another vitamin C, vitamin B cocktail shot, and he thought, now I will never get sick again. And he actually was never sick. He could, you know, stand in his brown shirt in the rain and raise his arm for hours. So he's he's quite fit actually. But then in 41, he was sick for the first time. This was in his headquarters Wolfslayer in eastern Prussia against the Soviet Union. The war had just started, and he had so-called Russian flu and high fever, and couldn't go to the military briefing and asked Morel to give him something stronger. And then Morel for the first time gave him an opioid uh and it immediately cured Hitler's Russian flu. And um he could go to the briefing and function, and Hitler was always afraid that he couldn't function anymore because he was the only one in his belief system that was necessary to keep the whole world spinning, basically. So it's impossible that he would not be able to function because that would that would mean that means the end of the world. So when he realized how strong this opioid is, Morel and him kind of developed into a couple that would administer not only vitamins, and from 41 to about 43, they still don't know exactly what's best for Hitler. So they experiment a lot. And the vitamins are accompanied by, for example, steroids. Morel then suddenly gets very interested in steroids and develops in his own pharmaceutical factory hormonal concoctions of made of pig's liver and bull's testicles and all kinds of crazy stuff. And Hitler is really interested in them and takes them. But these concoctions are not really healthy. So that's kind of when Hitler stops being so healthy. Um and the whole system actually stops being I mean, it was never healthy, but Hitler at least made decisions that worked within the national socialist, you know, belief system. But now he kind of goes off the rails. And then in 43 he has this famous meeting with Mussolini who wants to leave the war effort, and he takes Oikodal for the first time, which is now called Oxycodone, and he really loves that drug because it makes him euphoric and it numbs all his pain. So it's kind of perfect for him, actually. He whenever he takes Oikodal intravenously, he feels like Hitler again. He's on top of his game, his mental capacities are all there, he feels great. Generals can tell him that you know there's lots of problems on the front, but he just didn't doesn't give a shit, and he just, you know, overrides them with his charisma. So Oikodal becomes his drug of choice in a way, and that's how it turns into a junkie basically. So from a vitamin consuming health nut to a opioid shooting junkie within well, a few years. Takes a few years in a in a world war, but he does change quite a bit, and his health then obviously degenerates. Um, which is also kind of kind of catchy because as Germany degenerates and everything is bombed to the ground, also Hitler's health kind of is bombed to the ground. So he's kind of in sync. His physical condition is in sync with the condition he creates, not only for Germany, but actually for the for the for the for the whole of Europe.

SPEAKER_01 43:45

And talk about some of his erratic behavior and how it starts to map onto his addiction.

SPEAKER_00 43:50

I'm not sure if we can call his behavior erratic because he was very focused on his belief. So he doesn't really change in a way. I mean it becomes Erratic because the world changes, but he doesn't change. So his decisions seem erratic, but he he takes the drugs to keep his tunnel vision and to just stay on track, like never change, you know, because he's not flexible in his mind. This is what cost Germany the war, because you know, if you have a commander who's not flexible in his thinking, you have a problem because the war situation on the ground is extremely fluid, and you you know, you know, n you need to think basically out of the box the whole time. But National Socialism is not a belief system that is creative, it's a very rigid system. Um Hitler used these drugs in a way that were it was coherent with Nazi ideology for him because he could stay on track, but it also destroyed National Socialism because it just proved to be a system that cannot really function in a in a fluid evolving world.

SPEAKER_01 44:58

And we all know how the story ends for Hitler. What is the role of sort of drugs and the central thesis of pervertin in German society? How does that storyline continue after 945?

SPEAKER_00 45:13

I mentioned this before. Pervutin was still around in the 50s, but it didn't influence society as much anymore as it did in the forties. I mean, it takes quite an effort to rebuild the country. And there's reports on Japan, for example, that methamphetamine, which was also used in Japan, was being used to rebuild the country that had been nuked to the ground, and also the German so-called debris women who cleared up all the debris in the bombed-out cities in Germany apparently used Pavitine so they could master the task. But the fees in Germany was not really shaped by methamphetamine.

SPEAKER_01 45:53

Outside of Germany and Japan, did you discover in your research or learn any interesting anecdotes about uh the role of drugs in other countries and armies of the same period?

SPEAKER_00 46:03

There was an article in a Italian newspaper in September 1940 talking about a courage pill that the Germans are taking. Basically, this was the someone spilled a military secret because obviously the British became interested in that and uh made their own tests then and found out that math is actually too strong for the British soldier. Because obviously British soldier cannot take as much as a German soldier. But British soldier can still take amphetamine, so they decided to stockpile amphetamine, benzrine basically. But they learned so they learned from the Nazis that you could take a stimulant to improve your fighting capabilities. So when Montgomery was fighting Rommel in the desert in late 40 and 41, the British were on amphetamines and the Germans were in methamphetamine. The Western armies, especially the American army, was using amphetamines then in the Korean War, in the Vietnam War, also in the Iraq War of the early 90s. So the Nazis' legacy uh continues.

SPEAKER_01 47:18

Is there any particular lesson you want the people who read this book to uh leave with?

SPEAKER_00 47:25

It's very dangerous if a government becomes driving force in organizing what drugs should be taken or what drugs are not to be taken by, you know, individuals. Because the government usually does not, is not concerned, even though it might claim otherwise, with the health benefits of the people who live in a certain area, but more with other things, ideologies or a certain you know, basically it's an ideology. So I think that drug laws um are quite violent and do not correspond to a free society. I think governments abuse drug laws to control people in America. This is very obvious with controlling minorities like the African Americans through the drug laws. Um and the Nazis did that, you know, used drugs in a massive way to shape the society to their view, to their needs and to their, you know, liking. That's why I think um that governments have no right to actually create drug laws. Obviously, they have a duty to protect citizens from harmful practices, maybe. But since we have seen that the war on drugs does not prohibit people from taking drugs, but rather creates dangerous drugs because the drugs are no longer um are no longer controlled by you know authorities that would, you know, look at the purity. Like heroin was a German product, it was looked at. There was no one died of heroin when it was, you know, you buy, you get it from Bayer, you have it in combination with your doctor's advice, people didn't die from it. But if you take heroin now, you go on the street corner and buy heroin, you might die from it because you don't know what the hell you're taking. So I guess the lesson is that uh drugs should all be legalized eventually, you know. There should be a discussion in society. And this discussion is already going on. I mean, in America, at least marijuana is now being legalized in many states, psilocybin is becoming legalized. So at least drugs that are not harmful, like psychedelics, should obviously be legalized.

SPEAKER_01 49:33

Cocaine? You think that should be legalized too?

SPEAKER_00 49:36

I had a reading in Peru, and when I landed at the airport, the first thing that I was given was a was a coca tea at the airport. And this coca tea was actually quite good. I mean, it was just coca leaves in hot water. And if you bring like coca leaves to the United States, a bag of coca leaves, probably get like 20 years in prison or something. Obviously, cocaine as we know it is a horrible drug. And but then again, when it was still legal, Freud developed psychoanalysis on cocaine. So the cocaine that you get on the black market is bullshit. You know, it's like, I don't know, it's poisoned with all kinds of stuff. I mean, cocaine itself is also a ridiculous substance because it's but also refined sugar is a ridiculous substance. I think we need to look totally have a different uh look on drugs and stimulants, and uh eventually, obviously uh coca leaves and cocaine sh should also be legal if we know what it is, and you know, I don't think more people would take it. Probably less people would take it. And it would be, you know, pure and whatever. Cocaine it's in itself is not the problem. What about the problem of addiction? I mean, we're all addicted to something, you know. Um I the con I'm not really an expert on addiction, but I I guess the concept of addiction also is totally old-fashioned. What is addiction? When is addiction bad? What is just consumption? What is behavior?

SPEAKER_01 51:03

Then let's wrap it up with uh just two or three more questions. How surprised were you by the success of the book?

SPEAKER_00 51:09

I've always been convinced um that my books are basically uh a blessing to the world, which is obviously ridiculous. Uh this is, you know, my this was my belief already when I was 20, when I was writing, I was already I was always convinced that my books would be interesting. Well for me that my fourth book became a big success was not surprising, actually, because I always thought my books are successful. And while I was researching, it was clear to me that the story is very, very interesting, obviously. So you can write an excellent book, you can write an excellent book on something that is not really so interesting to so many people and it might not be a big success. But if you write an excellent book on such a juicy topic, your chances are much higher that it becomes a big success. But it's still not, you know, it could still have been an it could still be an underground book that no one really knows about. I I don't actually think so, because it's really a I don't know, the book is just it's it's just a good project. I don't know. I'm not surprised it's successful actually. I would be surprised if it's not successful. I would be sad and surprised. I don't know. I mean it's not such a huge success, but it's out in over 30 languages, and it was a New York Times bestseller and bestseller in Germany and some other countries. I don't know, maybe a million.

SPEAKER_01 52:28

Amazing. I mean, that's a huge success. That's a lot of publishing standards. Yeah, like that's a that's a complete outlier success. I wonder, did you see that Lex Friedman actually brought you up by name recently in his podcast? Are you familiar with who that is? No. Lex Friedman is an American podcaster. He probably has top five most listened to podcasts in the world. And I forget the context, I should be better, but he was talking to a guest and he's fascinated in the history of World War II, um, you know, has reread Rise and Fall of the Third Reich multiple times, and uh actually brought you up by name and was asking his guests whether he should try and have you on. I just wonder if if you'd seen that. It it would probably be the single biggest piece of promotion you could ever do.

SPEAKER_00 53:15

No, maybe I should contact him.

SPEAKER_01 53:17

But it would also be very interesting, um, because he's a great interviewer and he would uh treat you well. He'd fly you over to America and you know you you wouldn't have to talk to him through a computer like you are with May. Okay, Norman, so final two questions for you, mate. I try to ask this to every guest who comes on the show. The first being, could you talk about the role that serendipity played in your life?

SPEAKER_00 53:39

Well, I kind of organize my life according to this principle, or I le I I allow this principle to lead me, because I probably also believe or experience karmic situations. Or are you asking for a particular instance? I mean, in general, I would just say it's important, but again, I'm a little bit tired.

SPEAKER_01 54:03

Okay, well, I mean, you you gave a great example earlier about how the subject of your most popular book of all time happened by uh having a conversation with the DJ in a nightclub in Berlin. That's a beautiful moment of serendipity. I think you just sort of said it yourself. You organize your life by it, you believe in some type of karmic principle, and therefore one optimizes by keeping their mind open, by not saying no to people, by yeah, keeping an open mind at the end of the day. Like what what could possibly happen here if I just, you know, go down this path? And you never know what it leads to. Maybe it leads to a best-selling book, maybe it leads to uh years wasted, who knows? But not all serendipity is good, I suppose is worthwhile saying as well. But interesting. Okay, well, final question then, Norman. If you could witness a conversation between any two people of history, dead or alive, no language barrier, so listening to a podcast, who would the two people be?

SPEAKER_00 54:55

That's a hard question. Maybe Jesus and Mary Magdalene or whatever her name was, the girlfriend of Jesus.

SPEAKER_01 55:02

Okay, Norman.

SPEAKER_00 55:03

Um, anything else? Well, I think we should do another one on my new book when it comes out in America. All right, we shall