Kind: captions
Language: en
Hitler invited three young tank generals
to his office and they had a plan which
was the plan to go through the Aden
mountains. That was the victorious idea.
So it's not the drugs actually that idea
to go through the Aden mountain. If you
if you think monocausal, you would say
that's the reason. That idea was genius.
And Hitler immediately understood it
because before the plan was to attack in
the north of Belgium, which is the same
as World War I, and it comes a stalemate
and they fight for months and no one
really moves and it's bloody and it's
nothing's happening. It's a bad. But
that was the only plan that they had.
That's why the high command said, "No,
we're not going to do it. It's stupid."
But these three tank generals they said
look if we go with the whole army
through the Aden mountains and like
Hitler this is not possible this is like
a mountain range how can the whole
German army fit through this eye of a
needle basically and they say no we can
do it because everyone misunderstands
what tanks can do. Tanks are not slow
machines in the back that wait for the
action to happen and then support this
somehow. We're going to use tanks in the
front as race cars. Basically, we're
going to over power the enemy. We're
going to be in France before they know
it. We are already behind them. But it
would only work if you would reach
Sedon, the border city of France within
3 days and three nights. And that was
only possible if you don't stop.
Suddenly, Ranka realized that his moment
had come because he had the recipe how
people could stay awake for 3 days and
three nights. Before that he was kind of
an outsider like the freak with the drug
idea. Suddenly he became like okay tell
us how does it work and he gave like
lectures in front of the officers and he
wrote a stimulant decree where like a
whole army is prescribed a drug this
case methamphetamine how much should be
taken at what intervals. This became a
very big thing and then Tla had to
deliver 35 million dosages to the front
lines and then on May 10th they took
their methamphetamine and they started
the surprise attack through the Aden
mountains.
The following is a conversation with
Norman Oler, author of Blitzed, Drugs in
the Third Reich, a book that
investigates what role psychoactive
drugs, particularly stimulants such as
methamphetamine, played in the military
history of World War II. It is a book
that two legendary historians, Ian
Kershaw and Anthony Beaver, give very
high praise to. Ian Kershaw describes it
as very wellressearched serious piece of
scholarship and Anthony Beaver describes
it as remarkable work of research and it
is indeed a remarkable work of research.
Norman went deep into the archives using
primary sources to uncover a perspective
on Hitler and the Third Reich that is
before this but mostly ignored by
historians.
He also wrote Tripped: Nazi Germany, the
CIA, and The Dawn of the Psychedelic
Age. And he's now working on a new book
with the possible title of Stoned
Sapiens. Great title. Looking at the
history of human civilization through
the lens of drugs.
This is the Lex Freedman podcast. To
support it, please check out our
sponsors in the description and consider
subscribing to this channel. And now,
dear friends, here's Norman Oler.
Tell me the origin story of meth
methamphetamine and pervertin brand name
drug version in the context of Nazi
Germany in the late 1930s. Let's start
there.
>> I think you're right to ask about the
context because without the context,
it's not really understandable. So, what
was the situation?
In the 20s, the Nazi movement basically
started and it started in Bavarian beer
halls. So alcohol was the drug of choice
of the early Nazi movement. The only guy
that didn't drink was Hitler. He was a
tea totler I guess you say. So um that
was happening in Munich. So alcohol and
national socialism are very closely
connected. At the same time in the 20s
in Berlin there was a completely
different thing going on. People were
taking all kinds of drugs. This had to
do actually with the defeat of Germany
in the first world war. I mean the
context is a big context. The Versailles
treaty had the effect that the German
economy
was not really able to recover after the
end of World War I. The Versail treaty
was written basically by the Western
victorious powers. Germany had no say in
the negotiations
and um I'm certainly not a German
nationalist, not even a German patriot,
but even I would say that the Versail
treaty treated Germany somewhat unfair.
I mean it laid all the blame on Germany.
And I mean a war is a very complex thing
and the first world war
to examine how it actually started is a
very complex you know story and there's
many factors to it. But the Versail
treat just said it was Germany's fault
and then Germany had to do all these
payments to the allies. It couldn't
create a new economy. It couldn't have a
new army. So it was the economy really
went down. Everything in Berlin was
cheap and the people were using also
substances that were very cheap in huge
quantities. So while in Bavaria they
were drinking alcohol and alcohol in the
brain
uh stimulates behavior a a group
behavior us against them. You can
actually examine this as a
neuroscientist would know exactly how
this works. uh while in Berlin the drugs
that were used were morpheium, there was
cocaine, there was masculine, there was
ether. So people were experimenting.
Everyone developed a different mindset.
It was all, you know, you didn't behave
in a way that some kind of authority
would like you to behave in because the
authority had just lost the first world
war and there was no no real authority
in Berlin. people were doing whatever
they wanted to do and they were
intoxicating themselves in the way they
wanted to do it. So the population in a
way if you just look at Munich and
Berlin was growing apart like there were
the alcohol people in Munich the Nazis
then there were these weird diverse
LGBTQ
whatever scene in Berlin like actresses
sniffing Ether in the morning and then
making crazy moves. Could you speak to
the nature, the motivation of the drug
use in in uh Berlin at the time? Was a
rebellion? Was it a way to deal with the
a difficult economic depression? Was it
just the natural thing that young people
do to explore themselves, to understand
the world, to develop their culture?
Like what what do we understand about
drug use there?
>> All of these factors come together. But
it was the first time in modern history
in Germany at least that there was no
emperor. Like before that Kaiser Wilhelm
everything was very strict you know you
had to you couldn't you couldn't go
crazy you know as a young person you
couldn't be a young person but now in
the Vimma Republic in the 20s you could
no one stopped you so people went crazy
like that's what made Berlin into the
city that it still somehow is and maybe
later we talk about contemporary Berlin.
It kind of it it's it still has that
vibe, you know, that's why people still
come to Berlin. Drugs are cheap. You can
move however you want. There's no
authority. So that created a rift
between the Nazis in Munich. And they
always hated Berlin and what was going
on in Berlin. So for example, Gerbles,
the later propaganda minister, he called
the situation in Berlin the Fasta as
reality, the hated asphalt reality of
Berlin. He hated that. And when the
Nazis then were able to take power in
1933, one of the first things they did
was to really prosecute people who were
taking drugs because they wanted to, you
know, bring everyone back into the fold.
And I think that's you asked what was
the reason for people taking so many
drugs. They were accessible. They were
cheap.
But I think the most important thing is
that they they let you find yourself
maybe or lose yourself, you know, also
possible, you know.
>> Can we also take a tangent there because
you uh have a connection to this place
Berlin and this part of the world. Can
you just briefly speak to that so we can
contextualize even deeper the personal
aspect of this because you understand
the music of the people, the land, its
history. There's there's something you
can only really understand if you've
been there and you have taken it in and
we'll return to this topic in in
multiple contexts but in in this
particular way as a as one human being
who writes about this place. What's your
own story?
>> I grew up in West Germany and this was
during the cold war um and
Berlin the walled in city was always
like a big fascination cuz there was a
wall. There was actually a wall in the
city preventing people to move into
another part. And I was from the west,
fortunate enough to be from the free
west. So I could travel to Berlin and I
could leave. I could look at it. And I
always loved Berlin. I thought it was a
very viby place. And then when the wall
came down, I was still in school, but I
like immediately got into the car of my
parents and drove there. I wanted to see
how it came down. And then Berlin really
in the '9s became a place that was very
attractive to me and I moved there then
in the '9s. I was first living in New
York. I wrote my first novel in New York
and I loved New York before Giuliani
became mayor. It was he ruined the city.
>> Before that it was not gentrified. Let's
say he introduced gentrification and
gentrification is a big topic. be I I
still lived in the ungentrified New York
City for like 300 bucks a month rent and
everyone I knew was an artist.
>> You loved the diversity of it?
>> Yeah, I loved it. I wrote my first novel
there. I I took LSD for the first time
in downtown Manhattan on a Saturday
night.
>> So, you're kind of like a like a German
Carowak type character, but moved a few
decades forward.
>> I wouldn't compare myself to another
writer, but I think Carrick is pretty
cool, but he's he's an empetamine
writer. on the road was apparently
written in two weeks on empmphetamines
and but it's good you know
empmphetamines are not bad per se we can
also talk about this so-called bad drugs
you know because basically they're
neutral but let's not lose the thread
>> yes
>> even though New York
>> oh yeah and then I was in New York I was
in a health food store one of the first
like there weren't health food stores
back then a lot but there was one on
first avenue and suddenly there was an
announcement which was unusual in the
health food store I think it was called
prana on a Pana Foods and the
announcement was that Kurt Cobain had
just shot himself. It was like and I had
been actually and still am a Navana fan.
I' I've seen one of the last concerts of
Nirvana in New York City and it was
amazing. But he killed himself and like
the next day I received a music cassette
from a friend of mine from Berlin with
electronic music and I realized that
there had been a paradigm shift.
Obviously rock music with the hero on
stage was dead. No, it was, you know,
dance electronic music, which a lot of
people today think it's kind of
simplistic
music form, but it's actually a very
highly intelligent music form. At least
it was in the '9s. People were really
experimenting with that music. That was
the new music. That was actually the
reason I moved to Berlin. I really I
decided I leave New York City. I'm going
to move to Berlin. And then in Berlin,
to answer your question,
I fell in love with something that
probably reminded me of the 20s, even
though I wasn't there in the 20s, but
there really the city was very open. The
wall had just was still, you know, I
mean, it's a few years later, but still
the wall, it felt like it just came
down. There was Germany was uh Berlin
was not yet the capital of Germany. That
was still in Bon. So Berlin was a very
cheap and cultural and crazy city
probably a bit like in the 20s actually
and um that's how I fell in love with it
and that's how I became interested in
this electronic scene. Uh I mean I I
visited many dance venues then called
so-called clubs.
>> That's one of the hubs in the world of
electronic music.
>> They claim that techno was kind of
invented in Berlin but it was also comes
from Detroit. So Detroit and Berlin are
like the techno hubs I would say.
>> Yeah. Electronic music is a soundtrack
for some of the most interesting
experience this earth has ever created,
right? Just it gets people together in
some interesting ways. So it's not just
the music itself, it's the experiences
that the music enables. Well, in
Germany, we had a situation that the
wall actually kept people apart. People
didn't know each other. But because the
wall came down, people suddenly met in
abandoned buildings in the center of
Berlin which had been owned by the
socialist state of East Germany. The
most famous club Tour means like vault.
It was the big vault with the big door.
So that's where Trezor was the club.
It's so funny that the echo 100 years
later, Berlin had all these uh left
parters, young people using drugs and
then Munich with a beer and then that's
where Hitler came out. So, is that what
we're supposed to imagine in the early
days of the Nazi party when Hitler's
giving the speeches to to just a handful
of folks, they're all drunk?
>> Well, it is it is a fact that um the
movement came out of the burger boy
kella. It's a certain restaurant pub in
Munich and that was not only a beer hall
that was also a political venue and it
was a right-wing venue. It was for
rightwing populist people like
communists wouldn't use it even though
communists are in many ways quite
similar to the right-wing
especially back then but it was used by
right-wingers and Hitler didn't mind
because people who are drunk are more
susceptible to right-wing populism I
would claim now here and Hitler would
agree so he he he did not think it was
bad that these people were a bit drunk
or maybe even very drunk because if
you're drunk you also get aggressive
against others like it's he could play
with that, you know.
>> So drunk, aggressive towards others, but
drunk in a group,
>> it constitutes the group also. If
everyone is on the same alcohol level,
you you just go to October Fest in
Munich,
>> which is not a political thing, but
everyone, you know, you can kind of
sense how it originated. And actually,
the first time the Nazis tried to grab
power was the so-called beer hall put. I
mean, that's a historical event took
place in 1923. And it was after a drunk
night where they suddenly decided now
we're gonna do it. So they came out of
the burger boy kella and they were all
drunk except of Hitler and they just
tried to overtake the Munich government
and they miserably failed because it was
just a stupid drunk idea like they were
like yeah let's just do it. And the
Bavaria police quite sober that day they
just you know shot him to the ground.
Hitler was almost killed like he just
jumped
behind his bodyguard uh Guring during
the behold push was uh wounded in his
stomach with a I think a gunshot that's
why he became a morphine addict so this
behold push in 23 had and severe effects
also they were sentenced to prison and
Hitler wrote mine come in prison all of
these little events come together it's
so interesting that for them it was just
life but now we look back these critical
moments in history that turned the tides
of human civilization. Right? So Hitler
could have died there and these
characters occurring that became larger
than life
>> that influenced the the lives and the
deaths and the suffering of millions.
All first of all could have been stopped
then and whatever that means when you
look back at history. But all all of
those are just human beings developing
their ideas, growing, developing groups,
developing ideologies, and using drugs
or drinking.
>> I mean, that's why I thought it's
interesting, for example, to examine
Hitler's drug use.
>> When I announced that to a historian
while I was doing research, he helped me
a lot with methamphetamine and the army,
proper medicine historian from the
University of Ulm. And then I said, "No,
I'm interested in Hitler." And he said,
"No, don't. This is not interesting.
This is not serious
his this is not serious history but it's
you know even Hitler was a person you
know and if you understand for example
the substance abuse of a person of
course you understand more about that
person and historians never had had that
idea before Kershaw for example who is
really a great he's very knowledgeable
about national socialism like many
British historians they always know more
about German history than the German
historians but Kersha really does. I
think he's he's really good. But in his
biography of Hitler, he just writes one
sentence like,
"And then he had a crazy doctor called
Morel who gave him dubious medications
and drugs and he stops there and then he
goes on to describe whatever." Yeah, we
should say that Ian Kershaw is widely
considered to be probably one of the
greatest biographers of Hitler. I think
he he wrote the best biography of
Hitler,
>> which is so it's so important. Your work
is really important because it opens a
whole new perspective on the lives of
the individuals and the machinery of the
Nazi military that historians haven't
looked at. It's so interesting that you
can unlock those perspectives. And
that's that's the underlying really the
foundation of our conversation today and
of your work is there's layers to this
thing. You can look at the the the
tactics of war, this strategic level of
war, the operational level of war. You
can look at the human suffering of war,
uh the love stories. is you could look
at the hate, the psychology of
propaganda or you could look at the
individual things substances consumed by
the individuals that make up the Nazi
party leadership and the soldiers and
all those are critically important to
understand the war. Right? And this
piece of drug use and supplement use
have been ignored by historians.
That was very surprising to me. You
know, I didn't know this myself. I never
planned to write this book. Uh it's b it
kind of happened to me and um
I decided to team up with the leading
German historian on national socialism
Hans Mumzen
uh who has passed away by now. Uh he was
quite old but quite ready to be my
mentor for this book Blitz.
and he
was
maybe even shocked when I came back from
the military archive of Germany with
like a like a lot of copies all relating
to the systematical drug use of the
German army including
an experiment done by the Navy who had
always pretended to be the clean German
we say vafangat weapon.
Like you have the army, you have the air
force, you have the navy, you have and
the in Germany they had the SS and the
navy always pretended to be like we
weren't really Nazis. We were like, you
know, the German Navy. We had we had our
ethics code. But I found in the archive
that the Navy did human experiments in
the concentration camp of Saxonhausen
trying to to find a new wonder drug
because they had new what they called
wonder weapons or what Hitler called
wonder weapons. He always talked about
these wonder weapons. Wonder weapons
were basically mini submarines. One or
two people going in staying underwater
for up to a week and torpedoing, you
know, Allied ships. So the Navy was
trying to do to develop a drug that
would keep you awake and combat ready
for seven days and seven nights without
sleep and without you know burning out.
Very difficult to find. So they hired um
a penalty unit in the concentration
camp. They hired the SS had the
so-called shoe walking unit. It was a
penalty unit in the concentration camp
testing shoe souls for the German shoe
industry, walking for like days and then
they would measure like how the souls,
you know, kept up in the stress and they
had different uh uh layers in the
concentration camp like all the all the
the surfaces that German soldiers would
touch when they conquer Europe. So this
is a very elaborate thing you know and
if you go to the concentration camp
today it's a museum you can still see
that running track of the shoe runners
unit. So the Navy hired the shoe runners
unit from the SS paid them money and
then gave them drugs different kinds of
drug combinations methamphetamine
combined with cocaine and in a chewing
gum and like all kinds of things. So
this is a this is a big thing you know
and there's documents to it and mumsen
who knew everything about national
socialism the old you know authority I'm
like the young like I didn't study
history I just you know I just try to
make sense you know but I present him
all these uh documents he's reading like
from this pill patrol and he said wow
like he said we historians we never do
drugs we don't understand drugs this we
missed this you know so he was very
clear that we missed this and he said
this is actually the missing link that
historians did not have especially to
explain Hitler's
degeneration as a leader like he he he
made very good decisions good in meaning
militarily effective decisions in the
beginning of the war and very bad
decisions for the German war effort
towards the end and you you can you can
link that to drugs you
explain a lot of Hitler through the
drugs. But you can also look at this
point that historians so far had not
been able to figure out basically what
happened to Hitler. Why did he get crazy
and I mean he was crazy or he was but
why did he get so bad as a leader cuz he
was very effective for a long time and
then there's this moment where it where
it turns.
>> Yeah. The the generation of decision
making,
psychology, behavior, all of that. you
you cannot understand that fully without
understanding his drug use. And we
should also say that some of the
historians you mentioned, Ian Kershaw
and uh Anthony Beaver, these legends of
history, they all gave you compliments.
So uh Kershaw said that your work is
very good, extremely interesting and a
serious piece of wellressearched
history. Anthony Beaver said that it's a
remarkable work of research. So props to
them. You have received a bunch of
criticism from historians, but you've
also received
obviously a lot of props. I mean,
Kershas,
the legendary historian of Hitler
complimenting how deep your work is.
That's
that must feel good. Uh maybe maybe this
is a good moment to also just since
we're talking about historians to
address some of the criticism. Uh so
Richard Evans was been also a great
historian
has been one of the bigger critics. He
said that your work is crass and
dangerously inaccurate account and is
morally and politically dangerous.
I think that's grounded in the idea that
if you say that well all the Nazi forces
and Hitler was on drugs so therefore
their evil can be they're not really
evil. It's just accountability can be
removed because they were using drugs,
>> right?
>> And also another criticism of his which
I also understand and probably can steal
man is if you look too much through this
singular lens of drugs,
uh you can overemphasize it. You know,
you can overemphasize how important it
was as an explainer of the effectiveness
of Blitz Creek, for example.
Because it's there's there is some I
mean I should say there is something
really compelling about a singular
theory that explains everything and you
can fall in love with it too much as an
explainer. So can can you steal man his
criticism or criticism you received and
also argue against it? I think he's
absolutely right that you shouldn't
argue in a monocausal way and this is
actually what moms also said to me
because of course I was enthusiastic
about all my drug findings and he said
don't argue in a monocausal way
especially the war
>> there's a lot of variables a lot of
factors a lot of things going on yes
>> so that sentence of his don't argue in a
monocausal way that always stayed with
me um and I think that
um I didn't deviate from that path
actually, but it was still interesting
that Evans
thought that I put too much emphasis on
the drugs. It's I think it's it's a it's
a totally fine, you know, opinion. I I
would disagree otherwise I wouldn't have
written the book. Uh what is what I can
state here is that I invented nothing.
In all of my three non-fiction books,
nothing is invented. If you are a good
writer and I trained as a novelist for
me it was also very unusual to write a
non-fiction book. I wanted to write a
novel about Nazis and drugs. My
publisher said no this is he looked at
the you know at the the facts you know
he said someone has to write the facts.
So I said but the non-fiction books are
boring. He said not necessarily maybe
you can find a way to write it with your
novelistic style but
based
100% on the facts. And that is like in
German we say, how do you say that?
Split. Like when you do with your legs
like
>> it's hard, you know.
>> Yeah.
>> Because with a very fluent sophisticated
language, you can easily overpower the
reader. If I describe how the German
guys, 19-year-old guys took the math and
went into the tank and the math started
kicking in, five guys on math after like
one hour of ride into France,
you can write that in a powerful way
that if you are the reader, you would
think, yeah, I mean the Blitzkrieg
without math is unthinkable. There is a
bit of a man, I wish I found that kind
of feeling for historians, right? Like
how did I miss this p piece? So some
historians like great historians like uh
Kershaw obviously see they kind of give
you a
like a slow clap applaud and some
historians are a little bit skeptical
like this is a little too good. So
totally understandable and um also they
have a different
techniques to write text like this. I
used a totally different technique
um
and I have an apparatus. So it really
feels like it could be acade an academic
work but still it's written in a way
that uh it kind of overpowers it's it it
kind of colonializes the story in a
weird way. I never thought about it
about it like that but while I was
writing it I was just trying to write it
as well as I could. I didn't think about
these questions we're talking about now.
>> Um I just
>> I got carried away obviously but I never
left the area of facts.
>> Yes. So, we should talk about your
process. That's also super fascinating.
You went to the archives. You went to
the sources. What's what's that take?
What what does it feel? What does it
smell like? What does it look like? What
does it what does it entail? Uh how much
text is there? What language is it in?
What what's the process there? I never
thought of going to the archives. And my
girlfriend at the time, she said, "You
have to go to the archives." And she's
an academic, so she and I I was like,
"Yeah, okay. I'll go. I'm fine. I'm I'll
check it out." And then when I
met a a historian, he claims that
without methamphetamine, there would be
no Blitzkrie victory of Germany. Like
he's monocausal.
>> Mhm.
>> But he was also extremely helpful to me
and he's an academic. Uh he he he he
gave me the signatures. It's called in
German where you find stuff in the
archives. signature is like then it's
like H2538
something like this and these were the
files of professor Ranka and Professor
Ranka was
he was the head of the institute for for
um army physiology his job was to
improve the the performance of the
soldier
>> and all of his stuff was
filed in a certain place in the milit
military archives which in Germany is in
Fryborg in the south in a small town not
in Berlin because Germany is a bit of a
decentralized country. We don't want to
put everything into Berlin again like
the Nazis did. We try to avoid our
mistakes. So the military archive is in
Frybook and I went there and because I
was I had this signature immediately I
got you know original documents that
were all relating to my research like I
could read the I had the original what
does it look like? These are sheets of
paper.
>> Yeah. It's like
>> like So it's not scanned. It's
>> Well, it's different things. Like the
guy who did the math into the into the
army, the professor,
>> he was uh writing a war diary. That's
what the name was. War Diary. So every
day he would write it by hand. So this
war diary was given to me.
>> So you're reading that. So it's like
dated like you have a date. The diary.
It was a bit funny with him because
he took a lot of meth himself because he
thought it was great. He just thought it
increases your performance. Um, by now
we know a little bit more that
methamphetamine is not so healthy
because you get used to it and you burn
out. You get depressed and then you have
to take more big problem. and he became
depressed and burned out and he didn't
realize it's because of the meth that he
he's like describing to the whole German
army like he was he he made a convincing
case and I can explain that in detail
how that actually happened. Uh but just
to have his war diary was great and then
also like he would write he would type
letters writing to the uh company of Tla
how fast they could produce stuff in
which time. So you have you have all
these original documents. You have like
500 documents and it goes like he writes
like reports what happened in this
battle on methamphetamine. Like there's
a lot of stuff you've can find in the
archives if you find them. But the
tricky thing is that you can only look
you could you kind of look at a
so-called find book. In the find book
you cannot type in drugs. It wouldn't
find anything because at the time when
they were taking all the notes from this
doctor, his war d everything, they
didn't put the label drugs there. They
put the label, his name, his position,
World War II, French campaign, stuff
like that. So, because at the time they
didn't know that I would at one point
come and look for drugs in that, you
know, but he was the drug guy, but also
they didn't realize he was the drug guy,
you know, no one realized that he was
the drug guy. So it's not easy to find
stuff in the archives. So the archives
you go it's a it's a cuff guys
experience. You go into this building
and you have to understand the rules and
you will never fully understand what's
going on. Also the archist they don't
really know what's going on cuz there's
so many documents no one's read them
all. You know no one knows like there's
history kind of lying there somehow
organized somehow stored. I mean it does
sound like a very Kafka-esque it's thing
>> but it's great if you find something but
you can also sit there for a week and
not find anything.
>> So what was the process for you? You're
just reading open-minded
seeing trying to see is there some truth
here to be discovered.
Well, I have a friend. He's a DJ and we
talked about Berlin. We probably talk
about it more. Uh,
and he takes a lot of drugs.
And he knows his, let's put it that way,
he knows his drugs. Um, and one day he
said to me when I was trying to uh
figure out what I would write about
next, he said, "The Nazis took a lot of
drugs. You should write about that." And
I said, "The Nazis didn't take drugs."
Because you know when you grow up in
Germany you get
educated about the Nazis quite intensely
especially in West Germany like they
teach you everything but they don't
teach you drugs. I mean now they do
maybe you know but it was not known. So
and and the Nazis always had this um
this aura of being law and order. No
drugs of course no chaos everything. My
grandfather he was a Nazi always said
well at least there was discipline in
the country. There was law and order. So
this this doesn't match with drugs, you
know.
>> You know, I should also say I think
that's the experience for a lot of
people before reading your book.
Uh you know, I had the same kind of
feeling that the Nazi ideology was all
about like law and order and purity and
surely they would not be doing drugs. So
this was like this really blew my mind.
And I think I was I wasn't quite ready
similar to like Richard Evans like this
is a big like okay a narrative
transforming into a deeper more
complicated understanding what Nazi
forces and uh the Hitler in the circle
actually look like. That's why I didn't
believe Alex. Always take the DJ the
drug expert with a grain of salt.
>> I didn't believe him. But I I said it's
a great topic. Maybe I could invent it.
He said no we don't invent this. This is
real. I said, "How do you know?" And he
said, "Um, I have a friend and I know
this guy by now. I met him. He's an
antique dealer in Berlin and he had
bought an old medicine chest in an old
Berlin apartment. This was in 2010. And
he found pevitine tablets inside which
were the methamphetamine product that
was marketed in Germany in the late30s.
And this guy, the antique dealer, took
some tablets and they were quite old,
you know, 70 years old, but they still
had an effect on him. And I later asked
him and he he said, "Well, we took them
for about a month. It was the greatest
month we ever had. Like we had so much
fun. We were so productive." Because
that methamphetamine back then was also
>> like a quality product. It was not
crystal meth made in a in a trailer lab.
>> So this is many decades later. They were
still potent.
>> They were still potent.
>> Especially Alex convinced me because
Alex has a high tolerance. And he said,
"Okay." They still had some. So I said
to him, "Can I have some also?" And I
took one. And he's like, and this was,
we were standing in my writing tower,
which is at the river in Berlin. And he
was like, "I took one
and I could feel something." Then I took
another one and then it's, you know, I
could feel more and then I took a third
one. like typical Alex he would like
take three you know instead of just
taking one he's take he took three
metame tablets from the 40s and he said
>> and then I felt like and he looked at
the river and there was a big like big
ship like a cargo ship going by and he
said I felt like this ship suddenly
there was a shoop he said in German like
a a motion that was like energy that was
grabbing me and I could like I felt so
powerful and he told me this and I was
like wow this is like and I googled like
math methamphetamine Nazi Germany. This
was in 2010. And there was this one
professor uh at the university in Ulm
who said the blitzk was only possible
because of methamphetamine. So I called
up this guy and he said, "Sure, I'll
meet you." And then I he gave me the
signature for the archive. Then I went
to the archive and then I really started
to do my own research. And then I went
to different archives and I tried to
find everything on Nazis and drugs and
that came everything is in the book. So
that crazy meeting with Alex in my
writing tower, that kind of got me on
this research journey.
>> It makes me wonder what other mysteries
like that are in the archives. Do you
think there's stuff like that in there
that we deeply don't understand?
Uh about, for example, there's there's a
bunch of mysteries that we think we
understand.
Uh maybe about the concentration camps,
maybe about the Eastern Front. the
interplay between Stalin and Hitler,
>> maybe maybe a Bob Britain that could be
discovered in the letters in the data
that were completely missing.
>> I think so. And I think that also there
are archives that are not open.
um let's say the Vatican archive
>> some secret archives that some very
powerful structures have structures that
we might not even know you know now off
the top of our head which still have a
huge influence so I think that the human
history is quite different from
what
most historians write I think that's uh
that's just one version I think there's
several versions
And I think that it goes much deeper and
is much more interesting. And so I guess
like this history is a very active thing
which I also didn't know you know I was
writing historical
non-fiction book and I suddenly realized
that this is like a shark pool like
because the history
defines the future or is very connected.
Our history teacher always said if we
don't know where we come from we cannot
know where we go. And that is that is I
think true. That is what I now really am
interested in for my next book. I'm
trying to really understand human
history. And obviously I'm not the
first. There's a few, you know,
alternative historians that go like
because you have to go back in time
quite a bit. And then it's it's not easy
to to write about it. But it's very
interesting to think about it. And I
would love to find like the truth on
Atlantis, which I don't believe in
actually. And we can also talk about
that. But maybe there's an archive where
we can actually see that they had this
king ruling. I don't think this could be
found. But um I I think we we can still
also find a lot of documents, but I
think especially in in closed archives,
so we won't find them.
>> You said a lot of really interesting
things.
It's so important to have people like
you that do the daring work of going
into the archives of the sources, the
evidence, and trying to find a a thing
that completely transforms a history as
we thought we understood it. That's
revisionist history at its best.
Uh there's revisionist history has a
sort of negative connotation
sometimes because you go to
conspiratorial land without much
evidence and you're just being a rebel
for rebel's sake.
>> But when you grounded in data and and
dare to challenge the historical
narrative, that's really powerful. So
now I should also mention that we've
been just setting the laying out the
context.
>> Yeah, we're still in the context phase.
>> Context phase. uh and for the next 10
hours and maybe for the rest of our
lives we will be continuing just setting
the context but let us dare return to
the original question of um Pervertton
how did that come about taking the 1930s
Nazi Germany
>> the Munich and the and the Berlin
tension that we all laid out beautifully
uh how did Pervertton come into the
picture? Well, the Nazis managed to grab
power on January 30th, 1933,
and they immediately become an anti-drug
regime. That is important to them
because the only intoxication they allow
from now on in Germany is the Nazi
intoxication, is the ideological
intoxication.
So they quickly install concentration
camps which were at the time run by the
SR not the SS takes over later and turns
the concentration camps into an
industry. Uh the first SR concentration
camps were in cells in Berlin or in the
countryside
and um some of the first people that
landed in these cellers and were
disciplined were drug users. also
anti-semitic policies which were
um very important from the day one for
the Nazis like they anti-semitism is the
is the defining pillar of national
socialism
um the core of it really um they quickly
connected anti-drug policies with
anti-semitic policies they claimed the
Jews in Germany the German Jews were
taking more drugs than the non the
non-Jewish Germans and um National
Socialism's
goal was to purify the German body. So
they saw the whole folk the the c the
folk folk the country the people as a
body one body and that has to be
purified. So all Jews are poison but not
only Jews. Everyone who thinks
differently, communists are also poison.
Jews are the worst poison. But you know
a lot of you know Yeah. And then you
create this clean body. And obviously
drugs play have no position in that. If
you're addicted to drugs that's weak.
You know you're morphinist. You you use
cocaine. That's all degenerate. That's
Jewish. That's Jewish doctors are all
morphinists you know. Um so that Nazi
Germany and Hitler was the shining
example of the person who doesn't take
drugs. He was he didn't have a private
life. He didn't even have he didn't even
have a body. He just
led the the the folk's body, you know.
So Hitler was on not putting any poisons
into him. He stopped smoking cigarettes
uh in the 20s already. He never touched
alcohol.
vegetarian.
>> Vegetarian.
No caffeine even.
So he was that's what he was in the
beginning. Story of course changes at a
certain point in time but he started as
this.
>> As far as you understand that's true.
>> Yeah. I'm pretty sure I'm pretty sure
that this is true. Also vegetarianism
was a right-wing thing in Germany. It
was an elitist thing. If you were
vegetarian, you had a higher frequency
which kind of gave you
uh a superiority over let's say like
these workers who need like to eat the
sausage so he can you know do the work
like Vagna the composer he was a
vegetarian. Hitler was impressed by
Vagna. Um so vegetarianism all I think
that's all true. So I think Hitler was
like that and um
and it's hard to be like that actually
and I think that gave him
an attraction inside the movement which
were all like drunk you know drunkers
and using morphine all the time because
he of his pain he got used to morphine.
So they were it was not the movement
wasn't like this but he was like this.
So he was um
he symbolized but he symbolized that
whole approach of cleanliness like
purity.
So then how does methamphetamine come
into the picture? It's totally absurd.
That's why I thought it was fun
researching this because it's doesn't
make sense, you know. Um
and you know they use this simple trick
by you know defining what is a drug an
illegal drug and what is not because
drugs don't have it written on them.
This is an illegal dangerous drug. You
know drugs are basically neutral. These
are these are molecules you know. So the
meth methamphetamine molecule was found
in a Berlin based company called the Tla
company.
Um and the head of TLA he was very upset
with the Olympics in 1936 because an
afroamerican athlete Jesse Owens
was running faster than German
superheroes with the best jeans. You
know how could how can this be? So they
thought that he was on something cuz he
won, I think, five gold medals. It was
ridiculous, you know. This was supposed
to be Germany's games, you know. And
then the afroamerican runs better than
the than the Aryan Uber mench. So the
only explanation is he took a drug. He
took probably
benzadrine,
which was a legal empetamine.
And also there were no doping checks at
the Olympics.
And if you take an amphetamine, of
course, you can run a bit faster. Maybe
that, you know, when it kicks in. Uh
that this has to do with the immense
release of um of dopamine in the brain.
Um
but it was never proven that Owens used
any type of drugs. But the head of the
Templar company, he said, "We have to
prevent this. We have to invent a better
amphetamine. uh we have to we have to
make a German amphetamine that is
stronger than the American benzadrine.
So his main chemist, Hshield, Fritz
Hshield, he did research and he found
that in 1917 in Tokyo a Japanese chemist
had made methamphetamine and he remade
that methamphetamine and they tested it
among themselves, the chemists in the
Berlin pharmaceutical lab and they loved
it like they made pure methamphetamine
and you know they had a really good time
and they were like more active they were
talkative because that's what happens on
methamphetamine. So the company really
thought this is a great product and they
turned it into a product. They went to
the patent bureaucracy and got the
patent for methamphetamine and then it
quite quickly came onto the market. It
was labeled as pavitine
which is kind of a great name because it
has like the perverse already in it and
this pavein perverden uh was available
in any pharmacy. So you just you didn't
need a prescription. a child could go
and buy 10 packs of pure
methamphetamine. So methamphetamine was
also very cheap. So it became quite
popular because people you know talked
about it.
>> Did they understand the the side effects
and negative effects of methamphetamine?
Did they care?
>> They didn't really know what it was. I
mean I also read I went to the archive
of that company also of course so they
were like what is it good for? like I
just feel great when I take it and I
have more energy and they didn't know if
that could be a product like they it was
1937 38 when they were discovering it
>> but also did they how did they think
about the fact that this is a drug
>> well it it was they called it a
performance enhancer got it
>> is drinking a coffee in the morning a
drug I mean it is a drug but we don't
think of it as a drug you know it's
legal
and this was kind of how meth was
treated did in Germany it was normal to
use it like you had a a very important
business meeting of course you would
take a pevitine there's a a movie by
Billy Wilder called 123 very good movie
and he shows the American executive it
was it the movie set right after the the
end of the second world war so we see
like I think it's a Coca-Cola executive
American and he says to his secretary
uh how should I have the morning coffee
I half of a pevitine. So pevitine was
also normal. It wasn't stigmatized. It
was it it it was not the American just
say no propaganda where your teeth fall
out. And I mean it was a German quality
product. People liked it. Of course they
did uh tests at universities like but
most of them were quite positive like
yeah it reduces your fear. Today we
might you know look for different things
but this was also a performancedriven
totalitarian society moving towards war.
So if someone takes pevitine and says in
the clinical test at the university I
have I'm not afraid of anything anymore.
So that's positive. That's actually what
got the guy who worked for the German
army interested because he read
university reports. I I also saw all of
these reports. They were also in the
military archive. So he's like, "Okay,
you're not afraid anymore if you take
methamphetamine. You don't need to sleep
anymore. You don't need to eat so much
because your appetite is lowered." Like,
this is perfect for a soldier. So
negative effects only became public in
1940 when the first Pavitine opponent,
he was actually a relative of Alberta,
Hitler's architect and later armament
arm arms minister. He was the this
psychologist. He was the first one who
said, "Wait a minute. First of all,
methamphetamine is against the nazi
ideology because now we're all taking a
drug to be high performers. We have to
be high performers without a drug." And
he also said, "Yeah, you know, this the
obvious, this is going to make you
addicted, etc. This will, you know,
create a tolerance." So only then the
first negative reports came out. before
that what Temla did and then what the
universities did they all thought
methamphetamine is really good.
>> So what was the process of convincing
the German military the army to use it
at scale?
>> Well, Professor Ranka was employed by
the army. So it was his job to find
things that would improve the
performance of the German soldier. I
always imagine him like a a James Bond
character like Q who developed like
gadgets and stuff because he also
developed gadgets.
So he was quite a you know he was an
academic but he was also a soldier you
know he was employed but he was
basically running this institute
examining it and he was so convinced
that pav pavvetine is the answer to his
question how to beat the main opponent
of the German soldier and that was not
the British soldier not the French
soldier not the Russian soldier that was
fatigue he had been looking for a way to
keep a soldier awake longer.
So when he read these reports
um from universities, he did his own
tests in the military academy with young
medical officers. They came together at
8:00 p.m. in the evening and then they
received
either methamphetamine,
caffeine pill, or placebo or benzadine.
like they had different experiments and
he always concluded at the end like at
like they start at 8:00 p.m. and like at
10:00 a.m. in the morning one time he
notes the pevitine people still want to
go out and party while like the the
caffeine guys are like sleeping on the
bench and the you know it was clear that
pevitine is the strongest it gives you
the most energy lets you work for the
longest time. So he was convinced but
his superior like the surgeon general of
the German army he was like an old
school dude and he was like he didn't
even react to these like rank would
write letters we have to use synthetic
drug in the next campaign which was
against Poland which he knew about and
uh because Pvine was quite known in the
civil society people were using it
already so he said he even said a lot of
soldiers will just take it with them and
we should we should control that we
should make it an official drug. But the
surgeon general didn't understand. He he
didn't reply. So Germany attacked Poland
without a clear like regulatory system
on methamphetamine. And indeed a lot of
soldiers used it. And what Ranka then
was did was he requested from all the
the medical officers in the field in
Poland. The war was over after a few
weeks. So but the German army was
occupying Poland. He said, "Send me all
back reports and tell me what did did
your people take pevitine and what were
the effects?" And he collected all these
reports which I also studied in the
military archive and he came to the
conclusion this is a really good
fighting drug and it probably is because
people are still using it today.
Methamphetamine is still being used and
Ranka discovered this. He had he had
everything in front of him and Poland
was beaten and then Hitler wanted to
attack the west and the west was a
different story than Poland because the
west was the world empire of Great
Britain combined with L Grand Army the
strongest army in the world the French
army these two combined you know how can
you win that Poland they could overpower
they had you know better army than
Poland but is the German Vat really
better than both of these armies
combined behind his officers didn't
think so. High command said, "No, we're
not going to attack the West. We're
going to lose.