BLITZED KRIEG
Unbelievable but true: how Nazis rampaging across Europe were fuelled not just by blind fanaticism but by dizzying quantities of crystal meth . .. supplied by a cocaine-addicted Fuhrer fed daily drug cocktails by the Reich ‘injection master’
THE Belgian defenders had entrenched themselves in bunkers on a hillside a few miles from the French border as battle commenced. It was May 1940, and the Germans were bent on driving through the supposedly ‘impenetrable’ Ardennes Forest. The Fall of France had begun.
In front of the Belgians lay a slope, several hundred yards of open terrain: impossible to take except by a frontal attack, which was apparent suicide. But that’s exactly what the infantrymen of the Wehrmacht did.
The Belgians, shocked by this fearless behaviour, retreated. Yet rather than securing their position, the completely uninhibited Germans chased after them and set their enemies to flight.
During the hours that followed, 60,000 Germans, 22,000 vehicles and 850 tanks crossed the River Meuse into France. ‘We felt a kind of high, an exceptional state,’ one participant reported. ‘We were sitting in our vehicles, covered in dust, exhausted and wired.’
It was a mere three days later that the German division commander reported his troops had reached the French border. Many of them had not shut their eyes since the start of the campaign.
And thanks to the crystal meth that had fuelled their rage through the Ardennes, they still couldn’t. ‘GERMANY, awake!’ the Nazis had ordered. And with the help of methamphetamine, or crystal meth, a nation did. Starting life as Volksdroge, ‘the people’s drug’ was on sale in every chemist shop in Germany. But from 1937 tens of millions of little pills – under the trademark Pervitin – were produced to a quality that even Walter White, the drugs cook in the hit TV drama Breaking Bad, could only have dreamed about.
Furniture-packers shifted more furniture, firemen put out fires faster, barbers cut hair more quickly, nightwatchmen stopped sleeping on the job, train drivers drove their trains without a word of complaint, and long-distance lorry-drivers bombed down newly constructed autobahns, completing their trips in record time.
Party members did the same, and so did the SS. Stress declined, sexual appetite increased, and motivation was artificially enhanced. Bosses at the Temmler factory in Berlin, where the pill was produced, were bursting with pride. Boxed chocolates spiked with methamphetamine were even put on the market.
IT WAS not only the hard-working servants of the Reich who became dependent on chemical stimulation. Their commander-in-chief, too, was hopelessly addicted. While Adolf Hitler allowed the world to believe he was a teetotaller who didn’t even touch coffee, a man who had thrown his last cigarettes into the Danube, the reality was that he was a superjunkie, addicted to cocaine, the heroin-like eukodal, and a toxic cocktail of narcotics supplied by Theodor Morell, a doctor described as ‘the Reich injection master’.
Drugs fuelled Hitler’s military decisions, helped him outlast his opponents, aided his recovery after assassination attempts, and also assisted him in the bedroom with Eva Braun.
By 1936 Hitler’s health was so poor that he could barely function. He suffered from unspeakable bloating, and eczema on both legs, so that he had to walk with bandages around his feet and couldn’t wear boots.
Morell recommended to the Fuhrer the bacterial preparation Mutaflor. Hitler was cured and he appointed the doctor as his personal physician. Before every big speech the Reich Chancellor now allowed himself a ‘power injection’ in order to work at the peak of his capabilities. Colds, which could have kept him from appearing in public, were banished by intravenous vitamin supplements.
To be able to hold his arm up for as long as possible when doing the Nazi salute, Hitler trained with chest-expanders and also took glucose and vitamins. The glucose, administered intravenously, gave the
brain a blast of energy after 20 seconds, while the combined vitamins allowed Hitler to address crowds wearing a thin Brownshirt uniform even on cold days without showing a sign of physical weakness.
In the summer of 1942, Hitler’s absorption of injections rose to such a level that Morell had to put in a special order at Engel chemist’s shop in Berlin for syringes for the Fuhrer’s headquarters. JULY 18, 1943 was a special date. The Red Army had won the greatest tank battle in history at Kursk, and thus destroyed all German hopes of a turnaround in Russia. In the middle of the night, Morell was dragged from his bed by Heinz Linge, Hitler’s valet: the Fuhrer was bent double with pain, and an immediate cure was required.
Morell needed to pull an ace from his sleeve, and in fact he did have something: eukodal. But its use was risky. Its extremely potent active ingredient is an opioid called oxycodon, synthesised from the raw material of opium. In specialist circles, eukodal was a wonder drug. Almost twice as effective for pain relief as morphine, this archetypal designer opioid was characterised by its potential to create very swiftly a euphoric state significantly higher than that of heroin, its pharmacological cousin.
Erwin Giesing was another of Hitler’s doctors. Giesing’s favourite remedy for treating pains in the ear, nose and throat area was cocaine, the substance the Nazis abhorred as a ‘Jewish degeneration drug’. According to Giesing’s notes, Hitler said: ‘It’s a good thing you’re here, doctor. This cocaine is wonderful, and I’m glad that you’ve found the right remedy. Free me from these headaches again for a while.’ But he added: ‘Please don’t turn me into a cocaine addict.’
Between the autumn of 1941, when he started being given hormone and steroid injections, and the second half of 1944, when first the cocaine and then, above all, the eukodal kicked in, Hitler hardly enjoyed a sober day. He moved in a permanent fog: a doped-up performance athlete unable to stop – until the inevitable collapse. REPORTS by the medical service on methamphetamine use in the attack on Poland in September 1939 fill whole dossiers in the Freiburg Military Archive. The molecular structure of methamphetamine is similar to adrenaline. Those who take it feel livelier, energised to the tips of their fingers. Self-confidence rises, there is a sense of euphoria, and a feeling of lightness and freshness. A sense of emergency is experienced, as when one faces a sudden danger: an artificial kick.
The consequences for the German army were astounding – and terrifying for those unfortunate enough to stand in its way. In every aspect of the attack that led to the deaths of 100,000 Polish soldiers and, by the end of the year, 60,000 Polish civilians, the drug helped the aggressors to work ‘without any sign of tiredness until the end of the mission’.
The 3rd Panzer Division reported the following: ‘Often there is euphoria, an increase in attention span, clear intensification of performance, work is achieved without difficulty, a pronounced alertness effect and a feeling of freshness. Worked through the day, lifting of depression, returned to normal mood.’
For many soldiers, the drug seemed to be an ideal companion on the battlefield. It switched off inhibitions, which made fighting easier. A medical officer from the IX Army Corps raved: ‘I’m convinced that in big pushes, where the last drop has to be squeezed from the team, a unit supplied with Pervitin is superior.’ CONTRARY to what Nazi propaganda told the outside world, the Germans did not have superior armies. The Allies had better equipment and numerically greater forces. Hitler refused to acknowledge these realities and was convinced the Aryan warrior’s soul would achieve dominance against the odds. Time and again, mistakenly inspired by the military’s doped performance on the Polish campaign, he spoke of ‘miracles of courage of the German soldier’. Another such Pervitin-fuelled ‘miracle’ came with the Wehrmacht’s invasion of France in May 1940. The plan was to push a lightning armada of tanks through the supposedly impassable Belgian Ardennes mountains to reach the French border city of Sedan within a few days, and then to charge all the way to the Atlantic coast. In their trouser pockets the Germans always had their pep pills at the ready. They knew that the fighting could begin at any moment. When that happened, they had to be on top form and wide awake. The Wehrmacht was thus the first army in the world to rely on a chemical drug. At the Temmler factory dozens of women sat at circular machines that looked like mechanical cakes. As many as 833,000 tablets could be pressed in a single day. The Wehrmacht had ordered an enormous quantity for the army and the Luftwaffe – 35million in all.
Side effects of the pharmacological mass abuse were also observed. Older officers from the age of 40 felt the effects of the use of meth on their hearts. One colonel with the 12th Panzer Division, who was known to ‘take a lot of Pervitin’, died of a heart attack while swimming in the Atlantic. One captain also had a cardiac arrest after using Pervitin at a stag party. A lieutenant general complained of fatigue during long periods of fighting and took Pervitin before driving to the front to join the infantry, against medical advice. There he suffered a collapse.
Like the German army, the Luftwaffe also became hooked on Pervitin. It soon became too dangerous to operate over Britain in daylight, and one bomber pilot described the situation: ‘The launch was very often late, 10 o’clock, 11 o’clock, and then you were over London or some other English city at about one or two in the morning, and of course then you’re tired. So you took one or two Pervitin tablets and then you were all right again.’
While Messerschmitts were technically inferior to British Spitfires, the Luftwaffe’s use of drugs was far ahead of that in the RAF. Pervitin had several nicknames that indicated its use – pilot salt, Stuka pills or Goring pills.
Spurred on by a disastrous cocktail of propaganda and pharmaceutical substances, people would become more and more dependent.
In Germany the use of the substance ran to more than a million doses per month. National Socialism was toxic in the truest sense of the word. It gave the world a chemical legacy that still affects us today: a poison that refuses to disappear. On one hand, the Nazis presented themselves as clean-cut and enforced a strict anti-drug policy, underpinned with propagandistic pomp and draconian punishments. In spite of this, a particularly potent and perfidious substance became a popular product under Hitler. Studies show that two-thirds of those who take crystal meth excessively suffer from psychosis after three years.
Since Pervitin and crystal meth have the same active ingredient, and countless soldiers had been taking it more or less regularly since the invasion of Poland, the Blitzkrieg on France or the attack on the Soviet Union, we must assume psychotic side effects, as well as the need to keep increasing the dosage to achieve a noticeable effect.
Ideology had long lost its hold, and the leadership could think of nothing to motivate their soldiers.
Pervitin carved out a great career for itself all over the German Reich, and later in the occupied countries of Europe.
Its active ingredient, methamphetamine, is now either illegal or strictly regulated, but, with the number of consumers currently at more than 100million and rising, it counts today as our most popular poison.
Blitzed: Drugs In Nazi Germany, by Norman Ohler, translated by Shaun Whiteside, is published by Allen Lane on October 6, priced £20. Offer price £15 (25 per cent discount) until September 18. Pre-order at www.mailbookshop.co.uk or call 0844 571 0640 – p&p is free on orders over £15.