New York Post

BUZZ BOOK: LSD and the Nazis

- — Eric Spitznagel

With LSD finally gaining mainstream acceptance — just last month, the FDA granted breakthrou­gh status to an LSD formula to treat anxiety — author Norman Ohler investigat­es how it took so long for the drug’s therapeuti­c benefits to be taken seriously. His conclusion: Blame the Nazis.

Not only was the US government introduced to LSD through Nazi research, the Third Reich “shaped much of the federal government’s early attitudes around it and other psychedeli­cs,” Ohler writes in “Tripped: Nazi Germany, the CIA, and the Dawn of the Psychedeli­c Age” (Mariner Books), out now. When the Nazis ”elicited a potential weaponized use for LSD, the drug was never able to shake that taint.”

The Germans had access to LSD as early as 1943, thanks to the close relationbi­ochemwas ship between Nazi ist Richard Kuhn, who developing biochemica­l weapons for Hitler, and Werner Stoll, a Swiss psychiatri­st who conducted the first scientific studies on LSD effects.

But it’s unclear if LSD was part of the experiment­s at Dachau, where Nazi scientist Kurt Plötner used Jewish prisoners as test subjects in his search for a truth serum. Dr. Plötner’s notes mysterious­ly disappeare­d just before the Nuremberg trials in 1945, likely by agents working for the US military-funded Alsos Mission, who “wanted the subject kept secret,” Ohler writes. The US military was deterned to, in their words, “exit German science and technology for the benefit” of America. With the help of Harvard researcher Henry K. Beecher — who realized Nazis likely used LSD because it’s easier than mescaline to dose patients without their knowledge — the top secret MKUltra program was launched in 1953 to investigat­e if psychedeli­cs could be weaponized just as the Nazis intended.

When they discovered that LSD couldn’t turn people into living puppets, the US government followed the other Nazi protocol when it came to drugs: Strict prohibitio­n. Drug-users in Nazi Germany were often sent to concentrat­ion camps.

“When people think of LSD, they don’t think of the Nazis,” writes Ohler. “And yet that unseen hand played a role in framing our laws.” Time will tell if that Nazi thinking about LSD will become a thing of the past.

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