Exploring the intriguing history of the Third Reich and mind-altering drugs, including amphetamines and opioids. Based on Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich by German journalist Norman Ohler.
Drugs are kind of my thing.
I defined entire periods of my young life based on which chemicals I was experimenting with. Hence, my precocious alcoholic stage, a time of swiped bottles, violent hangovers, and unfortunate disclosures; my psychonaut phase of mushroom and acid voyaging, characterized by lucid dream journals, ashtanga yoga, and Alex Gray posters; my E-tard era, marked by endless, heart-to-heart conversations, preoccupation with textured surfaces, and grinding my teeth into oblivion; and my oxy / heroin phase, which has lasted over 20 years, during which I found my chemical home, so to speak.
So, yeah. For better or worse, drugs are an enduring passion of mine.
In addition to my recreational pursuits, I've studied up: I've taken years of undergrad and graduate neurobiology, organic chemistry, and pharmacology.
I pride myself on being decently knowledgeable about the history and sociology of mind-altering chemical use around the world. Knowing chemical formulae and understanding mechanisms of action is foundational, but drugs can't be understood by the science that governs them alone; the history and culture that surrounds them shapes humanity's experience with them - all the way from Timothy Leary's set and setting, which determine an individual user's subjective response, to mass, societal experiences with certain chemicals, which impact world history in profound and unexpected ways.
I should say that I prided myself on being decently knowledgeable about the history and sociology of drugs, because German journalist Norman Ohler's 2015 book Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich put me to shame by showing me just how much I still had to learn.
Although I had some general knowledge about the use of amphetamines and opioids during World War II, I was absolutely astounded to learn how many classes of addictive chemicals and historical / cultural patterns around substance use emerged in Nazi Germany.
This is particularly impressive because many of the key addictive drugs of the modern era were only produced regularly, at scale, and with reasonable purity and consistency of dose during the early twentieth century. The synthesis of morphine, heroin, methamphetamine, and many other mind-altering chemicals was first accomplished well into the 1800s; believe it or not, injection as a route of administration wasn't even developed until 1850.
So, in a matter of a few decades or less, human civilization progressed from synthesizing these chemicals in the lab for the first time to mass-producing and consuming them to the extent that they played a fundamental - perhaps even decisive - role in world history during the Second World War from 1939 to 1945.
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To set the historical stage, it's necessary to imagine post-WWI Germany as a nation heartbroken and humiliated. In addition to assigning catastrophic reparations and restricting the German military, the Treaty of Versailles had inflicted a wound on German national pride that, in retrospect, only a rabidly jingoistic regime could have assuaged.
As Germany floundered economically during its fledging democratic years, the Weimar Republic became the center of a decadent culture of sexual freedom where cabaret, drag, and transsexualism flourished; drug taking, with heroin, morphine, and cocaine being particularly popular and largely unregulated for the first part of the 20th century; and a nihilistic, round-the-clock hedonism best summarized by a slogan of the time: "Berlin, take a breath / bear in mind your dance partner is death!"
To give you an idea of just how far along things had gotten, it was estimated that during the Weimar Republic years, 40 percent of Berlin doctors were addicted to morphine.*
*Interestingly, the Nazis first made it illegal for addicted doctors to practice. They were barred from medicine for five years, which happens to be the period of monitoring for addicted physicians in the U.S. today.
Germans knew that this hedonism was ultimately self-destructive, and Hitler capitalized upon this knowledge to leverage political power. As the National Socialists defeated the Communists and gained power during the 1920s and 1930s, Hitler developed his image as a teetotaler - an abstemious vegetarian who didn't drink or take drugs and wouldn't indulge in sexual relationships for fear of them distracting from his mission to restore the Fatherland.
Hitler advocated what Ohler characterizes as an ideological intoxication: He wanted the German people so brimming with political frenzy that they gave themselves over to "collective ecstasy" - hence the constant parades, violently nationalistic films and songs, the endless, shrill speeches.
As Hitler consolidated his power, he formalized and legislated his anti-drug stance, which had several key components:
History's first modern "war on drugs" (literally, Rauschgiftbekämpfung). Of course, no government has ever really engaged in a true war on drugs; they've all been better described as wars on the people who use certain substances.
As in any such political maneuver, drugs were recategorized as acceptable or unacceptable. The use of cocaine, morphine, and heroin, which had flourished during the Weimar Republic years, when German pharmaceutical giants had become world leaders in their production, was now severely curtailed.
At the same time, the consumption of addictive drugs was explicitly linked to undesirable groups such as Jews, homosexuals, and criminals. Hitler wanted the German people to believe that they were being poisoned by subversive groups that sought to hobble the country indefinitely.
If you, erm, happened to have picked up a habit, you faced cold turkey withdrawal and a two-year, involuntary detainment that could be extended indefinitely. Of course, whether this happened to you was largely dependent on if you were "racially pure" or not; in fact, the German registration form for drug users literally had checkmarks for which racial / ethnic categories they fulfilled (see pic below). Oh, and intersectionality prevailed: If you happened to be homosexual or transsexual and a drug user, your chances of being detained dramatically increased.
ID Card for the Reich Central Office for Combating Drug Transgressions, which identified you as a dealer, prescription forger, Eukodal (oxy) addict, or other problem child (interestingly, although the Fuhrer himself became a Eukodal addict in his paranoid bunker years, I'm pretty sure he didn't have to carry one of these cards around). You were also given a color-coded identity based on whether you were Jewish, German Aryan, etc. The Nazis convinced the German people that it was their responsibility to report on family members and neighbors who used drugs, creating an anti-drug information network that foreshadowed the modern police approach. (Image taken from Norman Ohler's Blitzed). If you were an addicted Jew or homosexual / transsexual, you were subject to compulsory sterilization. You could also meet the definition for criminal insanity, which meant that euthanasia was a possibility, as well.
All of the above - transsexualism, homosexuality, partying - was excused if you were a high-ranking Nazi, of course. That was different.
Development of the first opioid maintenance drug. To the previous point, it appears that there were, erm, kind of a lot of Nazis and "racially pure," Aryan Germans who found themselves dependent upon opium, morphine, or heroin and unable to quit.
Nazi Germany's solution - given that their plans for global military conquest meant that opium supply would be sporadic, at best - was to synthesize methadone, a highly potent, long-acting opioid that didn't require poppies as raw materials.
One of the drug's original trade names was Dolophine. While legend has it that the "'Dol-" in the drug's name was a nod to Adolf Hitler, it actually came from the Latin word dolor, which means pain, with the "phine" suffix used not just as a common ending for alkaloids (chemicals from plants), but also in the phonetic sense of "-fin," meaning "end." So, Dolophine was "pain-end," literally.
Perhaps the first populist movement that explicitly advocated vitamins and natural remedies. Hitler's physician, a GP quack named Dr. Morell, was a German society doctor renowned for treating ailments that didn't exist with (mostly) harmless vitamin and supplement injections. Dr. Morell promised the Fuhrer that his persistent GI problems - caused by, you know, being a raving lunatic with an imbalanced diet who obsessed about Jews and homosexuals and restoring the Fatherland - could be relieved using daily injections of vitamins, glucose, and, of all things, glandular extracts from various animals.*
*Dr. Morell met Adolf Hitler at a dinner party given to thank Dr. Morell for treating the Nazi propagandist Heinrich Hoffman's kidney infection, which resulted from gonorrhea. Must have been from all of that clean living that the Nazis espoused.
Of course, when stress was amplified during the final years of the regime and the Fuhrer needed a boost, Dr. Morell felt the heat and ended up giving him Eukodal (oxy), which Hitler became grievously addicted to (Hitler was given cocaine by a different physician, as well).
During the final days of Nazi Germany, Hitler would go into cold turkey withdrawal, alleging that Dr. Morell had poisoned him without his knowledge.
It wasn't just Hitler who was into vitamins and supplements. The Nazis emphasized that the German people's bodies belonged to their country and its future and that they needed to maintain them in peak form because of that. Instead of drinking and taking drugs, a variety of vitamins and supplements were shilled - think Alex Jones and Infowars but state-backed and fully Nazi.
Dr. Morell was a shrewd businessman, and he convinced Hitler to allow him to take over businesses that had been confiscated from Jewish owners in occupied areas and use them to manufacture his supplements, most of which were bogus and some of which were dangerous*. Various German military divisions ordered their troops to take them, too.
*In addition to his abuse of oxy, cocaine, and possibly methamphetamine, it has been suggested that Hitler's dramatic, Parkinson's-like deterioration during his final two years was caused in part by an autoimmune response triggered by the several daily injections of animal extracts that Dr. Morell prescribed.
Of course, vitamins and supplements only get you so far on the path to global dominance. The Nazis relied on methamphetamine more so than vitamins and minerals, which I'll discuss next.
History's first amphetamine craze. As I mentioned above, during the Weimar Republic years, German pharmaceutical giants such as Merck and IG Farben led the world in synthetic drug creation, testing, and mass production.
One chemical that particularly fascinated the Nazis was methylamphetamine (methamphetamine), which had been synthesized by the Japanese at the end of the 1800s. This drug so appealed to the Third Reich because it promised to increase focus, stamina, and productivity.
When American athletes blew the world away in the 1936 Olympics thanks partly to their use of the amphetamine Benzedrine, German scientists dove headlong into methamphetamine production and popularization.
Pervitin (methamphetamine tablets) and Hildebrand (methamphetamine chocolates) were embraced by students, housewives, factory workers, long-haul truckers, doctors, and military personnel, the exact groups which use Adderall and other synthetic stimulants most heavily today.
"Hildebrand chocolates always delight," which wasn't surprising given that they contained a whopping 14 mg of methamphetamine per serving (compared to 3 mg per Pervitin pill). Image taken from Norman Ohler's Blitzed. This was one of the world's first Big Pharma social engineering coups. There was an extensive, catchy advertising campaign, free samples for physicians, and even biased clinical trials that concealed evidence of harmful side effects and addiction.
Methamphetamine was coined the Volksdroge, the "people's drug," which would lead Nazi Germany to recapture the glory of the Fatherland. To quote Ohler, "Pervitin allowed the individual to function in the dictatorship. It was National Socialism in pill form.”
And it was equally essential to the German blitzkrieg ("lightning-war") across Europe, Africa, and Asia. By the time that the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, many German military leaders were dosing their troops with Pervitin to help them stay awake and focused for unnaturally long periods.
Without mass consumption of Pervitin, the surprise German invasion of France, which involved a tank-led, "sickle-cut" maneuver considerably north of where the Allies anticipated that invasion would occur, could never have succeeded. German forces went without sleep for over three days during the offensive, and the euphoria, bloodlust, and fearlessness induced by the drug amplified morale, as well.
However, German military leaders quickly learned that, while most of the drug's benefits were illusory, its very real aftereffects were debilitating, dependence set in quickly, and continuing to push against physical and mental exhaustion inevitably lead to collapse.
Leo Conti, leader of the Reich Health Office, campaigned against the epidemic of amphetamine addiction, noting that "our young soldiers look extraordinarily ill, often grey and sunken-cheeked." Unfortunately, the problem was so deeply entrenched by that point that not even making Pervitin prescription-only (for civilians, not soldiers) was able to correct it.
Not incidentally, amphetamine erraticism and overconfidence have been implicated in a variety of poor strategic decisions that contributed to Nazi Germany losing the war - not to mention war crimes of unusual brutality.
To be fair, the Allies weren't exactly Sober Samuels, either. We gave our pilots "goofballs," amphetamine plus barbiturate formulations, to "enhance mission performance" - or, more accurately, remove fear-based self-preservation responses.
But it's different when we do it, obviously.
I could go on and on and on.
I can't emphasize enough how blown away I am by the extent to which the Third Reich's use of mind-altering chemicals has shaped, predicted, and illuminated our modern-day relationships with these substances. It is absolutely fascinating stuff; studying the story of these chemicals is nothing short of studying the history of humanity itself.
I really hope that you all will consider reading this book, which offers a truly fresh take on the WWII history that we all learned in high school.
As a final thought, I was always taught that the horror of the Third Reich and especially the Holocaust lay in its sober mundanity - the sort of workaday, bureaucratic approach to global military conquest and the extermination of entire groups of people.
It's deeply sad, interesting, and cautionary to consider how an entire nation's use of addictive drugs - by common people and political leaders alike - created a collective state of intoxication within which Germans were able to delude themselves about the atrocities that they were committing.
The extent to which the Third Reich's experiences with these addictive chemicals presaged modern social and political patterns bears further consideration. In many ways, it was during the Third Reich that Western civilization achieved its modern relationship with addictive chemicals - with all of the attendant fear, hypocrisy, and lack of moderation that this implies.
(Dolo-) Fin
As always, thank you for reading! It means a lot to me that the average read time for this blog is almost 20 minutes right now. I know how busy life is these days, and my readers choosing to spend such a significant chunk of time here is an encouragement for me to keep writing.
If you enjoyed this article, maybe check out "The Selfish Genes that Prospered: The Evolution of Addiction," which presents a more zoomed-out history of mankind's relationship with mind-altering drugs. I can nearly guarantee that you won't hate it.
If you're interested in how methadone clinics run in the U.S., check out "Metha-Don't" and "Big Win: U.S. Methadone Regulations Changed."
Above all, though, buy yourself a copy of Blitzed. It offers a fresh and fascinating take on World War II and is an essential volume for anyone interested in the historical impact of mind-altering drugs.
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