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Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich

4:31:21 recording · EN · 2 speakers

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Brief overview

Norman Ohler shows methamphetamine and opioids shaped Nazi Germany's war, without excusing anyone's crimes.

  1. Context first: beer halls versus Weimar BerlinAlcohol bound the early Nazi movement in Munich while Berlin experimented with morphium, cocaine, mescaline and ether.
  2. The archive hid the story under other labelsThe find book had no entry for drugs, only Ranke's name, position and campaign, so nobody had looked.
  3. Drugs explain performance, never absolve responsibilityOhler says planning a crime and then committing it intoxicated does not diminish guilt, and Nazi ideology had nothing to do with drugs.
Executive Summary AI
  • Lex Friedman introduces Norman Ohler, author of Blitzed, a book on the role of psychoactive drugs in the Third Reich that Ian Kershaw called serious scholarship and Anthony Beaver called a remarkable work of research.0:00
  • Ohler sets the context: in the 1920s the Nazi movement grew out of Bavarian beer halls on alcohol, while defeated, Versailles-impoverished Berlin ran on cheap morphium, cocaine, mescaline and ether, and the two cities grew apart.9:46
  • After 1933 the regime prosecuted drug users and tied anti-drug policy to anti-Semitism, yet the Berlin firm Temmler, stung by Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympics, had its chemist Fritz Hauschild remake a methamphetamine first made in Tokyo in 1917 and sell it in every pharmacy as Pervitin.50:45
  • Professor Ranke, whose war diary Ohler read in the Freiburg military archive, argued meth beat the soldier's real enemy, fatigue, and wrote a stimulant decree; Temmler delivered 35 million dosages, and on May 10th the tanks went through the Ardennes to reach Sedan in three days and three nights.1:05:11
  • Göring, a morphinist, persuaded Hitler to issue the Haltebefehl outside Dunkirk so the Luftwaffe could finish the British, which von Mahnstein later called a lost victory; Ohler still insists drugs explain performance, never responsibility.1:25:07
Key Quote
“And they immediately become an anti-drug regime.”
— Norman Ohler46:39
Key Quote
“Pavitin is the answer to his question how to beat the main opponent of the German soldier.”
— Norman Ohler56:56
Key Quote
“And that was when, that to me is a war crime.”
— Norman Ohler1:09:33