This interview was recorded at the Psychedelic Science 2025 in Denver, where we spoke with leading voices in psychedelic research, therapy, spirituality, and policy. Norman Ohler is a German author and investigative journalist best known for his best-selling book Blitzed, which explored the hidden history of drug use in Nazi Germany. In this interview, we delve into the lesser-known stories of how psychoactive substances shaped war, power, and propaganda, and discuss the darker sides of psychedelic history, including their potential for misuse. Norman, you are not a historian. How and why did you decide to write a historical book about drug use in Nazi Germany?
I wanted to write a novel, actually, but my publisher said when he saw the copies of the archival documents that the true story would be more important than just a novel, because in a novel you don't know if it's fictionalized or not. So I decided to write a non-fiction book. My first non-fiction book.
Have you ever had experiences with drugs before you wrote this book?
Yes, I took LSD when I was in my early twenties and have since been interested in psychedelics, and they have influenced my writing. I wrote novels before, but I never wrote specifically about substances like I then later did.
You, as a German, also study a very sensitive period of history in the Nazi era. And Germany did a lot to come to terms with its past. Do you think that your books also contribute to this reconciliation process?
Well, Germany always claims it does a lot to come to terms with its past, but it actually does nothing, or at least it learns nothing from the past. It's again becoming not exactly a fascist country, but it supports fascist policies around the world. So I don't really think we have learned enough from the past at all. Maybe except from my books or contributions of people who draw different conclusions from the violence that has happened, and these conclusions are of course no violence and freedom, which also includes freedom of the mind, of course. But this is not what's happening in Germany right now.
But are you happy with the reception of your book in Germany?
It's been well received. I could wish for more readers, obviously, always. But I think, well, I mean, the book about LSD was not so well received. Well, it was well received, but not many people noticed it, unlike the book about Nazis and drugs, that was noticed by a lot of people. So the psychedelic scene in Germany is quite small. It's quite a conservative, narrow-minded place.
Some people criticized your books because they say that you are mixing fiction and facts. How would you respond to those criticisms?
I never mix fiction with fact, actually. My non-fiction books are all based on fact. There's nothing invented. They're just written in a fluid, maybe more narrative style than old-school historians use. So I guess this is the reason. I mean, it was basically one historian. I think he confused academic writing with my more popular non-fiction writing, but I don't invent anything.
Okay. So the Nazis, they promoted racial purity and clean life, and Hitler was a vegetarian. At the same time, they distributed millions of Pervitin pills among the soldiers of the Wehrmacht. So, how can we make sense of this contradiction?
Well, that was part of the fun of writing the book, to expose that double standard, basically. I mean, the Nazis claimed to be an anti-drug government, which is bad in itself. You know, the government should not regulate the drug consumption of people. It has no business in doing that. But they used it for propagandistic reasons, saying like, we're cleaning up the country, we're going to create a healthy population. And then at the same time, they abused one of the most notorious substances, which is methamphetamine. But it wasn't labeled as a drug; it was just a normal medicine at the time. I mean, not normal, but it was a legal medicine at the time. So it also shows us that what we consider drugs, or what our governments make illegal, is often a political choice and has nothing to do with the health effects of these substances.
And in your other book, Tripped: Nazi Germany, the CIA, and the Making of the Counterculture, you trace the kind of hidden lineage between the early Nazi research and the CIA studies on LSD. Can you talk more about this link between the two?
Well, the Nazis, the SS, did psychedelic experiments in the concentration camp of Dachau, and there was a connection between the CEO of Sandoz, the company that developed LSD, and Richard Schultze, who was a leading Nazi biochemist. And Schultze received half a gram of ergotamine in October 1943 from Switzerland. And when Schultze was interrogated by the Americans after they liberated the western part of Germany, he told them about this LSD research that they had done. Nazis were looking for a truth drug which they could use in interrogations to extract secrets from people. So the Americans were very interested in that and then conducted their own truth drug experiments with LSD. First, the US military, and then the CIA. And then the CIA actually pressured Sandoz also not to distribute LSD to the Eastern Bloc. So LSD, because of its Nazi past, did not have the chance to become like a global health medicine.
So that's the kind of darker side of the history of LSD. And when we celebrate Bicycle Day, you know, on the 19th of April, where Albert Hofmann discovered LSD, we never think about that there was a war at that time in Europe.
Do you think that Hofmann knew about the Nazis' experiments?
I don't think so. Oh, I mean, it's a bit strange. In his book LSD: My Problem Child, he basically blames the American hippie movement for the illegalization of LSD, that they kind of overdid it. Like Timothy Leary, they did too much, so the government had to stop it. He doesn't really go into the '50s, what happened. He doesn't go into the '40s, what happened. So it's like a void in his LSD biography. And I don't know if he was really so naive and didn't know, which I find it hard to believe because he knew a lot, you know. So maybe he just decided to keep hush about this. And I think it's a mistake, and I think it weakens his book. But I don't know. It would be interesting to ask him, but it's not possible anymore.
So, what happened exactly in the concentration camps? Do you know about the details of what kind of experiments the Nazis did with these drugs?
Well, I saw two pages of a conclusion of the tests, and the tests were called something like tests for the extraction of secrets through chemical means. And I read also one trip report of an inmate who received a psychedelic in Dachau, and he had an amazing trip. Like, he really liked it, which surprised me in the beginning because I thought it must be horrible to have a psychedelic experience in the concentration camp. But he was so happy to experience something else, at least for a couple of hours. And he told the SS supervisor, you know, how great it was. So the SS was a bit disappointed because they, you know, they didn't want to give inmates a good time. They wanted to destabilize people. So these SS experiments were not successful for the SS. They were just like a little vacation for the people who were part of these experiments. But I also only read one report. Maybe there were other tests with maybe other results, but these reports have not survived.
So how did LSD find its way from these early truth serum experiments to the underground scene in America and the hippies?
