Boom, I am Norman Ohler, and you are watching The Break It Down Show.
You have written a fantastic book. I was listening to your episode of Joe Rogan, and one of the things that's fascinating — I spend quite a bit of time looking at old stories for things I'm working on in the newspaper database, and you can just find these wonderful things. And I love how you found this story about drugs, Hitler, Nazis. And then when you look in the archives, and you look like no one else has seen this thing in 30, 40, 50 years. And at one point you had said there had been like four people that had looked at Hitler's doctor's notes, which is just remarkable considering how much has been created about Hitler and what he did and why he did.
Right, it's quite awkward actually. I think history is too precious to leave it up to the historians.
Yeah, how did you — go ahead.
They overlook things, also they don't know anything about drugs, and drugs played a vital role at least in the history of the so-called Third Reich. So, um, but I was lucky, I guess, that I stumbled upon the subject.
Can you tell us how you stumbled on it?
Um, a friend found old methamphetamine pills in an East Berlin apartment in 2010, um, labeled Pervitin, and he took them and was still active. So, he knew that methamphetamine was taken because he took it himself, um, and he told me this, so that was the beginning of my research.
And how did you make your way to Hitler's physician? It's such a vital — like when you read the book, it's such a vital cog, you're constantly going back to his actual day-to-day records, which is just remarkable.
Um, I wanted to examine not only what the army took but also what the leadership took, if they took something, because it was a vital part of Hitler's and propaganda to show him as a teetotaler that wouldn't touch any intoxicating substances, including coffee or cigarettes. Um, yeah, but the historian, for example, that I worked with, that I asked for advice sometimes, he said don't look at Hitler's doctor, that's just not that serious, it's not interesting. Um, but then when he found — you know, when he read my text after I had found the notes, he changed his mind because he then also thought it relevant. Um, because it's really remarkable how he could actually portray a head of state, um, through the pharmacological angle. But you can only do that if you have the records available, which I had.
Yeah, is there a whole other book of stuff? Once you get into these texts, there's the book next to it, and there's the books next to that, and all of a sudden there's three or four books in this history.
Yeah, I mean it was one thing led to the next, you could say. It was kind of interesting. I mean, the same fun the reader has now when he or she reads Blitzed, I had when I researched it. I mean, maybe even more because I was actually researching it. Um, it was like — you know, but it's kind of a similar experience actually that the reader has now.
Yeah, the book is fantastic. It's called Blitzed. Everybody should check it out. It gives you the inside look at how methamphetamine and other chemicals were being created. You know, we think of meth as being sort of a modern thing. We think about, you know, Sons of Anarchy and all this kind of stuff, but actually it goes back to the Nazis.
Yeah, I mean, the Nazis were modern. I mean, they were a modern society, more modern, capitalist, performance-driven society, so they would use any means, or people would use means with which they could improve their performance. And at the time, they thought it would be methamphetamine, which is still what many people who take methamphetamine do believe. I mean, they take it because it gives them energy. The problem, of course, is that at one point you have to replenish your brain because all the neurotransmitters have been released, so it creates addiction and depression. Um, but that wasn't so known in the very early years when it came out in Germany in 1938. Studies hadn't been done yet, um, so people were a bit naive about it.
Were they naive in thinking like it was a miracle? Or I mean, how naive do you have to be to put a foreign substance in, have this reaction, and not think it's going to be a cost to this? Or is this not a thought?
No, but at the time people didn't know this, um, because there had been no studies done. So I don't find it so surprising. We all take performance-enhancing drugs every day. I think most of us have some kind of stimulant, be it coffee or nicotine or alcohol or cannabis. So it's kind of normal that humans are always trying to improve their performance, especially in a system that rewards performance like the capitalist system. So it's not that surprising actually that it was a very popular product. And it was, you know, fabricated by a German pharmaceutical company. It was not made in, um, trailer labs in the Rust Belt of the United States as crystal meth is being. That's where crystal meth comes from now, or maybe it comes from where I don't know where it comes from, but certainly not from a German pharmaceutical company. So those pills had 3 milligrams of methamphetamine, which is — I guess I haven't tried these pills, um, unlike my friend, um, yeah. But I guess 3 milligrams of methamphetamine is not so strong. It just gives you like a buzz. It doesn't make you crazy like snorting a huge line of crystal meth, you know, might derange you. But taking one pill made by a pharmaceutical company is not that — you know, I mean, methamphetamine was also legal in the United States later on, and it's been used against depression. And I mean, it is a stimulant, so I guess if you know how to use it right, you could even use it as a medicine. But you know, most people just abuse it as a recreational drug and take way too much. So but I guess in general, it's not really healthy for the brain to use amphetamines or methamphetamine. Um, there's much healthier substances to which we might also come in this conversation.
Yeah, I mean, the explosion now of — well, more access, more legal access to marijuana, the improvement of marijuana as a product. I work on another show with a bunch of former drug smugglers. They're talking about how marijuana was in the 70s and these different brands and everything, and now it's curing cancer, it's reducing, you know, all kinds of problems for people. So we see the continued evolution of these things, but some of them are on the more healthier side. DMT is becoming more and more normalized all the time. So yeah, it's um, I guess this is part of the modern conversation, is what supplements do we add into our biome to improve our performance?
Um, yeah, or I mean also change our performance, because if we look at psychedelics, what happens in the brain on psychedelics is that the default mode network, which regulates our day-to-day operations, receives less energy, and other parts of the brain which have a lot of 5-HT2A receptors kind of fire up under psychedelics and connect, um, and create new thinking patterns and erase ruminations and depression patterns. Um, it is, um, not only — it's stimulating in a way, but it's just changing the brain chemistry in a way that scientists are now actually recommending in a way, or saying that this is good against depression, against dementia. It kind of keeps our brain healthy and fit. So that's kind of interesting, and that's a complete turnaround of our perspective on psychedelics, especially LSD, which was once demonized basically, especially in the United States in the 60s.
Yeah, yeah, it became something bigger than what probably people thought it was, and it became a fad. I mean, it became a lifestyle almost. And maybe that's probably too far or closer to too far than simple, like, let's use this to adapt to my personal environment, my personal, whatever kind of psychosis or behavioral disorder I might have. If a microdose of LSD is the thing that calms me down, or if I have like these kids that have seizures and they take marijuana and their seizures just stop and live as normal a life as they're still capable living, I think everybody's good with that. But then again, everybody's not.
Well, psychedelics are good, I think, for most people, but they might be problematic for people with psychiatric problems. Um, those people should only take them with a therapist and actually, you know, might work through their problems. But it might be too hard to do on your own. But if you're healthy and you're in a good environment, I think it's very beneficial actually, at least that's what I have experienced personally, and that's also what the new scientific findings show. So that's what I worked on in the successor to Blitzed, the new book, which is called Tripped. I look at the history of psychedelics and try to find out why they actually became illegal. Is that because they were dangerous, or is that for political reasons, which is actually what happened in the last century?
Yeah, and I'll put the link up for that book in a second here while we're chatting. Let's go back to the German use of it in World War II. In some ways it's an enhancer to their capabilities, and in other ways it's a detriment. Let's talk about that, compare and contrast.
You mean methamphetamine? Back to — yeah, yeah, yeah, the methamphetamine. Yeah, how it helped them. Yeah, it helped them, especially in May 1940 when they were attacking France. And um, the strategy demanded of the German soldiers to march, or rather race, through the Ardennes mountains into Southern Belgium and then advance towards France for three days and three nights without stopping. And this was only achieved through methamphetamine, because without such a potent stimulant it's impossible to stay awake for that long. And then if they wouldn't have done so, the British forces and French forces which were stationed north of Belgium would have had enough time to come down and crush the advance. But the Germans were able to sustain such a long time and therefore were able to cut off the Allied forces and kind of go behind their back and race towards the Channel coast. So that was um, the meth was very successful in that so-called Blitzkrieg. Speed war, basically speed helping to make the speed war. So it's all in the terminology. Um, but in the long war, which World War II eventually turned out to be, because the Soviet Union could not be defeated within a few weeks just like France could or the other countries — the Soviet Union was fighting back quite intensely. Also they had a lot of manpower and a good trained army, or at least you know a lot of people that were fighting. And um, so it took longer, and then the methamphetamine was not really helping anymore because it's like borrowed energy. So you can — you know, you could decide to stay awake for the next two weeks. I mean, it would be crazy, but you could probably somehow do it if you had enough crystal meth. But then, you know, you would be a wreck basically, and you would have severe depression and dependency, and you would have, you know, even less, you know, far less energy. And so it's not good for, you know, an army over a long period of time. Um, so in a way, the crystal meth didn't really help the German army, but it's good for fighting a combat unit if the conflict that the combat unit has to be engaged in is of a limited, you know, like five days or a week or two weeks. Yeah, that that makes sense. You know, so if you — yeah, like for terrorist attacks, it makes sense. And then in a way, the German Blitzkrieg advances were kind of terrorist attacks in a way. Like suddenly, like the Hamas attack on Israel, suddenly, you know, they're coming in and wreaking havoc. But you can't sustain that over like five years.
Yeah, yeah. So I'm a combat veteran, I used to be a combat spy, and a lot of my job is simply just being outside the wire and going on patrols. And one of the ways I dealt with that was to use energy drinks. And they gave us energy drinks, they were everywhere, and you know, there's no like, 'be careful, these things are bad for you' kind of thing. And surely you can only drink so many energy drinks before you have to pay a cost back. But there was also nicotine and, you know, gosh, any number of supplements you could take. And 100%, there were steroids going on and other stimulants.
Oh, for sure, for sure. Yeah, Adderall is legal in the United States. Adderall is an amphetamine, so the army can use these things. They basically learned it from the German army, the Wehrmacht, to use stimulants. But I don't think any army except the Germans were using methamphetamine. It's much smarter to use amphetamines because they're not as strong. Yeah, but the kind of crazy warfare the Germans did, maybe the methamphetamine was better because it really turns you into like a crazy person basically. Like you just — right, the Germans were acting very strangely. The French were not really — didn't really know how to deal with those fearless, um, combat machines that the Germans turned into with meth. So right, I mean, it's not only the meth, it's also the indoctrination, obviously, with the ideology, and also they knew that if they, you know, would not obey an order, they would be shot or whatever. So it's a strong discipline combined with methamphetamine that creates a vicious army, obviously.
Yeah, yeah, and if I give the impression I meant methamphetamines, but for sure Adderall, those kind of things. It was uncommon to find someone using those and looking sort of, you know, at the German army as a proxy. I worked for the 82nd Airborne, and if you walked out after a 12-hour day, they'd call you a half day. You know, like legitimately, they overworked people. That was one of their strategies. You had to be tougher and stay up longer and not need jackets. Like, they purposely don't wear jackets in the cold because they're just too damn tough for it. And so you would work past your capacity to work and find a way to cope with that, and then go on patrol if you had to. But there was no saying, 'I'm too tired' or 'I can't do this because of my personal ability to push through this barrier.' You had to always push through the barrier.
Right, when you look at Hitler's use of these substances, and in general like the senior staff, as these guys are, uh, losing a war and a lot of them see that, they must have been under enormous stress. And so why not try to unplug a little bit? Did they tend to go towards stimulants? Did they go towards other things to hide and mask the inevitable? What are your thoughts in general on Hitler and the senior staff and what they were taking?
Well, the senior staff, um, I mean, Hitler took a lot of drugs, but he didn't take methamphetamine. He took um, opioids, especially Eukodal, which was later in the US known as oxycodone. The same drug. It was basically — well, not basically discovered, it was a German product at the time by the Merck company. And only after the war, the patent was lost by Merck, and um, it reappeared in the United States and was rebranded as oxycodone. And that, taken intravenously, makes one apparently euphoric and quite alert and charismatic also. So at least it had this effect on Hitler. Um, so that had the effect that people going into meetings with him, knowing that he had this, you know, crazy energy, not knowing that it comes from drugs. I mean, it was all attributed to his charisma or his, you know, status as the leader. But a lot of it, later in the war when the war started to look really bad for Germany, was coming from artificial stimulants like, um, like opioids. So generals who knew this were scared to go into a meeting and not be, you know, on eye level. Um, so they also took drugs, and this was reported by Morell, Hitler's personal physician, that in the headquarters, generals would come to him before they would go to Hitler and would say, 'Come on, give me something.' He was like the pharmacy of the head of the Führer headquarters. Um, so he would give these people methamphetamine usually, Pervitin. You take a pill of Pervitin, you're going to be much better in the room. If you take it like half an hour before you go into a meeting with Hitler, you're more confident, more energy. You know, so it's good. It might save your life even. Um, but also some of them took opioids, some of them became junkies. Um, I read a newspaper clip at the United States archives, um, in College Park, out of Washington. Forgot which general it was, could be Jodl, which was — no, it was Keitel, I think. Very high general under Hitler, who, when he was captured by the Americans, had, like, in his office, like the whole drawer of his main desk was full of opioids. So I mean, the war was crazy, and the stress was enormous, and people were just trying to cope with this madness, you know, because Hitler was not mad, but his behavior was mad. You know, um, very, very difficult, I guess, to be an officer in the German army at the time, having to wage a war against the world, a war with, you know, atrocities committed against civilians, etc. That's very hard to do if you're not, you know, a monster, which most generals weren't. They were, you know, professional military people, so it went against their code of ethics, what was asked of them. So it makes sense that they would use drugs to, um, you know, cope — being able to cope with the situation.
When you're reading the notes from the doctor, you're reading like the firsthand — I mean, it's such a great source, it's firsthand primary source stuff. Is it heavy when you're reading this and you realize what — what is happening like immediately with Adolf Hitler and how he's leading people? Like, what's the weight on you as you're reading this history?
Well, I mean, I felt excitement actually when I read through these documents, because I realized it's an important story. So it was like I was — it was like a treasure that I found, because I knew that through these findings, people would be able to understand the history better. So I didn't think — I mean, it was a sort of responsibility, I guess. You know, I could have just not been able to tell the story because I was, maybe I'm a bad writer, I can't do it, or I take too many drugs myself and I lose track of the project or something. But um, for me it was clear that I would, you know, try to successfully tell the tale. Um, so I was excited, and I liked it. A lot of it is actually, in a way, funny, what Morell writes, because you're like the fly on the wall. And you also see that Hitler was — like, I mean, it's interesting to see him as a human person, you know, because he's obviously committed monstrous things, but he's also a human being. And you know, when he was ashamed when he had like diarrhea and fleeing to the toilet and locked the door so Morell wouldn't come in, and he was lying on the floor with pain in his gut and having his buttocks examined all the time because he was always scared that there was something, you know, wrong with him. And it's kind of interesting. I didn't put everything in the book because some of the things are too weird, but it was interesting also for me as a writer to decide, you know, what to put in and how to shape the story. Yeah, so it was an interesting task.
When you humanize, or attempt to humanize, someone like Hitler, or at least examine him from that human angle, there's some risk in that, and that we will be like, no, this guy's a monster and we have to completely dismiss him. But the fact is, we have to understand who he was and how he did things as he was. And he is a human, and there were times when good things happened. We always want something to be universally this or universally that, but people are multivariant and they have different things. This doesn't condone any of Hitler's bad behavior, obviously, but you know, we have to see the man as the man so we can understand how man can do this to man. I mean, the man is the man, and also the man is not just the — he's not the only one. You know, Hitler is just one part of a system that involves millions of people, of Germans mostly.
So I mean, it is a sort of a responsibility, because genocide was committed, and not only genocide — 20 million Russians were killed, 6 million Poles were killed. Um, so you don't want to trivialize it. You don't want to, you know, you wouldn't want to make a case like he only did this because he was on drugs, which is also not true. You know, he did this because he wanted to do this, and it was a racist ideology of, you know, white supremacy, German supremacy. That's not related to drugs, but drugs helped him to keep his tunnel vision and keep his artificial energy going until the end. So it's interesting, but also you have to tell it right. Like, you could tell a wrong story. You have to know a lot about history and about national socialism. So that's why it took five years to write the book, because I had to become basically an expert on national socialism and on World War II history. So I took it very seriously.
