Blitzed

Highlights

• On one hand, the Nazis presented themselves as clean-cut and enforced a strict, ideologically underpinned anti-drug policy with propagandistic pomp and draconian punishments. In spite of this, a particularly potent and perfidious substance became a popular product under Hitler. This drug carved out a great career for itself all over the German Reich, and later in the occupied countries of Europe. Under the trademark ‘Pervitin’, this little pill became the accepted Volksdroge, or ‘people’s drug’, and was on sale in every chemist’s shop. It wasn’t until 1939 that its use was restricted by making Pervitin prescription-only, and the pill was not subjected to regulation until the Reich Opium Law in 1941. Its active ingredient, methamphetamine, is now either illegal or strictly regulated,1 but, with the number of consumers currently at over 100 million and rising, it counts today as our most popular poison.

  Location 58

• On 10 August 1897 Felix Hoffmann, a chemist with the Bayer company, synthesized acetylsalicylic acid from willow bark; it went on sale as Aspirin and conquered the globe. Eleven days later the same man invented another substance that was also to become world famous: diacetyl morphine, a derivative of morphine – the first designer drug. Trademarked as ‘Heroin’, it entered the market and began its own campaign. ‘Heroin is a fine business,’ the directors of Bayer announced proudly and advertised the substance as a remedy for headaches, for general indisposition and also as a cough syrup for children. It was even recommended to babies for colic or sleeping problems.

  Location 130

• This didn’t change after the First World War. While France and Great Britain were able to acquire natural stimulants such as coffee, tea, vanilla, pepper and other natural medicines from colonies overseas, Germany, which lost its (comparatively sparse) colonial possessions under the terms of the Versailles Treaty, had to find other ways – stimulants had to be produced synthetically. In fact, Germany was in dire need of artificial assistance: the war had inflicted deep wounds and caused the nation both physical and psychic pain. In the 1920s drugs became more and more important for the despondent population between the Baltic Sea and the Alps. The desire for sedation led to self-education and there soon emerged no shortage of know-how for the production of a remedy. The course was set for a thriving pharmaceutical industry. Many of the chemical substances that we know today were developed and patented within a very short period of time. German companies became leaders in the global market. Not only did they produce the most medicines, but they also provided the lion’s share of chemical raw materials for their manufacture throughout the world. A new economy came into being, and the picturesque Rhine Valley became a Chemical Valley of sorts.

  Location 143

• Forty per cent of Berlin doctors were said to be addicted to morphine.

  NoteFollowing WW1

  Location 186

• The myth of Hitler as an anti-drug teetotaller who made his own needs secondary was an essential part of Nazi ideology and was presented again and again by the mass media. A myth was created which established itself in the public imagination, but also among critical minds of the period, and still resonates today. This is a myth that demands to be deconstructed.

  Location 260

• It is frightening how familiar many of these terms still sound today. While we have driven out other Nazi verbal monstrosities, the terminology of the war on drugs has lingered. It’s no longer a matter of Jews – the dangerous dealers are now said to be part of different cultural circles.

  Location 346

• Before every big speech the Reich Chancellor now allowed himself a ‘power injection’ in order to work at the peak of his capabilities. Colds, which could have kept him from appearing in public, were ruled out from the start by intravenous vitamin supplements. To be able to hold his arm up for as long as possible when doing the Nazi salute, Hitler trained with chest expanders and also allowed his body to snack on glucose and vitamins. The glucose, administered intravenously, gave the brain a blast of energy after twenty seconds, while the combined vitamins allowed Hitler to address his troops or the people wearing a thin Brownshirt uniform even on cold days without showing a sign of physical weakness. When he suddenly lost his voice before a speech in Innsbruck in 1937, Morell quickly alleviated the nuisance with an injection.

  Location 439

• Pervitin became a symptom of the developing performance society. Boxed chocolates spiked with methamphetamine were even put on the market. A good 14 milligrams of methamphetamine was included in each individual portion – almost five times the amount in a Pervitin pill. ‘Hildebrand chocolates are always a delight’ was the slogan of this potent confectionery. The recommendation was to eat between three and nine of these, with the indication that they were, unlike caffeine, perfectly safe.57 The housework would be done in a trice, and this unusual tidbit would even melt the pounds away, since Pervitin, a slimming agent, also curbed the appetite.

  Location 546

• Knowledge of Pervitin and its striking effects spread fast through the young medical officers. Under severe pressure in their difficult medical studies, they soon expected genuine miracles from the supposedly performance-enhancing substance, and began to take more and more. This made them forerunners of the students of today at universities all over the world, among whom the use of performance pills like Ritalin and amphetamine derivatives is widespread. It was only when Ranke found out about this trend, which he had sparked in part with his tests, and learned that a room had had to be set out at Munich University for so-called ‘Pervitin corpses’ (fellow students who had overdosed and had to rest till they came round), that he became aware of the danger. He was forced to acknowledge that the consumption of high doses was already common in the run-up to exams at his Military Medical Academy. The results from those under the influence left much to be desired, and a concerned colleague wrote: ‘In the cases in which an admission of drug assistance was made, the result of the examination was extraordinarily poor.’

  Location 723

• Two days later, on 17 April 1940, a document was making the rounds of the Wehrmacht, one with no parallel in military history. The so-called ‘stimulant decree’ was sent out to a thousand troop doctors, several hundred corps doctors, leading medical officers and equivalent positions in the SS. The first paragraph was as dry as it was controversial: ‘The experience of the Polish campaign has shown that in certain situations military success was crucially influenced by overcoming fatigue in a troop on which strong demands had been made. The overcoming of sleep can in certain situations be more important than concern for any related harm, if military success is endangered by sleep. The stimulants are available for the interruption of sleep. Pervitin has been methodically included in medical equipment.’

  Location 941

• The Wehrmacht was thus the first army in the world to rely on a chemical drug. And Ranke, the Pervitin-addicted army physiologist, was responsible for its regulated use. A new kind of war was on the way.

  Location 954

• A large order at Temmler … 35 million methamphetamine doses for the army and Luftwaffe.

  Location 965

• In less than a hundred hours the Germans gained more territory than they had in over four years in the First World War.

  Location 1074

• Towards the end of that first week of the attack there was a ghostly scene that casts a sharp light on the German advance: in the early hours of 17 May 1940, Rommel, no longer answerable to any of his superiors, tore along the road from Solre-le-Château, right in the north of France, towards Avesnes. As chance would have it, the 5th Infantry Division, parts of the 18th Infantry Division and the 1st Infantry Division of the French army had struck their bivouac on that very spot. Rommel didn’t hesitate for a second. He dashed through them, crushing everyone and everything, fired broadsides, and over the next ten kilometres he pushed hundreds of vehicles and tanks, along with the dead and wounded, into the ditches on either side and rattled on with blood-smeared tracks,

  Location 1115

• One commodore reports from the Mediterranean: ‘In my knee pocket there is a hand-length strip of linen covered with cellophane, with five or six milk-white tablets stuck to it, the size of a chocolate bar. The label reads: “Pervitin”. Tablets against fatigue. I open the bag and tear first two, then three of these tablets from the pad, take the breathing mask off my face for a moment and start chewing the tablets. They taste repellently bitter and floury, and I’ve got nothing to wash them down with.’118 After a while the effect kicks in: ‘The engine is running cleanly and calmly. I’m wide awake, my heartbeat thunders in my ears. Why is the sky suddenly so bright, my eyes hurt in the harsh light. I can hardly bear the brilliance; if I shield my eyes with my free hand it’s better. Now the engine is humming evenly and without vibration – far away, very far away. It’s almost like silence up here. Everything becomes immaterial and abstract. Remote, as if I were flying above my plane.’

  Location 1400

• An officer describes the Reich Marshal’s appearance: ‘We struggled to keep a straight face. He dons a white silk, blouse-like shirt with flowing sleeves, and over it a yellow, sleeveless, fur-lined suede jacket. With this he sports long medieval looking bloomers, and around his waist a broad, gold studded leather belt, with a short Celtic sword jangling from it. Long silk stockings and golden-yellow Saffiano leather sandals complete the picture.’

  Location 1424

• On 13 September 1940 the Milan daily Corriere della Sera reported on a ‘courage pill’ used by the Germans, which had gone from medicine to secret weapon. The military effectiveness of this ‘pillola di coraggio’, the article said, wasn’t a match for a Stuka bomb, but it did guarantee the German General Staff the uninterrupted operational capability of its soldiers. Britain went on to study and eventually use Benzedrine (which has fewer side-effects than Pervitin) as a result of the Milan piece.

  Location 1481

• ‘I didn’t take Pervitin myself, or at least not often, just once to try it. To know what I was prescribing,’ he says. ‘And I can tell you: it worked. It kept you awake, mercilessly. We knew it was addictive, and that it had side-effects: psychoses, nervous excitement, a loss of strength. And in Russia, it was a war of attrition, positional warfare. In such circumstances Pervitin was no use: it just exhausted you. You eventually had to catch up on the rest you’d missed. Sleep deprivation simply didn’t bring any tactical advantages any more.’

  Location 1787

• Hitler no longer attended communal meals, but retired completely to his log cabin, which he only ever left after dark. When he did fly to the front in mid-August 1942 to get an idea of the military reality, he immediately got terribly sunburnt – ‘His whole face burnt dark red, great burns on his forehead, severe pains’43 – and was extremely glad when he was back in his sheltered hut.

  Location 1871

• This remoteness from truth would have serious effects on the course of the war. Hitler often sent his units into battle without any notion of their equipment, fighting power or supplies. But at the same time he was minutely concerned, to the chagrin of the army, with all tactical questions, right down to battalion level, and thought he was indispensable in every respect.fn5

  Location 1888

• During those weeks, cocaine and Eukodal – the Führer’s mixture, the cocktail in his blood – mutated into the classic speedball: the sedating effect of the opioid balancing the stimulating effect of the cocaine. Enormous euphoria and highs that are felt in every last fibre of the body result from this pharmacological pincer movement, in which two potent molecules with opposite biochemical effects fight for dominance in the body. This produces both a strong circulatory overload and insomnia, and the liver desperately fights against such an onslaught of poisons.

  Location 2503

• When Hasselbach protested that any medical or even civil court could at least accuse Morell of negligent bodily harm, Himmler turned abrasive: ‘Professor, you are forgetting that as interior minister I am also head of the supreme health authority. And I don’t want Morell to be brought to trial.’162 The head of the SS dismissed Giesing’s objection that Hitler was the only head of state in the world who took between 120 and 150 tablets and received between eight and ten injections every week.

  Location 2638

• For these kamikaze commandos Orzechowski suggested ten different preparations under the abbreviations D I to D X: Drug 1 to Drug 10. They consisted of different quantities of Eukodal, cocaine, Pervitin and Dicodid, a semi-synthetic morphine derivative similar to codeine but considerably more potent. Those were the strongest known substances in the world, thrown together at random – a sign of how lax the navy had become in its treatment of drugs, and of how desperate the situation was.

  Location 2966

• On 7 December 1944 Dönitz stood in Dresden in front of 5,000 members of the Hitler Youth. Most in the crowd were only teenagers, fifteen or sixteen, and there were even ten-to twelve-year-olds. On the podium, beside the microphone, a mini-U-boat had been positioned, looking like a large-scale urn, decorated with garlands of flowers. The Grand Admiral was hailing it as Germany’s only hope of a final victory: the intention of his speech was to recruit volunteers. Countless members of the Hitler Youth signed up and over the next few days were driven in trucks with blacked-out numberplates to the ports where they were to be deployed. Only there were they given uniforms for these top-secret missions.28 Obviously these young men didn’t know what awaited them when they pulled on their caps, each with a little gold sawfish29 stitched on to it, and clambered aboard the hastily riveted-together torpedo vehicles and received their just as hastily pressed pills or cocaine-spiked chewing gum. Soon most of them would drown wretchedly, like kittens in a sack.

  Location 3104

• The last large-scale attack by the Luftwaffe ended fatally on the morning of 1 January 1945. Almost a thousand planes launched for one final gasp. But in spite of strict secrecy the Allied fighters and anti-aircraft defences reacted very effectively, and several dozen Luftwaffe pilots turned out to have had their last ever rations of Pervitin. It was on the return flight of the ones who had escaped the enemy that the true disaster happened. The German planes came under heavy fire from their own anti-aircraft gunners, who had not been informed about the mission. In this macabre way the Luftwaffe destroyed itself against its own cloudy sky. After that there were no more missions worthy of the name.

  Location 3253

• There are still some prescription drugs based on methamphetamine, e.g. in the USA (such as the ADHD medication Desoxyn).

  Location 3454