We’ve all heard that Nazi soldiers were fueled by methamphetamine. (This isn’t uncommon in military history. For example, see the US army’s use of “pep bills” in Vietnam.) But new research gets way more specific about the history of drugs in Nazi Germany. From CNN:
Now, meth, cocaine and even opiates have been referenced in association with German soldiers in a new book by German author Norman Ohler, “Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich,” set to publish in the United States in March, but already released in other parts of the world, including the UK.
“Norman Ohler’s Blitzed depicts the pervasive drug culture that allegedly developed in Germany’s Third Reich,” wrote Paul Weindling, a research professor at Oxford Brookes University, in an article in the journal Nature in October.“Nazi officials took high-performance drugs such as methamphetamine hydrochloride (crystal meth) and cocaine. German military units and aviators were dosed with the patent methamphetamine-based drug Pervitin (manufactured in Germany from 1937) to improve operational efficiency. And drugs such as Pervitin and metabolic stimulants were tried out on students, military recruits and, eventually, in concentration camps,” Weindling wrote. “Questions remain, however, over precisely how the drugs were tested, prescribed, distributed and used.”