Speaker 1: What's taking shiploads of meth? My hit. I'm Robert Evans.
Speaker 1: This is Behind the Bastards. The podcast re tell you
Speaker 1: everything you don't know about the worst people in all
Speaker 1: of history. We're in today's episode, stuff that you think
Speaker 1: you know, but you actually don't know the specifics in
Speaker 1: the way that you probably think you do. Maybe anyway.
Speaker 1: Top ten intros to this podcast. Thank you, Sophie. Sophie Lichterman,
Speaker 1: my producer and legally boss and my guest today, I
Speaker 1: would like to introduce the wonderful Carolina Barlow. Carolina, you
Speaker 1: are a writer and a co host of the Ron
Speaker 1: Burgundy podcast and the True Romance Podcast. Carolina. Yes, is
Speaker 1: Will Ferrell nice in person? He is a toxic overlord.
Speaker 1: Will Farrell is actually the nicest person and I've never
Speaker 1: met my life. Um, he's nicer than I think most
Speaker 1: members of my family and yours. I'm just assuming, um,
Speaker 1: no knowing how kind he is. And yeah, he's a Sophia.
Speaker 1: You can he frenched my dog. How does his hair smell? Okay,
Speaker 1: this is a great question because is very good at
Speaker 1: grooming and he always smells really nice. His skincare is
Speaker 1: amazing and I believe he may still be using this product.
Speaker 1: But once we were on a press tour with Mark Wahlberg,
Speaker 1: who was using a lot of brand called Moroccan oil,
Speaker 1: which you can buy. I'm not this is not an ad,
Speaker 1: but you can buy it pretty much anywhere. Will decided, Wait,
Speaker 1: I'm messing up this story. Will was using a brand
Speaker 1: uses a brand called Moroccan oil, and Mark Wahlberg was
Speaker 1: obsessed with it, and so we ended up talking about
Speaker 1: it a lot on a press tour, and Moroccan Oil
Speaker 1: then send us a bunch of Moroccan oil. So I
Speaker 1: believe he still uses that. But it smells incredible. Okay,
Speaker 1: well this is this is actually a lot more information
Speaker 1: than I expected. Welcome to the celebrity corner. When we
Speaker 1: talk about how different celebrities hair smells. Next up, so
Speaker 1: we're talking about we are talking about a celebrity today
Speaker 1: surrounded by babies because probably like pissing ship, pist and
Speaker 1: ship all the time. That's that scans completely. Actually, you
Speaker 1: know who else a diaper? I totally forgot you know
Speaker 1: who else smelled like ship? Oh? This is this is
Speaker 1: so accurate and is a celebrity. I don't like that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't like that title for him. He is a celebrity.
Speaker 1: He's a very famous man, arguably more famous than any
Speaker 1: living celebrity. I'm not gonna I'm not going to give
Speaker 1: Hitler a celebrity title. You can say a lot of
Speaker 1: bad things about the man, but he has brand recognition. Okay,
Speaker 1: fair enough. So we're like going from polar opposites. We're
Speaker 1: talking about one of the Donna Share. You don't even
Speaker 1: need the last names exactly, just Hitlers going from like
Speaker 1: the nicest person ever of Will Ferrell to the worst
Speaker 1: person ever to aid off Hitler so quick. Well, he's
Speaker 1: also his name has kind of been a verb because
Speaker 1: you can like, I don't know about y'all, but like
Speaker 1: when my friends are being shitty and like you're kind
Speaker 1: of hitler ing right now. You're you're getting a little
Speaker 1: Hitler on all of us here, Maybe calm down. So
Speaker 1: he's like, he's like, Google, my friends have been done
Speaker 1: something so shitty that I would spring that name. Fair enough. Well,
Speaker 1: this one time my buddy Mike annexed the Sudette land
Speaker 1: and we were got pretty we got pretty pissed at him.
Speaker 1: That's fair. Yeah, that's um, Carolina, what do you, how
Speaker 1: do you feel about drugs? Drugs? I don't do drugs
Speaker 1: because when I was young, I did them too much
Speaker 1: and then I had to stop. And actually in the
Speaker 1: same boat, um, I drink sometimes and uh and take creatum.
Speaker 1: But I my my doing illegal drugs days or long
Speaker 1: long behind me because I damaged my brain too much.
Speaker 1: You've what have you heard about the Nazis and drugs.
Speaker 1: I know that they did a lot of them. And
Speaker 1: I think World War two, much like the Civil War,
Speaker 1: was a pretty crazy time and Vietnam wars generally and
Speaker 1: drugs actually tend to mix well together. Absolutely, it's a
Speaker 1: great time to get wasted when you're at a war zone.
Speaker 1: I can say that from experience. Um. And you know
Speaker 1: it's also so there's In two thousand sixteen, a German
Speaker 1: novelist and a screenwriter, a guy named Norman Oehler, published
Speaker 1: a book, a work of historic nonfiction. In the United States,
Speaker 1: it was released under the title Blitzed, Drugs and Nazi Germany.
Speaker 1: A lot of people have heard of this book. It
Speaker 1: was an international but it was a huge, huge book.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess most of the people listening to
Speaker 1: the episode right now either heard of it. Or you
Speaker 1: read some article that was based on kind of the
Speaker 1: media campaign around this, because literally every major news website
Speaker 1: in magazine on the fucking planet published interviews with this
Speaker 1: guy or at least kind of like write ups that
Speaker 1: were summarizing the book. The Guardians article during this period
Speaker 1: it is kind of emblematic of the whole. It was
Speaker 1: titled Hi Hitler, which is a fun a fun title,
Speaker 1: nice little play on Heil Hitler um. And it's also
Speaker 1: really appropriate because the reason Hitler was getting high it
Speaker 1: was for his health, and Hil Hitler literally means health
Speaker 1: to Hitler. But anyway, that's a that's a point Owlder makes. Umm,
Speaker 1: it is a nice little pun. I'm going to read
Speaker 1: a sample paragraph from that article talking about Owler's wook work.
Speaker 1: The book in question is The Total Rush, or to
Speaker 1: use its superior English title, Blitzed, which reveals the astonishing
Speaker 1: and hitherto un largely untold story of the Third Reich's
Speaker 1: relationship with drugs, including cocaine, heroin, morphine, and above all, methamphetamines,
Speaker 1: and of their effect not only on Hitler's final days.
Speaker 1: The fear by Owler's account was an absolute junkie with
Speaker 1: ruined veins by the time he retreated to the last
Speaker 1: of his bunkers. But on the Wehrmacht's successful invasion of
Speaker 1: France in nineteen forty published in Germany last year, where
Speaker 1: it became a best seller. It has since been translated
Speaker 1: into eighteen languages. A fact that the lights owler but
Speaker 1: also amazes him. And this isn't I'm starting, not kind
Speaker 1: of the way we normally do by just sort of
Speaker 1: giving the history, but by talking about this book because
Speaker 1: it is so prominent, and in the years that I've
Speaker 1: been doing Behind the Bastards, I've probably had a couple
Speaker 1: of hundred different people email me or ask me sometimes
Speaker 1: in person if I've read Blitzed and tell me that
Speaker 1: I had to do hit an episode on Hitler's drug addiction,
Speaker 1: and this is that episode. But I have to tell
Speaker 1: you a decent chunk of this is actually going to
Speaker 1: be kind of critiquing blitzed um and more broadly critiquing
Speaker 1: kind of how the media presented it. And I want
Speaker 1: to clarify up top. I don't think blitz is a
Speaker 1: bad book where that older is a bad guy. I
Speaker 1: think his work is in some ways a victim of
Speaker 1: its own, of his own success. If you start googling
Speaker 1: around permutations of phrases like Hitler's drug addiction, or drugs
Speaker 1: and Nazis German and Nazi Germany, or the Nazis and meth,
Speaker 1: about seventy of the search results you see are going
Speaker 1: to be articles based on Norman's book, kind of rewriting
Speaker 1: the same thing over and over again, and this makes
Speaker 1: his book fairly unique in the field of Nazi studies.
Speaker 1: The Third Reich is the single most widely studied and
Speaker 1: written about regime in political history. There are governments on
Speaker 1: the planet right now who produce less, who have produced
Speaker 1: to date less documentation for their government bureaucracy than there
Speaker 1: is historic works written about the Third Reich. Um no
Speaker 1: other government has had more scholars devote their lives to
Speaker 1: examining it, and no state has had so many pages
Speaker 1: of quality historical writing dedicated to its history. And when
Speaker 1: we include the great minds have written about the Third
Speaker 1: Reich throughout history, we quickly become clogged with genius. There's
Speaker 1: William Schier, Iran Ian Kershaw, John Toland, Vocaler, ul Ric
Speaker 1: Richard Evans, and Hannah Rent, just to name a few.
Speaker 1: And the fact that in five years, Norman Ohler has
Speaker 1: become one of the most recognized writers in Nazi history.
Speaker 1: UM is due to the subject matter of his book, namely,
Speaker 1: people like drugs and people are fascinated by the Nazis,
Speaker 1: and if you combine those two things, you're going to
Speaker 1: sell a lot of fucking books. Um. And one of
Speaker 1: the reasons this frustrates some historians is that some of
Speaker 1: the stuff that Older wrote about had been well documented
Speaker 1: before he came into the picture. For exam ample, pervitin,
Speaker 1: which is the methamphetamine that the Nazis primarily took UM.
Speaker 1: A lot of scholars wrote about the use of pervitin
Speaker 1: by Nazis during the Blitz Creek. Where Older broke new
Speaker 1: ground was in making a detailed study about the personal
Speaker 1: notes and professional journals of a guy named Dr Theodore Morrell,
Speaker 1: who was one of Hitler's personal physicians and his primary
Speaker 1: dope dealer. Morrell was not an unknown quantity to historians previously,
Speaker 1: but Ohler spends a lot of time digging into precisely
Speaker 1: what he gave Hitler and how it may have impacted history.
Speaker 1: Half of the controversy among historians about Blitz revolves around
Speaker 1: the language used in this book. Older is not a historian,
Speaker 1: he's not a scholar. He's writing in a pop nonfiction
Speaker 1: cadence and vocabulary. So this is closer to a guy like, um,
Speaker 1: who's that fucking guy everybody hates now that everybody loved
Speaker 1: for I wrote The Tipping Point Malcolm Gladwell. I'm not
Speaker 1: and I'm not saying he's like because I think he's
Speaker 1: much more responsible than not. But he's closer to the
Speaker 1: Gladwell into the spectrum that kind of pop nonfiction than
Speaker 1: he is to a scholar like Ian Kershaw, you know, Um,
Speaker 1: And that frustrates scholars because his work has been so influential, Right,
Speaker 1: you get kind of piste off when, like you, you
Speaker 1: do detailed, painstaking analyzes of these guys and then, um,
Speaker 1: some dude kind of throws out a book that maybe
Speaker 1: maybe exaggerates some things and uses some like flagrant language
Speaker 1: and and is much more popular than any work by
Speaker 1: a scholar will ever be that frustrated people? Um, And
Speaker 1: you know, I I don't think that that means it's
Speaker 1: not There is good scholarship of this, and there's in fact,
Speaker 1: groundbreaking scholarship in this. Ian Kershaw, who's probably the single
Speaker 1: most prominent biographer of Hitler alive today. UM called this
Speaker 1: a serious work of scholarship and praised it. UM. Richard Evans,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, who's also variable respected, hated this book.
Speaker 1: So it's not like there's not I don't want to
Speaker 1: come across as saying there's an agreement among scholars that
Speaker 1: this book is bad, or that there's an agreement that
Speaker 1: it's good. UM. I tend to think it did more
Speaker 1: good than harm Um. But it was written to appeal
Speaker 1: to the masses and be a popular book, and it
Speaker 1: absolutely is now. The other half of the controversy around
Speaker 1: Blitz revolves around some of the more serious issues with
Speaker 1: the way Older presents his research. Namely, he suffers from
Speaker 1: the same problem most people do when they zero in
Speaker 1: on a very specific aspect of the Nazi regime. He's
Speaker 1: gotten so into the weeds on this topic that he
Speaker 1: lends it weight that's sometimes disproportionate to its actual and
Speaker 1: the same thing happens to people studying like the occult
Speaker 1: and nazis right because there is like a really fascinating
Speaker 1: history of like esoteric Hitlerism, of like of occult Nazism,
Speaker 1: but it also wasn't nearly as influential as the people
Speaker 1: who write books about it put it on as an
Speaker 1: in fact, by one it was pretty much out of
Speaker 1: of of any kind of influence in the party. But
Speaker 1: you know, if that's your thing, you're going to seek
Speaker 1: to kind of hell boy things up a little, you know.
Speaker 1: So this is like a long winded way of saying
Speaker 1: it's debatable. No, it's it's a long way of trying
Speaker 1: to like give caveats about like what are not saying
Speaker 1: it's a bad book, but saying it's a good book
Speaker 1: that I think, because he's so fo focused on the drugs,
Speaker 1: tends to ignore other reasons for some of the behavior
Speaker 1: that are not drugs. I wonder if it's dangerous. This
Speaker 1: is me speaking without reading the book. I think it
Speaker 1: may be dangerous to blame anything on drug use. I
Speaker 1: don't think that's That is the chief criticism the historians
Speaker 1: that dislike him make, And he's actually pretty careful. He's
Speaker 1: careful in his book to say, like I am not
Speaker 1: saying Hitler's horrible crimes are the result because one of
Speaker 1: the things he does, he points out, as we'll go
Speaker 1: into most of the hardcore drugging use from Hitler started
Speaker 1: in the forties, you know, when he had already set
Speaker 1: everything in motion that he was going to set in
Speaker 1: were already pretty yeah, was going down. Yeah. But he's
Speaker 1: saying like, it's it's worth noting if a guy is
Speaker 1: funked up on myth and cocaine and opium all of
Speaker 1: the time, and he's a warlord, it's worth wondering, like,
Speaker 1: how does that impact his decision making process? Which I
Speaker 1: think is a fair question, right, Like, obviously there is
Speaker 1: a danger when you do that, but it's also I
Speaker 1: don't think that means you shouldn't look at like, well,
Speaker 1: what was this doctor shooting into the veins of this
Speaker 1: man making these incredibly influential decisions. Is the same way
Speaker 1: that like, it's worth looking at how the methamphetamine JFK
Speaker 1: took impacted his decision making during the Cuban missile crisis
Speaker 1: and ship right, like it is a problem or Trump
Speaker 1: and aneral It's it's certainly not like I don't wanna.
Speaker 1: I agree that's a worry, But I also don't think
Speaker 1: we should be like, well, let's not talk about this
Speaker 1: just because some people talking all you know, I guess
Speaker 1: I I am implying more that leaning into it too hard,
Speaker 1: giving it too much weight. I can see it um
Speaker 1: distracting from a serious threat that was definitely worsened by drugs.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's interesting, um, Vietnam. Towards the end of Vietnam,
Speaker 1: all the soldiers, American soldiers were getting really messed up
Speaker 1: on all the kinds of pills that were just very
Speaker 1: prevalent in the sixties and seventies, like coaludes, black beauties, speed,
Speaker 1: anything to keep them up. And it increased a lot
Speaker 1: of paranoia, especially when there's an enemy that you know,
Speaker 1: quote unquote enemy Via Kong who um aren't in uniforms.
Speaker 1: Your paranoia can increase, it can make you more violent. Um.
Speaker 1: With or without these drugs. The Vietnam War is still
Speaker 1: inherently a crime against humanity. But drugs don't help, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and help. And that's there's a question too with the
Speaker 1: Nazis right where you don't want to like a lot
Speaker 1: of these these these r mock soldiers were going days
Speaker 1: without sleeping and taking ship into that amphetamine, and some
Speaker 1: of them committed horrible atrocities. You don't want to like
Speaker 1: the atrocities. Number One, we're often ordered by people who
Speaker 1: were certainly not drugged out of their minds, and we're
Speaker 1: planned pretty extensively ahead of time. That said, the fact
Speaker 1: that a lot of these guys are meth and like
Speaker 1: flipping out and burning down villages, Um, some of that's
Speaker 1: probably due to the fact that they're they're fucked up
Speaker 1: on meth amphetamine, right, Like not necessarily like the the
Speaker 1: concerted genocide actions where they're shooting forty people in a day,
Speaker 1: but like, oh yeah, they get shot at by a
Speaker 1: partisan and they burned down a village, And maybe that's
Speaker 1: some guys who are tweaked out on speed over react
Speaker 1: like flipping out in the same way that like, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe it had an impact. Um, I think you can
Speaker 1: say that. I think you can want to know. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: you have millions of men going days without sleeping, heavily
Speaker 1: armed and taking math amphetamine. I bet that has an
Speaker 1: influence on their behavior. Without saying the Nazis killed millions
Speaker 1: of Russian civilians because they were on meth which is
Speaker 1: not the case. They killed millions of Russian civilians because
Speaker 1: the war from the beginning was a genocidal crusade. UM.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't want to like I don't
Speaker 1: want to like veer away from what is an interesting
Speaker 1: question just because people can, Um, people can simplify it
Speaker 1: to the extent that it gets sucked up, you know,
Speaker 1: because I I do think this is a fascinating question. Um,
Speaker 1: We're gonna be talking a lot about Ohler's findings here
Speaker 1: because I do agree with Ian Kershaw who described it
Speaker 1: as a serious piece of scholarship. He goes into he's
Speaker 1: not just real like cutting up other bits of reporting.
Speaker 1: He looks at a lot of original primary sources. He's
Speaker 1: combing through in a way I don't think anyone else
Speaker 1: ever did. Dr Theodore Morrell's Hitler's primary Physicians notes in
Speaker 1: in exhaustive detail researching the medicines He's getting. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of very important scholarship, I think in his findings.
Speaker 1: But I also will be laying out some areas where
Speaker 1: Owler's conclusions do not jell with the actual evidence, and
Speaker 1: there are some points there. So let's start by talking
Speaker 1: about drug culture in Weimar, Germany as a refresher. The
Speaker 1: Vimar government was a progressive democracy that followed after the
Speaker 1: Kaiser's monarchy went away and was eventually eaten up by Hitler.
Speaker 1: For like the fifteen or so years it existed, Weimar
Speaker 1: was a dizzying lye progressive government for its time. Berlin
Speaker 1: became a magnet for the LGBT community, and the side
Speaker 1: of the first very first series is research on healthcare
Speaker 1: for trans people. Art and music flourished, and as you'd
Speaker 1: expect from a city full of bohemian artists and musician,
Speaker 1: people were getting fucked up all the time, like I
Speaker 1: mean just just really yeah, exactly, like real creative drug use. Um,
Speaker 1: because like Berlin is Berlin is you know what what
Speaker 1: what places like New you know, chunks of New York
Speaker 1: and chunks of California became in the sixties and seventies.
Speaker 1: Berlin is that in the fucking twenties, you know. UM
Speaker 1: and this put photographs you can find of Berlin in
Speaker 1: the twenties where people are in drag. It's very casual.
Speaker 1: It's actually completely there's a flamboyant, like fun Roaring twenties quality. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's um, it's it's it's a fascinating time to study. Um.
Speaker 1: And and this put you know. One of the things
Speaker 1: that I think is critique about older is he when
Speaker 1: he's talking about drug use in Germany, he focuses heavily
Speaker 1: on Berlin and the Berlin Hella drug use, but also
Speaker 1: Berlin's drug uses in direct contrast to what's going on
Speaker 1: in the rest of Germany. Not only was most of
Speaker 1: Germany much more socially conservative think about like Portland, Oregon
Speaker 1: versus as surrounding areas right, but the use of recreational
Speaker 1: drugs like cocaine was markedly uncommon in Germany and not
Speaker 1: even particularly common in Berlin. As we'll talk about, it's
Speaker 1: worth noting that at this time most Germans across the
Speaker 1: country would not have considered tobacco or alcohol drugs, So
Speaker 1: when we're talking about drug use, those are not drugs
Speaker 1: to Germans in the twenties, that's like milk to them.
Speaker 1: Both were so ubiquitous that they were considered to be
Speaker 1: a part of a person's diet, and interestingly enough, both
Speaker 1: Communists and Nazi leaders in Europe at this time hated tobacco.
Speaker 1: Lenin was famously anti cigarette, um so was Hitler. Obviously,
Speaker 1: Lennon's anti cigarettes ship didn't last once stock Castalla loved
Speaker 1: him some some smoking, and Hitler hated cigarettes, but there
Speaker 1: was never really any sort of They both like he
Speaker 1: had to kind of accept like, well, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to get Germans to stop smoking, Like that's not gonna happen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were, they were, they were, he was he definitely
Speaker 1: kind of straight edge. Yeah. Um. And you know, uh,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about this more later. But for the most
Speaker 1: part throughout the twenties, Nazis and Communists smoke and smoked
Speaker 1: and drank about as much as everybody else. So again,
Speaker 1: while there's Nazi and Communist leaders who are being like, no,
Speaker 1: you need to struggle towards revolution and be sober for that,
Speaker 1: most Communists, most Nazis are getting drunk and chain smoking
Speaker 1: like anybody else. Um. And so when we talk about
Speaker 1: drugs in Germany, what I mean by drugs is hard
Speaker 1: stimulants like cocaine and methamphetamine, as well as opiates. Germany
Speaker 1: was actually the world leader in drug manufacturing at this
Speaker 1: Morphine beer exactly. Morphine had first been isolated by a
Speaker 1: German chemist in the early eighteen hundreds. It was rediscovered, patented,
Speaker 1: and mass produced by Bayer in eight By the end
Speaker 1: of World War One, morphine was the number one product
Speaker 1: of the entire German pharmaceutical industry. They were shipping this
Speaker 1: stuff out everywhere because it's the most addictive thing in
Speaker 1: the world. The company that owned that first manufacturing plant
Speaker 1: in Germany was the Sacklers, later responsible for the opioid
Speaker 1: epidemic we're currently facing the States. Good people, Yeah, we've
Speaker 1: talked about. Yeah, there's some other Bear products made during
Speaker 1: the Nazi regime that we could talk about too, like heroin. Yeah,
Speaker 1: heroin they advertise as lighter than morphine. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: and a lot of this ship is OTC in Germany
Speaker 1: at the time, right, Um, and Bear is the first
Speaker 1: to produce and sell heroin, And actually heroin stays over
Speaker 1: the counter in Germany until like the nineteen fifties. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm god to live in those times, to just be
Speaker 1: able to walk down to the corner store and get
Speaker 1: a big fat baggele horse smoke it. And I don't know,
Speaker 1: it doesn't really matter what the movies. Yeah, it doesn't
Speaker 1: really matter what you're doing when you're smoking heroin. So
Speaker 1: now by a lot of like this point, heroin has
Speaker 1: become like illegal in the US and a lot of Asia,
Speaker 1: at least if you're taking it, like you can't just
Speaker 1: go and get it over the counter, right, Maybe it's
Speaker 1: more prescribed than it is than it was now that
Speaker 1: it was not like you couldn't just walk in and
Speaker 1: buy it as a person, but you can in Germany,
Speaker 1: and so Germany, since everything is kind of legal, there
Speaker 1: becomes the nexus for an international gray and black market
Speaker 1: drug trade in heroin, and these German Swiss companies will
Speaker 1: kind of use Germany as a base and will They're
Speaker 1: not directly selling it illegally underground in countries, but they're
Speaker 1: putting it in position to be sold that way and
Speaker 1: they're profiting from it. I'm gonna quote from a write
Speaker 1: up by a scholar named Jonathan Levy here. Both morphine
Speaker 1: and heroin were consumed in Germany during the Weimar years
Speaker 1: and the Third Reich. The morphine was far more popular
Speaker 1: than it's more potent cousin, perhaps explaining Merk's decision to
Speaker 1: cease its uh diacetyl morphine program. The number of addicts
Speaker 1: in Germany is difficult to ascertain. Like many drug statistics,
Speaker 1: the reported numbers of addicts are mere gu estimates rather
Speaker 1: than reliable figures, mainly because it is next to impossible
Speaker 1: to differentiate between addicts and users. Now, the best evidence
Speaker 1: seems to suggest that The rate of opiate addiction in
Speaker 1: Germany increased from the start of the war years, and
Speaker 1: by that I mean World War One until about nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty two, which is probably caused by the same thing
Speaker 1: that drives a lot of opiate use in the US today,
Speaker 1: which is wounded soldiers getting hooked on it, right, getting
Speaker 1: prescribed as much of it as they want having, you know,
Speaker 1: developing a problem, but by much of them in the
Speaker 1: Civil War too, Yeah, yeah, every time, every time a
Speaker 1: lot of men get wounded. Yeah, soldiers got hooked on.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's funny you say guestimate because I'm just
Speaker 1: reading that sock rebook. Everyone is waiting, and they said,
Speaker 1: they said the estimate was a quarter of a million
Speaker 1: soldiers in the United States hooked on morphine, and that
Speaker 1: even Theodore Roosevelt basically created a position for someone to
Speaker 1: fight this quote unquote epidemic. Yeah, I mean that that
Speaker 1: that completely completely makes sense, especially and it is like
Speaker 1: as available as it was when you just bumped down
Speaker 1: to the street and buy it. Why wouldn't you take
Speaker 1: up on Jay irwin Um. Now by nineteen thirty one, though,
Speaker 1: the rate of addictions seems to have like fallen in Germany. Obviously,
Speaker 1: none of our data is perfect, but it may have
Speaker 1: just been a matter of like enough time had passed
Speaker 1: since the war, people had recovered enough, some of them
Speaker 1: had probably died. UM. One leader in the Reich Health
Speaker 1: Office at that point estimated that just point there were
Speaker 1: just point three male addicts per ten thousand people in Germany,
Speaker 1: which is probably nonsense. But he also noted that one
Speaker 1: in a hundred doctors were addicts UM and this is
Speaker 1: probably a much more accurate number. Include in part because
Speaker 1: like a lot of these guys have been prosecuted for this,
Speaker 1: and in part because today we know that doctors are
Speaker 1: at a heavily, massively elevated risk of particularly opiate addiction,
Speaker 1: right something with nurses? Yeah, yeah, doctors, pharmacists and nurses.
Speaker 1: You know, I've talked to I've talked to a nurse
Speaker 1: with a drug addiction who was like pinching you know,
Speaker 1: opiates and ship for for quite a long while. And
Speaker 1: it's some like it's it's it's hard to avoid, especially
Speaker 1: given like the trauma that you encounter as a healthcare worker.
Speaker 1: Why wouldn't you want to be high on fucking oxy
Speaker 1: all the time? I get it, it's not good behavior
Speaker 1: if people's lives are in your hand. But it's I
Speaker 1: I can empathize with the need to dull that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially since I don't know none of us are. We've
Speaker 1: all decided not to not to do the pandemic mitigation
Speaker 1: thing anymore. So I don't know. We got more taxes
Speaker 1: than Jeff Bezos Arizona. Yeah, so yeah, take some oxy.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna I'm not gonna yell at your um
Speaker 1: now do Yeah. Cocaine was also a drug with a
Speaker 1: German origin. It was synthesized first from coca leaves by
Speaker 1: German chemists and popularized by a Veny psychiatrist named Dr
Speaker 1: Sigmund Freud and a Vienny's eye doctor named Carl Kohler.
Speaker 1: Freud prescribed cocaine as part of his talk therapy sessions,
Speaker 1: and Dr Cohler just poured it right into people's eyes
Speaker 1: as a local anesthetic, which is man, imagine going to
Speaker 1: the eye doctor and I'm gonna pour some cocaine in
Speaker 1: your eyes. Came them open. This ship is strong as ass.
Speaker 1: My therapist Kathy shout out if before I was about
Speaker 1: to talk to her about um stalking people on social
Speaker 1: media and how it's affecting my mental health. She poured
Speaker 1: some cocaine into my eyes. I can't say how that
Speaker 1: would affect our sessions. I think they'd be rather. I
Speaker 1: think they'd be they'd go by really quickly. They would
Speaker 1: go by very quickly. Yeah, and I would need a
Speaker 1: gallon of water to help my dry mouth. Look, as
Speaker 1: far as I am aware, cocaine is a drug without downsides,
Speaker 1: So I don't see why people shouldn't shouldn't take a
Speaker 1: shipload of it. It's good for your part, good for you.
Speaker 1: I've heard it has the ability to reduce u nasal problems,
Speaker 1: cleans you out real for the next two days. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for legal res no continue. You know what it is.
Speaker 1: Time for an ad break and Behind the Bastards is
Speaker 1: sponsored by the global cocaine industry. Behind the Bastards if
Speaker 1: you like podcasts, you'll love cocaine. We're back and we're
Speaker 1: celebrating the cocaine industry, an industry with no problems, sore
Speaker 1: pr Yeah, carry one side of the story exactly. People
Speaker 1: talk a lot about all the deaths, all the murders,
Speaker 1: all the violence, violence, all the death squads funded by
Speaker 1: cocaine exports. People never talk about the humble movie producers
Speaker 1: railing cocaine off of the back of each other's iPhones
Speaker 1: in the bathroom of a club. Yeah, Martin ever heard
Speaker 1: of write another for and he never did anything problematic cocaine,
Speaker 1: thank you. So now we were just talking about how
Speaker 1: Dr Sigmund Freud and Dr Cohler Carl Koehler Um were
Speaker 1: heavily responsible with popularizing cocaine in Germany. And both guys
Speaker 1: are Jewish. This is relevant because cocaine takes off as
Speaker 1: the Nazis are rising to and then getting into power. Um.
Speaker 1: And so the Nazis condemn cocaine as a Jewish drug
Speaker 1: corrupting pure Arean bodies, right um. They are not fans
Speaker 1: of cocaine. And and this is why they can't really
Speaker 1: come after opiates, right um. And they don't they have
Speaker 1: these kind of they they kind of approached as a
Speaker 1: public health problem. But they can't condemn opiate users because
Speaker 1: most of a lot of opiate users are soldiers. And
Speaker 1: there's this you have to like worship veterans in this
Speaker 1: period of time, especially if you're the Nazis. But cocaine,
Speaker 1: that's the drug that you know, the artists and and
Speaker 1: and the queer people and the and the fucking psychiatrists
Speaker 1: are doing you can you can demonize cocaine, you know um,
Speaker 1: and they do so. Berlin decadence was a major topic
Speaker 1: of complaint for the Nazis, and the city was a
Speaker 1: hive of all things rad There were illegal, illegal dance
Speaker 1: parties not similar to raves. There were infamous clubs like
Speaker 1: the Bowhouse Ressi, which was kind of like the Studio
Speaker 1: fifty four of its time is a place people would
Speaker 1: meet and fucking do lots of cocaine. Since prostitution and
Speaker 1: drug use was more or less legal in Berlin, tourists
Speaker 1: from the United States would often travel there to fucking
Speaker 1: snort themselves silly in blitzed older sites. The lyrics of
Speaker 1: a contemporary song to set the mood of the time.
Speaker 1: And I don't know what the tune of this song was,
Speaker 1: but it's a good song. Once, not so very long ago,
Speaker 1: sweet alcohol, that beast brought warmth and sweetness to our lives.
Speaker 1: But then the price increased, and so cocaine and morphine.
Speaker 1: Berliners now select. Let lightning flashes rage outside, we snort
Speaker 1: and we inject. At dinner in the restaurant, the waiter
Speaker 1: brings the tin of coke for us to feast upon.
Speaker 1: Forget whiskey and gin let drowsy morphine take its subcutaneous
Speaker 1: effect upon our nervous system. We snort and we inject.
Speaker 1: These medications aren't allowed, of course, they're quite forbidden, but
Speaker 1: even such a listid treats are very seldom hidden. Euphoria
Speaker 1: awaits us, and though as we suspect our foes can't
Speaker 1: wait to shoot us down, we snort and we inject.
Speaker 1: And if we snort ourselves to death or into the asylum,
Speaker 1: our days are going downhill fast. How better to beguile them.
Speaker 1: Europe's a madhouse anyway, No need for ginia flecting. The
Speaker 1: only way to paradise is snorting and injecting very fun.
Speaker 1: And the way you read it and made it sound
Speaker 1: like you're reading a children's book, Yeah, it would be
Speaker 1: a good children's book. And it makes sense. This is
Speaker 1: happening as the first kind of anti drug laws are
Speaker 1: being pushed through and again they're not they're not nearly
Speaker 1: as strict as anything we we live with today in
Speaker 1: the United States, but they're the first, and the Nazis
Speaker 1: are you know, they're complaining about drug use. But they're
Speaker 1: also complaining about degeneracy, about artists, about about people who
Speaker 1: are are queer, and there those people the like kind
Speaker 1: of artistic intellectually can see what's coming, and they also
Speaker 1: can't stop it because they didn't um. And that's what
Speaker 1: the song is about, is like, well, we're about to
Speaker 1: it all murdered by the Nazis. Might as well take
Speaker 1: some heroin, right, Yeah, it's sending a little Yeah, the
Speaker 1: prices increasing, it's not cutting it anymore. Yeah, time to
Speaker 1: get yeah fucked up until the Nazis take total power. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Hard to blot out what's happening. Yeah, yeah. Now, I
Speaker 1: will say, somewhat ironically, Ohler's fullness of focus on Berlin
Speaker 1: drug culture, the fact that he zero was in on
Speaker 1: that so much, kind of focusing less on the rest
Speaker 1: of Germany, seems to have been heavily influenced by Nazi
Speaker 1: propaganda in a way that I think does make his
Speaker 1: overall work a little less accurate. He writes, quote anyone
Speaker 1: who could afford it to cocaine the ultimate weapon for
Speaker 1: intensifying the moment. Coke spread like wildfire and symbolize the
Speaker 1: extravagance of the age on the other hand, it was
Speaker 1: viewed as a degenerate poison and disapproved of by both
Speaker 1: communists and Nazis were fighting for power. In the streets,
Speaker 1: there was violent opposition to the free and easy Zitgeist.
Speaker 1: German nationalists railed against moral decay, and similar attacks were
Speaker 1: heard from the conservatives. Though Berlin's new status as a
Speaker 1: cultural metropolis was accepted with pride, the bourgeoisie, which was
Speaker 1: losing status in the nineteen twenties, showed its in security
Speaker 1: through its radical condemnation of mass pleasure culture, to cry
Speaker 1: it as decadently western. Now, his job does a fine
Speaker 1: His work here is a fine job of getting across
Speaker 1: the way popular a German opinion, kind of at least
Speaker 1: right wing opinions saw Berlin and the decadence of its
Speaker 1: artistic set. But it's also not historically accurate in absolute terms.
Speaker 1: And to make that point, I want to quote from
Speaker 1: a paper called the Drug Policy of the Third Reich
Speaker 1: from the journal Social History of Alcohol. A drugs criminal
Speaker 1: Commissar Ernst Angelbrecht of Berlin claimed in nineteen twenty four
Speaker 1: that cocaine became most popular amongst female and male homosexuals.
Speaker 1: To him, cocaine was not a problem. It had turned
Speaker 1: to do an epidemic. Yet, according to contemporary estimates, the
Speaker 1: city of Karl's rue Ragn reign supreme as the center
Speaker 1: for cocaine consumption, with one point four or four grams
Speaker 1: per thousand people, while Berlin remained second with a consumption
Speaker 1: rate of one gram per thousand people, which is not
Speaker 1: particularly high. Nineteen two marked the first German Anti So yeah,
Speaker 1: he's is again there is cocaine. There is this kind
Speaker 1: of very popular party sect and the Nazis make a lot,
Speaker 1: a lot of haye of it. But in absolute terms,
Speaker 1: Berlin isn't consuming a particularly large amount of cocaine. And again,
Speaker 1: I think this is an area where the fact that
Speaker 1: the Nazis harped on it so much has older focusing
Speaker 1: on kind of the decadence of Berlin in a way
Speaker 1: that that is kind of falling for their trap, because
Speaker 1: it was not. Berlin itself was not nearly as decadent
Speaker 1: or drug adduled as the propagandamate it seen. Based on
Speaker 1: the numbers that we actually have, um but don't be
Speaker 1: a problem. Was it sounds like, well, it peaked around
Speaker 1: I think um three um it starts to decline to
Speaker 1: this like, that's kind of the whole point is that Germany,
Speaker 1: especially compared to the United States, does not have a
Speaker 1: particularly big drug problem or drug culture. It's again very
Speaker 1: prominent because a lot of famous people are involved in
Speaker 1: like the set in Berlin that is doing a lot
Speaker 1: of this, but that is that's kind of like a
Speaker 1: subculture in Berlin. It's not the city and it's not
Speaker 1: my mainstream in Germany. Um. And the fact that the
Speaker 1: Nazis kind of blow it up into being Berlin is
Speaker 1: the sin the hum of It's kind of like what
Speaker 1: happens with like Portland, where like the city of Portland's
Speaker 1: being burnt down every week because the right wing sees
Speaker 1: a kid break a Starbucks window. Um, that's kind of
Speaker 1: that's well, no, I was, I didn't break I didn't
Speaker 1: see ship. But that that's kind of how That's kind
Speaker 1: of how drug use in Berlin gets painted and and
Speaker 1: a lot of people still see it in history just
Speaker 1: because the Nazis made so much hay over the decadence
Speaker 1: of the city, when the reality is the vast majority
Speaker 1: of people in Berlin, Um, if they ever did indulge,
Speaker 1: weren't doing it all that much. Um. It's buzzwords like
Speaker 1: yeah now. Nineteen twenty four marked the first major German
Speaker 1: anti drug law, which banned the sale of powder cocaine
Speaker 1: from pharmacies. So didn't make it. You could still get
Speaker 1: cocaine pretty much legally, you just couldn't buy powdered coke
Speaker 1: from the pharmacy. Um and cocaine consumption is estimated to
Speaker 1: have peaked in nineteen seven and fallen afterwards, So this
Speaker 1: is definitely an area where Older engages in some counterfactual
Speaker 1: prose to the sake of making his book more interesting. Um.
Speaker 1: But that said, his writing does give a decent idea
Speaker 1: of how the Nazis expressed their rhetoric around drugs. Quote.
Speaker 1: Jews and drugs merged into a single toxic or epidemiological
Speaker 1: unit that menaced Germany for decades. Are people have been
Speaker 1: told by Marxists and Jews, your body belongs to you.
Speaker 1: That was taken to mean that at social occasions between
Speaker 1: men or between men and women, any quantities of alcohol
Speaker 1: could be enjoyed, even at the cost of the body's health.
Speaker 1: Irreconcilable with this Jewish Marxist view is the Teutonic German
Speaker 1: idea that we are the bearers of the eternal legacy
Speaker 1: of our ancestors, and that accordingly our body belongs to
Speaker 1: the clan and the people as as helpstone Fear Criminal
Speaker 1: Commissar Orwen Cosmel, who was from ninety one director of
Speaker 1: the Reich Central Office for Combating Drug Transit Aggressions, asserted
Speaker 1: that Jews play a supreme part in the international drug trade.
Speaker 1: His work was concerned with eliminating international criminal who often
Speaker 1: have roots and jewelry. The Nazi Party's Office of Racial
Speaker 1: Policy claimed that the Jewish character was essentially drug dependent.
Speaker 1: The intellectual urban Jew preferred cocaine or morphine to call
Speaker 1: him his constantly excited nerves and give himself a feeling
Speaker 1: of peace and inner security. Jewish doctors were rumored to
Speaker 1: be often extraordinarily addicted to morphine. But he rather cooler,
Speaker 1: rather conveniently ignores the fact that you know, again, in
Speaker 1: focusing on this and those are all things the Nazis said,
Speaker 1: they definitely again harped on Jewish drug use and like this,
Speaker 1: the scourge of drug addiction and how it's Jewish, you know,
Speaker 1: has Jewish origins. But immediately before the Nazi seizure of power,
Speaker 1: the Reich Health Minister what wrote quote, to the knowledge
Speaker 1: of the Reich Health Office, there is no illicit drug
Speaker 1: trade in Berlin in a considerable amount, as opposed a
Speaker 1: danger to the public. The circumstances in this respect have
Speaker 1: changed completely in recent years. And this is nineteen thirty one.
Speaker 1: So after seven drug use kind of all kinds declines rapidly,
Speaker 1: and so by the point the Nazis are in power,
Speaker 1: um there's really not much of a drug problem and
Speaker 1: as a result, there's really not much of a drug crackdown.
Speaker 1: And this is Ohler's main sin. In his book, as
Speaker 1: I see it, he wants to draw a direct line
Speaker 1: between the modern war on drugs and the Nazi war
Speaker 1: on drugs, and so he notes that when the Central
Speaker 1: while the Central Drug Law and the Third Reich was
Speaker 1: a holdover from Fimar Germany, there were new drug regulations
Speaker 1: put in place when the Nazis took power to further
Speaker 1: Nazi ideas of racial hygiene. He claims that drug consulsumption
Speaker 1: was heavily penalized starting in nineteen thirty three with prison time,
Speaker 1: and appears to be making the claim the drug users
Speaker 1: and Nazi Germany were penalized and thrown into concentration camps
Speaker 1: like other political prisoners and racial minorities. This is something
Speaker 1: actual scholars who studied drug policy, and they disagree. While
Speaker 1: you can find most of it was not and even
Speaker 1: so we'll talk about it like consumption wasn't really criminalized,
Speaker 1: and there was at no point where drug users gone
Speaker 1: after and put in concentration camps in an organized way.
Speaker 1: And I want to quote from that that paper by
Speaker 1: Jonathan Levy again, quote drug use was never a cry
Speaker 1: I'm in Germany. Thus habitual drug users or drug addicts
Speaker 1: were not criminals. Therefore they were not considered habitual criminals
Speaker 1: and could not be sent to a concentration camp. So
Speaker 1: this is again if we're if when in terms of
Speaker 1: critiquing Older, and this is a big chunk of the
Speaker 1: early part of his book, and it is, you know,
Speaker 1: there's two parts of this book. There's the part of
Speaker 1: it where he's doing original research into Hitler's drug use
Speaker 1: and Hitler's doctor, and there's a part of it where
Speaker 1: he's kind of synthesizing a bunch of other historic reports
Speaker 1: on the Nazis and drugs. And it's that part that,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, he screws up the most. Um, So yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's anyway. That's a little bit of a
Speaker 1: rant on on this book, but I think it's important
Speaker 1: to kind of get this this sort of stuff right.
Speaker 1: Um and when you are important to get this stuff right? Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: And and Levy is is clear that he cannot find
Speaker 1: And Levy's a guy who studies specifically Third Reich policies
Speaker 1: on like drug policies. His conclusion is that there's no
Speaker 1: evidence that again, in the Nazis talked a lot about
Speaker 1: about racial hygiene, about how drug use, you know, was
Speaker 1: it was a racial problem, But there's no evidence, according
Speaker 1: to Levy, that that the Nazi drug policy was impacted
Speaker 1: by their ideas on racial hygiene. So politicians and like
Speaker 1: people were saying one thing, but in terms of like
Speaker 1: what the actual legal changes worth, there's just not evidence
Speaker 1: of that. Um. And I have to thank Levy knows
Speaker 1: who shipped on this better than Owler does. So making
Speaker 1: drug consumption of crime was really our thing. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: we we do the hell out of that. I mean
Speaker 1: the Germans do now. But um yeah, and part again,
Speaker 1: part of why the Nazis really didn't want to go
Speaker 1: after drug users is because a lot of them were veterans.
Speaker 1: Herman Garring was a drug addicted veteran in the Trench
Speaker 1: generation were idolized, They were nearly worshiped by the Nazis.
Speaker 1: If you've focused on junkies and demonizing them like that
Speaker 1: would have been bad politics. It's also worth noting that
Speaker 1: the German penal code, established during the Kaiser's Reich was
Speaker 1: actually we would consider it wildly progressive on issues of
Speaker 1: drug addiction compared to the United States. And I'm gonna
Speaker 1: quote from Levy here. Addicts were not responsible for their
Speaker 1: actions while under the influence of drugs and should receive
Speaker 1: treatment instead of a jail sentence. Judges often agreed with
Speaker 1: this position, but we're unable to force treatment, and we're
Speaker 1: known to set free criminals unfit to stand trial. The
Speaker 1: protection of drunken and intoxicated criminals existed in the German
Speaker 1: Peedle code since its inception, And obviously that's not a
Speaker 1: perfect way to do things either, being like, well, you
Speaker 1: you raped it somebody, you beat the ship out of somebody,
Speaker 1: but you were drugs. Get out of here. They found
Speaker 1: a bag of uh, you know, high sativa. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: it is there is There is also an element of
Speaker 1: that that's good, which is that like, well yeah it,
Speaker 1: drug addictions should be treated as a health problem rather
Speaker 1: than criminal problem. Um yeah yeah, progressing stating of that
Speaker 1: smoked enough crack to move the US forward on drug policy.
Speaker 1: Really doing your country service, and I mean that actually
Speaker 1: sincerely you know who else is doing our country service?
Speaker 1: Carolina Brand Brand, the sin Aaloa cartel producers until this
Speaker 1: exact episode. No, No, we're we are peers seeing ala
Speaker 1: these days. So curl up with a big fat bag
Speaker 1: a cocaine and listen to a podcast while sweating heavily.
Speaker 1: Make up pipe out of your mother's base, make a
Speaker 1: pipe out of anything. A BP baby, always be piping.
Speaker 1: It's my motto. We're back, Uh boy, so drugs? Um yeah.
Speaker 1: So far I've mostly criticized Blitzed, and it doesn't deserve
Speaker 1: some criticism. But now we're about to get into what
Speaker 1: I think the book does very well, which is provide
Speaker 1: the first really thorough history of a fascinating figure, one
Speaker 1: of the few high up Nazis to be most lely
Speaker 1: ignored by historians, Dr Theodore Morrell. In nine, psychiatrist Fritz
Speaker 1: Redlick published a book titled Hitler diagnosis of a destructive profit.
Speaker 1: It was an attempt to actually answer the to actually
Speaker 1: answer the question, what the funk was going on with
Speaker 1: that dude? With this in like a medical way, with
Speaker 1: as much scientific rigor, Yeah, what was going on with
Speaker 1: that guy? In as much of like a scientific way
Speaker 1: as you could for a patient who's been dead for decades.
Speaker 1: He used written in oral statements by Hitler and his
Speaker 1: close associates to try and put together a picture of
Speaker 1: the fewer's health. Red Look's book relied heavily upon Dr
Speaker 1: Theodore Morrell Morrell's records, and I'm gonna quote from the
Speaker 1: Psychiatric Times here. Before the outbreak of war in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty nine, Hitler's complaints included insomnia, eczema, and g I discomfort.
Speaker 1: His health is known to have declined considerably starting in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty one. Red Li excited a host of ailments,
Speaker 1: including tonitis, severe headaches, dizziness, impaired vision, abdominal spasms, impairments
Speaker 1: and motility, and during the final year of the war, jaundice, laryngitis,
Speaker 1: running knows more abouts, g I spasms, trimmor of his hands,
Speaker 1: and conspicuous difficulties in locomotion evidence of Parkinson's disease. In
Speaker 1: ninety five, his GI symptoms and Trimmer's worsen't, eventually leaving
Speaker 1: him unable to move around completely on his own. In
Speaker 1: treating these symptoms over the years, Morrell prescribed for Hitler
Speaker 1: a cocktail of medications that included opiates, morphine, oxycodone, barbiturous cocaine, amphetamines,
Speaker 1: and bromides. In the end, red Lick drew a conclusion
Speaker 1: that has been repeatedly repeated frequently ever since. Hitler abused amphetamines,
Speaker 1: particularly between nineteen thirty nine and nineteen forty three, and
Speaker 1: was temporarily impaired by such abuse, and this was probably
Speaker 1: the most hitler A diagnosis, probably the most popular and
Speaker 1: thorough look at Morele and Hitler's drug use prior to
Speaker 1: Owler's work, and like Owler's work, red Lick's book was
Speaker 1: heavily criticized. Experts noted that many of his sources were
Speaker 1: unreliable because again, a lot of this is based on
Speaker 1: personal recollections of Nazis who survived the war, who are
Speaker 1: fundamentally untrustworthy people, um and yeah. And even more than that,
Speaker 1: they criticized red Lick for the fact that his emphasis
Speaker 1: on the fears drug abuse came close to excusing Hitler's
Speaker 1: crimes um, which you obviously never want to do. And
Speaker 1: the same criticism is made of Blitz. We'll see how
Speaker 1: we feel about that at the end of this but
Speaker 1: right now I think it's time to get into the
Speaker 1: meat of Hler's work, which is his portrait of Dr
Speaker 1: Morrell and the relationship Hitler had with his primary physician.
Speaker 1: Here's how Older introduces morrel quote. The word Jew was
Speaker 1: smeared on the plaque of a doctor's surgery on bay
Speaker 1: Ruther Strasse in Berlin's Charlottenburg district one night in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty three. The name of the doctor, a specialist in
Speaker 1: dermatological and sexually transmitted diseases, was illegible. Only the opening
Speaker 1: hours could still be seen clearly weekdays eleven to one
Speaker 1: and five to seven apart from Saturday afternoon. The overweight,
Speaker 1: baldtor Theodore Morrell reacted to the attack in a way
Speaker 1: that was typical, That was as typical as it was wretched.
Speaker 1: He quickly joined the Nazi Party to diffuse further hostilities
Speaker 1: of that kind. Morel was not a Jew. The essay
Speaker 1: had wrongly suspected him of being one because of his
Speaker 1: dark complexion. After he had registered as a party member,
Speaker 1: Morrell's practice became even more successful. It expanded and moved
Speaker 1: into the lavish rooms of a nineteenth century building on
Speaker 1: the corner of First and dom and fasanen Strassa. Now,
Speaker 1: Morrel was not at all unique in joining the Nazi
Speaker 1: Party to avoid, you know, getting getting accused of being Jewish. Yeah,
Speaker 1: very common. He was one of and again not just
Speaker 1: for that reason. He was one of what hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousands of German professionals who are what you would call
Speaker 1: a political Nazis. If the Nazi Party had never come around,
Speaker 1: they probably never would have done anything bad. They would
Speaker 1: have done whatever their fucking job is, right, Um. But
Speaker 1: because being the best way to further their career or
Speaker 1: just make life easier was to join the Nazi Party,
Speaker 1: they joined the Nazi Party and thus played some role
Speaker 1: in the Holocaust. Um. And Yeah, so, as you might expect,
Speaker 1: Morrell was not a great doctor. Again, std s were
Speaker 1: kind of his primary area of expertise. But the thing
Speaker 1: that he really loved to focus us on was the
Speaker 1: very new field of vitamins. Now, in the early nineteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: we'd figured out that vitamins were things and that you
Speaker 1: would die without them, but we did not know a
Speaker 1: whole lot more than that. Right, vitamin is still a
Speaker 1: pretty new concept that there's like there's these things that
Speaker 1: if you don't get enough of them, you your body
Speaker 1: stops breaking. Yeah. Um, so there was an idea. And
Speaker 1: when we start to realize, like, oh shit, vitamin C
Speaker 1: or like you know, potassium, you can have you can
Speaker 1: feel immediate effects when you take some of this stuff
Speaker 1: like B twelve, right, and you can if you ever,
Speaker 1: if you especially if you're dealing with it, get efficiency,
Speaker 1: like it's it's fucking quick. Um. And so that that
Speaker 1: convinces a lot of people that, like, you can, you know,
Speaker 1: if some of these can have such an immediate effect
Speaker 1: on people who are vitamin efficient, maybe taking shiploads of
Speaker 1: vitamins will like make you superhuman, right, like just inject
Speaker 1: huge doses of them and you'll be you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's Joe roganesque stuff, right, like it's the it
Speaker 1: also reminds me of being and having to eat a
Speaker 1: bunch of this. Yeah, let's see what happened. Yeah, yeah exactly,
Speaker 1: And like eating a bunch of nutmeg. Taking shiploads of
Speaker 1: vitamins is a mixed bag and can make you poop
Speaker 1: a tremendous amount. Um, shout out to vitamin C. Shout
Speaker 1: out to vitamin C. So obviously, vitamin injections can be
Speaker 1: powerful menas and save people's lives in certain circumstances, right,
Speaker 1: incredible potential for malnourished people and people with certain disorders.
Speaker 1: And also like, there are certain vitamin shots like if
Speaker 1: you're hungover and ship you'll be like, oh fuck, I
Speaker 1: feel like I feel like a king right now, you know. Um, Now,
Speaker 1: the early nineteen hundreds was a time oh sorry, so um,
Speaker 1: there is like vitamin injections that's not like snake oil necessarily,
Speaker 1: that's not something that's even necessarily bad for you. But
Speaker 1: Morrell marketed his vitamin injections in a way that again
Speaker 1: wouldn't have seemed out of place on like a podcast
Speaker 1: add today. Um. He was, in short, a snake oil salesman,
Speaker 1: and he relied on the fact that vitamins were new
Speaker 1: and sexy to help him market the a performance enhancers.
Speaker 1: He had this thing called Vita Molton, which was he
Speaker 1: sold it in both like bar form and in a
Speaker 1: shot that was basically like this powerful vitamin injection that
Speaker 1: he eventually added like a whole bunch of other stuff too.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about it, um and again. You know, because
Speaker 1: vitamins don't have a huge impact on people who are
Speaker 1: already well nourished, Morrell it points would make the decision
Speaker 1: to mix real drugs and hormones into his vitamin shots
Speaker 1: because like, yeah, you want them to like feel something immediately, right,
Speaker 1: Put a little amphetamine in there, you know, a little
Speaker 1: bit of fucking put some fucking testosterone in there, you know. Um, Like,
Speaker 1: so he was he was doping people. It wasn't just vitamins.
Speaker 1: It was often like steroids. It was or or you know, amphetamines,
Speaker 1: and eventually like a shiploaded like everything. He could get
Speaker 1: a caffeine A lot of the time he would shoot
Speaker 1: caffeine in you know. It's kind of because again, if
Speaker 1: you're this guy, if someone's well nourished, just most vitamin shots,
Speaker 1: they're not kind of feel anything. So shoot a bunch
Speaker 1: of caffeine in there too. They'll feel that. They'll feel
Speaker 1: like something's going on, you know, like ship like i'm
Speaker 1: i'm i'm, I'm, I'm I'm powerful now. Um, it's a
Speaker 1: smart con move. It's a smart telling someone that you
Speaker 1: are giving them vitamins but really are giving them a
Speaker 1: cup of coffee. It probably does feel like something's working. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So for male patients, he often shot added in testosterone
Speaker 1: to act as an anabolic steroid. For female patients, he
Speaker 1: would include nightshade to help with energy and because he
Speaker 1: thought it made their eyes prettier. If that wasn't enough
Speaker 1: of a boost, he was not above using more powerful
Speaker 1: stimulants like methamphetamine. We'll talk about method more detail later,
Speaker 1: but the point is Morrel's only true talent as a
Speaker 1: position was marketing and the fact that he seems to
Speaker 1: have been really good at injecting people. There were folks
Speaker 1: who said you couldn't even feel him pricky with the needle.
Speaker 1: He was so good at what he did. Now today's
Speaker 1: fascists are so obsessed with traditionalism that it's often forgotten
Speaker 1: that the o g s were futurists. Fascism was obsessed
Speaker 1: with machinery, with cutting edge science, ultra modern medical science.
Speaker 1: Fascism was a modern thing. They loved cars, they loved
Speaker 1: machine gun, they loved planes. Eugenics at the time was
Speaker 1: considered hip and exciting science. Morrell adopted from the States. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the eugenics and stuff. Sure, I mean a decent amount
Speaker 1: of this was um and Morrell's vitamin shots fit in
Speaker 1: well with the vibe of the early Nazi years. By
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty six, he was one of the most prominent
Speaker 1: doctors in the Reich, and that's the year he got
Speaker 1: a phone call from Hitler's adjutant asking him to make
Speaker 1: a house call for Heinrich Hoffman, the Fewer's official photographer.
Speaker 1: Hoffman had contracted gonorrhea and not from his wife. Since
Speaker 1: he was a prominent Nazi, the regime wanted to treat
Speaker 1: him in a hush hush manner. Morrell knew a lot
Speaker 1: about STDs and was able to treat the photographer easily.
Speaker 1: The Nazis were so grateful that they gave him and
Speaker 1: his wife a fancy trip to Venice as a thank
Speaker 1: you for his discretion. Afterwards, he was invited to dine
Speaker 1: with the Hoffman's in Munich. Hitler showed up and the
Speaker 1: group ate all the Nazi leaders in the group all eight.
Speaker 1: The Nazi leader's favorite meal spaghetti with nutmeg tomato sauce,
Speaker 1: on the side and green salad from whitst quote, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Hitler's weird, weird eater. Hitler, who had heard a great
Speaker 1: many good things about the jovial Morrell, thanked him before
Speaker 1: dinner for treating his old comrade and regretted not having
Speaker 1: met the doctor before. Perhaps then his chauffeur, who had
Speaker 1: died of meningitis a few months earlier, would have still
Speaker 1: been alive. Morrell reacted nervously for the compliment and barely
Speaker 1: spoke during the spaghetti dinner. The constantly sweating doctor, with
Speaker 1: the full face and the thick round glasses on his
Speaker 1: potato nose, knew that in higher circles he was not
Speaker 1: considered socially acceptable. His only chance of acceptance lay in
Speaker 1: his injections, so he pricked up his ears. When Hitler,
Speaker 1: in the course of the evening, talked almost in passing
Speaker 1: about severe stomach and intestinal pains that had been tormenting
Speaker 1: him for years, Morrell hastily mentioned an unusual treatment that
Speaker 1: might prove successful. Hitler looked at him quizzically and invited
Speaker 1: Morrell and his wife to further consultations at the Berghoff,
Speaker 1: his mountain retreat in the Ober Saltzburg near Berkdscaden. There.
Speaker 1: A few days later, during a private conversation, the dictator
Speaker 1: frankly admitted to Morrell that his health was now so
Speaker 1: poor that he could barely perform any action. That was
Speaker 1: he claimed due to the bad treatment given to him
Speaker 1: by his previous doctors, who couldn't come up with anything
Speaker 1: but starving him. Then, if there happened to be an
Speaker 1: abundant dinner on the program, which was often the case,
Speaker 1: he immediately suffered from unspeakable bloating and itchy exima on
Speaker 1: both legs, so that he had to walk around with
Speaker 1: bandages around his feet and couldn't wear boots. Morrell immediately
Speaker 1: thought he recognized the cause of Hitler's complaints and diagnosed
Speaker 1: abnormal bacterial flora causing poor digestion. Now we don't know
Speaker 1: exactly what was wrong with Hitler at this point. Like
Speaker 1: medically in the mid odds, historian Hendrik A. Berl and
Speaker 1: physician Hans Joachim Neuman attempted to diagnose the fear's physical maladies.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna quote from the Psychiatric Times here. While
Speaker 1: the German Chancellor appears to have not suffered from any
Speaker 1: major acute illnesses. He was a victim of chronic diseases.
Speaker 1: Neuman and Eberil confirmed that Hitler's longstanding ailments were g
Speaker 1: I and nature. There are also signs and medical records
Speaker 1: of progressive coronary sclerosis and high blood pressure. Most prominently, however,
Speaker 1: Neuiman and A. Burrow confirmed the diagnosis of Parkinson's disease,
Speaker 1: which really started in the early So he's got eximant,
Speaker 1: he's got something on his GI gives him this, and
Speaker 1: this is his main complaint. He has this horrific, debilitating
Speaker 1: gas pain. His gas is so bad that like he
Speaker 1: can't he can't function a lot of the time when
Speaker 1: he eats. Some of this is probably exacerbated by his
Speaker 1: vegetarian diet. He probably had IBS as a result of
Speaker 1: his time in the trenches. You talk about people particularly
Speaker 1: who were over in like Iraq and Afghanistan earlier in
Speaker 1: those wars, before there was as much infrastructure on the U.
Speaker 1: S side, nearly all of them have some sort of
Speaker 1: ib S. It's just something you get when you're in
Speaker 1: in trenches. The water's dirty and stuff. Um. There's a
Speaker 1: number of things that are probably going on with Hitler. Um,
Speaker 1: but it is. It is likely right that he had
Speaker 1: something going wrong with his bacterial flora, you know, Um,
Speaker 1: perhaps because of you know, his injuries during the war
Speaker 1: or something. Um. But we now know that like, yeah,
Speaker 1: all the bad food eats, gut bacteria have a big
Speaker 1: impact on your health. Um. And that was starting to
Speaker 1: be understood then. It's still kind of a primitive science
Speaker 1: now comparatively, um. And Morrell prescribed his leaders something called
Speaker 1: Utah floor. This was a gut bacterious supplement. It had
Speaker 1: actually been crafted from the intestinal flora of a German
Speaker 1: soldier who had been sent to the Balkans during World
Speaker 1: War One and had been like the only guy in
Speaker 1: his unit not to get horrible stomach issues. So that's
Speaker 1: actually a really good medical thing. He's like, well, that
Speaker 1: guy seems like, let's get the ship out of his
Speaker 1: guts and like give it to other people, you know.
Speaker 1: And Muda floor was live bacteria in capsules, taken with
Speaker 1: the hope that they'd set up permanent shop in the
Speaker 1: patient's bowels. This was real medicine, and its impact on
Speaker 1: hitler g I track was apparently powerful and quick. Hitler
Speaker 1: experienced immediate relief, although not permanent relief. So I don't
Speaker 1: know exactly what was going on here, but he was
Speaker 1: so overjoyed to be cured, as he felt at the time,
Speaker 1: that he gave Morella house and made him his personal physician.
Speaker 1: But Morrell wasn't a gut bacteria specialist. He was a
Speaker 1: vitamin man. Hitler still had health complaints, and a lot
Speaker 1: of them were probably due to permanent injuries caused by
Speaker 1: his service and the fact that he was just an
Speaker 1: aging man, you know, in a time when medicine wasn't
Speaker 1: very good. So Morrell was able to convince his new
Speaker 1: boss that vitamins were the Antswer, You're not tired because
Speaker 1: you're pushing fifty and you have been, you know, going
Speaker 1: without sleep and working like a crazy person, and like
Speaker 1: you were injured and suffered permanent damage in the war.
Speaker 1: You're tired because you need these vitamin injections that are
Speaker 1: also full of caffeine or sometimes amphetamines, you know. Um.
Speaker 1: So he was basically like, I you're you're you can't
Speaker 1: like you need vitamins, And because vitamin pills take too
Speaker 1: long and your schedule is so demanding, I've just got
Speaker 1: to start shooting you up every time before a speech
Speaker 1: in order to like get you get you hyped up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and Morrel starts getting Hitler's shots and he never stops
Speaker 1: until the very end of the war. And he would
Speaker 1: put a wide variety of substances into the Nazi leader's veins, iodine, vitamin's, chalk,
Speaker 1: and when Hitler had a big speech, a power injection
Speaker 1: which often contained glucoset to give him a boost of
Speaker 1: sugar sugar fueled energy, probably caffeine. Also. A lot of
Speaker 1: the time, Morrel's immediate goal was an instant cessation of symptoms.
Speaker 1: So if you're tired, he wants you to wired right away,
Speaker 1: you know. Um. And to that end, he continually experimented
Speaker 1: and tweaked the injections he was giving Hitler. We don't
Speaker 1: always know what they included, um, because sometimes just I
Speaker 1: gave him, you know, shot number whatever, and it's like, okay, well,
Speaker 1: what the funk was in that? And older does a
Speaker 1: lot of good work to try to diagnose it. You know,
Speaker 1: a lot of times that aren't recorded, there's probably some
Speaker 1: if not amphetamine, then at least caffeine, and these things
Speaker 1: we don't always know. Um. We do know that in
Speaker 1: seven UM, the Nazi leader lost his voice before a
Speaker 1: big speech, and Moreau gave him an injection of something
Speaker 1: that is said to have cured him immediately, Like, who
Speaker 1: knows what the funk he was shooting into the guy?
Speaker 1: Just tell Hitler to lip sync? Yeah, um soon. Morrel
Speaker 1: was so indispensable to the few that he was forced
Speaker 1: to let his medical practice shrivel up from lack of attention.
Speaker 1: Hitler couldn't let him be away from him right, um,
Speaker 1: he needed him kind of available on call at all time.
Speaker 1: Hitler was an all concer booming patient, but he rewarded
Speaker 1: Dr Morrell wealth, making him a wealthy man. In nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty eight, he gave his doctor an honored professorship. For
Speaker 1: his part, Morrell kept looking for new substances to shoot
Speaker 1: into Hitler's body. The nineteen thirty six Olympics had seen
Speaker 1: the advent of the use of benz adrine, which is
Speaker 1: classic speed when your parents talking about you and speed
Speaker 1: in the seventies. That's Benny's baby. Yeah, you can still
Speaker 1: get it today. If you get a benza, drecs and hailer,
Speaker 1: you make it. They're little allergy and hailers. You just
Speaker 1: make sure that they say benz adrine. On him. You
Speaker 1: pop them open, you take the little cotton cloth out
Speaker 1: throat in a water bottle, you're good to go. Allegedly.
Speaker 1: Allegedly yeah, um so yeah. Benz Adrine gets big after
Speaker 1: the thirty six Olympics and a German pharmaceutical company makes
Speaker 1: a note of this. They're like, well, it seems like
Speaker 1: people love speed, we should develop a better speed. And
Speaker 1: the chemical they picked to make an even better speed
Speaker 1: was a little substance you might have heard about. It
Speaker 1: was first synthesized in nineteen nineteen by Japanese chemists and
Speaker 1: name was in methyl mphetamine. That's the good ship, good
Speaker 1: good ship, yeah baby, uh meth speaking of drugs with
Speaker 1: dolen sides. So in short order, Timmler was producing meth
Speaker 1: methemphetamine pills as an over the counter medication under the
Speaker 1: brand named pervitin Um, and sales started in the weekend
Speaker 1: of night in the winter of nineteen seven, and the
Speaker 1: drug use was and the drug was immediately popular among
Speaker 1: the Young Third Reich users or in The drug was
Speaker 1: immediately popular in the Young Third Reich. Soon Timmler was
Speaker 1: even selling boxes of meth spiked chocolate. They bragged that
Speaker 1: their wonder drug was good for quote reawakening joy and
Speaker 1: the despondent, and that fragility, frigidity, and women can be
Speaker 1: easily influenced with pervitin tablets giving her all some methods
Speaker 1: she'll want to get down. You know, you can just
Speaker 1: put that on a box and sell missing is meth
Speaker 1: is meth when it's all legal. I hope to be
Speaker 1: an admin for the meth m that I mean industry.
Speaker 1: It's with chemistry. Yeah, yeah, like it can help it. Well,
Speaker 1: have you you and your wife been fighting? Fight faster
Speaker 1: on meth? You know, exactly exactly. So I'm going to
Speaker 1: continue to read from Timmler's ads for purvidin. The treatment
Speaker 1: technique is as simple as can be imagined. Four half
Speaker 1: tablets every day, long before bedtime, ten days a month
Speaker 1: for three months. This will achieve excellent results by increasing
Speaker 1: women's libido and sexual power. Take meth every day to
Speaker 1: funk better. Meth I'm almost positive would not help me
Speaker 1: get laid. I mean when I smoked pot in college,
Speaker 1: I would perpetually ruined dates by avoiding the person I
Speaker 1: was sitting next to. I literally in college smoked weed
Speaker 1: once with this guy who I was like getting set
Speaker 1: up with, didn't speak to him at all, like I
Speaker 1: need to go home, apologized to him. The next time
Speaker 1: I saw him, I was like, hey, John, I'm so
Speaker 1: sorry about it. That was so weird. I would love
Speaker 1: to just like see if we could do this again.
Speaker 1: And he said, thank you so much for apologizing. What
Speaker 1: did we do on our next date? Smoke weed together?
Speaker 1: I was like, I've got to leave again, so sorry,
Speaker 1: and um, that was the end of our short lived relationship.
Speaker 1: So I feel like if meth was at it, it it
Speaker 1: wouldn't help the situation, is what I'm saying. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, there's only one way to find out, which
Speaker 1: is track that guy down and take a just rail
Speaker 1: a funckload of crystal. Only if they put it in chocolate,
Speaker 1: and I want them in those little roche little roast chocolates. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would like when you know there like this this
Speaker 1: chocolate cherries, little cherry in the middle of the chocolate.
Speaker 1: Things like texture with a little rock of crystal meth
Speaker 1: right in the middle, right in the middle. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: surprise or maybe those little eggs they make. Yeah, Cadburry.
Speaker 1: I was thinking Cadbury instead of like building a toy
Speaker 1: inside you you smoke meth, just a funkload of meth
Speaker 1: field cadburry eggs. God, that would be rad um. Allegedly, so,
Speaker 1: metho fetamine was even useful in treating drug addicts. According Again,
Speaker 1: this is according to the company selling meth. They advised
Speaker 1: they advised people withdrawing from alcohol, cocaine or heroin to
Speaker 1: take a little meth to help them get over the sheiks.
Speaker 1: Meth was so trying to get off a heroine. You
Speaker 1: know what, I'll clean you up famine. Can you pronounce this? Yeah,
Speaker 1: then you're ready to take it. Oh yeah, Cocaine's bad stuff.
Speaker 1: Take this meth, clean your right out. Um. So again,
Speaker 1: the reason I bring all this up is to point
Speaker 1: out that like meth was not a drug in the
Speaker 1: Third it wasn't seen as a drug in the Third Reich.
Speaker 1: It was just seen as like a medicine, particularly like
Speaker 1: a treatment for anything. It was. It was. It was,
Speaker 1: It was a helper. It was not a recreational substance. Um.
Speaker 1: It was advised. It was advertised as capable of bringing
Speaker 1: quote sugars, malingerers, defeatists and whiners into the Nazi fold
Speaker 1: and turning them into too productive obedient citizens. They were saying, like,
Speaker 1: meth will help turn you into a good Nazi. You'll
Speaker 1: be able to work if you're lazy, because you'll be
Speaker 1: on meth one pharmer. And again that's also you could
Speaker 1: draw a line to like why they were advertising that
Speaker 1: it makes women want to funk is, Like, well, it's
Speaker 1: all about breeding, right, Like meth is the drug that
Speaker 1: makes you helps you work in a factory or get
Speaker 1: laid and make babies. You know, Like that's why they're
Speaker 1: selling it. The way they're selling it are a big
Speaker 1: part of it. One pharmacologist, Felix Hoffner called prescribing purvit
Speaker 1: in the new Supreme Commandment of his discipline in Germany.
Speaker 1: He was saying, like, if you're a pharmacist, it's your
Speaker 1: duty to give Germans meth um. He called it a chemical.
Speaker 1: He said that it could bring chemical order to disordered people.
Speaker 1: Now we don't know when precisely Morrel first gave Hitler
Speaker 1: and meth amphetamine. The bad Doctor had often gave given
Speaker 1: like that he gave again. He had like different brand
Speaker 1: names for his various injections, and well, some of his
Speaker 1: notes were detailed. This wasn't always the case It's likely
Speaker 1: that Hitler started taking meth in a couple of different forms,
Speaker 1: potentially in the late nineteen thirty as he had often
Speaker 1: complained of a lack of energy, and by nineteen nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty nine pervitin was incredibly popular among German civilians. So
Speaker 1: the fact that Hitler's taking amphetamines during this period of
Speaker 1: time was not odd. It wasn't something unique to him.
Speaker 1: It was something that made him very much normal among
Speaker 1: like the German working class in this period. That said,
Speaker 1: it was not something that was widely publicized. Hitler's reputation
Speaker 1: was he was a sober Man and he didn't drink,
Speaker 1: which was weird, Like he was not a guy who
Speaker 1: drank a lot um. He didn't really smoke. Uh. He
Speaker 1: had this reputation being indefatigable, almost superhuman, and this was
Speaker 1: a big part of his appeal. So they didn't want
Speaker 1: to like talk about the fact that he was as
Speaker 1: drugged up as everybody else. Historians Steven Snelder's and Twin
Speaker 1: Peter's called Nazi Germany after nineteen thirty eight a meth
Speaker 1: amphetamine dictatorship, And when they say that, they don't mean
Speaker 1: that Hitler was a meth dictator, although he was a
Speaker 1: dictator on meth. I'm gonna quote from Psychiatric Times to
Speaker 1: get to what they're saying here. Rather than emphasizing the
Speaker 1: role of the suppliers. However, they argue that the evidence
Speaker 1: shows strong demand pressures for the drug from consumers. In
Speaker 1: clinical practice, the drug was first used to treat psychological inhibition,
Speaker 1: inhibition and endogenous depression and augment was what was referred
Speaker 1: to as the will to Get Healthy Purvet and quickly
Speaker 1: moved from clinical to general practice and was prescribed fairly
Speaker 1: commonly for employees, workers and housewives. In fact, a pre
Speaker 1: Leane chocolate with fourteen milligrams of purviton was marketed to
Speaker 1: the general public. So it's a meth dictatorship because everyone
Speaker 1: is on meth. There on meth to deal with their depression,
Speaker 1: their anxiety, like the fact that it's a bummer living
Speaker 1: in Nazi Germany. They're on meth to deal with the
Speaker 1: fact that like they have to like the work schedules,
Speaker 1: like the production they're trying to do. Like meth is
Speaker 1: in a way the dictator, you know, to go on
Speaker 1: dates to make enough baby. And this is one of
Speaker 1: those things where I don't think Older is really guilty this,
Speaker 1: but I think that people kind of interpreting his work
Speaker 1: have made way too much of Hitler's amphetamine use, and
Speaker 1: rather than put in the context of like, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: all of the Nazis were on a funkload of speed,
Speaker 1: and that is relevant, and it impacted their behavior and
Speaker 1: impacted history in a significant way. But it's not that
Speaker 1: like Hitler was on meth and and made crazy decisions.
Speaker 1: It was that the whole Third Reich was in the
Speaker 1: late thirties and early forties very methamphetamine dependent, and that's
Speaker 1: kind of important to note. Um. Now it's tempting to
Speaker 1: speculate as to which of Hitler's temper, tantrums and rages
Speaker 1: were influenced by Matthews. I'm going to avoid that temptation.
Speaker 1: It is impossible to know. And while meths certainly had
Speaker 1: an impact on his behavior, that impact was more to
Speaker 1: exacerbate the kind of rages he'd always engaged in. Hitler
Speaker 1: even used morrel to dose another head of state, check
Speaker 1: President Emil Hasha, during a crucial moment in March of nine.
Speaker 1: Hitler was trying to negotiate over the annexation of Czechoslovakia.
Speaker 1: It was crucial that the smaller country just sort of
Speaker 1: hand themselves over without fighting, because Germany actually couldn't have
Speaker 1: sex successfully invaded Czechoslovakia. They were kind of bluffing here.
Speaker 1: Um Hasha was ill when he attended a state visit
Speaker 1: to the Reich Chancellory, where Hitler demanded he ordered the
Speaker 1: surrender of Czech troops. Hatcha suffered a heart attack which
Speaker 1: rendered him unable to function, and I'm gonna quote from
Speaker 1: Blitz here. Next Hitler urgently summoned Morrell, who hurried along
Speaker 1: with his case in his syringes, and injected the unconscious
Speaker 1: foreign guest with such a stimulating medication that Hasha rose
Speaker 1: again within seconds, as if from the dead. He signed
Speaker 1: the piece of paper that sealed the temporary end of
Speaker 1: his state. The very next morning, Hitler invaded Prague without
Speaker 1: a fight. During the following years, Hatches sat the powerless
Speaker 1: head of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, to which
Speaker 1: parts of his country had been reduced, remaining Morrell's loyal patient.
Speaker 1: In that respect, pharmacology worked as a way of continuing
Speaker 1: politics by other means, And this reminds me a lot
Speaker 1: of a girl in uh New York who once went
Speaker 1: down a k hole and everyone was worried that she
Speaker 1: was going unconscious until Carle ray Jemsen's song call Me
Speaker 1: Maybe came on and then she shot up back from
Speaker 1: the dead. Hey, that song is morally identical to dosing
Speaker 1: someone with methamphetamin. And I've always said I've always said that. Now,
Speaker 1: the annexation of Austria and Czechoslovakia was pretty much went
Speaker 1: off perfectly for Hitler, but his next goal, the conquest
Speaker 1: of Poland, was going to require actual, you know, war stuff.
Speaker 1: The Fewer and his general staff all had clear terrible
Speaker 1: memories of the First World War and they wanted more
Speaker 1: than anything to avoid a repeat of the bloody stalemates
Speaker 1: of the Western Front. The German war machine developed several
Speaker 1: solutions to this problem. One of the major reasons that
Speaker 1: allowed them to kind of that that was crucial behind
Speaker 1: blitz Creek was small unit stormtrooper tactics that had started
Speaker 1: being developed near the end of the First World War.
Speaker 1: The term the Germans used for this was Austrug's tactic
Speaker 1: um and it was it was heavily We'll talk about
Speaker 1: this a bit more later, but it was heavily based
Speaker 1: around allowing a lot of unit autonomy. There's this like
Speaker 1: myth that the Nazi soldiers were these like automatons who
Speaker 1: followed orders unquestioning lee. The reason why the blitz cree
Speaker 1: worked is that individual small unit leaders were given a
Speaker 1: degree of personal discretion and choice and power to make
Speaker 1: decisions in the field that no other military in the
Speaker 1: world gave them at this point um and that's a
Speaker 1: big part of why they were successful. They were also
Speaker 1: the blitz creed was also crucially relied on the fact
Speaker 1: that the Germans had built up a significant amount of
Speaker 1: armored cars, tanks, and close air support craft to enable
Speaker 1: a speedier sort of mechanized warfare. And as all of
Speaker 1: this developed, an idea developed, championed by men like General
Speaker 1: Heinz Guderian, that this new German army might be able
Speaker 1: to move quickly enough to avoid the static fortifications that
Speaker 1: had bogged them down in nineteen fourteen. But technology and
Speaker 1: tactics only went so far. Poland was huge, and war
Speaker 1: with Poland meant war with France. In order to have
Speaker 1: a hope of sweeping through either country, German soldiers were
Speaker 1: going to need chemical assistance and pervitin was just what
Speaker 1: the doctor general ordered. From a write up and Time
Speaker 1: magazine quote, doctor Otto F. Rank, director of the Research
Speaker 1: Institute of Defense Physiology, had high hopes that pervitin would
Speaker 1: prove advantageous on the battlefield. His goal was to defeat
Speaker 1: the enemy with chemically enhanced soldiers, soldiers who could give
Speaker 1: Germany a military edge by fighting harder and longer than
Speaker 1: their opponents. After testing the drug on a group of
Speaker 1: medical officers, Rock believed that pervitin would be an excellent
Speaker 1: substance for rousing a weary squad. We may grasp what
Speaker 1: far reaching military significance it would have if we managed
Speaker 1: to remove the natural tiredness using medical methods. Rock himself
Speaker 1: was a daily user, as detailed in his wartime medical
Speaker 1: diary in letters, quote, with purviton, you can go on
Speaker 1: working for thirty six to fifty hours without feeling any
Speaker 1: noticeable fatigue. This allowed Ron to work days at a
Speaker 1: time with no sleep, and his correspondence indicated, yeah, is
Speaker 1: this an ad? It is? It is an ad for
Speaker 1: for again, primary sponsor of the show meth amphetamine under
Speaker 1: a bridge near you. You can cook in your bathtub
Speaker 1: if you really want or you're you know, wherever it's safe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's good stuff. Yeah. So we're going to talk more
Speaker 1: about all this in part two. But but that's going
Speaker 1: to do it for us in part law and Carolina,
Speaker 1: how are you? How are you feeling? Has this changed
Speaker 1: your mind on method? Al? Okay, I'm really starting to
Speaker 1: look at my dating history and I'm realizing a missing
Speaker 1: puzzle piece meth amphetamine, methymphetamine and maybe just like the
Speaker 1: super vitamin shot of chalk oh you can't get enough job,
Speaker 1: the glucose and whatever human growth hormone, whatever else he
Speaker 1: was throwing in there. I think it's fair to say
Speaker 1: a lot of us have been looking for love in
Speaker 1: all the wrong places, and maybe the right place is
Speaker 1: crystal meth exactly. Happy Valentine's Day, Happy Valentine's Day. When
Speaker 1: you're on meth, every day's Valentine's Day, that's the beauty
Speaker 1: of meth. That's so true, So true, Carolina, Do you
Speaker 1: have anything other than methamphetamine? You want to plug? I
Speaker 1: would love to plug my show True Romance, where we
Speaker 1: discuss um dating horrors and we're covering from anything from
Speaker 1: an episode of the Bachelorette to a terrible first date
Speaker 1: to a truly devastating breakup. We're here for you. Every Thursday,
Speaker 1: there's a new episode on I Heart Radio, Apple Podcasts
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts and um. On our
Speaker 1: next episode, I will be going on a blind date. Yeah. Literally,
Speaker 1: we'll be blocked out and on all our next episodes,
Speaker 1: I think we'll be on meth too, Sophie, can we
Speaker 1: get a line item in the budget for just like
Speaker 1: a shipload of math? Come on, so come on this question. Well,
Speaker 1: but off the record, off the record, We're absolutely gonna
Speaker 1: do some math. Excellent. Alright, good news everybody. Well, this
Speaker 1: has been behind the bastards. Methamphetamine is actually based edition. Listen,
Speaker 1: it could happen here. It's now daily and and it's
Speaker 1: on the same Podka stapp you're listening to. Maybe if
Speaker 1: I was stop lobbying for this, stop it. That's the episode,
Speaker 1: Bye bye, alright, that's the episode.