WEBVTT - Part One: Hitler's Drug Problem 0:00:00.360 --> 0:00:07.640 What's taking shiploads of meth? My hit. I'm Robert Evans. 0:00:07.720 --> 0:00:10.360 This is Behind the Bastards. The podcast re tell you 0:00:10.440 --> 0:00:12.760 everything you don't know about the worst people in all 0:00:12.760 --> 0:00:16.040 of history. We're in today's episode, stuff that you think 0:00:16.079 --> 0:00:18.959 you know, but you actually don't know the specifics in 0:00:18.960 --> 0:00:22.279 the way that you probably think you do. Maybe anyway. 0:00:23.239 --> 0:00:28.040 Top ten intros to this podcast. Thank you, Sophie. Sophie Lichterman, 0:00:28.480 --> 0:00:33.800 my producer and legally boss and my guest today, I 0:00:33.800 --> 0:00:37.720 would like to introduce the wonderful Carolina Barlow. Carolina, you 0:00:37.760 --> 0:00:39.760 are a writer and a co host of the Ron 0:00:39.800 --> 0:00:45.280 Burgundy podcast and the True Romance Podcast. Carolina. Yes, is 0:00:45.280 --> 0:00:50.160 Will Ferrell nice in person? He is a toxic overlord. 0:00:50.520 --> 0:00:52.599 Will Farrell is actually the nicest person and I've never 0:00:52.680 --> 0:00:56.760 met my life. Um, he's nicer than I think most 0:00:56.840 --> 0:01:00.400 members of my family and yours. I'm just assuming, um, 0:01:00.520 --> 0:01:06.240 no knowing how kind he is. And yeah, he's a Sophia. 0:01:06.280 --> 0:01:10.880 You can he frenched my dog. How does his hair smell? Okay, 0:01:10.880 --> 0:01:14.360 this is a great question because is very good at 0:01:14.400 --> 0:01:18.000 grooming and he always smells really nice. His skincare is 0:01:18.040 --> 0:01:23.280 amazing and I believe he may still be using this product. 0:01:23.319 --> 0:01:26.200 But once we were on a press tour with Mark Wahlberg, 0:01:26.360 --> 0:01:29.560 who was using a lot of brand called Moroccan oil, 0:01:30.240 --> 0:01:32.760 which you can buy. I'm not this is not an ad, 0:01:32.920 --> 0:01:38.720 but you can buy it pretty much anywhere. Will decided, Wait, 0:01:38.720 --> 0:01:42.240 I'm messing up this story. Will was using a brand 0:01:42.440 --> 0:01:46.280 uses a brand called Moroccan oil, and Mark Wahlberg was 0:01:46.319 --> 0:01:49.360 obsessed with it, and so we ended up talking about 0:01:49.360 --> 0:01:51.400 it a lot on a press tour, and Moroccan Oil 0:01:51.480 --> 0:01:53.880 then send us a bunch of Moroccan oil. So I 0:01:53.920 --> 0:01:58.440 believe he still uses that. But it smells incredible. Okay, 0:01:58.480 --> 0:02:00.600 well this is this is actually a lot more information 0:02:00.600 --> 0:02:02.920 than I expected. Welcome to the celebrity corner. When we 0:02:02.960 --> 0:02:09.600 talk about how different celebrities hair smells. Next up, so 0:02:09.720 --> 0:02:13.440 we're talking about we are talking about a celebrity today 0:02:13.720 --> 0:02:16.560 surrounded by babies because probably like pissing ship, pist and 0:02:16.560 --> 0:02:20.960 ship all the time. That's that scans completely. Actually, you 0:02:20.960 --> 0:02:24.320 know who else a diaper? I totally forgot you know 0:02:24.360 --> 0:02:27.920 who else smelled like ship? Oh? This is this is 0:02:28.000 --> 0:02:32.480 so accurate and is a celebrity. I don't like that? Yeah, 0:02:32.480 --> 0:02:35.000 I don't like that title for him. He is a celebrity. 0:02:35.080 --> 0:02:38.160 He's a very famous man, arguably more famous than any 0:02:38.160 --> 0:02:41.000 living celebrity. I'm not gonna I'm not going to give 0:02:41.080 --> 0:02:43.760 Hitler a celebrity title. You can say a lot of 0:02:43.800 --> 0:02:47.280 bad things about the man, but he has brand recognition. Okay, 0:02:47.600 --> 0:02:51.120 fair enough. So we're like going from polar opposites. We're 0:02:51.120 --> 0:02:54.040 talking about one of the Donna Share. You don't even 0:02:54.080 --> 0:02:57.440 need the last names exactly, just Hitlers going from like 0:02:57.520 --> 0:03:00.280 the nicest person ever of Will Ferrell to the worst 0:03:00.280 --> 0:03:03.680 person ever to aid off Hitler so quick. Well, he's 0:03:03.720 --> 0:03:05.520 also his name has kind of been a verb because 0:03:05.560 --> 0:03:07.080 you can like, I don't know about y'all, but like 0:03:07.080 --> 0:03:08.720 when my friends are being shitty and like you're kind 0:03:08.720 --> 0:03:10.600 of hitler ing right now. You're you're getting a little 0:03:10.639 --> 0:03:12.920 Hitler on all of us here, Maybe calm down. So 0:03:12.960 --> 0:03:15.919 he's like, he's like, Google, my friends have been done 0:03:16.160 --> 0:03:19.720 something so shitty that I would spring that name. Fair enough. Well, 0:03:20.200 --> 0:03:22.840 this one time my buddy Mike annexed the Sudette land 0:03:22.880 --> 0:03:25.200 and we were got pretty we got pretty pissed at him. 0:03:25.360 --> 0:03:29.919 That's fair. Yeah, that's um, Carolina, what do you, how 0:03:29.919 --> 0:03:33.079 do you feel about drugs? Drugs? I don't do drugs 0:03:33.160 --> 0:03:37.560 because when I was young, I did them too much 0:03:37.600 --> 0:03:40.280 and then I had to stop. And actually in the 0:03:40.320 --> 0:03:44.480 same boat, um, I drink sometimes and uh and take creatum. 0:03:44.720 --> 0:03:48.400 But I my my doing illegal drugs days or long 0:03:48.480 --> 0:03:50.800 long behind me because I damaged my brain too much. 0:03:51.600 --> 0:03:55.040 You've what have you heard about the Nazis and drugs. 0:03:55.560 --> 0:03:58.680 I know that they did a lot of them. And 0:03:58.720 --> 0:04:01.520 I think World War two, much like the Civil War, 0:04:02.760 --> 0:04:07.840 was a pretty crazy time and Vietnam wars generally and 0:04:07.960 --> 0:04:10.880 drugs actually tend to mix well together. Absolutely, it's a 0:04:10.960 --> 0:04:13.720 great time to get wasted when you're at a war zone. 0:04:13.720 --> 0:04:17.680 I can say that from experience. Um. And you know 0:04:17.800 --> 0:04:21.960 it's also so there's In two thousand sixteen, a German 0:04:22.040 --> 0:04:25.240 novelist and a screenwriter, a guy named Norman Oehler, published 0:04:25.240 --> 0:04:28.880 a book, a work of historic nonfiction. In the United States, 0:04:28.960 --> 0:04:33.080 it was released under the title Blitzed, Drugs and Nazi Germany. 0:04:33.200 --> 0:04:34.400 A lot of people have heard of this book. It 0:04:34.440 --> 0:04:37.119 was an international but it was a huge, huge book. 0:04:37.279 --> 0:04:40.080 I mean, I guess most of the people listening to 0:04:40.120 --> 0:04:42.200 the episode right now either heard of it. Or you 0:04:42.320 --> 0:04:44.680 read some article that was based on kind of the 0:04:44.720 --> 0:04:48.239 media campaign around this, because literally every major news website 0:04:48.240 --> 0:04:51.039 in magazine on the fucking planet published interviews with this 0:04:51.080 --> 0:04:53.640 guy or at least kind of like write ups that 0:04:53.680 --> 0:04:57.880 were summarizing the book. The Guardians article during this period 0:04:57.880 --> 0:04:59.479 it is kind of emblematic of the whole. It was 0:04:59.520 --> 0:05:03.200 titled Hi Hitler, which is a fun a fun title, 0:05:03.320 --> 0:05:07.359 nice little play on Heil Hitler um. And it's also 0:05:07.400 --> 0:05:10.160 really appropriate because the reason Hitler was getting high it 0:05:10.279 --> 0:05:13.000 was for his health, and Hil Hitler literally means health 0:05:13.080 --> 0:05:16.000 to Hitler. But anyway, that's a that's a point Owlder makes. Umm, 0:05:17.279 --> 0:05:18.920 it is a nice little pun. I'm going to read 0:05:18.920 --> 0:05:22.880 a sample paragraph from that article talking about Owler's wook work. 0:05:24.160 --> 0:05:26.560 The book in question is The Total Rush, or to 0:05:26.680 --> 0:05:30.400 use its superior English title, Blitzed, which reveals the astonishing 0:05:30.400 --> 0:05:33.279 and hitherto un largely untold story of the Third Reich's 0:05:33.320 --> 0:05:38.279 relationship with drugs, including cocaine, heroin, morphine, and above all, methamphetamines, 0:05:38.800 --> 0:05:41.799 and of their effect not only on Hitler's final days. 0:05:41.839 --> 0:05:44.240 The fear by Owler's account was an absolute junkie with 0:05:44.320 --> 0:05:46.320 ruined veins by the time he retreated to the last 0:05:46.320 --> 0:05:49.120 of his bunkers. But on the Wehrmacht's successful invasion of 0:05:49.160 --> 0:05:52.040 France in nineteen forty published in Germany last year, where 0:05:52.080 --> 0:05:54.120 it became a best seller. It has since been translated 0:05:54.160 --> 0:05:56.919 into eighteen languages. A fact that the lights owler but 0:05:57.000 --> 0:06:01.520 also amazes him. And this isn't I'm starting, not kind 0:06:01.520 --> 0:06:02.880 of the way we normally do by just sort of 0:06:02.880 --> 0:06:05.160 giving the history, but by talking about this book because 0:06:05.200 --> 0:06:08.440 it is so prominent, and in the years that I've 0:06:08.480 --> 0:06:10.240 been doing Behind the Bastards, I've probably had a couple 0:06:10.240 --> 0:06:13.320 of hundred different people email me or ask me sometimes 0:06:13.320 --> 0:06:16.000 in person if I've read Blitzed and tell me that 0:06:16.040 --> 0:06:18.479 I had to do hit an episode on Hitler's drug addiction, 0:06:18.839 --> 0:06:20.640 and this is that episode. But I have to tell 0:06:20.680 --> 0:06:22.359 you a decent chunk of this is actually going to 0:06:22.360 --> 0:06:26.480 be kind of critiquing blitzed um and more broadly critiquing 0:06:26.520 --> 0:06:28.640 kind of how the media presented it. And I want 0:06:28.680 --> 0:06:30.440 to clarify up top. I don't think blitz is a 0:06:30.480 --> 0:06:33.200 bad book where that older is a bad guy. I 0:06:33.240 --> 0:06:35.039 think his work is in some ways a victim of 0:06:35.040 --> 0:06:37.920 its own, of his own success. If you start googling 0:06:37.960 --> 0:06:41.400 around permutations of phrases like Hitler's drug addiction, or drugs 0:06:41.400 --> 0:06:44.240 and Nazis German and Nazi Germany, or the Nazis and meth, 0:06:44.560 --> 0:06:47.080 about seventy of the search results you see are going 0:06:47.080 --> 0:06:49.839 to be articles based on Norman's book, kind of rewriting 0:06:49.839 --> 0:06:52.240 the same thing over and over again, and this makes 0:06:52.279 --> 0:06:55.120 his book fairly unique in the field of Nazi studies. 0:06:55.760 --> 0:06:58.760 The Third Reich is the single most widely studied and 0:06:58.800 --> 0:07:02.560 written about regime in political history. There are governments on 0:07:02.600 --> 0:07:05.840 the planet right now who produce less, who have produced 0:07:05.920 --> 0:07:09.760 to date less documentation for their government bureaucracy than there 0:07:09.840 --> 0:07:13.640 is historic works written about the Third Reich. Um no 0:07:13.720 --> 0:07:16.000 other government has had more scholars devote their lives to 0:07:16.080 --> 0:07:18.440 examining it, and no state has had so many pages 0:07:18.440 --> 0:07:21.920 of quality historical writing dedicated to its history. And when 0:07:21.920 --> 0:07:23.760 we include the great minds have written about the Third 0:07:23.760 --> 0:07:26.920 Reich throughout history, we quickly become clogged with genius. There's 0:07:26.920 --> 0:07:30.920 William Schier, Iran Ian Kershaw, John Toland, Vocaler, ul Ric 0:07:31.360 --> 0:07:33.920 Richard Evans, and Hannah Rent, just to name a few. 0:07:34.480 --> 0:07:36.880 And the fact that in five years, Norman Ohler has 0:07:36.920 --> 0:07:40.000 become one of the most recognized writers in Nazi history. 0:07:40.240 --> 0:07:43.040 UM is due to the subject matter of his book, namely, 0:07:43.320 --> 0:07:46.480 people like drugs and people are fascinated by the Nazis, 0:07:46.520 --> 0:07:48.280 and if you combine those two things, you're going to 0:07:48.320 --> 0:07:51.480 sell a lot of fucking books. Um. And one of 0:07:51.520 --> 0:07:54.680 the reasons this frustrates some historians is that some of 0:07:54.680 --> 0:07:57.480 the stuff that Older wrote about had been well documented 0:07:57.560 --> 0:08:01.120 before he came into the picture. For exam ample, pervitin, 0:08:01.240 --> 0:08:05.160 which is the methamphetamine that the Nazis primarily took UM. 0:08:05.200 --> 0:08:07.400 A lot of scholars wrote about the use of pervitin 0:08:07.440 --> 0:08:10.320 by Nazis during the Blitz Creek. Where Older broke new 0:08:10.360 --> 0:08:12.880 ground was in making a detailed study about the personal 0:08:12.920 --> 0:08:16.240 notes and professional journals of a guy named Dr Theodore Morrell, 0:08:16.320 --> 0:08:19.200 who was one of Hitler's personal physicians and his primary 0:08:19.240 --> 0:08:23.440 dope dealer. Morrell was not an unknown quantity to historians previously, 0:08:23.480 --> 0:08:25.840 but Ohler spends a lot of time digging into precisely 0:08:25.880 --> 0:08:28.240 what he gave Hitler and how it may have impacted history. 0:08:28.680 --> 0:08:32.000 Half of the controversy among historians about Blitz revolves around 0:08:32.000 --> 0:08:35.600 the language used in this book. Older is not a historian, 0:08:35.679 --> 0:08:38.679 he's not a scholar. He's writing in a pop nonfiction 0:08:38.760 --> 0:08:43.720 cadence and vocabulary. So this is closer to a guy like, um, 0:08:43.720 --> 0:08:46.280 who's that fucking guy everybody hates now that everybody loved 0:08:46.280 --> 0:08:49.920 for I wrote The Tipping Point Malcolm Gladwell. I'm not 0:08:50.000 --> 0:08:51.520 and I'm not saying he's like because I think he's 0:08:51.600 --> 0:08:55.560 much more responsible than not. But he's closer to the 0:08:55.559 --> 0:08:58.800 Gladwell into the spectrum that kind of pop nonfiction than 0:08:58.800 --> 0:09:01.920 he is to a scholar like Ian Kershaw, you know, Um, 0:09:02.000 --> 0:09:05.720 And that frustrates scholars because his work has been so influential, Right, 0:09:05.760 --> 0:09:08.080 you get kind of piste off when, like you, you 0:09:08.160 --> 0:09:12.520 do detailed, painstaking analyzes of these guys and then, um, 0:09:12.559 --> 0:09:15.120 some dude kind of throws out a book that maybe 0:09:15.200 --> 0:09:19.360 maybe exaggerates some things and uses some like flagrant language 0:09:19.400 --> 0:09:21.679 and and is much more popular than any work by 0:09:21.679 --> 0:09:25.880 a scholar will ever be that frustrated people? Um, And 0:09:26.000 --> 0:09:28.440 you know, I I don't think that that means it's 0:09:28.440 --> 0:09:30.959 not There is good scholarship of this, and there's in fact, 0:09:31.120 --> 0:09:34.240 groundbreaking scholarship in this. Ian Kershaw, who's probably the single 0:09:34.320 --> 0:09:37.840 most prominent biographer of Hitler alive today. UM called this 0:09:37.920 --> 0:09:41.240 a serious work of scholarship and praised it. UM. Richard Evans, 0:09:41.280 --> 0:09:43.800 on the other hand, who's also variable respected, hated this book. 0:09:43.840 --> 0:09:47.079 So it's not like there's not I don't want to 0:09:47.120 --> 0:09:49.400 come across as saying there's an agreement among scholars that 0:09:49.440 --> 0:09:51.280 this book is bad, or that there's an agreement that 0:09:51.320 --> 0:09:53.959 it's good. UM. I tend to think it did more 0:09:54.000 --> 0:09:58.000 good than harm Um. But it was written to appeal 0:09:58.080 --> 0:10:00.520 to the masses and be a popular book, and it 0:10:00.559 --> 0:10:03.960 absolutely is now. The other half of the controversy around 0:10:03.960 --> 0:10:06.480 Blitz revolves around some of the more serious issues with 0:10:06.559 --> 0:10:09.800 the way Older presents his research. Namely, he suffers from 0:10:09.840 --> 0:10:12.160 the same problem most people do when they zero in 0:10:12.280 --> 0:10:15.559 on a very specific aspect of the Nazi regime. He's 0:10:15.600 --> 0:10:17.800 gotten so into the weeds on this topic that he 0:10:17.880 --> 0:10:20.839 lends it weight that's sometimes disproportionate to its actual and 0:10:21.360 --> 0:10:23.320 the same thing happens to people studying like the occult 0:10:23.360 --> 0:10:26.760 and nazis right because there is like a really fascinating 0:10:26.800 --> 0:10:31.319 history of like esoteric Hitlerism, of like of occult Nazism, 0:10:31.360 --> 0:10:34.080 but it also wasn't nearly as influential as the people 0:10:34.080 --> 0:10:35.760 who write books about it put it on as an 0:10:35.800 --> 0:10:39.120 in fact, by one it was pretty much out of 0:10:39.120 --> 0:10:41.600 of of any kind of influence in the party. But 0:10:42.080 --> 0:10:44.280 you know, if that's your thing, you're going to seek 0:10:44.320 --> 0:10:46.960 to kind of hell boy things up a little, you know. 0:10:47.200 --> 0:10:49.240 So this is like a long winded way of saying 0:10:49.360 --> 0:10:52.400 it's debatable. No, it's it's a long way of trying 0:10:52.440 --> 0:10:55.360 to like give caveats about like what are not saying 0:10:55.400 --> 0:10:57.439 it's a bad book, but saying it's a good book 0:10:57.960 --> 0:11:01.559 that I think, because he's so fo focused on the drugs, 0:11:01.760 --> 0:11:05.080 tends to ignore other reasons for some of the behavior 0:11:05.160 --> 0:11:13.199 that are not drugs. I wonder if it's dangerous. This 0:11:13.280 --> 0:11:15.679 is me speaking without reading the book. I think it 0:11:15.760 --> 0:11:19.120 may be dangerous to blame anything on drug use. I 0:11:19.120 --> 0:11:23.080 don't think that's That is the chief criticism the historians 0:11:23.160 --> 0:11:26.240 that dislike him make, And he's actually pretty careful. He's 0:11:26.320 --> 0:11:27.880 careful in his book to say, like I am not 0:11:27.960 --> 0:11:31.559 saying Hitler's horrible crimes are the result because one of 0:11:31.559 --> 0:11:33.120 the things he does, he points out, as we'll go 0:11:33.160 --> 0:11:36.040 into most of the hardcore drugging use from Hitler started 0:11:36.760 --> 0:11:39.400 in the forties, you know, when he had already set 0:11:39.440 --> 0:11:41.439 everything in motion that he was going to set in 0:11:42.240 --> 0:11:46.880 were already pretty yeah, was going down. Yeah. But he's 0:11:46.880 --> 0:11:49.599 saying like, it's it's worth noting if a guy is 0:11:49.800 --> 0:11:52.640 funked up on myth and cocaine and opium all of 0:11:52.720 --> 0:11:56.040 the time, and he's a warlord, it's worth wondering, like, 0:11:56.120 --> 0:11:59.480 how does that impact his decision making process? Which I 0:11:59.520 --> 0:12:02.440 think is a fair question, right, Like, obviously there is 0:12:02.520 --> 0:12:05.320 a danger when you do that, but it's also I 0:12:05.320 --> 0:12:07.560 don't think that means you shouldn't look at like, well, 0:12:07.559 --> 0:12:10.160 what was this doctor shooting into the veins of this 0:12:10.200 --> 0:12:14.360 man making these incredibly influential decisions. Is the same way 0:12:14.360 --> 0:12:17.959 that like, it's worth looking at how the methamphetamine JFK 0:12:18.120 --> 0:12:20.960 took impacted his decision making during the Cuban missile crisis 0:12:20.960 --> 0:12:25.559 and ship right, like it is a problem or Trump 0:12:25.600 --> 0:12:29.000 and aneral It's it's certainly not like I don't wanna. 0:12:29.440 --> 0:12:32.320 I agree that's a worry, But I also don't think 0:12:32.400 --> 0:12:34.400 we should be like, well, let's not talk about this 0:12:34.559 --> 0:12:38.319 just because some people talking all you know, I guess 0:12:38.360 --> 0:12:41.400 I I am implying more that leaning into it too hard, 0:12:41.520 --> 0:12:45.080 giving it too much weight. I can see it um 0:12:45.120 --> 0:12:50.040 distracting from a serious threat that was definitely worsened by drugs. 0:12:50.040 --> 0:12:55.600 I mean, it's interesting, um, Vietnam. Towards the end of Vietnam, 0:12:55.640 --> 0:13:00.000 all the soldiers, American soldiers were getting really messed up 0:13:00.040 --> 0:13:03.000 on all the kinds of pills that were just very 0:13:03.040 --> 0:13:06.440 prevalent in the sixties and seventies, like coaludes, black beauties, speed, 0:13:06.480 --> 0:13:10.200 anything to keep them up. And it increased a lot 0:13:10.240 --> 0:13:14.560 of paranoia, especially when there's an enemy that you know, 0:13:14.760 --> 0:13:20.559 quote unquote enemy Via Kong who um aren't in uniforms. 0:13:21.000 --> 0:13:24.680 Your paranoia can increase, it can make you more violent. Um. 0:13:24.679 --> 0:13:27.880 With or without these drugs. The Vietnam War is still 0:13:29.040 --> 0:13:33.360 inherently a crime against humanity. But drugs don't help, Yeah, 0:13:33.760 --> 0:13:36.640 and help. And that's there's a question too with the 0:13:36.720 --> 0:13:39.400 Nazis right where you don't want to like a lot 0:13:39.440 --> 0:13:42.160 of these these these r mock soldiers were going days 0:13:42.160 --> 0:13:44.920 without sleeping and taking ship into that amphetamine, and some 0:13:45.040 --> 0:13:48.160 of them committed horrible atrocities. You don't want to like 0:13:48.480 --> 0:13:51.280 the atrocities. Number One, we're often ordered by people who 0:13:51.280 --> 0:13:53.880 were certainly not drugged out of their minds, and we're 0:13:54.000 --> 0:13:58.280 planned pretty extensively ahead of time. That said, the fact 0:13:58.320 --> 0:14:00.600 that a lot of these guys are meth and like 0:14:00.640 --> 0:14:04.640 flipping out and burning down villages, Um, some of that's 0:14:04.679 --> 0:14:06.679 probably due to the fact that they're they're fucked up 0:14:06.679 --> 0:14:10.320 on meth amphetamine, right, Like not necessarily like the the 0:14:10.440 --> 0:14:14.040 concerted genocide actions where they're shooting forty people in a day, 0:14:14.040 --> 0:14:15.880 but like, oh yeah, they get shot at by a 0:14:15.920 --> 0:14:17.880 partisan and they burned down a village, And maybe that's 0:14:17.880 --> 0:14:20.080 some guys who are tweaked out on speed over react 0:14:20.200 --> 0:14:22.560 like flipping out in the same way that like, yeah, 0:14:22.560 --> 0:14:25.440 maybe it had an impact. Um, I think you can 0:14:25.480 --> 0:14:28.040 say that. I think you can want to know. Okay, well, 0:14:28.160 --> 0:14:31.640 you have millions of men going days without sleeping, heavily 0:14:31.760 --> 0:14:34.160 armed and taking math amphetamine. I bet that has an 0:14:34.200 --> 0:14:38.360 influence on their behavior. Without saying the Nazis killed millions 0:14:38.400 --> 0:14:40.560 of Russian civilians because they were on meth which is 0:14:40.600 --> 0:14:43.520 not the case. They killed millions of Russian civilians because 0:14:43.560 --> 0:14:47.560 the war from the beginning was a genocidal crusade. UM. 0:14:47.600 --> 0:14:50.080 I don't know. I don't want to like I don't 0:14:50.080 --> 0:14:52.960 want to like veer away from what is an interesting 0:14:53.040 --> 0:14:57.480 question just because people can, Um, people can simplify it 0:14:57.560 --> 0:14:59.600 to the extent that it gets sucked up, you know, 0:14:59.640 --> 0:15:02.960 because I I do think this is a fascinating question. Um, 0:15:03.040 --> 0:15:05.400 We're gonna be talking a lot about Ohler's findings here 0:15:05.400 --> 0:15:08.000 because I do agree with Ian Kershaw who described it 0:15:08.040 --> 0:15:10.240 as a serious piece of scholarship. He goes into he's 0:15:10.280 --> 0:15:13.320 not just real like cutting up other bits of reporting. 0:15:13.320 --> 0:15:16.560 He looks at a lot of original primary sources. He's 0:15:16.560 --> 0:15:18.160 combing through in a way I don't think anyone else 0:15:18.160 --> 0:15:22.400 ever did. Dr Theodore Morrell's Hitler's primary Physicians notes in 0:15:22.400 --> 0:15:25.560 in exhaustive detail researching the medicines He's getting. There's a 0:15:25.560 --> 0:15:29.200 lot of very important scholarship, I think in his findings. 0:15:29.560 --> 0:15:31.840 But I also will be laying out some areas where 0:15:31.840 --> 0:15:34.760 Owler's conclusions do not jell with the actual evidence, and 0:15:34.760 --> 0:15:37.600 there are some points there. So let's start by talking 0:15:37.640 --> 0:15:41.680 about drug culture in Weimar, Germany as a refresher. The 0:15:41.760 --> 0:15:45.000 Vimar government was a progressive democracy that followed after the 0:15:45.080 --> 0:15:48.120 Kaiser's monarchy went away and was eventually eaten up by Hitler. 0:15:48.520 --> 0:15:51.120 For like the fifteen or so years it existed, Weimar 0:15:51.280 --> 0:15:55.480 was a dizzying lye progressive government for its time. Berlin 0:15:55.600 --> 0:15:58.360 became a magnet for the LGBT community, and the side 0:15:58.400 --> 0:16:01.160 of the first very first series is research on healthcare 0:16:01.160 --> 0:16:04.480 for trans people. Art and music flourished, and as you'd 0:16:04.480 --> 0:16:07.360 expect from a city full of bohemian artists and musician, 0:16:07.640 --> 0:16:10.080 people were getting fucked up all the time, like I 0:16:10.080 --> 0:16:17.200 mean just just really yeah, exactly, like real creative drug use. Um, 0:16:17.240 --> 0:16:20.720 because like Berlin is Berlin is you know what what 0:16:20.720 --> 0:16:23.080 what places like New you know, chunks of New York 0:16:23.080 --> 0:16:25.600 and chunks of California became in the sixties and seventies. 0:16:25.640 --> 0:16:29.000 Berlin is that in the fucking twenties, you know. UM 0:16:29.040 --> 0:16:31.880 and this put photographs you can find of Berlin in 0:16:31.880 --> 0:16:35.239 the twenties where people are in drag. It's very casual. 0:16:35.960 --> 0:16:45.840 It's actually completely there's a flamboyant, like fun Roaring twenties quality. Yeah, 0:16:45.960 --> 0:16:50.040 it's um, it's it's it's a fascinating time to study. Um. 0:16:50.120 --> 0:16:53.160 And and this put you know. One of the things 0:16:53.160 --> 0:16:55.400 that I think is critique about older is he when 0:16:55.400 --> 0:16:58.200 he's talking about drug use in Germany, he focuses heavily 0:16:58.280 --> 0:17:02.240 on Berlin and the Berlin Hella drug use, but also 0:17:02.480 --> 0:17:05.439 Berlin's drug uses in direct contrast to what's going on 0:17:05.480 --> 0:17:07.760 in the rest of Germany. Not only was most of 0:17:07.760 --> 0:17:11.520 Germany much more socially conservative think about like Portland, Oregon 0:17:11.640 --> 0:17:14.760 versus as surrounding areas right, but the use of recreational 0:17:14.840 --> 0:17:18.960 drugs like cocaine was markedly uncommon in Germany and not 0:17:19.119 --> 0:17:22.240 even particularly common in Berlin. As we'll talk about, it's 0:17:22.280 --> 0:17:25.000 worth noting that at this time most Germans across the 0:17:25.000 --> 0:17:27.800 country would not have considered tobacco or alcohol drugs, So 0:17:27.840 --> 0:17:30.080 when we're talking about drug use, those are not drugs 0:17:30.119 --> 0:17:33.159 to Germans in the twenties, that's like milk to them. 0:17:33.160 --> 0:17:36.040 Both were so ubiquitous that they were considered to be 0:17:36.080 --> 0:17:39.240 a part of a person's diet, and interestingly enough, both 0:17:39.280 --> 0:17:42.920 Communists and Nazi leaders in Europe at this time hated tobacco. 0:17:43.080 --> 0:17:47.720 Lenin was famously anti cigarette, um so was Hitler. Obviously, 0:17:48.520 --> 0:17:51.240 Lennon's anti cigarettes ship didn't last once stock Castalla loved 0:17:51.280 --> 0:17:54.400 him some some smoking, and Hitler hated cigarettes, but there 0:17:54.440 --> 0:17:56.960 was never really any sort of They both like he 0:17:57.000 --> 0:17:58.480 had to kind of accept like, well, I'm not going 0:17:58.520 --> 0:18:03.600 to get Germans to stop smoking, Like that's not gonna happen. Yeah, 0:18:03.640 --> 0:18:05.879 they were, they were, they were, he was he definitely 0:18:06.000 --> 0:18:10.440 kind of straight edge. Yeah. Um. And you know, uh, 0:18:10.480 --> 0:18:12.320 we'll talk about this more later. But for the most 0:18:12.359 --> 0:18:15.720 part throughout the twenties, Nazis and Communists smoke and smoked 0:18:15.720 --> 0:18:18.040 and drank about as much as everybody else. So again, 0:18:18.040 --> 0:18:20.399 while there's Nazi and Communist leaders who are being like, no, 0:18:20.480 --> 0:18:23.359 you need to struggle towards revolution and be sober for that, 0:18:23.760 --> 0:18:27.640 most Communists, most Nazis are getting drunk and chain smoking 0:18:27.680 --> 0:18:31.120 like anybody else. Um. And so when we talk about 0:18:31.200 --> 0:18:34.520 drugs in Germany, what I mean by drugs is hard 0:18:34.600 --> 0:18:39.000 stimulants like cocaine and methamphetamine, as well as opiates. Germany 0:18:39.040 --> 0:18:41.800 was actually the world leader in drug manufacturing at this 0:18:42.520 --> 0:18:48.480 Morphine beer exactly. Morphine had first been isolated by a 0:18:48.480 --> 0:18:52.160 German chemist in the early eighteen hundreds. It was rediscovered, patented, 0:18:52.200 --> 0:18:55.239 and mass produced by Bayer in eight By the end 0:18:55.240 --> 0:18:58.000 of World War One, morphine was the number one product 0:18:58.000 --> 0:19:00.800 of the entire German pharmaceutical industry. They were shipping this 0:19:00.800 --> 0:19:03.879 stuff out everywhere because it's the most addictive thing in 0:19:03.920 --> 0:19:08.760 the world. The company that owned that first manufacturing plant 0:19:08.760 --> 0:19:13.120 in Germany was the Sacklers, later responsible for the opioid 0:19:13.160 --> 0:19:18.680 epidemic we're currently facing the States. Good people, Yeah, we've 0:19:18.720 --> 0:19:24.120 talked about. Yeah, there's some other Bear products made during 0:19:24.160 --> 0:19:29.119 the Nazi regime that we could talk about too, like heroin. Yeah, 0:19:30.200 --> 0:19:33.880 heroin they advertise as lighter than morphine. Yeah, I mean, 0:19:34.080 --> 0:19:36.399 and a lot of this ship is OTC in Germany 0:19:36.480 --> 0:19:38.800 at the time, right, Um, and Bear is the first 0:19:38.840 --> 0:19:41.959 to produce and sell heroin, And actually heroin stays over 0:19:42.040 --> 0:19:45.320 the counter in Germany until like the nineteen fifties. Um, 0:19:47.760 --> 0:19:50.800 I'm god to live in those times, to just be 0:19:50.840 --> 0:19:53.120 able to walk down to the corner store and get 0:19:53.160 --> 0:19:57.960 a big fat baggele horse smoke it. And I don't know, 0:19:58.240 --> 0:20:00.720 it doesn't really matter what the movies. Yeah, it doesn't 0:20:00.720 --> 0:20:04.280 really matter what you're doing when you're smoking heroin. So 0:20:04.960 --> 0:20:07.360 now by a lot of like this point, heroin has 0:20:07.359 --> 0:20:10.320 become like illegal in the US and a lot of Asia, 0:20:10.359 --> 0:20:11.879 at least if you're taking it, like you can't just 0:20:11.920 --> 0:20:14.800 go and get it over the counter, right, Maybe it's 0:20:14.800 --> 0:20:17.240 more prescribed than it is than it was now that 0:20:17.280 --> 0:20:19.439 it was not like you couldn't just walk in and 0:20:19.480 --> 0:20:22.120 buy it as a person, but you can in Germany, 0:20:22.440 --> 0:20:24.840 and so Germany, since everything is kind of legal, there 0:20:24.880 --> 0:20:28.600 becomes the nexus for an international gray and black market 0:20:28.760 --> 0:20:31.960 drug trade in heroin, and these German Swiss companies will 0:20:32.040 --> 0:20:35.160 kind of use Germany as a base and will They're 0:20:35.160 --> 0:20:39.320 not directly selling it illegally underground in countries, but they're 0:20:39.320 --> 0:20:41.439 putting it in position to be sold that way and 0:20:41.480 --> 0:20:43.840 they're profiting from it. I'm gonna quote from a write 0:20:43.920 --> 0:20:47.840 up by a scholar named Jonathan Levy here. Both morphine 0:20:47.840 --> 0:20:50.360 and heroin were consumed in Germany during the Weimar years 0:20:50.359 --> 0:20:52.800 and the Third Reich. The morphine was far more popular 0:20:52.840 --> 0:20:55.840 than it's more potent cousin, perhaps explaining Merk's decision to 0:20:55.920 --> 0:20:59.480 cease its uh diacetyl morphine program. The number of addicts 0:20:59.520 --> 0:21:02.560 in Germany is difficult to ascertain. Like many drug statistics, 0:21:02.560 --> 0:21:05.280 the reported numbers of addicts are mere gu estimates rather 0:21:05.320 --> 0:21:08.440 than reliable figures, mainly because it is next to impossible 0:21:08.480 --> 0:21:12.960 to differentiate between addicts and users. Now, the best evidence 0:21:13.040 --> 0:21:15.159 seems to suggest that The rate of opiate addiction in 0:21:15.200 --> 0:21:17.720 Germany increased from the start of the war years, and 0:21:17.760 --> 0:21:20.080 by that I mean World War One until about nineteen 0:21:20.119 --> 0:21:22.640 twenty two, which is probably caused by the same thing 0:21:22.640 --> 0:21:24.800 that drives a lot of opiate use in the US today, 0:21:24.840 --> 0:21:27.960 which is wounded soldiers getting hooked on it, right, getting 0:21:27.960 --> 0:21:29.960 prescribed as much of it as they want having, you know, 0:21:30.000 --> 0:21:32.320 developing a problem, but by much of them in the 0:21:32.400 --> 0:21:35.080 Civil War too, Yeah, yeah, every time, every time a 0:21:35.119 --> 0:21:38.879 lot of men get wounded. Yeah, soldiers got hooked on. 0:21:39.480 --> 0:21:41.800 I mean, it's funny you say guestimate because I'm just 0:21:41.880 --> 0:21:44.160 reading that sock rebook. Everyone is waiting, and they said, 0:21:45.119 --> 0:21:47.560