Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and
Speaker 1: there's other Josh over there, the O J. You're the
Speaker 1: O G. Yes, he's the O J. That's right. We
Speaker 1: should probably come up with a different nickname for you, Josh.
Speaker 1: That's tried. Um. So, oh, yeah, this is Stuff you
Speaker 1: Should Know the podcast Nazi Crankhead Edition. We've been doing
Speaker 1: a lot on Nazis lately, have we. I guess we have.
Speaker 1: We did the July twenty plot to assassinate Hitler this one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a lot. It's a lot. Uh, yeah, this is
Speaker 1: I thought this is interesting and I remember hearing a
Speaker 1: lot about this when um, I mean there's been plenty
Speaker 1: of people in books about Nazis doing lots of drugs.
Speaker 1: The big one that came out called Blitzed from author
Speaker 1: Nomen Ohler really made a lot of hey in the
Speaker 1: news for sure. Um, it was a it was a
Speaker 1: big deal when it came out just I think in
Speaker 1: two thousands seventeen, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, and we're
Speaker 1: endorsing that book is a good read. Have you read it?
Speaker 1: I read a lot of it, Okay, I got I
Speaker 1: heard it's a very exhaustive book. It's pretty exhaustive, so
Speaker 1: it um. I have not read it, but it does
Speaker 1: seem from from some of the stuff I've read about it.
Speaker 1: Some of the book reviews are like, yeah, this, this
Speaker 1: guy's got the goods. This guy, Norman Ohler um spent
Speaker 1: like five years at least in the archives. So this
Speaker 1: isn't just like conjecture. This is very well researched and
Speaker 1: um fact based. Well, I guess there's a little conjecture
Speaker 1: to it, because he's basically saying drugs drove the Third
Speaker 1: Reich initially and then just like you know, anybody becoming
Speaker 1: strong out on a drug, it led to the deterioration
Speaker 1: and ultimately downfall of the Third Reich. And that's a big,
Speaker 1: big thing to say, Like there's there are very few
Speaker 1: things in history, especially massive world changing things like the
Speaker 1: Third Reich and World War Two and the Holocaust, that
Speaker 1: you can just pin one thing on. And I'm sure
Speaker 1: he's not saying like that is it, there's nothing else
Speaker 1: to it, But he's saying like this is a huge
Speaker 1: contributor of it, and he's the first. He's not the
Speaker 1: first person to say, yeah, the Nazis did a lot
Speaker 1: of drugs, he seems to be the first author to
Speaker 1: to really say, yeah, the Nazis did a lot of
Speaker 1: drugs and this was the result. Yeah. And I think
Speaker 1: from what I uh, the parts of the book that
Speaker 1: I read and doing this research, it is it's not
Speaker 1: much of a leap. So when you have facts and
Speaker 1: like the number of pills, which we'll get into, and
Speaker 1: what these pills were, there's just no disputing the physiological
Speaker 1: effect that it has on people and what these drugs
Speaker 1: do because that's why they were taking them. So it's
Speaker 1: not much of a leap, even though it is some
Speaker 1: conjecture to say, you know, the blitz creek was uh,
Speaker 1: probably super effective because they were all on crank. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it gives blitz creek bop like a new meaning, you know.
Speaker 1: I I that was totally off the cuff, too off
Speaker 1: the dome. Yeah. So should we talk about Old Germany
Speaker 1: and sort of the seed of this whole thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but first one more thing while we're kind of on
Speaker 1: this particular riff. Um, I don't know, because again I
Speaker 1: haven't read the book. I don't know that Ohler is saying,
Speaker 1: and I don't think he is that like the Holocaust
Speaker 1: wouldn't have happened if if Germany hadn't been hopped up
Speaker 1: on drugs. Um He's something some people do say that.
Speaker 1: There's some revisionist historians who say, yeah, it was it
Speaker 1: was drugs that was that had gripped Hitler's mind, and
Speaker 1: had he not been on drugs, the Holocaust wouldn't have happened.
Speaker 1: That appears to be patently untrue. The earliest um, the
Speaker 1: earliest deaths executions in the Holocaust that I found go
Speaker 1: back to nineteen thirty three, and the Nazis had such
Speaker 1: a tenuous grip on power that um that that they
Speaker 1: had to basically make it look like these executions of
Speaker 1: these four Jews at Dachau um were were for were
Speaker 1: them trying to escape? Like they were shot trying to escape.
Speaker 1: It was such a terrible obvious lie that three SS
Speaker 1: officers and the camp commandant at Dachau were indicted for murder.
Speaker 1: That's how new the Nazis were into power that they
Speaker 1: these guys were indicted for murder. The indictments went away.
Speaker 1: But again this was three, way early, way before anybody
Speaker 1: was on drugs and UM, and the Holocaust was just
Speaker 1: that was like the earliest beginnings of the Holocaust, and
Speaker 1: it showed this mentality and this drive and desire to
Speaker 1: carry out the Holocaust later on. So so anybody who
Speaker 1: says that it was drugs that brought about the Holocaust
Speaker 1: is wrong from what I understand. So you mentioned nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty three, Uh, that is interesting that data is because
Speaker 1: there were plenty of drugs. The Nazis weren't doing them yet,
Speaker 1: but they started passing laws in nineteen thirty three as
Speaker 1: one of the big first moves of the Nazis to um,
Speaker 1: to clean up the land, to clean up the Weimar
Speaker 1: Republic which is what Germany was basically known as from
Speaker 1: nineteen eighteen to nineteen thirty three. Yeah, the Weimar Republic
Speaker 1: was an experiment at democracy in Germany and it almost
Speaker 1: took like the last five years of the republic showed
Speaker 1: like economic growth. It was during the jazz Age, so
Speaker 1: everybody was kind of partying, as we'll see. And UM,
Speaker 1: it wasn't until the Great Depression started in nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: nine that this really fragile republic, this really fragile democracy
Speaker 1: just could not handle that kind of economic hit, and
Speaker 1: it gave Hitler in the National Socialism Party this per
Speaker 1: ficct entree into power by saying, first of all, we
Speaker 1: can we can turn things around economically. The Wymar Republic
Speaker 1: couldn't do it. And secondly, this all Wymar Republic thing,
Speaker 1: everybody's on drugs, they're all degenerates. And then they used
Speaker 1: that idea of degenerate art of people being on cocaine
Speaker 1: and morphine, and and tied it in with Judaism. And
Speaker 1: so anybody who was on drugs, anyone who was gay,
Speaker 1: anyone who would say like a roma, Um, they were
Speaker 1: all tied in with the Jews, and all of those
Speaker 1: people were subject to the Holocaust um right out of
Speaker 1: the gate. Yeah, so the stage is set. They're locking
Speaker 1: up their imprisoning, their sterilizing addicts, UM, denouncing these users. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then and these are, like we said, cocaine and morphine,
Speaker 1: which Germany was like one of the leading or maybe
Speaker 1: the leading producer of cocaine in the world at the time. Right,
Speaker 1: you gotta tell them those statistics. Yeah, in the nineteen
Speaker 1: twenties Germany, UH, companies in Germany generated of the world's
Speaker 1: morphine and controlled eight of the global cocaine market. That is,
Speaker 1: in the nineteen twenties. Astounding, and so you can imagine
Speaker 1: that the Weimar Republic is awash in this. And so
Speaker 1: there really was like a lot of I mean, there
Speaker 1: was tons of wow, almost just said something else. There
Speaker 1: were tons of tons of horrible broken lives and addiction.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of homelessness. There was a lot
Speaker 1: of prostitution. There was a lot of um, a lot
Speaker 1: of I mean issues and problems that the society had.
Speaker 1: But there was also a lot of really interesting and
Speaker 1: good things that was coming out of this combination of
Speaker 1: a democracy of washing drugs. There were things like a
Speaker 1: lot more gender equality than there had been before. There
Speaker 1: was a lot of androgyny going on, and kind of
Speaker 1: like the art and social scene, there was some really
Speaker 1: good art coming out. But again the Nazis came along
Speaker 1: and denounced it as degenerate art and actually held an
Speaker 1: exhibition chuck in a degenerate art exhibition where they showed
Speaker 1: everybody in Germany, this is bad art, and we're going
Speaker 1: to destroy a lot of this and replace it with um.
Speaker 1: The three k's. It was kinder couch, I think couch, yeah,
Speaker 1: k you with the new and Kirsch, which is family
Speaker 1: home in church. And that is what our art, that
Speaker 1: is what our culture is going to be about. So
Speaker 1: the Weimar Republic provided this really great foil to what
Speaker 1: the Nazis were kind of rousing Germany out of, like, hey,
Speaker 1: let's all get off the cocaine, let's all get off
Speaker 1: the morphine. And in fact, if you know an addict,
Speaker 1: tell the cops, you neighbor, you co worker, you family member,
Speaker 1: go and form on on the drug users in this country.
Speaker 1: Let's let's clean Germany up. Let's clean Germany's bodies up,
Speaker 1: and let's move forward with an emphasis on family home
Speaker 1: in church. That's what the Nazis came to Germany with
Speaker 1: in in right. And as this is going on literally,
Speaker 1: as all this stuff is happening in the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: early in mid nineteen thirties, they're denouncing these people, locking
Speaker 1: them up um, talking about how toxic these drugs are.
Speaker 1: Germany and companies in Germany were switching over to synthesizing
Speaker 1: drugs and making speed and all kinds of drugs synthetic,
Speaker 1: like precursors to OxyContin and uh, meth basically. Uh. There
Speaker 1: was a firm in Berlin called the Timbler Firm, and
Speaker 1: they were headed up and this is a seven by
Speaker 1: man named Fritz house Child, who uh later on was
Speaker 1: the sort of leading dude in East Germany's sports doping program.
Speaker 1: So he's he knows what he's doing. So they synthesized
Speaker 1: basically crystal meth into something and you know, at least
Speaker 1: as the same kind of active ingredients as a little
Speaker 1: pill called purvitin V E R V I T I
Speaker 1: N and um. It wasn't just the army that uses
Speaker 1: and we'll get into all that, because the German military
Speaker 1: was definitely hopped up on what we now know as
Speaker 1: crystal meth. But this stuff was over the counter at first,
Speaker 1: and a lot of Germany was using this, housewives were
Speaker 1: using it. And we should say that like the same
Speaker 1: stuff was going on as benz adrine in the United States,
Speaker 1: like they were. It seems like the whole world was
Speaker 1: hopped up on speed in the nineteen thirties, not just
Speaker 1: the thirties, like well into the sixties, well, I mean
Speaker 1: starting in the nineteen thirties. Uh, And so purviton was
Speaker 1: over the counter at first, eventually, uh, you know, some
Speaker 1: alarm bell started going off, so they just like, we
Speaker 1: might want to make this prescription. And then they said, well,
Speaker 1: you know what, we don't know if the general public
Speaker 1: should have this at all, but we totally want our
Speaker 1: military to still have it. Yeah, it was called the
Speaker 1: Stimulant Decree where the head of the German um physiology
Speaker 1: department in the in the Defense ministry, his name was
Speaker 1: Otto Ranki. He said, give me thirty five million of
Speaker 1: those stimulant tabs because we're waging a war on exhaustion,
Speaker 1: as we'll see. Let's let's before we hop into the military.
Speaker 1: You want to take a break, Yes, okay, I'm ready.
Speaker 1: We need to starting now, George, okay, Chuck. So in
Speaker 1: Germany before before there's a really important point that I
Speaker 1: don't want to gloss over. Germany went from this. As
Speaker 1: far as the Nazis were concerned, it's kind of shiftless um,
Speaker 1: high unemployment, fragile economic state where a lot of people
Speaker 1: were selling and doing cocaine and morphine recreationally and to
Speaker 1: stave off depression. I mean, they were in a pretty
Speaker 1: bad spot as a country weight or like you know, well,
Speaker 1: well no not yet, not yet that was not the
Speaker 1: point of it. Yet. It was strictly to get high,
Speaker 1: is what they were doing in the Ymar Republic was
Speaker 1: just a perk when the well, no, that was a
Speaker 1: Nazi thing. So then the Nazis come along and they say,
Speaker 1: we're not doing cocaine and morphine anymore. Let's try these
Speaker 1: other synthetic stimulants that can be produced strictly in Germany.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that is a benefit is
Speaker 1: weight loss or I saw first date jitters or um
Speaker 1: just self confidence, depression, anything you could think of that
Speaker 1: you might need a little boost for. Purvitin was was
Speaker 1: advertised for, I almost prescribed, but like you said, it
Speaker 1: was over the counter. And so it's really interesting that
Speaker 1: that um Norman Ohler makes this point. Around the time
Speaker 1: the perviting came out and started to become into widespread use,
Speaker 1: the German economy started cranking into full gear. So one
Speaker 1: of the first points that Owlder makes is without this speed,
Speaker 1: Germany probably wouldn't have been able to get onto wartime
Speaker 1: footing as fast as it did because it happened overnight
Speaker 1: in terms of like huge social social change, and that
Speaker 1: was a big part of it. Was this pervitin the
Speaker 1: speed that everyone in Germany was on. And now thinking
Speaker 1: about you know, the German the health of the German
Speaker 1: country in Germany itself. Yeah, and you know, if you
Speaker 1: think about a military being hopped up on speed um,
Speaker 1: it has a lot of initially may have a lot
Speaker 1: of advantages and that not only are you feeling euphoric
Speaker 1: and confident and you're super focused, but you can also
Speaker 1: battle it up and wore it up for two days
Speaker 1: straight without sleeping and still feel good. So they were
Speaker 1: passing them out literally in chocolates. Uh some of them
Speaker 1: were called uh ponza chocolata tank chocolate for the tank
Speaker 1: drivers and tank crews. And then they would give them
Speaker 1: to the Air Force. They would give them to pilots
Speaker 1: and they called it either pilot salt or pilots chocolate.
Speaker 1: And between, dude, between April and July, just what is that?
Speaker 1: Four months? Yes, in nineteen forty more than thirty five
Speaker 1: million doses of purbiton were manufactured for the army. In
Speaker 1: the Air Force alone over three three and a half
Speaker 1: four months, thirty five million doses. And I mean there
Speaker 1: are plenty of accounts um like on record. This is
Speaker 1: not speculation at all. There was a Nobel Prize winner
Speaker 1: named Einrich Bowl who won the Nobel Prize in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy two for literature, and he was he was in
Speaker 1: the army back before he was an author, and like
Speaker 1: the our letters home where he's like, perhaps you could
Speaker 1: obtain some more purbaton for my supplies and just send
Speaker 1: it on over. So they love the stuff, yeah, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: they loved it, um, not not just like the the
Speaker 1: actual like soldiers loved it, which they very much did
Speaker 1: from all from all appearances, but also the people running
Speaker 1: the show, um of the military, the Wehrmacht loved it
Speaker 1: too well. They were on it themselves, sure, but they
Speaker 1: also loved like the effects, like they it turned German
Speaker 1: soldiers into like super soldiers. Basically they didn't need sleep.
Speaker 1: They could they could hike through forests for days on end,
Speaker 1: and they did. Actually, the blitz creak into France was
Speaker 1: carried out over about three three plus days and um
Speaker 1: Norman Ohler says in his book that in in less
Speaker 1: than a hundred hours, Germany gained more land in France
Speaker 1: than it did throughout the entirety of World War One,
Speaker 1: and it was because it was one big push all
Speaker 1: the way into France that took place over three days, NonStop.
Speaker 1: There wasn't like let's let's move like twenty miles and
Speaker 1: then camp for the night and then pick up the
Speaker 1: next morning. It was a NonStop move into France. And
Speaker 1: from what I understand, no one in in the modern
Speaker 1: world had ever seen anything like that from a military.
Speaker 1: It didn't make any sense. And that was it for France.
Speaker 1: I mean, like, this was May of nineteen forty France.
Speaker 1: France fell like almost immediately just in the face of this.
Speaker 1: And they used the same tactic in Poland the year before,
Speaker 1: and all of this was they think, it's not like, oh,
Speaker 1: this coincides with the time that you know, the military
Speaker 1: was was ordering pervitin. It's documented that pervitin was the
Speaker 1: reason that this these pushes were able to happen and
Speaker 1: why Germany looked like they really were going to take
Speaker 1: over the world in the early stages of World War two. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this stuff was, I mean, it was it was
Speaker 1: from the top down. And we'll we'll get to Hitler's
Speaker 1: drug use in the third act of this podcast because
Speaker 1: that stuff is super interesting. Um, but it was definitely
Speaker 1: top down, like the head of the Research Institute of
Speaker 1: Defense Physiology, basically the the lead physiologist for the German military.
Speaker 1: His name was Otto Runk. Yeah I mentioned him. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was. He was. He was hopped up on it himself.
Speaker 1: He's the one that endorses from the beginning. And basically
Speaker 1: it's like medically documented that he he essentially at a
Speaker 1: certain point was living in a constant state of speed
Speaker 1: meth overdose. So uh, all right, so the army, the
Speaker 1: Air Force, everyone's all hopped up on this drug. Um,
Speaker 1: they are literally like prescribing this as like these young
Speaker 1: like seventeen eighteen year old German soldiers or are signing
Speaker 1: up for the army or did they sign up or
Speaker 1: did they just get absorbed. It depends on when in
Speaker 1: the in the war you're talking about. Towards the end
Speaker 1: of the war, they had no choice. They were just drafted.
Speaker 1: Well any rate, they would say like here's your outfit. Um,
Speaker 1: it's very sharp, I think you must admit, and you
Speaker 1: go boss yeah, And the soldier would say thinks a lot.
Speaker 1: And they would say here's your weapon, and here's your speed,
Speaker 1: like put this under your tongue starting now. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: then here's all the rest of your speed to carry
Speaker 1: around with you. Just come back when you need some more. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the short term, you know, it's it's like we've
Speaker 1: done plenty of episodes on drugs and on crystal meth,
Speaker 1: and the short term we've been on crystal meth while
Speaker 1: we've done the episodes that the short term effect was
Speaker 1: was great and like you said, they made so many
Speaker 1: gains so much more quickly, to the point where Churchill
Speaker 1: was apparently dumbfounded by how fast they operated. But like,
Speaker 1: over time, it's gonna have the effect of any other drug.
Speaker 1: Just because it comes packaged and marketed as a prescription
Speaker 1: doesn't mean it wasn't crystal meth. And over time what
Speaker 1: happens is sleep deprivation and very poor decision making, not
Speaker 1: sharp focus, and soldiers who would die of heart failure
Speaker 1: or who would take their own lives during psychotic breakdowns,
Speaker 1: and you know, withdrawal when they couldn't get their hands
Speaker 1: on the purvitend. So this very much ended up biting
Speaker 1: them on their German highnees. Uh, even after their initial successes. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and um, I mean you can point to the
Speaker 1: places where the where the war started to turn that
Speaker 1: that coincide with um. You know, points where it had
Speaker 1: been years that the German army had been on stimulants
Speaker 1: and speed for basically every day since then, and like,
Speaker 1: I mean, you don't even have to You could be
Speaker 1: the most drug naive person in the world and you
Speaker 1: still know that space staying on speed for three years,
Speaker 1: there's eventually going to be a bottoming out. And that's
Speaker 1: not a place where you want to be as a military,
Speaker 1: especially when you're deep into Russia in the winter. If
Speaker 1: your whole army is bottoming out after Matthews, yes, that's
Speaker 1: not good. And that seems to be what happened. Like
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why the Russia offensive was was
Speaker 1: um was not was not successful. It is because there
Speaker 1: was a lot of um, A lot of UM. I
Speaker 1: keep using the word followed or bottoming out what's it
Speaker 1: called when like you oh, crashing from speed sure and
Speaker 1: like and and suffering from psychosis and all sorts of
Speaker 1: other problems. And then even if it wasn't directly like
Speaker 1: their their decision making wasn't affected or even if you
Speaker 1: take all that out, being in Russia, caught in Russia
Speaker 1: in the winter, um while being addicted to speed for
Speaker 1: three years. That is not a good place. Your body
Speaker 1: is not in the kind of place where it can
Speaker 1: fight off pneumonia easily or stay warm easily. It's severely compromised.
Speaker 1: Just on like say, a first dose of speed in
Speaker 1: that situation, but after being on speed every day for
Speaker 1: three years, that's a really bad situation. So in that sense,
Speaker 1: at the very least, speed would have contributed to a
Speaker 1: really huge um set back for the German Army that
Speaker 1: a lot of people point to is one of the
Speaker 1: at least the real nail in the coffin for Germany,
Speaker 1: which was um Russia not being successful in Russia turning
Speaker 1: the tides and pushing Germany back or the German army
Speaker 1: back into Germany and then chasing it into it. That
Speaker 1: was that was a big deal, and it's possible that
Speaker 1: speed played a really big factor in it. Well for sure.
Speaker 1: I mean, we we talked about older speculation about some
Speaker 1: of this stuff, but again it's it's sort of a
Speaker 1: numbers game. I mean, there there are studies that show
Speaker 1: that if you take crystal meth a lot for three years,
Speaker 1: that two thirds of the people who use that drug
Speaker 1: in that way are going to suffer from serious psychosis.
Speaker 1: So it's just a math problem. If that many pills
Speaker 1: were literally being handed out in the army and they
Speaker 1: were all using it for that amount of time, then
Speaker 1: that means, according to studies, that two thirds of the
Speaker 1: German army at some point we're suffering from psychosis drug
Speaker 1: induced psychosis. That's not good. And apparently towards the end
Speaker 1: of the war UM German chemists were trying to come
Speaker 1: up with new drugs. There was one that didn't get
Speaker 1: deployed UM, but that was tested or I think it
Speaker 1: might have been deployed, I can't remember UM called Drug
Speaker 1: nine or d I X Roman Numeral nine, and it
Speaker 1: was basically like cocaine and morphine and then another kind
Speaker 1: of morphine, and it was it was meant to combat
Speaker 1: the to get the German army back on its feet, UM.
Speaker 1: But it was just so over the top that it
Speaker 1: was never never issued in like any kind of wide
Speaker 1: supply because it was just it was basically like here, addicts,
Speaker 1: here's a brand new super drug that's going to keep
Speaker 1: you going. But it didn't quite work. But they found
Speaker 1: I saw that in tests on on concentration camp inmates.
Speaker 1: They would they would hike in a colaw in a
Speaker 1: circle like ninety kilometers in a day without rest, so
Speaker 1: it would work. But I think they also tried it
Speaker 1: on some some one man subs and it didn't work
Speaker 1: out very well. D nine So sounds like like the
Speaker 1: dude in college that's like, dude, I got some D nine. Man.
Speaker 1: It was this like this German drug back in World
Speaker 1: War Two that was a combination. It's the ultimate super
Speaker 1: drug and some guy in uh Indiana is making it now. Yep, yep,
Speaker 1: that's where they would make it, when in fact it
Speaker 1: was just you know, white Crosses smashed up right and
Speaker 1: mixed with um, you know, Pillsberry sugar cookie dough. Alright,
Speaker 1: so I think we should take another break. We're going
Speaker 1: to finish up with what I think is the most
Speaker 1: interesting part of this whole thing, which is Adolf Hitler's
Speaker 1: rampant drug use in his his own Michael Jackson esque
Speaker 1: personal doctor who injected up on a daily basis right
Speaker 1: after this ge alright, so there's this doctor. His name
Speaker 1: was doctor Morrel, Dr Theodore Morrel, and he kind of
Speaker 1: wormed his way into He was not a highly um
Speaker 1: thought of doctor. He was not highly credited. To begin with,
Speaker 1: he was sort of known as a quack. He was
Speaker 1: a dermatologist though, and I think that's how he first
Speaker 1: curried favor with Hitler was in curing is his long
Speaker 1: time exema, right, And he also just uh he worked
Speaker 1: on venereal diseases and stuff like that, and starting in
Speaker 1: ninety six, he managed to worm his way in there
Speaker 1: such that Hitler made him his private physician. And it's
Speaker 1: like you always hear about these private physicians, whether it's
Speaker 1: Michael Jackson or Elvis or anyone in this high position
Speaker 1: of power or world leader who has their own doctor
Speaker 1: Field Good essentially, and that's what happened with Hitler. He uh,
Speaker 1: I mean, should we just go ahead and talk about
Speaker 1: the daily routine? Sure, there's so many interesting things here.
Speaker 1: Hitler would. First of all, Hitler had bad um. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess you'd call it ib s um notoriously flatulent
Speaker 1: and diarrhea and just had a bad bad stomach problems
Speaker 1: and intestinal issues like gas that Dr Morrell once noted
Speaker 1: in his journals, because he kept extensive journals untreating Hitler,
Speaker 1: who he called patient A, he referred to it as
Speaker 1: colossal gas. The likes of which he's never seen before.
Speaker 1: Like that was the kind of gas that Hitler was
Speaker 1: dealing with. Of course, Hitler had the worst farts of
Speaker 1: all time, of all times, worst farts in history. So, uh,
Speaker 1: he goes vegetarian, and he did not help things. It
Speaker 1: did not help things because he basically subsisted on a
Speaker 1: diet of baby food. Um they didn't call it baby
Speaker 1: food or serve it to him with a plastic spoon
Speaker 1: from a little tiny jar, but he ate purade, watery
Speaker 1: vegetables basically, which is not going to cure your flatulence. Uh,
Speaker 1: and he was he started to get uh, doped up
Speaker 1: a little bit from Morrel, and he's like, hey, I
Speaker 1: feel a little bit better with this stuff. And it
Speaker 1: got to the point where he didn't care what he
Speaker 1: was getting as long as the result was that it
Speaker 1: made him feel better. And so eventually Morrel got up
Speaker 1: to the point where he was injecting him daily, multiple
Speaker 1: times a day, with anywhere from I've seen twenty five
Speaker 1: to dy different drugs over the course of about nine years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so and all of this it started in ninety
Speaker 1: six and like you said, ran for nine years, and
Speaker 1: at first it was you know, doctor Morrell was one
Speaker 1: of the first doctors in Germany to espouse the healing
Speaker 1: and health benefits of vitamins. Before that, vitamins weren't really
Speaker 1: thought of as healthy, and he was like, no, they're
Speaker 1: super healthy. Watch, I'll show you under fear. And remember
Speaker 1: one of the things about Nazi Germany was that like,
Speaker 1: you kept your body pure to help the German state.
Speaker 1: It was like a component of fascism was was like
Speaker 1: being pure and drug free. But if they were vitamins
Speaker 1: and they were injected by a doctor, that's fine, we
Speaker 1: can do all those. So um, this idea of keeping
Speaker 1: Hitler seeming like fit and active and like full of
Speaker 1: um spit and vinegar, you know. Um, that was supposedly
Speaker 1: from Morrel's vitamin injections. But then as time went off
Speaker 1: and Hitler started to suffer more ill health again, some
Speaker 1: of these vitamins were supplemented by just straight up, straight
Speaker 1: up drugs that were produced by Germany, like Purveton and
Speaker 1: like you could all, yeah, so Hitler's getting injected um
Speaker 1: with and like you said, he like Hitler notoriously was
Speaker 1: thought of as a teetotler. He didn't even drink coffee.
Speaker 1: He quit smoking and he was supposed to be this
Speaker 1: picture of health. All the while he's getting injected with
Speaker 1: everything from literal cocaine to morphine, to precursors to OxyContin
Speaker 1: two uh extractions of bull semen because Hitler very notoriously
Speaker 1: had um issues in the in the E. D department testosterone.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's crazy the amount of drugs that he
Speaker 1: was getting injected with multiple times daily. I saw a
Speaker 1: d was the high estimate on with one source. I
Speaker 1: saw ninety elsewhere. But a cocktail and not just like
Speaker 1: here's one drug and then the next day, here's a
Speaker 1: different drug, a cocktail of up to combinations of up
Speaker 1: to ninety different drugs, you know, during during the course
Speaker 1: of this this time repeatedly getting injected like daily injections.
Speaker 1: Apparently towards the end of the war, Hitler's veins had
Speaker 1: started collapsing. But UM to Hitler, or at least the
Speaker 1: way that Hitler pretended was that this was his doctor,
Speaker 1: you know, shooting him up with vitamins UM when he
Speaker 1: when he got I when he got a cocaine, it
Speaker 1: was given in the form of eye drops. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: that was that was early on, Like this was before
Speaker 1: they started shooting him up. They would give it to
Speaker 1: him and I drive, I dropped it ten times the
Speaker 1: concentration that because cocaine was used in medicine a little
Speaker 1: bit um but at very low doses, so he would
Speaker 1: ramp it up by ten times, squirt it in his eye,
Speaker 1: and eventually, like anything else, you have to ramp it
Speaker 1: up to get that same high. So that's when the
Speaker 1: injection started. Well, he also started snorting it. I saw
Speaker 1: to um to clear his to clear his sinuses and
Speaker 1: keep his throat clean, or throat um to ease a
Speaker 1: sore throat. Just stupid stuff like that. But it was
Speaker 1: through that Elvis paradigm, which was if a doctor's giving
Speaker 1: it to me, it's legal, it's a it's not it's
Speaker 1: not a drug. Drug. It would have been scandalous if
Speaker 1: it had gotten out that that Hitler was snort in
Speaker 1: cocaine because again like the Nazis had associated that with
Speaker 1: you know, degenerates in the Weimar Republic, so no one
Speaker 1: did cocaine. If Hitler had been caught doing cocaine, that
Speaker 1: would have been a big deal. Yeah, and you know,
Speaker 1: by all accounts, by the end of the war, you know,
Speaker 1: those final dark dark days of Hitler the Bunker, and
Speaker 1: and this we know the stuff because Dr Morrell left
Speaker 1: behind a treasure trove of documentation to kind of cover
Speaker 1: his own but just in case anything ever happened. So
Speaker 1: we have all this documentation. But from what everyone has
Speaker 1: written in history, in the final days, hit Or was
Speaker 1: just a straight up junkie. Yeah, that's that's that's certainly
Speaker 1: how Older characterizes the whole thing. Um, And it's not
Speaker 1: just him, like a lot of people are like, no,
Speaker 1: Hitler's health decline tremendously, Like he didn't go into the
Speaker 1: war with too many health problems aside from eczema and
Speaker 1: something called spina bifida occulta, which they think was responsible
Speaker 1: for his um his problematic um bowels and gas. But
Speaker 1: like he didn't have massive problems, he didn't have Parkinson's.
Speaker 1: By the end of the war, he seemed to have
Speaker 1: developed Parkinson's he um, he had trouble walking. He uh,
Speaker 1: he was very much emaciated and sallow and so um.
Speaker 1: Older for the first time really lays this at the
Speaker 1: feet of Dr Morrell and his injections, because not only again,
Speaker 1: not only is it like cocaine and morphine and oxycoxycontin
Speaker 1: and um uh speed that he's giving Hitler. Some of
Speaker 1: these other can coxin's are like really not good. There
Speaker 1: was an anti gas pill called Dr Couster's Anti gas Pills.
Speaker 1: They had had Strict nine in it. Yeah, Hitler took
Speaker 1: a lot of those. And you know, if you take
Speaker 1: a lot of Strict nine every day over the course
Speaker 1: of years, it's going to have some really negative impacts
Speaker 1: on you. So not only was it that Hitler was
Speaker 1: addicted to drugs, he was also being given some very
Speaker 1: poisonous toxic materials by his doctor in other ways too,
Speaker 1: and that was it accumulatively had this effect. But I
Speaker 1: think the big money thing, Chuck is like, how did
Speaker 1: it impact Hitler's judgment? How does that correlate towards the
Speaker 1: end of the war, And that's where Ohler is really
Speaker 1: going into town. He's like, dude, Hitler was, like you said,
Speaker 1: just totally addicted to drugs morphine, OxyContin, um speed, cocaine
Speaker 1: by the end of the war, and it had clouded
Speaker 1: his judgment. And even though no call off, he's still
Speaker 1: I think it might have been Himmler or Spear, one
Speaker 1: of his close advisors had said like man when when
Speaker 1: the war started Hitler, Hitler could make a decision in
Speaker 1: a snap. By the by the towards the end of
Speaker 1: the war, bye, he it was just like a nightmare
Speaker 1: watching him like go back and forth and try to
Speaker 1: come to a conclusion in a decision, and that that
Speaker 1: was directly related to the drugs he was on well
Speaker 1: and increasingly sequestered and paranoid. Like the whole thing was
Speaker 1: a recipe for disaster. Uh, you know, you've talked about Morrel.
Speaker 1: What he had to gain was obviously the prestige of
Speaker 1: being Hitler's personal physician. But he had a lot of
Speaker 1: money in the in the game here because he was
Speaker 1: cranking out this preparation that he called Vita Molton that
Speaker 1: was marketed across Europe, and he was essentially in the
Speaker 1: drug business, like he was making it tons of money,
Speaker 1: and he could try out Hitler as his star patient
Speaker 1: and even went so far as to basically he wrote
Speaker 1: a letter to the Reich Health Office because you know,
Speaker 1: eventually doctors and people started coming out and saying, hey,
Speaker 1: like this stuff is not good. We need to outlaw this.
Speaker 1: This is having a bad effect. And so he wrote
Speaker 1: the Reich Health Office and said, the fewer has authorized
Speaker 1: me to do the following. If I bring out in
Speaker 1: test a remedy and then applied in the fureer's headquarters
Speaker 1: and applied successfully that it could be applied elsewhere in
Speaker 1: Germany and no longer needs authorization. So so yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like you just try to try to come back with
Speaker 1: a response to that. Yeah. And in the meantime and
Speaker 1: building a factory and getting rich, uh making speed for
Speaker 1: all of Germany. Yeah, this Vita Molton, there was like
Speaker 1: a billion packets ordered by just you know, the um,
Speaker 1: the Hrmacht alone, let alone like all of the German people.
Speaker 1: UM that he sold a lot and made a lot
Speaker 1: of money off of it. Um. But from from what
Speaker 1: seems to be UM, I guess Older Owler's research has
Speaker 1: kind of shown that UM, that Morrell was very much
Speaker 1: dedicated not just as a doctor, but like personally to
Speaker 1: Hitler too, and that he most likely over the years
Speaker 1: historians have accused Morrel of purposefully trying to harm Hitler
Speaker 1: or um something along those lines. But the apparently Older
Speaker 1: is like, no, this guy really was a true believer
Speaker 1: and was really like very much proud that he was
Speaker 1: Hitler's physician. He didn't know what he was doing. He
Speaker 1: definitely turned Hitler into an addict of multiple drugs, a
Speaker 1: super I think a super addict is how um Owlder
Speaker 1: puts it. But he he was still devoted to him.
Speaker 1: He wasn't doing it to cause deliberate harm, right. Um,
Speaker 1: It's just so interesting this this same thing with like
Speaker 1: Michael Jackson and Elvis. It's like there's this weird thing
Speaker 1: that happens where these doctors completely so their souls to
Speaker 1: work alongside these people in positions of power and essentially
Speaker 1: kill them eventually, uh, by just feeding them whatever drug
Speaker 1: they needed. Like he was not only on speed obviously
Speaker 1: to counteract that. You need something to bring you down.
Speaker 1: So then he would get injected with something called you
Speaker 1: could all that's the OxyContin uh relative. Yeah, so he
Speaker 1: I mean, he didn't know which way it was up
Speaker 1: at a certain point. Um, eventually, like he would he
Speaker 1: fired Morrel on April seventeen. Two weeks later, Hitler put
Speaker 1: a bullet in his brain. Morrell gets tried for war
Speaker 1: crimes and goes to jail and then I believe died
Speaker 1: of a stroke in nine. Yeah, he he was not
Speaker 1: tried for war crimes, but he was interrogated, No, he wasn't. Um,
Speaker 1: he was interrogated in prison for two years by the
Speaker 1: Allies who just pumped him for all the information they
Speaker 1: could get about Hitler. He was just in prison being questioned. Yes, interesting,
Speaker 1: And he ended up producing or contributing to like a
Speaker 1: forty seven page report about Hitler and Hitler's health that
Speaker 1: the Allies had that didn't come out until I think
Speaker 1: the nineties in the US. But um, he was a
Speaker 1: huge trove of information. But more than that, and the
Speaker 1: fact that he got Hitler addicted to OxyContin that led
Speaker 1: to Hitler making some terrible decisions, to becoming increasingly paranoid,
Speaker 1: to stop listening to his generals, to becoming embarrassed for
Speaker 1: these defeats, and like withdrawing even further and then ultimately
Speaker 1: losing the war, and um taking his own life. In
Speaker 1: that sense, the world owes a tremendous debt to Theodore Morrell.
Speaker 1: It's kind of funny when you think about it, like
Speaker 1: we owe that dude. And imagine this also another way
Speaker 1: to look at this, Chuck, Imagine that you had gotten
Speaker 1: behind this, this cult of personality, this leader, this charismatic
Speaker 1: leader who said we are going to take over the world,
Speaker 1: and you decided that you were on board with that.
Speaker 1: You're a German who was going along with it. Maybe
Speaker 1: you were pepped up on a little bit of speed um.
Speaker 1: And then over time, right in the middle of this
Speaker 1: taking over the world thing that's actually starting to seem
Speaker 1: like it might work, that leader decides that he's going
Speaker 1: to go and get hooked on like five different extraordinarily
Speaker 1: addictive drugs right in the middle of taking over the world,
Speaker 1: and that that would be the thing that brought about
Speaker 1: the downfall, which you which Older makes the cases like, yes,
Speaker 1: you can lay a lot of this the downfall of
Speaker 1: of the Third Reich, at the feet of drugs. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean it's certainly you can't fault Older for for
Speaker 1: going there, because is such a juicy thing to take
Speaker 1: all these facts about all this drug use, rampant drug use,
Speaker 1: and then years later go back and say, like what
Speaker 1: if this hadn't happened, or what was the overall effect
Speaker 1: not just that they did these drugs, but what how
Speaker 1: did it affect history? Super interesting? Yeah, it's extraordinarily interesting.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's good stuff. Oh, I found I
Speaker 1: found one other thing too. I want to mention. There's
Speaker 1: something called Muda floor or Muta floor m U t
Speaker 1: A f l o R. It's still available. It was
Speaker 1: Hitler's go to probiotic, and it was isolated in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventeen from a stool sample taken from a World War
Speaker 1: One soldier who, while everybody else in his troop was
Speaker 1: like getting dysentery left and right, he was healthy. And
Speaker 1: this doctor noticed and and isolated a particular kind of
Speaker 1: bacteria in this guy's stool. And you can buy um
Speaker 1: pills made from that line of bacteria to this day,
Speaker 1: except it's illegal in the US for some reason, which
Speaker 1: makes me really want to see what it's all about.
Speaker 1: But you're eating World War One poop bacteria when you
Speaker 1: take this Muta floor. But it was given to Hitler
Speaker 1: and apparently it worked, so Hitler's probiotic, which I'm I'm
Speaker 1: sure Muta floor is like, please don't call it Hitler's probiotic.
Speaker 1: We're still trying to sell that stuff. Uh. Well, do
Speaker 1: you want to know more about Hitler and drugs, Just
Speaker 1: go read um Blitzed The Third Reich and Drugs by
Speaker 1: Norman Ohler, or you can go read all the book
Speaker 1: reviews about it, Uh like I did. And since I
Speaker 1: said that, it's time for a listener mail, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: call this uh epic pants story in the Science of Breakups? Um,
Speaker 1: you were talking about getting pants? Oh yes, I remember.
Speaker 1: So this is from anonymous. Hey guys, it happened in
Speaker 1: high school. I was gathering up the nerve to ask
Speaker 1: a girl out on a date that I had a
Speaker 1: crush on, to set the scene and highlight the level
Speaker 1: of embarrassment I'm setting myself for. It's worth noting that
Speaker 1: at this point in my life I had never actually
Speaker 1: asked a girl out this boldly. I was going to
Speaker 1: do it face to face in the classroom in front
Speaker 1: of her friends and my friends. Geez, it's not a
Speaker 1: good idea. Can't you like Catcher by her locker? And
Speaker 1: she's not surrounded by people. He was hopped up on
Speaker 1: purvet and feeling really confident. Maybe, Uh, this out of
Speaker 1: character for me, But I couldn't find the courage on
Speaker 1: my own, so I confided in a close friend who
Speaker 1: agreed to be my wingman. He was very supportive, Plus
Speaker 1: he had inside her info. They actually heard her say
Speaker 1: that she liked me. Man, Remember those days? How sweet
Speaker 1: that was yes, does she like me? Yes? Or maybe? Uh?
Speaker 1: The teacher left the classroom for a minute. My trusty
Speaker 1: mate said I should go for it and do it
Speaker 1: right now. So with the encouragement from him, I needed uh,
Speaker 1: and I was nervous as h I walked over to
Speaker 1: her table of friends, interrupted them, had her full attention,
Speaker 1: and started asking her out on the date I was
Speaker 1: actually doing it. Guys, I felt amazing, and then bam,
Speaker 1: super supportive mate had set me up and pants to
Speaker 1: me in front of her and the whole class. Now
Speaker 1: it gets worse, he think, Huh, I'm not gonna say.
Speaker 1: I think you know what's coming. The execution was perfect, guys.
Speaker 1: One pantst full monty before the whole class and for
Speaker 1: a whole second before I could halt the process. Dude,
Speaker 1: could you imagine I would never recover? Hey, No, I'd move.
Speaker 1: I'd go home and be like, we have to move
Speaker 1: to a new school in a new state, maybe a
Speaker 1: new country, wasn't It's funny you mentioned that, because I
Speaker 1: think every school also had some kid who didn't show
Speaker 1: up after summer the next fall and when in fact
Speaker 1: his dad got a transfer, but there would be some
Speaker 1: story cooked up on why I saw him on a
Speaker 1: milk carton. Wait, that was a kid at our school
Speaker 1: who supposedly moved because he masturbated in class and got caught.
Speaker 1: And I don't think any of it was true. Oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, Oh my gosh. But is there like a
Speaker 1: kernel of truth to that, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Last years later the playground say it, actually, don't say,
Speaker 1: but it's funny. I haven't thought about that since the
Speaker 1: ninth grade. I'm gonna totally look him up and see
Speaker 1: if he's out there. Um. Anyway, guys, the betrayal was set.
Speaker 1: Gainst was second to Judas and the wave of embarrassment
Speaker 1: so Gargantelin that all I could do was just take
Speaker 1: a seat and die inside. We were an art class,
Speaker 1: but if the subject was advanced pantsing, my mate would
Speaker 1: have gotten an A plus. He's like, I was so embarrassed.
Speaker 1: I couldn't even pull my pants up when I took
Speaker 1: a seat. I just sat down with my bare butt
Speaker 1: and fruit basket right on the lunch room bench. I
Speaker 1: just gave into it, guys, and went dong out for
Speaker 1: the rest of the semester. Um what no, no, no,
Speaker 1: he did. I was like, Wow, good for this. I
Speaker 1: was just riffing on your bit, like I feel like
Speaker 1: I'm about to throw up. I must I love green
Speaker 1: right now right. So he keeps saying mate. It turns
Speaker 1: out he is Australian because he says ps in Australia
Speaker 1: instead of saying pants. Do we say dacked d A
Speaker 1: c K E D. I saw that somewhere dacks refer
Speaker 1: to pants like tracky decks are track pants. To put
Speaker 1: it in a sentence, my mate is such a dog.
Speaker 1: He full dacked me in front of this chick. I
Speaker 1: like h And that's from anonymous. Thanks a lot of
Speaker 1: anymous appreciate you sharing that, even though it was anonymously.
Speaker 1: That's right. If you have a horrifically cringe worthy story,
Speaker 1: we want to hear it. We'll make it through it together.
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