Museums, memorials and entire textbooks are dedicated to the atrocities and horrors committed by German Nazis. One thing that’s not exactly clear, however, is just what fueled those atrocities and horrors. Was it entirely hatred—or something far more insidious? According to a recent CNN feature, historians are taking a fresh look at the lengths to which Nazi officials experimented with chemicals and drugs. “I think that the drugs were pragmatically used and administered by [military]physicians and by soldiers and civilian consumers, but the evidence remains scanty for most of the war,” one historian noted. The evidence that does exist, however, is as disturbing as it is revealing about the nature of evil and war.
What Drugs Did the Nazis Actually Use?
It’s not a question of whether the Nazis used drugs, most historians agree. It’s how much they used. CNN observes that “German physicians prescribed the methamphetamine drug Pervitin when World War II troops felt tired or depressed and sought to enhance their energy,” while Nazi leader Adolf Hitler “inhaled powdered cocaine to treat sinus problems”—a fact corroborated by his own medical records. Still, it’s doubtful the entire Third Reich was under the influence of meth. “We do not know how extensive methamphetamine consumption was…in an exact quantitative sense; there are indications, but I doubt the suggestions of some that the whole war machine was fueled by these drugs. That’s just not how these drugs work,” one historian claimed.
That said, many experts, including author Norman Ohler, contend that drugs are what kept the Nazi Party marching across the globe. Ohler’s recent book Blitzed explores the “Third Reich’s relationship with drugs, including cocaine, heroin, morphine and, above all, methamphetamines (aka crystal meth), and of their effect not only on Hitler’s final days.” In fact, Ohler’s book claims that “the Führer…was an absolute junkie with ruined veins by the time he retreated to the last of his bunkers.” While it’s a lesser-heard detail about Hitler, it’s one that fits right into a dark, already-twisted mythos of the man.
“National Socialism in Pill Form”
A Guardian article points out that in the 1930s “when Germany’s pharmaceutical industry was thriving—the country was a leading exporter both of opiates, such as morphine, and of cocaine.” In fact, the article claims that “drugs were available on every street corner.” At the same time, “Hitler’s inner circle established an image of him as an unassailable figure who was willing to work tirelessly on behalf of his country, and who would permit no toxins—not even coffee—to enter his body.” When the Nazis took power in 1933, drugs weren’t just demonized. Drug users were considered “criminally insane” and many “would be killed by the state using a lethal injection [while]others would be sent to concentration camps.”
And yet at the exact same time, “Nazi officials took high-performance drugs such as methamphetamine hydrochloride (crystal meth) and cocaine,” the CNN feature said. Even crazier is that German soldiers were regularly dosed with a methamphetamine of their own creation: Pervitin. Ohler’s book described the drug as “National Socialism in pill form.” Otherwise known as “pilot’s salt” and given to soldiers as an “alertness aid,” Pervitin was considered “the ideal war drug” in how it could “keep fighters (pilots, in particular) alert on little sleep [and]it could also keep an entire military force feeling euphoric.” And while the drug immediately energized the Nazi front lines, “questions remain over precisely how the drugs were tested, prescribed, distributed and used,” the CNN story said. Apparently, it was “used as a confidence booster and performance enhancer by everyone from secretaries to actors to train drivers”—without a prescription.
Soldiers Without Pain
Pervitin, like cocaine, “boost[ed]the release of two main neurotransmitters in the brain—dopamine and serotonin—which give users a sense of energy and euphoria,” Kristen Keefe, a pharmacology and toxicology professor at the University of Utah told CNN. And yet performance-enhancing drug use among soldiers isn’t just for the annals of history. It’s almost (pun intended) a necessary evil. “If you have soldiers out in the field, you don’t want them to feel pain,” Keefe said. For all their obsession with power and superiority, though, the Third Reich still needed the same thing as everyone else to achieve it: chemicals. Methamphetamines like Pervitin are Schedule II drugs in the US, which means they’re so addictive they require a prescription. (Cocaine and opioids share the same classification.)
Still, Keefe cited that drugs are nothing new when it comes to soldiers and military engagements: “German, English, American and Japanese governments gave their military personnel methamphetamine to enhance endurance and alertness and [to]ward off fatigue during World War II,” CNN reported. And if World War II sounds like ancient history to you, the same CNN story points out that “jihadist fighters in Syria may be using the drug Captagon,” an amphetamine pill that provides the same jolt of energy and euphoria as Pervitin and crystal meth. Even American soldiers are routinely given “go pills,” about which The New Republic says “in today’s armed forces, performance-enhancing drugs are as common (and legal) as combat boots.” And while there is renewed interest in what drove the Nazi party and made them tick, today’s use of similar drugs in our own military calls into question just how far removed from that past (and our enemies) we actually are.
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