Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich

[KGBoy]

----Anybody heard or read this book?

Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich

by Norman Ohler, translated from the German by Shaun Whiteside

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 292 pp., $28.00

 

[Warts 'n' all]

Nope, and the link won't open. But I doubt very much that it contains anything new to us boring old farts. Although it might to people from the wrong side of the pond.

[Sgt.Squarehead]

I seem to remember reading excerpts, perhaps in relation to an article detailing the use of Captagon by ISIS & similar groups.....The effects of mind altering drugs in combination with cult-like pseudo-political/religious indoctrination should not be underestimated.

A big part of defeating your enemy is making him think he's being defeated.....If he's incapable of assimilating that concept, you are always going to have issues.

Edited January 28, 2021 by Sgt.Squarehead

[dr funkenstein]

I read it a few years ago. Quite interesting actually. Picked it up on the recommendation of Conan O'Brien haha. A guest of his asked him what he was reading at the time and he mentioned this book. 

The sections detailing the experiments they performed on prisoners are pretty unsettling. They were given speed and basically marched around in circles to death to measure the effectivity of the drug. Horrible stuff.

It also claims that German soldiers in France 1940 were able to sustain the manic pace of the blitzkrieg because they were juiced up and weren't sleeping.

[Sgt.Squarehead]

"The German chemist Friedrich Hauschild had been aware of the American amphetamine Benzedrine ever since the drug has been used as a doping product in the Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936. The following year he managed to synthesize methamphetamine, a close cousin of amphetamine, while working for Temmler-Werke, a Berlin-based pharmaceutical company. Temmler-Werke began selling methamphetamine under the brand name Pervitin in the winter of 1937. Partly thanks to the company’s aggressive advertising campaign, Pervitin became well known within a few months. The tablets were wildly popular and could be purchased without a prescription in pharmacies. One could even buy boxed chocolates spiked with methamphetamine. But the drug’s most important use was yet to come."

https://time.com/5752114/nazi-military-drugs/

Ohler gets a few mentions in the Time article, it seems to have been taken from another interesting sounding title in a similar vein:

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/killer-high-9780190463014?cc=us&lang=en&

[Warts 'n' all]

Wanders in and goes over to the gramophone, gives the big brass horn a rub, cranks the handle and puts on....

 

Edited January 29, 2021 by Warts 'n' all

[dr funkenstein]

12 hours ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

" One could even buy boxed chocolates spiked with methamphetamine. But the drug’s most important use was yet to come."

What could be more important than that?

[chuckdyke]

For the CM TacAI conscripts all get a +2 for leadership and a +2 for motivation. None for the Fallschirmjäger they were high enough. The Yanks all get 'Ice' in their Coke also nothing for the 82nd Airborne. 

[KGBoy]

16 hours ago, dr funkenstein said:

It also claims that German soldiers in France 1940 were able to sustain the manic pace of the blitzkrieg because they were juiced up and weren't sleeping.

As I read, it put the halt in the German offensive before Dunkirk as a meth crash. You basically run for 72 hours (?) like a maniac and then you crash and nothing will get you up. Also the allies were so impressed they developed their own version for their troops. Dutch courage was considered a compliment by English to the the Dutch and started the Navy's use of gin on their own ships. What comes around goes around.