Hi, I'm Ethan Nadelman, and this is Psychoactive, a production of iHeart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. Psychoactive is the show where we talk about all things drugs. But any views expressed here do not represent those of I Heart Media, Protozoa Pictures, or their executives and employees. Indeed, heed, as an inveterate contrarian, I can tell you they may not even represent my own. And nothing contained in this show should be used as medical advice or encouragement to use any type of drugs. Hello, Psychoactive listeners, There's been a book sitting on my shelf for a few years, Blitzed Drugs in the Third Reich, by a German award winning novelist and screenwriter and journalist named Norman Older. It also happens to be the book which I think more listeners of Psychoactive have suggested I do an episode on than any other. So we got in touch with Norman Olho lives in Berlin and asked him if he'd come on and talk about a book and so we can learn more about the remarkable story and history of the use of stimulants, speed and other drugs by the German military and other militaries, and also about Hitler and his personal use of these drugs. So Norman, thank you ever so much for joining me on Psychoactive. Thank you for having me on your podcast. I'm very happy to talk about this subject. So let's just get started, I mean, before we launched into what's going to happen during World War Two with the battle between the Axis and the Allies, between Germany and its allies and and Britain, the UK and eventually the Soviet Union. But let's set the context for this. And there's a sense of you know, vym Our Germany of the period of Germany before Hitler comes to power ninety three as being a fairly decadent period, uh, you know in Berlin. So if you could just set the stage for us about the nature of drug use before Hitler comes to power and how the Nazis approached that. Apparently, the puled Wima Republic which started in nineteen eighteen after Germany lost the First World War and ended in nineteen thirty three when the Nazis took power, so it lasted for about fifteen years. During that period, apparently there was quite a liberal approach to the usage of drugs. There were drug laws in place, but they were not enforced. There was no drug police in Germany, and Berlin became famous for basically it's drug culture. It was very cheap to acquire drugs. You could get a lot of stuff in the pharmacies, but there was also a huge black market. There was a big drug tourism coming into place, kind of like now. People from all over the world traveled to Berlin to go to the famous clubs and take drugs. It was kind of similar in the twenties. This also had to do with Lost War. Many german Men were addicted to morphine. They got morphine legally from the state and then they became addicted to it, and then they used heroin, for example, which was still a legal product manufactured by the company Baia, which also manufacturers still today aspirin. So heron and aspirin were their main success product. So themar Republic was, I guess uh, a free and liberal and a bit of a crazy time. And imagine cocaine plays quite a role in those days as well. Right, It's the ultimate party drug. It's popular, widely available, right, and yeah, apparently cocaine was quite on vogue at the time, you could buy it in restaurants from the waiters. There were movies made about cocaine, and cocaine wasn't so ostracized as it is I think rightly so today, but at the time it was considered to be like a like a high society drug. Also, Sigmund Freud developed psychoanalysis on cocaine, So using cocaine with kind of chic and maybe it would expand your mind, which I think it doesn't. But you know, cocaine was everywhere, I suppose in Berlin, in certain circles. And the Nazis hated this liberal approach to drugs because they propagated a clean Germany, a Germany without any poisons. And this was for them a holistic approach. I mean, the poisons could be racial, it could be racist that they thought were poisonous, that these could be substances that they thought were poisonous. So um an anti drug policy was in in in in an important part of the whole Nazi approach to policy making from the top in a way. I mean, Hitler himself is a teetotaler, right, doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, He's vegetarian, so part of his whole thing. I mean, on the one hand, there's his you know, infamous and horrific anti Semitism in mind comp and all of this. But there's another part of him, which is this kind of body purest which seems to you know, permeate some of the Nazi way of thinking about this right well not. The ideology was heavily into physical fitness, and that's why it was also an anti alcohol movement in a way, even though a lot of Nazis were drinking and never stopped drinking. But Hitler portrayed himself as this health freak in a way that would not put any poisons into his body. And he expanded this view into the idea of the body of a people. So the whole German people basically have one body. So you are not free to you know, poison your own body, because your body is part of a bigger body. Everyone is supposed to. This was called the health dictatorship. Everyone's supposed to live healthily, otherwise you'd endanger others ideas which actually are still popular today in in in completely different scenarios. But the Nazis were very much into this authoritarian approach to health and what to do to stay healthy, and Hitler was the shining example, and he really was not using any toxins until you know, much later, So in the beginning he was also the shining example in his own movement, because his own movement were basically all you know, when they first marched in Munich in Nree to take over power ten years before they managed to do so in the whole of Germany, they were all drunk. They were basically drinking the whole night in the Bavarian beer horn. In the morning they thought, now we're going to take over power, which miserably failed, and maybe that was one of the reasons why he does it from now on. Also, there will be no more drinking you know, rains and obviously no no other drugs. We have to be always you know, clear and clean and fit. M I mean, to some extent the anti alcohol thing. There was his broader sort of temperance movement in the Western world, where the US and parts of Scandinavy of Russia Canada actually went to some measure of alcohol prohibition and are broader temperance. Germany was not unique in this regard or the Nazis or Hitler even I mean, the anti alcohol thing was somewhat you know, consistent. But what was more distinctive right about Hitler was that in his focus on targeting the Jews and blaming the Jews for everything, right, he equated I think this is in your book. He equated Jews with pathogens and bacteria and poison, and they became equated in some form with bad drugs. Right. And then when the persecution begins after Hitler becomes to power in thirty three, it's Jews, it's gypsies what aren aw called roma, and it's drug users I guess, homosexuals and others who become part of the sort of broader demonized classes who are brain plained for bringing down the bringing down the country. Well that's exactly true. Um, you I have nothing to add, actually, okay, you just put it very very well. Well, let me shift to the other theme that's going on. Right. So you have this kind of drug culture in Weimar Germany, and then Hitler come into power in thirty three and a very strong anti drug thing mixed in with anti Semitism and anti other quote unquote deviant minorities. But you also have Germany which is this sort of industrial and also chemical powerhouse, Right, you have some of the leading pharmaceutical firms in the world, right, I think Mark which we all know about today, and Bear which you mentioned before, but also Tembler and Burringer. And Germany is the workshop of the world, you write in your book. You know, made in Germany is a guarantee of quality, especially for drugs. So tell us a little more about that pioneering role in global influence of the German pharmaceutical industry in the late nineteenth and into the twentieth century. Well, yeah, as you just said, this started already in the nineteenth century. Germany was um the biggest industry in Europe already, but it didn't have any colonies unlike France or Britain. And the need to consume stimulants, which for example, drove the British Empire into importing tea just to have this tea time at around four or five pm, which gives you like another boost or kick. Germany had to, you know, look for other ways to find stimulants. So what they did was to produce them pharmaceutically, and the late nineteenth century became very good time for German pharmaceutical industries because he didn't need a lot of raw materials. It basically needed brain power to develop medicines. So, as mentioned earlier, heroin and aspirin were actually discovered within the same company and within the time span of ten days by the same chemist. So there was a lot of innovation going on in the pharmaceutical industry in German. Bear puts out aspen for a headache and heroin it could seemed thoroughly in a pill form as a cost the present, right, So they're pioneering in that area. Yeah, they were quite confident that heron would be a big seller, which it was in the beginning, and until people understood that it actually forms an addiction. The beginning, they weren't even concerned with this. They even suggested to give heroin to babies who cannot sleep. It only makes sense because heron apparently makes you, you know, relaxed and makes you fall asleep. But it was a bit of a problem for the Nazis because on the one hand, they didn't want people to use those drugs anymore. On the other hand, they wanted to boost the German pharmaceutical industry because they dependent on a working German economy. And we can see how they solved this dilemma for example, with the Temla company in Berlin, because they manufactured methamphetamine for the first time in nineteen thirty six, came onto the market in night, and the Nazis simply said that this is not a drug. It's was totally illegal. So Temla could you know, make a huge profit from it. Yeah, I think you wrote there that they actually launched a major advertising campaign based upon Coca Cola's advertising campaign. Well, they thought that they had developed something similar to Coca Cola, but better. I mean the tastes, you know, there's no taste to it. It's just a pill. But it had a very refreshing effect on the consumers back in the days. And people back then didn't know, you know, they were like, we drink coffee all the time, or tea or very refined you know, tease, and we basically stimulate ourselves in the Western societies all the time. But in Germany and the thirties was a new thing. So there was suddenly this pill on the market which you took. It was pure meThe and phetomine. It was manufactured by a Berlin company, so there was a quality product. It was not high dosage. It was three milligrams, but still you could feel like you take a pill, you feel like a slow so you feel it coming on slowly and then you have like a boost your more targative, which was good at the time because you were Germany was just a capitalist country, so people were competing against each other, companies were competing with each other, so having this little booster of methemphetamine was considered to be very beneficial, and other countries didn't have this, so the German economy used the methemphetamine to produce more and be ahead in the race of the nations in Europe in the late thirties. Well, you also write about how you know I mean first when the campaign was launched by the manufacturer Tembler, they also directed the campaign at m d s and the doctors, suggesting they try it themselves, not unlike you saw it happen with oxycontent and Perdue Farm and other pharmaceutical companies in the US twenty I years ago, and I think they promoted it, which is oftentimes the case with any new drug as both the substitute for other things like alcoholic cocainet even opioids, and as a cure for addiction to those substances, right, and there was a broader kind of sexual connotation that helps sex and energy and performance and work and and all this sort of stuff. I mean, I guess in a way, you know, no society, or almost no society is going to be really drug free, free of all psychoactive drugs. To almost every society finds ways that are for the forbidden ones, and then the ones which are the sanctioned ones, the ones which are authorized or permitted. And for Germany, it sounds like the meth amphetamine, which I think marketed as pervitin, becomes that drug in the late nineteen thirties, you know, that's exactly true. I mean, it became very interesting even to the regime when um, someone who worked for the German army, professor called Ranca, realized that it decreases your need to sleep, and then he's he started, um, he started testing it on medical officers to find out whether this drug might actually be useful for the German army. And then matthan pheedom in, which before was making the German civilians civil society more productive, suddenly became a drug that the military took an interest in. M hmm. So you're describe in your book. You know this fellow Auto Rank who is the head of the Research Institute of Defense Physiology, and he's introducing it while at the same time using it and at the same time having certain qualms. And then you've sort of present his antagonist, Leo Conti, the health fear of the Reich right, who has you know, doesn't not formal authority over the military, but he's got the authority to regulator banned drugs for the broader society. So talk about some of that conflict and tensions within the military between these guys, and more broadly about whether or not to allow the use of meth amphetamine among the soldiers. No one thought that pevatine could have any side efactor, that there were any problems connected with pevteen. So also Ranka had no, we didn't have any second thoughts. He just read studies that decreases the need to sleep, and then he made um tests with medical officers and he realized, yes, they can stay awake for longer periods. So he got in touch with the surgeon general, the Nazi surgeon General, suggesting that it should be a regular drug for the for the German military, which it became in April nineteen forty, just before Germany attacked France, it was integrated and dished out to all the medical officers. They received a so called stimulant Decree which Ranko wrote, which described how many pills each soldier should take in the battle situation. And German military made good experiences with this drug. The German soldiers were very successful in the in these early campaigns in the West, and before that also in Poland were also matthem Phetamine was already used, but not officially yet. So for our listeners, they may they may not know the history of World War two all that. Well, the invasion of Poland in late nineteen thirty nine precipitates the beginning of World War two. I mean, the US has it entered for a couple more years until late forty one when we're attacked by the Japanese. But that's when Britain, France and the others enter. And you're saying that in that invasion the Poland by the Germans in late thirty nine, you're already seeing pervtin not amphetamine being used widely, but not with the official or specified encouragement of the senior military leadership. Is that right? Well, Ranco wanted it to be an official drug already in August nine, one month before the attack on Poland, but his supervisor basically didn't understand what he was talking about. A drug that's supposed to help on the battlefield, that was very new and advanced thinking that wasn't understood yet. But because pervyteen was quite popular, what was quite known in Germany, many soldiers just carried it in their pockets and when they were in the field in Poland, there's you know, there's many letters where they right back even to their parents saying send me more pavyteen I needed for my job here in the military. So Ranca also, you know, looked at these, he looked at how how did it work in Poland? And if he found out that it worked very well for the German army, And so what you're suggesting also if young soldiers are writing home, dear mom and dad, can you send me more of this meth amphetamine? At that point between ninete it was very culturally accepted, right, I mean, it was nobody saw much of a problem with it. No, no one saw a problem with it. It was basically like Coca cola. So why why would there be a problem. Whether you just go to the shop, which in that case was a drug store and you buy pavty and you take it and you're happy and in a better mood. And if your soldier, you can fight better because you have less fear when you're in mathem fhetamine. You're not afraid to go into dangerous situations. You have more you know, zest somehow, or more enthusiasm to fight other people, which is, you know, not a normal thing, you know, to fight other people. So it's better to be on drugs, I suppose, at least on mathemphetamine. So i'm I saw this and he read all these reports. He asked a lot of officers to send them reports. How was mathemphetamine used in the campaign against poland didn't work? Did increase the morale of the troops and mostly the feedback was positive. So he he again went to a supervisor before the French campaign and said, we have to make this drug official because then we could use it more efficient and this was done so when Germany attacked France on May ten, nineteen thirty five million doses of methamphetamine were given out and it enabled the German soldiers to fulfill what Hitler had ordered of the German troops which was too advance, very fast, advanced in a speedy way. That's why it was called the blitz Click the speedy war, and reached the French border city of Sudant within three days and three nights without stopping, without sleeping. This was a new tactic too, basically not sleep. This was no one had ever no army in the world had ever done this too, to march for three days and three nights, because no human being can stay awake for three days and three nights without an artificial stimulant, but with methamphetamine is actually possible. So the German army used this no longer time window of being able to be active to overrun the enemies which had to go to sleep. Actually, I mean, obviously, when RANKI gets interested in this, his initial interest, right is to find the drug encounters fatigue and exhaustion, which is seen as the number one enemy of sort of military efficiency both in the air and on the ground. Tank pilots, infantry, you know, fighter pilots, bombers, you name it. And so that's the focus. And presumably until that point soldiers had relied on coffee. Right in caffeine. I don't think have caffeine pills. Back then, they had relied nicotine is a bit of a stimulant. So obviously soldiers had used other stimulants. It's just that none of them seemed to compare to nothing amphetamine. Well, using stimulants is as old as you know, fighting a war. But as you said, there was never an effective and strong drug like methemphetamine. You just cannot compare smoking a cigarette or drinking alcohol to taking a high dosage of methamphetamine which releases all of your dopamine in the brain immediately and you just totally wired for a few hours. So this was a new type of stimulant, a much much more potent type of stimulant, which then gave the Germans an edge in these speedy campaigns. Yeah, you say in the book, and I apologize for my pronunciation of the German which I don't know, but that the German army, the Vermont, was thus the first army in the world to rely on a chemical drug, and that the Germans gained more territory in one hundred hours during that list Greek you know, west toward the Atlantic Ocean than they had in four years of World War One. So it was really I mean it sounds like that that campaign, that short campaign last thing with some weeks or a month. You know, we just had this absolutely stunning impact and in terms of having the Germans feel, my god, we are on top of the world, nobody can stop us, and of creating a sense of fear and intimidation among the French and the British and the Belgians and everybody else going my god, what has happened. We had more troops, we had more tanks, we had more planes, and now all of a sudden, Frances signing his surrender and Belgian and surrender, and the Brits are fling back home. And you're basically claim you make and I think which professional historians have you know, generally backed you up on this. You know that you make a powerful case that this could not have been possible without the use of that the amphetomy. Well, it's important to understand that simply feeding soldiers them phetamine doesn't automatically turn them into victorious soldiers. Um the strategy that the Germans had, which was to go through the Adenne Mountains and not attack from the north of Belgium, where Germany for example, had attacked in World War One. This was actually decisive because that enabled the Germans to be faster in France than the defending French and Belgian armies, which were you know, expecting the Germans to attack in Belgium. But this fast move, this thrust through the Adenne Mountains, it was only possible because of methamphetamine. So it was the combination of the strategy with the drug that was so successful. Umm. Yeah. Much of the credits given, I guess to two particular generals, Guderian and then probably the one German general that many Americans have heard of, Rammel. I mean, they just drive ahead NonStop, They and their troops driven to some extent by methi amphetamine. Hitler himself back home in Berlin is stunned by all of this. Darion and Ramel suggests that the tanks would be the avant garde of the campaign. So the tanks would be in the forefront of the of the front. You know, they would be not backing up the artillery like it was done in World War One, but they would have a completely different role this world, was to storm ahead and surprise the enemy. So this was actually the genius way of using tanks, and for example, the Americans have used the tanks in the similar fashion when they attacked Iraq. So this but this was a new way of using tanks. And I studied the distribution of the methemphetamine and I found, for example, that Rommel's tank division was using huge amounts of methamphetamine, and Romel also was a methamphetamine lover, so they just they would just you know, high on meth basically the whole time, storming ahead, doing things that no one had ever done on the battlefield, not waiting for other units to come and back them up, and then slowly moved together. They were just moving ahead, but still connected to the air force. So that the other very important tactical advantage the Germans had was to be able to link the Luftwaffer and the tank troops. So you had the storming tanks on the ground and the Luftwaffer in the air kind of you know, backing them up and making sure that their path is clear. And also the Luftwaffe was using huge amounts of pavteen, so the pilots could actually be more alert in the air for more hours. So these you know, pavoteen crazed pilots and pavoten driven tanks on the ground made this unbeatable their market phenomenon, at least in the so called blitz Creek. We'll be talking more after we hear this add So, I'm trying to get a understanding of what were the directives and understanding about how methamphetamine should be used, because if you start using it on a routine basis, or you start taking the amphetamine many hours before you're even going into combat, or you start increasing doses or you're developing tolerance, you can see all the ways in which this drug can you know, turn out, where the downsides can you know, turn against you, and where all the negative consequences of amphetamine use that are widely known around the world today begin to emerge. And so, I mean, did you have a sense of German leadership trying to get more discipline and rigorous about when and how fighter pilots, long distance pilots, tank commanders, tanking, you know, infantry should use the drug or is it always just kind of given out with a kind of you know, take two before combat type of message on it. I mean, in the beginning, the only regulation was the Stimulant Decree, which said to take two pills I think it was two hours before the beginning of combat and then take like another one if you feel the need for it. I mean it was. It gave some intervals for the for the doctors to use it, and apparently these these intervals were were good because it was successful. But the more that science knew about the drug, obviously the more there was talking about side effects, because we know today there are side effects. So this became known. But it took a while. I mean the drug came onto the market and thirty age it was used massively in the French campaign and forty and in forty one. This starts popping up. Actually already in the fall of there was this Leo Conti that you mentioned before, the the health purer of the Reich. You found out that it builds up tolerance and that addiction will come, and that it has negative side effects, et cetera. So Leo County warrant. The German military said, maybe in a blitz campaign this might work, but in a in a longer military conflict in Germany entered along a military conflict in the summer of night forty one, when it attacked the Soviet Union, it might actually be of disadvantage because it wears people, wears them out if they used too much. They need to increase the dosage. People become depressed when they don't have to drug anymore. So County became the enemy of Pevty. He tried to stop it, and there's interesting correspondence between him and the Virmat's surgeon general claiming that the MT is doing whatever the MMA wants to do. Because County was was a minister, the secretary secretary of health basically, so he was responsed, well, not for the army, not for the military, but for you know, the normal civil German society. So the army said whatever, you know, decided we don't, We don't really care. We make our own we make up our own rules. And the RMAT was so drunk by these early victories that they thought, you know, we have such a wonderful pill in our hand. Why would we, you know, listen to some some secretary of health who tells us that maybe this would be dangerous. But if it turns out that when in fact, you know, Hitler decides to invade the Soviet Union in June forty one, Operation Barbarossa that turns into a war of attrition, and that's the place where pervatin that's amphetamine, is actually probably going to do more harm than good. Right. The attack on the Soviet Jinia was also planned as a speed war, as a blitz creek, because that was basically the only strategy that Germany had was to surprise the enemy and overrun the enemy within a very short period of time. Because basically Germany was economically not able to beat the whole world and beat every country. It's it's it's a ridiculous idea. It only was able to do these surprise attacks and the Soviet the attack on the Civiet Union was also a surprise attack. So Hitler basically that the thought, you know, when when no one expects us to do such a thing, we're going to do it. And hundreds of millions of pills of heavyteen were dished out, and it actually helped. In the beginning, I mean the first three months of the campaign, Germany was almost able to destroy the Soviet Union. They were very close to taking Moscow, but they just didn't manage to do it. And then when the Red Army was able to recuperate from the early losses, the Red Army was able to recuperate and to you know, throw new battalions into the into the battles, and then it became a long drawn out war and basically Germany was not able, would never have been able to sustain in that war and win that when that war and Pevytin basically but didn't play a role anymore. I talked to one medical officer which I could interview from my book, who was obviously an old gentleman. When I met him, he remembered quite well when he was in staling Grad and he gave out pevyteen still in Stalingrad, and he said to me that he knew that this was not turned around the battle or even the war, but at the time, you know that the soldiers were hungry and exhausted from years of fighting. So pevyteen gave them like a little extra energy. But then you know it was paid again with a higher price because after the war off it was even worse than before. So pevyteen in the long run didn't help the German They probably had negative effects, but even without those negative effects, the German army would not have had a chance to achieve what the leadership wanted them to achieve. Once you get past the initial pushing to the Soviet Union in four the one. It's hard to point a major campaigns where the use of methamphetamine made a significant difference. No, I think the significance kind of decreased after forty one, because then it became a long drawn out war and the speed really helps short term in the long drawn out or even the alcohol is better, like the Red Army always used vodka. You can drink vodka over years, and obviously you might become an alcoholic, but it's it's not the same as becoming a speedhead and needing to use methamphetamine the whole time. M So after forty one, probably the methymphetamine was not decisive anymore. You know, it's interesting I was reading while after I read your book, I was reading some other articles and scanning through some other books about the use of stimulants during war and both in your book and also you know, you point out that after this happens the British. You know, firstly they do these propaganda films that the only reason the Germans beat us is because they had these you know, hyper drugs that were helping them do what they do. But then the British start doing all their own sorts of controlled experiments, I think to an even greater degree than the German scientists had, and they're trying to figure out is this about just reducing fatigue and exhaustion. Is it about making people smarter, faster reflexes? Is it about morale? Is it about losing fear? And you can see all these debates among these different scientists in the UK and the US. The US develops benz adrina for another form of amphetamine somewhat similar to than meth amphetamine, to the perfect ten, and they start using it, right, I mean in the battle in North Africa, right, you know, Rammel's gone down to North Africa and now the British Senator General Montgomery, and he orders lots of benzadrine amphetamine for his troops. He sees it as building morale and giving confidence. The US starts using these We know the Japanese we're going big time to the use of these drugs as well, so they clearly it clearly begins to play a role for all the militaries. But what we also comes out in your book is that once you get past forty two, and especially as you get towards forty four and forty five. As things are increasingly turning against the Germans, against Hitler, against the access powers, you see people pushing not just for more pervatent, but you describe more and more using drug combinations, in particular a form of oxy code on that the Germans had created called you could all Right, which had been invented I think back around the days of World War One had become very popular and essentially relying increasingly on speedballs and such. So it seems that as things are getting worse and worse um for the German army, they're relying on an ever greater array of substances to try to deal with the prospects of defeat. Yeah, they even came to trying to develop so called wonder drug because I was always talking about wonder weapons that they had up his sleeve, and to use some of these wonder weapons, new types of drugs were actually needed. Because one of his wonder weapons were the mini submarines, which he thought Germany would produce in mass amounts. They were met by one or two people, and when Germany had lost all its big U boats, um, these small mini submarines were still in the water trying to approach the Allied warships and then took these are like one or two person submarines with torpedoes attached. Basically there were many. Even then, you could sneak up to a big ship and and try to torpedo it. And for these missions, they were looking for a drug that would keep soldiers awake for five to seven days, which was even impossible with methamphetamine, so they tried to drug combinations. They combined cocaine, methamphetamine, you could all the oxycodon into a peal, which they called D nine Drug nine, and it just chose how desperate the German war effort became. I mean, it were essentially almost Kamakazi efforts, right, and then you were taking teenage soldiers, filling them with some combination of cocaine at the amphetamine and oxy codon, putting him into these little cubes where they could barely move around, and sending that on missions from which probably the majority would never return. Right. You know, the Germans officially never had suicide missions, but these these missions literally became suicide missions because not many of these young guys ever returned. The drugs itself that they had to take was so horrendous that they were lost control, they lost orientation, they didn't know anymore where they were going, and then they were just you know, destroyed by Western ships. So, Nora, I want to turn now in the last part of this discussion to Adolf Hitler and especially his relationship with a fascinating doctor named Theodore Morrell, who was a specialist and dermatological and sexually transmitted diseases, a pioneer and item in is, but also a bit of a quack, and he becomes this absolutely pivotal relationship for Adolf Hitler. And I think part of what your book did was to uncover evidence of the extent and depth of this relationship, both interpersonal and pharmacological, that no historian had fully appreciated before. So tell us something about that. No right historians have never really looked at the role that Dio Morrell played, even though his role is very interesting because my research showed that Morrell spent more time with it than anybody else and had quite a great influence on him. They were very close, they were friends, and they basically spent every day together. Um they first met in nineteen thirties six spaghetti dinner in Munich, where Morrell was invited by Hoffmann, who was the photographer of Hitler. Off One had been a patient of Morrel. He had contracted a sexually transmitted disease and Morrele cured him. So half One was very happy and he said, you have to meet my friend, and his friend was Hitler. So Morrel was sitting there at the dinner totally nervous, and Hitler had stomach problems always, he had problems with this digestion, and a Moral, who was not only into vitamins but also into probiotics, which was kind of new or very new at the time, suggested that Hitler would take a probiotic to help him with his digestion. And Hitler did this and it actually helped him. So he thought, this Morale is a is a great doctor. He achieved what no other doctor has achieved before. And he appointed Morrel as his personal physician n six and from that moment on the two men became almost symbiotic, saying English maybe ah. So from forty one Hitler followed Moral's suggestions to use a lot of vitamins and probiotics, and he was very healthy actually, even though the mode of application was a bit strange, perhaps because morel believed in injecting things. He said it's much faster than taking a medicine orally. Also, Hitler had his digestive problems, so also injecting was better for him, and Hitler became used to receiving his daily injection, and the injection had usually a cocktail of vitamins and blue cothes and maybe some other probiotic and things that would boost Hitler's health. And this worked quite well until one when he was in the heat of this campaign against the Soviet Union in August ninety one, he became ill for the first time him since Morrell was his doctor. He had the century which came with a high temperature and flu types symptoms. He felt very weak and he couldn't go to the military briefing, and he said to Morele, you have to give me something else, because he was Hitler was very much concerned with the general's acting on their own terms. If he wouldn't show up at the briefing, just like they did in the French campaign when they were just storming ahead, and he didn't understand anymore what was actually happening on the battlefield, so he ordered Morel to give him something stronger than just vitamins and morele for the first time gave him an opioid, and Hitler, who had developed his taste for strong acting injections, suddenly received an injection that was much more powerful than anything he had experienced before. And then he more and more asks morel to give him stronger stuff, stronger than just vitamins and morale being I guess you could call him an opportunist. He was also very He's much, very much. He was scared of his patient, patient A he called Hitler Adolf a number one patients, so he basically did was what his patient wanted. Hitler developed this term of immediate recoveries. So whenever Hitler after one felt a bit weak or insecure or tired, and he had to make big decisions which he always had to make in the war. Every day had to make more, you know, big decisions. So he said to Morrella, need you know, stronger and stronger medications. And Morrell basically delivered him these stronger medications and never try to protect his patient from becoming addicted or you know, using too many medicines. It sounds like, you know, every day is different in terms of what Morrel's giving Hill, right, he's playing around, not just with stimulants and opioids and other psychoactive chemicals, but he's also using steroids and hormones. He's designing things, he's invent think things. I mean, basically, Hitler is the guinea pig who he has to find a way to please day in, day out, and he gets caught almost in a catch twenty two where he's giving things that are making Hitler feel better but ultimately resulting in his long term decline in his health. But if he says no to Hitler, it endangers his relationship, if not potentially his well being in life. I mean, he really gets himself caught up into an impossible situation. It seems like, yeah, it was very difficult. He also complained a lot to his wife's He's saying, this is the most difficult patient you could imagine, And I think that's probably true because Nitla always thought he knows everything better, and he was kind of an amateur, a fan of medicine, so he's very interested in different developments, and so he was encouraging Morrel to develop these hormonal concoctions. For example, Morrell at one point at the monopoly on all the organs of all slaughtered animals in all of the slaughter houses of the Ukraine, which was a big deal because the Ukraine is a big country and there were big modern slaughter houses. And Morel got all the glands and all the organs and the blood and everything was separated during the slaughtering process and shipped to Morrel's company, which was based in occupied Czechoslovakia. And then he made these um these concoctions or like a pig's liver extract. And and when he made a new concoction, he first tested it on Hitler, and Hitler wanted to be the guinea pig. He said, yeah, tested on me. And even though Hitler is a vegetarian, he's taking all of these things that are coming from animal parts, knowing what you think, or not knowingly. Well, he he got concerned with this fact and he actually asked Morrell, can I Can I technically still be called a vegetarian? And Morel said yes, if you don't eat it, but if you actually get it intravenously, it was still a vegetarian, which is very strange, you know. But Hitler was fine with this argument, with this reasoning, and so Hitler actually consumed, you know, very intense animal products, and these animal products were not really tested on it, you know, anyone else except him, and if he liked it, then these products were legalized for the German population, also for the German army, because he does if it's good for me, it's good for the German people. So basically bypassing any type of bypassing any type of drug leglatory process that the German state would have had in place for the the German state had very strict you know, they had very strict regulations. So it was basically impossible after three to put a new product on the market because you know, he had to go through test phases and these test phase this couldn't be set up anymore because it was a total war situation. Morrell complained to it, like I said, I cannot put my new beautiful inventions on the market. And that's when Hitler said, okay, just we bypassed that. You just give it to me if I like it, and make a decree a few decree, and then it's going to be on the market. This was totally ridiculous way to to go ahead, but that's how it went ahead. And you know this, this is how the whole dictatorship went ahead. You know, Hitler was just deciding everything and obviously making many bad decisions. That that's why Germany, you know, catastrophically lost this war, because it was just one man thinking. Do you describe all these instances of his you know, telling Dr Morrell, give me something, I need something. I have a big meeting with the general staff or with my ministers or whatever, and you've got to get me up. And then he so he takes these things that make him feel kind of empowered and bold in the same way that prevoc perfect and had with the soldiers a few years ago, and obviously influencing the decision making he's doing, and I guess creating an ever greater laylevel of delusion about what his armed forces could achieve. What I spoke at length with Hans moms And, who was the leading historian on national socialism, and he thought that I somehow provided an answer to what historians have labeled as the delusion of Hitler, or how Hitler moreanma is removed from reality. And the drugs play quite an interesting part in this, because he created this artificial world that was you know, going through his blood. I mean, he was he he made sure that he would feel good and that he would think that he's ahead of everyone and always has, you know, the right correct decisions. But this was basically a drug delusion or a delusion in general, and he used drugs to you know, to keep this tunnel vision and to keep this delusion and by removing himself more and more from reality. Obviously, this had catastrophic effects for the German military because the generals were actually quite you know, they were very smart, they were trained, they were educated. They wanted to discuss the situation among themselves that make suggestions how to react to the situation on the battlefield, you know, what to do. But then there was this totally crazy hitler who just said no, no, no, you don't know anything. We'll do it like this, and he was micromanaging everything and he just he basically ran the whole thing against the wall. Let's take a break here and go to an ad you know, you talk about that. By forty two, also, what's happening as his decision making declines. But he's also rarely giving those incredibly charismatic speeches he used to give in the twenties and nineteen thirties, and that those speeches were on the one hand, and sort of intoxicant for him. I mean, they gave him this little I can relate to that as somebody who gave you know, hundreds, if not thousands of speeches. Doing that gives a kind of rush, a high. And for Hitler doing it, this extraordinary thing. There must have been that, and all of a sudden he's more and more, you know, isolated. We sometimes talk about the role of drugs, set and setting in the issue of psychoactive drugs. It is not just the drug that has the impact, but it's the set and setting. And you describe him basically, you know, hunkering down in a place called the Wolf's Layer, essentially a large bunker complex I think in eastern Germany more or less for three years from the summer of forty one to forty four. So he's kind of isolated. He's meeting with his senior commanders, but he's not out there talking to the crowds. He's not getting that sort of feedback. Drugs are playing every greater role. And then in his own delusion, he sort of sees himself and this is your description of the book, as himself almost offering himself to the German people as they're intoxican, don't use psychoactive drugs. I am not the ideology. I am the national intoxicant. I mean, what you describe is a man just undergoing this, you know, sustained three year and then intensifying in the last year of the war, you know, decline and ever greater delusion, and generals being in fear of having to you know, even go in and see him. And Hitler is just being delusional. Yeah, I call us the bunker mentality in my book. I had also had a love for real bunkers, for concrete, so he put like seven meter thick wall concrete walls around him. And he also put these pharmacological walls around him so no one could touch him. Especially the opioid Coda, which now as markets oxicontin became his favorite drug because once he was high on it could he felt invincible, He felt good, He thought he could think clearly. He basically never came back into reality at a certain point in time. He never came down and like spoke to someone and asked him what's really going what's really happening here? That he was He was never in that state of mind anymore. And and this greatly differentiated um the dictatorship from for example, that the British establishment where people were the American establishment war establishment, where people were rationally discussing what's the best way to go ahead. There was never this pooling of you know, different you know, perceptions and in opinions. In Germany, it was just this one man deciding everything in this one man, you know, becoming more and more delusional and and and removed from reality. Well, it seemed in a way also both Stalin and Hitler essentially extraordinarily powerful sociopath um and making unilateral decisions and killing and executing people and all that sort of stuff. But but Stalin, so far as we know, was not under the influence of powerful psychoactive drugs and growing drug dependency and the way that Hitler was. I mean, you also described in ninety three. You know, he tells Mussolini to come see him. The Allies have already attacked Italy, Rome's being bond. Mussolini comes to see Hitler, and Dr Morrell, you report in the book, has just given Hitler another injection to get him up for the meeting of Newssolini and Hitler just talks NonStop for three hours, right, mussolinial Duce doesn't even get a word in edgewise and concludes with some disastrous you know, military edict. I mean it's almost a comic. I mean it's a very sick and sad comedy, but parts of it almost sound that way. And starting as you mentioned, never used drugs. He was always uh, even though he was you know, mass murderer, but he was still you know, rationally made these decisions. He would very rationally approach the military theater, so he would let his generals do their job basically where Hitler would. He was not able to let anyone, you know, take any responsibility and make any big decision. That's where many generals, especially became more and more frustrated with Hitler and didn't want to go into the briefings anymore because they knew that they couldn't even they couldn't speak their mind. You know that. You also talked about all of the people and Hitler's revenue turning to Dr Morrel for their own medication. Industrialist senior you know, Nazi official, senior military officials, even ambassadors, some of them actually go to morale. You describe saying I got a meeting with Hitler coming up. Give me something to steal me for the meeting that's coming up. Um. And then of course Goring, who was the second most powerful person in the third right right, the head of the war economy, the head of the Luftwaffe, Hitler's designated number two. He'd a morphine addict for decades, which had not kept him from becoming enormously successful for a long time, but it sounds like in the last years of the war he kind of falls apart as well. Yeah, I mean this is not just a phenomenon of of Hitler becoming removed from reality. I think the generals of the Wehrmacht were still very rationally operating individuals, but higher echelon of the Nazi Party it was quite mad, actually. I mean, if you look at these types of personalities, characters that were in the highest power places, Good and Gobbles, Himmler, woman, they were very strange people and and and and I mean the pressure also around them was incredible, and they were using quite a lot of drugs, all of them except Himler. Himler was doing two hours of yoga each morning in his office, but the other ones were basically also living in the make belief World governess was using heroin and morphine. Girling was a morphine addict. At one point, it became almost essential to become a patient of morale if you wanted to stay close to Hitler, because if you would not become a patient of morale, Hitler wouldlready see this as you might even be an enemy because you're not, you know, doing the same thing that that he would do. You don't, you wouldn't trust the doctor that he trusted. So it became also very political what Morrel did, and he became extremely busy actually as as the doctor of most of the higher Nazis. Right. But then there's this final chapter right July twentieth is the failed assassination attempt by Claus found Stauffenberg and his allies where they land up getting a bomb into a meeting with Hitler, who is severely wounded. Um and other other senior staff are killed, but Hitler survives and a new doctor I know the name, Geesing, Gysing Geesing, who's an e NC in your nose and throws doctor comes into the scene and he's somebody I mean, it's common in those days to use cocaine uh, you know, he was not unique in using cocaine for dealing with ear nose and throat troubles. It was a very common form of medication in those days and quite effective for most people. Um. But a kind of battle breaks out between Geezing and Morrel over who is going to be Hitler's doctor. Well, when Gezing applied cocaine to his Hitless nostrils, he realized quickly that Hitler appreciated the drug, not like a normal patient who would maybe say, oh, I'm happy I don't have such pain anymore, but Hitler immediately wanted more, and he was actually craving for the psychoactive effect of the drug. Keising realized this, um, and he realized more and more, you know, he realized that Hitler is it was like a drug connoisseur, and he likes to take drugs every day. And then Keissing became skeptical morel because Morrel would never really say what he gave Hitler, so there was no open communication between the doctors. So Keezing became very suspicious about Morale's behavior and was actually went to Himler said, maybe it's not good what what Morrel is doing. And at the time, Hitler had become so inefficient as a war leader that there were you know, hopes within the higher the highest ecologen of the party to remove Hitlin and have a new leader. So they Himmler, who was part of that group for a while. You thought, if we removed Morel, then we cut off Hitler from his drug supply, that would weaken Hitler and we can actually get rid of Hitler and and and start a new phase of the dictatorship um. So there was actually a so called I call it the doctor's war between Geazing and Morale. But in the end hit the one the doctor's war and fired Geazing, and because he was still, you know, the leader, all the other basically went quiet, and Morel's rain um continued. And at this point, I mean, Morrel is giving Hitler everything in the kitchen sink, right, I mean steroids, And this is ultimately I guess, giving speedballs that are combining cocaine or amphetamine with you could all the oxy code own maybe even barbiturous. I mean, Hitler is in a place where these the stuff that Morrel is giving him is on the one hand, more and more accelerating his death. Yet on the other hand, giving him these little bursts of energy so that he can still attempt to perform. We described also is that in his last year is basically Morrel becomes Hitler's most frequent companion, somebody he describes as his best friend. And Morrel essentially becomes a de facto prisoner of Hitler, basically forbidden to go away, to leave, to see his family, to anything, so that he can be available four seven. And it's kind of this little dance of decline while Morrel's giving Hitler the drugs to sustain his megalomania and avoid accepting the realities of the what's happening on the battlefield all around him. Absolutely, I mean, Morrel tried to remove himself at a certain point in time even from his duties and wanted his assistant doctor from his old Berlin practice to come and take over the job. But it was just wouldn't let that happen because he said, I'm not sure if your assistant can give injections like you can. Because Morrell was supposed, you know, he was known to give the painless injection, which was not so easy at the time with the thick needles they had back then. Um so moral was had no idea how to ever get out of his job again, and he actually stayed with Hitler um almost until the very end. You describe Hitler just looking totally broken, like his vain shot track marks on his arm, and you make the point that the attempted assassin Stelfenberg. You say Stelfenberg hadn't killed him, but he had indirectly turned him into a drug addict. So it might be possible to say that Hitler was not truly addicted to drugs until just a few years before his death at the end of April, but by the end he was essentially a hopeless polly substance addict. Yeah, I men, It's interesting to look at what happened in the bunker in the last months of Hitless Rain, when Hitler's health was so destroyed by all these drugs that it became more and more in cape couple of you making the decisions that had to be made because this was the end phase of the war, and Hitler became more and more this ruling wreck who was just craving for the next fix, and then Morel's certain point in time decided not to give him the drug anymore. Especially the oikoldal suddenly stopped giving oiko do even though he had given it on regular in an irregular rhythm before. So it's interesting to speculate because Morrell didn't write down why he didn't give the opioid anymore. Why Morrel did that, So either Morrell didn't have the drug anymore. He decided that he has to save Hitler from from from his addiction by putting him called Turkey. But it certainly turned Hitler into, you know, even more of a wreck, because suddenly he didn't have the drug anymore, and he couldn't function anymore whatsoever. Mhm, And I guess those last days of his life. He lashes out at Morrel and fires him, and Morrell's even afraid he's going to have him executed, and I was having lots of other people executed at that point. Yeah, he fires him. In late April nineteen Goebbels had told him that Morrel had basically made him addicted to opioids, which Hitler must have known himself, because Hitler, as crazy as he was and as evil as he was, he still must have noticed that he developed a dependency on his doctor. But I think he suppressed his knowledge and Goebbels basically laid it out before him. He said, you have become addicted to opioids, and this is Morrel's fault, and that's why you're in such a bad shape right now. So Hitler actually says these words to Morele. You have been giving me opiods the whole time. Get out of the bunker. I don't ever want to see you again. And Morrel's totally crushed and he thinks now that the Nazis will hunt him down, make him responsible for destroying Hitler, which in a way he did. I mean, he really, he really contributed without wanting to do that, but he contributed a big, you know, part of Hitler's you know decline. So Morel flees to the south of Bavaria where he has a small research lab and just kind of waits, you know, for the ass killing squad to knock on his door and and and put a bullet in his head. But this never happens. Jeremany loses the war, and then in mid May n Morrel, still in the southern Bavarian village, is tracked down by US military and interrogated and then investigated for possible war crimes, which then he he was not because the Americans found out that what what did Morrel do? It basically poisoned Hitler didn't commit any war crimes. The only crime in a way that he committed was, you know, give drugs to Hitler, which is not it was not a crime in a way. It was certain very interesting behavior, which explains you know, some things about Hitlas rise and especially about Hitlas fall. M hm. Well, you know, let's just conclude then with a few reflections on this. And you know, before I do, I should just you know, reveal to you in the audience, you know, my own sort of personal connection to all of this, which was that, you know, I come from a Jewish family. My dad was born in Berlin in nineteen twenty eight and grew up there with his family until they were able to flee in nineteen thirty nine, just before the outbreak of World War Two, and so he was five when Hitler came to power. His father, the one I'm named after, Eric Nodelmann, you know, had fought for Germany in the First World War, had received the Iron Cross, and then in nineteen forty was living in France, and my grandparents had got and divorced and has picked up, sent to the French you know, detention camps, drawn cee and others, and then ultimately sent to al Wits where he's killed. So, you know, for me, there's a kind of personal connection to this. And lastly, when people asked me why I voted my life to, you know, working to end the drug war in the US and around the world, I mean, what I say is that it was my consciousness of the persecution of the Jews and of the nature of Jewish history and especially the Holocaust, you know, that sensitized me to things that resembled that sort of behavior in contemporary society. The war on drugs, although it did not approach the magnitude or evil of the Holocaust or some of the other greatest you know genocides that you know in history, that in fact, in many ways it did resemble those sorts of horrific campaigns that dehumanized people for one reason or another, and that employed in mass incarceration and massive police forces and all of this sort of stuff. So I'm just sharing that with you and with the audience. Um, but it's it's why reading your book was a you know, somewhat emotional engagement for me. As well. And the but for a question with Hitler, if Hitler had never met Dr Morrell, would he have been a healthier person? Would he have made it through the forty one and the way he did which he gave Morrell credit. I think I cannot imagine Hitler ever not having a tunnel vision and being a very closed minded racists person, completely convinced of his own right wing, right populist ideas. So Morrel was in a way perfect for him. I mean without Morele, maybe he would have crashed before, but I don't think he would ever have become more flexible in his thinking and in his decision making. That's why maybe the argument that Morrell ultimately destroyed Hitler is not really correct, because Hitler ultimately destroyed himself, and Morele just gave him the tools to actually be you know, quite active for a long time. I mean really bloody years of the war where nine four, nine five, when so many people died unnecessary deaths, and this was due to Hitler's you know stamina in a way, even after the bomb attack against him, he was in July where he was still going for almost another year. I would say morals medication actually did not help the world, but actually helped Hitler to keep running for quite a long time and commit incredible atrocity. So normally before we conclude, um, so what are you working on these days? Well, I got very interested in trying to find out how, you know, drugs have an influence on you know, history and historical processes. And then I looked at a certain drug that was developed or found um in three, which was LSD, and I decided to look at the very early years of LSD to figure out how it was developed, why it was not, why it did not become a normal medicine, and what actually went wrong with LSD and how can LSD um maybe be used nowadays. So this is, uh, this is a new book, especially basically a book about America and how American history was u shaped by this incredibly potent substance that suddenly was available norm and that sounds fascinating. I mean, obviously there's a whole post World War two history of the c I and others with their MK ultra, you know, investigations in giving LSD and other types of psychedelics to all sorts of people to see what types of possible uses they could have. An interrogating prisoners or motivating soldiers and all this sort of stuff. So I very much look forward to that book, and I just want to thank you ever so much for joining me on Psychoactive. Sure, thank you. If you're enjoying Psychoactive, please tell your friends about it, or you can write us a review at Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. We love to hear from our listeners. If you'd like to share your own stories, comments and ideas, then leave us a message at one eight three three seven seven nine six that's eight three three psycho zero, or you can email us at Psychoactive at protozoa dot com or find me on Twitter at Ethan Natalman. You can also find contact information in our show notes. Psychoactive is a production of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. It's hosted by me Ethan Naedelman. It's produced by Noham Osband and Josh Stain. The executive producers are Dylan Golden, Ari Handel, Elizabeth Geesus and Darren Aronovsky from Protozoa picture Is, Alex Williams and Matt Frederick from my Heart Radio and me Ethan Edelman. Our music is by Ari Blucien and a special thanks to a bio sef Bianca Grimshaw and Robert Deep. Next week, we'll be talking about all things ayahuasca with one of the world's leading experts, Brazilian anthropologist Dr Bia Lobat. I got really, yeah, dedicated, and I just wanted to drink it and talk about it and think about it and talk to people. And naturally I became an anthropologist studying Ayahuaska because I was so interested, and I just decided that I wanted to go to the Amazon and visit the sources and go directly to the fields. And for me it has been like my main ally and friend. But I think that's you know, we have to be careful with those kinds of things because there isn't such a thing. You know. This is the one or the best, I mean, this is the one for me, or this is the one that now serves me better. And this is a friend, this is an allyed, this is a teacher, This is a kindred spirit that I am aligned with. Subscribe to Psycoactive now see it, don't miss it.