Norman Ohler Quotes

What is past is prologue’.

The fact was that between the autumn of 1941, when he started being given hormone and steroid injections, and the second half of 1944, when first the cocaine and then above all the Eukodal kicked in, Hitler hardly enjoyed a sober day.

Heroin is a fine business,” the directors of Bayer announced proudly and advertised the substance as a remedy for headaches, for general indisposition, and also as a cough syrup for children. It was even recommended to babies for colic or sleeping problems.4

Just as the victorious United States appropriated the Third Reich’s discoveries in rocket science and the exploration of outer space, the Nazi drug experiments were imported to explore inner worlds.41

While we have driven out other Nazi verbal monstrosities, the terminology of the war on drugs has lingered. It's no longer a matter of Jews - the dangerous dealers are now said to be part of different cultural circles.

Pervitin became a symptom of the developing performance society. Boxed chocolates spiked with methamphetamine were even put on the market. A good 14 milligrams of methamphetamine was included in each individual portion—almost five times the amount in a Pervitin pill. “Hildebrand chocolates are always a delight” was the slogan of this potent confectionery. The recommendation was to eat between three and nine of these, with the indication that they were, unlike caffeine, perfectly safe.

Heroin is a fine business,” the directors of Bayer announced proudly and advertised the substance as a remedy for headaches, for general indisposition, and also as a cough syrup for children. It was even recommended to babies for colic or sleeping problems.

Its extremely potent active ingredient is an opioid called oxycodone, synthesized from the raw material of opium. The substance was a hot topic among doctors in the Weimar Republic because many physicians quietly took the narcotic themselves. In specialist circles Eukodal was the queen of remedies: a wonder drug. Almost twice as pain-relieving as morphine, which it replaced in popularity, this archetypal designer opioid was characterized by its potential to create very swiftly a euphoric state significantly higher than that of heroin, its pharmacological cousin. Used properly, Eukodal did not make the patient tired or knock him out—quite the contrary.

The path taken by the authorities in their so-called Rauschgiftbekämpfung, or “war on drugs,” lay less in an intensification of the opium law, which was simply adopted from the Weimar Republic,21 than in several new regulations that served the central National Socialist idea of “racial hygiene.” The term Droge—drug—which at one point meant nothing more than “dried plant parts,”* was given negative connotations. Drug consumption was stigmatized and—with the help of quickly established new divisions of the criminal police—severely penalized. This new emphasis came into force as early as November 1933, when the Reichstag passed a law that allowed the imprisonment of addicts in a closed institution for up to two years, although that period of confinement could be extended indefinitely by legal decree.22

This was the birth not only of the Merck Company, which still thrives today, but of the modern pharmaceutical industry as a whole. When injections were invented in 1850, there was no stopping the victory parade of morphine. The painkiller was used in the American Civil War of 1861–65 and in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71. Soon morphine fixes were doing the rounds as normal procedure.2

National Socialism was toxic, in the truest sense of the word. It gave the world a chemical legacy that still affects us today: a poison that refuses to disappear.

Under the trademark Pervitin, this little pill became the accepted Volksdroge, or “people’s drug,” and was on sale in every pharmacy.

Usually ingested nasally in high doses, the crystalline form of this so-called horror drug has gained unimaginable popularity all over Europe, with an exponential number of first-time users.

This upper, with its dangerously powerful kick, is used as a party drug, for boosting performance in the workplace, in offices, even in parliaments and at universities.

Hardly anyone knows about its original rise in Nazi Germany.

Breaking Bad: The Drug Lab of the Reich

The Temmler factory moved here in 1933. It was only one year later that Albert Mendel (the Jewish co-owner of the Tempelhof Chemical Factory) was expropriated by the racist laws of the regime and Temmler took over his share,

There is no sign of its prosperous past, of a time when millions of Pervitin pills a week were being pressed.

This is the former laboratory of Dr. Fritz Hauschild, head of pharmacology at Temmler from 1937 until 1941, who was in search of a new type of medicine, a “performance-enhancing drug.

This is the former drug lab of the Third Reich.

Here the methamphetamine produced was of a quality that even Walter White, the drug cook in the TV series Breaking Bad,

Prologue in the Nineteenth Century: The Father of All Drugs Voluntary dependence is the finest state. —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

In 1805 Goethe wrote Faust in classicist Weimar, and by poetic means perfected one of his theses, that the genesis of man is itself drug-induced: I change my brain, therefore I am.

Sometimes the bitter sap does not ease the pain quite strongly enough, and other times it can lead to an unintended overdose and fatal poisoning. Thrown back entirely on his own devices, just as the opiate laudanum consumed Goethe in his study,

Thrown back entirely on his own devices, just as the opiate laudanum consumed Goethe in his study,

Sertürner made an astonishing discovery: he succeeded in isolating morphine, the crucial alkaloid in opium, a kind of pharmacological Mephistopheles that instantly magics pain away.

Pain, that irritable companion, could now be assuaged, indeed removed, in precise doses.

When injections were invented in 1850, there was no stopping the victory parade of morphine.

The painkiller was used in the American Civil War of 1861–65 and in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71.

This made a different scale of war possible: fighters who before would have been ruled out for a long time by an injury were soon coddled back to health and thrust onto the front line once again.

With morphine, also known as “morphium,” the development of pain relief and anesthesia reached a crucial climax, both in the army and in civil society.

In drugstores across the United States, two active ingredients were available without prescription: fluids containing morphine calmed people down, while drinks containing cocaine, such as in the early days Vin Mariani, a Bordeaux containing coca extract, and even Coca-Cola,3 were used to counter low moods, as a hedonistic source of euphoria, and also as a local anesthetic.

Heroin is a fine business,” the directors of Bayer announced proudly and advertised the substance as a remedy for headaches, for general indisposition,

Business wasn’t just booming for Bayer. In the last third of the nineteenth century several new pharmaceutical hotspots developed along the Rhine.

the “workshop of the world.” “Made in Germany” became a guarantee of quality, especially for drugs.

While France and Great Britain were able to acquire natural stimulants such as coffee, tea, vanilla, pepper, and other natural medicines from colonies overseas, Germany, which lost its (comparatively sparse) colonial possessions under the terms of the Versailles Treaty, had to find other ways—stimulants had to be produced synthetically.

The local alkaloid industry still processed just over 200 tons of opium in 1928.

The Germans were world leaders in another class of substances as well: the companies Merck, Boehringer, and Knoll controlled 80 percent of the global cocaine market.

The story was exemplary, the message perfectly clear: the dangerous poison mushrooms had to be eradicated.

Anyone who consumed drugs suffered from a “foreign plague.” Drug dealers were presented as unscrupulous, greedy, or alien; drug use as “racially inferior”; and so-called drug crimes as one of the greatest threats to society.40

While we have driven out other Nazi verbal monstrosities, the terminology of the war on drugs has lingered.

It’s no longer a matter of Jews—the dangerous dealers are now said to be part of different cultural circles.

The Celebrity Doctor of Kurfürstendamm

Mixing an anti-drug campaign and anti-Semitism—even in a children’s book. “Just as poisonous mushrooms are often difficult to tell from good mushrooms, it is often difficult to recognize the Jews and confidence tricksters and criminals.

The overweight, bald Dr. Theodor Morell reacted to the attack in a way that was as typical as it was wretched:

Morell was not a Jew; the SA had wrongly suspected him of being one because of his dark complexion.

After he had registered as a Party member, Morell’s practice became even more successful.

You joined, you flourished—that was a lesson Morell would never forget, right until the end.

The fat man from Hessen hadn’t the slightest interest in politics.

Little was known at the time about these invisible helpers, which the body itself can’t produce but which it urgently needs for certain metabolic processes.

Injected directly into the blood, vitamin supplements work wonders in cases of undernourishment.

His reputation went beyond the boundaries of the city, and in the spring of 1936 his phone rang in the consulting room, even though he had categorically forbidden his nurses to disturb him during surgery hours.

But this was no ordinary phone call. It was from the “Brown House,” Party headquarters in Munich: a certain Schaub on the line,

the “Official Reich Photographer of the NSDAP,” was suffering from a delicate illness. It was the Party’s wish that Morell, as a prominent specialist in sexually transmitted diseases who was well known for his confidentiality, should take on the case.

The Führer, in person, had sent a plane for him, which was waiting at a Berlin airport, Schaub added.

The Nazi leader had been closely connected with the photographer since the 1920s, when Hoffmann had made considerable contributions to the rise of National Socialism.

There was also another, more personal reason that linked the two men: Hitler’s lover, Eva Braun, had previously worked as an assistant for Hoffmann, who had introduced the two in his Munich photographic shop in 1929.

Morell hastily mentioned an unusual treatment that might prove successful. Hitler looked at him quizzically—and invited Morell and his wife to further consultations at the Berghof, his mountain retreat in the Obersalzberg near Berchtesgaden.

Then if there happened to be an abundant dinner on the program, which was often the case, he immediately suffered from unspeakable bloating and itchy eczema on both legs, so that he had to walk with bandages around his feet and couldn’t wear boots.

Morell immediately thought he recognized the cause of Hitler’s complaints and diagnosed abnormal bacterial flora, causing poor digestion.

This genuinely effective concept convinced Hitler, for whom even processes within the body could represent a battle for Lebensraum, or “living space.

Injection Cocktail for Patient A He alone is responsible for the inexplicable, the mystery and myth of our people. —Joseph Goebbels43

Good old general practitioner Morell, with his cozy harmless air, gave him a sense of security from the very beginning.

If the head of state was to function, and demanded to be made immediately symptom-free, whatever his complaints, Morell hesitated no more than he would when treating an actress at the Metropol Theater,

Immediate removal of symptoms was the motto, followed not only by the bohemian circles of Berlin but also by “Patient A,” as he appeared in Morell’s books.

Hitler was delighted by the speed with which his condition improved—usually while the needle was still in his vein.

This puts the brain cells in excited communication with each other and a kind of chain reaction takes place.

A neuronal firework explodes and a biochemical machine gun starts firing an uninterrupted sequence of thoughts.

A state of emergency is experienced, as when one faces a sudden danger, a time when an organism mobilizes all its forces—even though there is no danger. An artificial kick.

Their publicity model was the marketing strategy for another rather stimulating product, produced by none other than the Coca-Cola Company, which—with the catchy slogan “ice cold”—had enjoyed enormous success with their brown brew.

In the first weeks and months of 1938, when Pervitin was beginning to go from strength to strength, posters appeared on advertising pillars, the outsides of trams, and on the buses and local and underground trains of Berlin.

In a modern, minimalist style they mentioned only the trademark and referred to its medical indications: weakness of circulation,

The envelope included free pills containing 3 milligrams of active ingredient as well as a franked postcard to be returned: “Dear Doctor, Your experiences with Pervitin, even if they were less than favorable,

So we would be very grateful to you for a message on this card.”48 A substance in its test phase. Just like the old dealer’s trick: the first dose is free.

Representatives of Temmler visited large-scale practices, hospitals, and university clinics all over the country; delivered lectures; and distributed this new confidence- and alertness-boosting drug.

Even “frigidity in women can easily be influenced with Pervitin tablets.

On the patient information leaflet it also said that the substance compensated for the withdrawal effects of alcohol, cocaine, and even opiates.

It was marketed as a kind of counter-drug to replace all drugs, particularly illegal ones. The consumption of this substance was sanctioned. Methamphetamine was regarded as a kind of panacea.

This so-called speedamin landed like a bomb, spread like a virus, sold like sliced bread, and was soon as much of a fixture as a cup of coffee.

Pervitin became a sensation,” one psychologist reported. “It soon gained acceptance in a very wide range of circles; students used it as a survival strategy for the exertions of exams; telephone switchboard operators and nurses swallowed it to get through the night shift, and people doing difficult physical or mental labor used it to improve their performance.

Whether it was secretaries typing faster, actors refreshing themselves before their shows, writers using the stimulation of methamphetamine for all-nighters at the desk, or hopped-up workers on conveyor belts in the big factories raising their output

Pervitin spread among all social circles.

Party members did the same, and so did the SS.54 Stress declined, sexual appetite increased, and motivation was artificially enhanced.

A doctor wrote: “Experimenting on myself, I also observed that both physically and mentally one may receive a pleasant boost in energy, which for six months has allowed me to recommend Pervitin to manual and clerical workers,

fellow colleagues who are temporarily short of time, and also speakers, singers (with stage fright), and examination candidates. . . . One lady likes to use the medication (c. 2 x 2 tablets) before parties; another successfully on particularly demanding working days (up to 3 x 2 tablets daily).

Pervitin became a symptom of the developing performance society. Boxed chocolates spiked with methamphetamine were even put on the market.

Making housework more fun—methamphetamine chocolates: “Hildebrand chocolates always delight.

Another part of the highly effective campaign was an essay by Dr. Fritz Hauschild in the respected Klinische Wochenschrift.

Universities all over the Reich pounced on these investigations.

Pervitin was a perfect match for the spirit of the age.

Two miracles had occurred, one economic and one military, covering the two most urgent problems for Germany in the 1930s.

Successes in foreign policy mounted up, whether it was a matter of the remilitarization of the Rhineland, the annexation of Austria, or “bringing the Sudeten Germans home to the Reich.” The Western powers did not punish these breaches of the Versailles Treaty.

The Allies misjudged the situation: Hitler would not be mollified by diplomatic success.

Hitler was never content.

A medical officer from the IX Army Corps raved: “I’m convinced that in big pushes, where the last drop has to be squeezed from the team, a unit supplied with Pervitin is superior. This doctor has therefore made sure that there is a supply of Pervitin in the Unit Medical Equipment.”23

and from Silesia through Bohemia–Moravia and Slovakia almost as far as Lemberg [Lwów] in Poland.

Teutonic Easy Riders with drugs from Temmler and goggles by Ranke.

Among the drivers many accidents, mostly attributable to excessive fatigue, could have been avoided if an analeptic such as Pervitin had been administered.”26 Crystal meth to avoid road accidents? Really?

The shock of the First World War, with millions of soldiers slaughtered, was still lodged in the memory. Banners were hung at the front lines: “We won’t shoot unless you shoot first.”29

Contrary to what Nazi propaganda told the outside world, the Germans did not have superior armies. Quite the opposite—after the Polish campaign their equipment urgently had to be renewed.