This is worthy subject matter to cover, but overwhelms the rest of the book. But such sections end and the bulk of the book ends up being about Hitler’s private doctor and the regimen of injections (including addictive drugs) that Hitler was on for the duration of the war. Sections of the book examining use of drugs by the military and civilians are quite interesting and eye-opening. Ohler also explains how use of such drugs made the Blitzkrieg possible – allowing soldiers to go on with minimal rest, manically energized and moving forward at blinding speed in that lightning war. The book is most interesting, and most deserving of its title, in the chapters offering the foundation of the drug industry in Germany. In this book, Ohler covers the history of these drugs, how they came to be mass produced and mass ingested, and how this fueled and then derailed the Nazi war effort. Both drugs were copiously consumed during World War II. But historians have known for decades that it wasn’t just amphetamines, but also methamphetamines. The general public (at least those who are history buffs) have known for decades that amphetamines (e.g., the drug colloquially known as speed).
Ohler takes what feels like a too brief (or at least not broad enough) look at drugs in Germany during the interwar and World War II period. Heavy on Hitler, would have liked broader focus Carefully researched and rivetingly listenable, Blitzed throws surprising light on a history that, until now, has remained in the shadows. While drugs alone cannot explain the Nazis' toxic racial theories or the events of World War II, Ohler's investigation makes an overwhelming case that, if drugs are not taken into account, our understanding of the Third Reich is fundamentally incomplete. Over the course of the war, Hitler became increasingly dependent on injections of a cocktail of drugs - including a form of heroin - administered by his personal doctor. In fact, troops regularly took rations of a form of crystal meth - the elevated energy and feelings of invincibility associated with the high even help to explain certain German military victories.ĭrugs seeped all the way up to the Nazi high command and, especially, to Hitler himself. On the eve of World War II, Germany was a pharmaceutical powerhouse, and companies such as Merck and Bayer cooked up cocaine, opiates, and, most of all, methamphetamines, to be consumed by everyone from factory workers to housewives to millions of German soldiers. But as Norman Ohler reveals in this gripping new history, the Third Reich was saturated with drugs. The Nazi regime preached an ideology of physical, mental, and moral purity.
0 kommentar(er)
