Hitler Drugs In Germany Essay

As the power of the Nazis rose, so did their desire to have a super human perception. Hitler portrayed himself as a tireless workaholic that only wanted German greatness. He built a society that excelled in athletics, academics, engineering, architecture, wholesomeness, virtuous, and above all, military might. However, Germany’s military was limited by the Treaty of Versailles, and had to build from and almost nonexistent force. Hitler needed an edge, and he found it in the form of performance enhancing drugs. And the drug of choice was pervitin, something available to the German public since the late 1930’s. Germans in all facets of life consumed drugs pervitin on a daily basis, it became the German wonder drug.

Drugs in Germany was not a new thing. In the nineteenth century, Germany led the world in pharmaceutical research. During the Weimar Republic, Berlin was referred to as the Whore of Babylon. Indulging in recreational drugs was part of the infamous Berlin night life. But the Nazi’s had a different ideology. Hitler’s inner circle glorified him as superior

in mind and body, never ate meat, touched drugs or consorted with women. A model for all Germans to strive for. In 1933, when Hitler came to power, the Nazis outlawed all intoxicating drugs. That was a culture shock, Germans were not ready to give up pervitin.
Norman Ohler states in his book Blitzed; Drugs in the Third Reich that the development of modern societies is bound as tightly with the creation and distribution of drugs as the economy is with technology.

Ohler also brings to light the shameless hypocrisy of Nazism and its ideology on drugs. In the Third Reich, the pharmaceutical industry whirled in toxicological frenzy. German companies owned 80 percent of the world’s cocaine market. Scientists performed research on opium, morphine, amphetamines. Consequently, Ohler states forty percent of Berlin doctors were addicted to morphine. Pervitin, a tablet form of methamphetamine, was available to the German public in the late 1930’s, and its use quickly reached epidemic proportions in 1939. It treated a variety of ailments from nasal congestion, menopause, energy boost. College students and people with thought intensive jobs loved

it.
After the war started, coffee became scarce, but pervitin was readily available. Pervitin became a caffeine substitute, and in some instances added to coffee. In late autumn 1939 Reich Health Office reacted to the trend. The Reich Health Fuhrer, Leo Conti, tried to prevent a national epidemic. November 1939, Conti made pervitin prescription only. However, pharmacist only loosely stuck to the prescription law, many would give out hospital packs. The German people were still able to get their feel-good drug.
The credit for the rise of the use of methamphetamine in the Wehrmacht belongs to Dr. Professor Otto F. Ranke. Ranke was director of the Research Institute of Defense Physiology. This became one of the most key positions in the German military. Ranke had influence over all of the new Wehrmacht medical officers. Ranke’s primary job was to make the German soldiers go beyond the normal expectations of soldiers.
Ranke’s goal was to eliminate fatigue in soldiers. In 1938, Ranke learned about the effects of Pervitin, the market name of methamphetamine, which was being produced at the Temmler factory. Ranke tested the effects of stimulants on the younger doctors at the institute using pervitin, caffeine, benzedrine, and placebos. This was the first known systematic drug test in military history. The test provided high positive results for pervitin, so much so that the test subjects wanted more of the drug. It was at this point that Ranke began to realize that it was addictive.
01 September 1939, pervitin went to war in Poland. It was not officially or scientifically deployed, only at the individual discretion of a commander, medical officer, or individual soldier. However, reports from officers were positive, no ill side effect. Alert and refreshed after three days. Reports from the advance into Poland was such as: “I’m convinced that in big pushes, where the last drop has to be squeezed from a team, a unit supplied with pervitin is superior”. Reports from senior staff medic that the use of pervitin may have avoided transportation accidents could have been avoided with pervitin. Ranke appears to be against the wide spread use of pervitin, but the Wehrmacht promptly dismissed Ranke’s warning about soldiers looking sunken cheek, grey and ill after using pervitin. Despite his personal objection, he supported the Wehrmacht’s use of pervitin and trained the medical officers on its use. The Wehrmacht wanted to put this wonder drug to a real test.
Ahead of the invasion of France, Wehrmacht commanders started ordering pervitin in huge quantities, 35 million doses. At that time, the entirety of the German military mustered approximately 3 million men. The German army raced through the conquest of France so rapidly, that the German Panzer (tank) divisions moved beyond the control of the General Staff. General Erwin Rommel became unanswerable to his commanders; by the time the written orders made it to the front where he was, he had already moved further on, beyond radio communications. After only six weeks, France fell to the Germans with strikingly low German casualties. The use of pervitin allowed the Wehrmacht to move at an incredible pace, simply bewildered the Allies who believed the Germans were supermen. But more importantly, the Germans believed they were.
The German High Command was riding a wave of invincibility in 1941, when it prepared for the invasion of the Soviet Union. The astounding success that Germany enjoyed in Poland and Western Europe under the influence of pervitin had the Third Reich believing their own super human rhetoric. But, unlike the invasion of France, Germany’s secret chemical weapon had a disastrous effect on Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union. The distances were simply too vast. One of the three army groups alone consumed 30 million tablets of Pervitin in the first few months of the campaign, yet it failed to produce a decisive result. By the end of 1941, some of those at Hitler’s headquarters realized that the Wehrmacht had reached the end of its strength. It was also noted at this time that amount of drug dependent soldiers was increasing. The planners of the operation put way too much faith in pervitin, and as such, it became a logistical nightmare for the Germans. The sheer magnitude of the weather, distance, and overwhelming numbers in the Red Army was too much for the Wehrmacht even with pervitin.
In 1936, Adolf Hitler met Dr. Theodore Morrel, a medical doctor that specialized in new kinds of treatments. Hitler suffered from a digestive disorder, and after a lengthy consultation with Morrel the Fuhrer agreed to a treatment. Hitler experienced immediate relief and made Morrel his personal physician.
From then on, Morrell treated Hitler daily. Morrel kept him on a very strong regimen of intravenous vitamins of his own mixture. That lasted until the fall of 1941. Hitler falls sick for the first time. It so happened that this the point that the war turned for Germany against Russia. Morrel treated him with his first opiate and hormone injection. Hitler, who was suffering from high fever immediately started to feel better and was able to conduct a war brief with his generals. Hitler, stating that must remain in best possible health to meet his commitments insisted on such injections regularly. From the fall of 1941 until the winter of 1944, according to Morrel’s records Patient A received increasing stronger dosages. In the summer of 1942, Morrel put in a special order for syringes needed for the increase in number of injections for the Fuhrer. Ohler states that during this time, that Hitler started a psychopathic fixation with the Stalingrad campaign. In 1943, the heavy opiate stage starts.
For him it was important to be healthy always, to never have a day off. His paranoia increased to the point he distrusted anyone in his surroundings, especially the generals. He believed that only he could make the military decisions. He was seeing army units on the maps that were not there, or hundreds of miles away. He finally came to the realization that Morell made him addicted to opiates late in the war, namely when he fired Morell in late April 1945. Several witnesses who were present in the bunker at that particular moment reported that Hitler shouted at Morell, "You have been giving me opiates the whole time! Get out of the bunker and leave me alone." It is possible that Hitler came to the revelation that he was drugging himself through Morrel for nine years.
What Ohler calls this “polytoxicomania” certainly contributed to Hitler’s fantasies about maps showing German progress and divisions that no longer existed, as he lost all touch with the reality on the battlefield. Whether Hitler’s trembling hands were the result of Parkinson’s or the direct consequence of excessive drug use is impossible to say, but the deterioration in his appearance toward the end of 1944 was shocking to anyone that had not seen him since earlier in the year. By February 1945, supplies of opiates begun to run out, and Hitler was soon suffering withdrawal symptoms as the end approached in the Führerbunker in Berlin. According to Ohler, the world most infamous dictator spent his final days in his bunker, drowning in a hellish state of withdrawal.