April 4, 2019 • 44 mins
Nazis were bad people. And it turns out a lot of them were high as kites on speed. Was this a recipe for disaster? Yes it was.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of My
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and
there's other Josh over there, the O J. You're the
O G. Yes, he's the O J. That's right. We
(00:23):
should probably come up with a different nickname for you, Josh.
That's tried. Um. So, oh, yeah, this is Stuff you
Should Know the podcast Nazi Crankhead Edition. We've been doing
a lot on Nazis lately, have we. I guess we have.
We did the July twenty plot to assassinate Hitler this one. Yeah,
(00:45):
it's a lot. It's a lot. Uh, yeah, this is
I thought this is interesting and I remember hearing a
lot about this when um, I mean there's been plenty
of people in books about Nazis doing lots of drugs.
The big one that came out called Blitzed from author
Nomen Ohler really made a lot of hey in the
(01:06):
news for sure. Um, it was a it was a
big deal when it came out just I think in
two thousands seventeen, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, and we're
endorsing that book is a good read. Have you read it?
I read a lot of it, Okay, I got I
heard it's a very exhaustive book. It's pretty exhaustive, so
it um. I have not read it, but it does
(01:29):
seem from from some of the stuff I've read about it.
Some of the book reviews are like, yeah, this, this
guy's got the goods. This guy, Norman Ohler um spent
like five years at least in the archives. So this
isn't just like conjecture. This is very well researched and
um fact based. Well, I guess there's a little conjecture
to it, because he's basically saying drugs drove the Third
(01:54):
Reich initially and then just like you know, anybody becoming
strong out on a drug, it led to the deterioration
and ultimately downfall of the Third Reich. And that's a big,
big thing to say, Like there's there are very few
things in history, especially massive world changing things like the
(02:14):
Third Reich and World War Two and the Holocaust, that
you can just pin one thing on. And I'm sure
he's not saying like that is it, there's nothing else
to it, But he's saying like this is a huge
contributor of it, and he's the first. He's not the
first person to say, yeah, the Nazis did a lot
of drugs, he seems to be the first author to
to really say, yeah, the Nazis did a lot of
(02:36):
drugs and this was the result. Yeah. And I think
from what I uh, the parts of the book that
I read and doing this research, it is it's not
much of a leap. So when you have facts and
like the number of pills, which we'll get into, and
what these pills were, there's just no disputing the physiological
(02:58):
effect that it has on people and what these drugs
do because that's why they were taking them. So it's
not much of a leap, even though it is some
conjecture to say, you know, the blitz creek was uh,
probably super effective because they were all on crank. Yeah,
it gives blitz creek bop like a new meaning, you know.
(03:20):
I I that was totally off the cuff, too off
the dome. Yeah. So should we talk about Old Germany
and sort of the seed of this whole thing. Yeah,
but first one more thing while we're kind of on
this particular riff. Um, I don't know, because again I
haven't read the book. I don't know that Ohler is saying,
and I don't think he is that like the Holocaust
wouldn't have happened if if Germany hadn't been hopped up
(03:42):
on drugs. Um He's something some people do say that.
There's some revisionist historians who say, yeah, it was it
was drugs that was that had gripped Hitler's mind, and
had he not been on drugs, the Holocaust wouldn't have happened.
That appears to be patently untrue. The earliest um, the
earliest deaths executions in the Holocaust that I found go
(04:06):
back to nineteen thirty three, and the Nazis had such
a tenuous grip on power that um that that they
had to basically make it look like these executions of
these four Jews at Dachau um were were for were
them trying to escape? Like they were shot trying to escape.
It was such a terrible obvious lie that three SS
(04:28):
officers and the camp commandant at Dachau were indicted for murder.
That's how new the Nazis were into power that they
these guys were indicted for murder. The indictments went away.
But again this was three, way early, way before anybody
was on drugs and UM, and the Holocaust was just
that was like the earliest beginnings of the Holocaust, and
(04:49):
it showed this mentality and this drive and desire to
carry out the Holocaust later on. So so anybody who
says that it was drugs that brought about the Holocaust
is wrong from what I understand. So you mentioned nineteen
thirty three, Uh, that is interesting that data is because
there were plenty of drugs. The Nazis weren't doing them yet,
(05:12):
but they started passing laws in nineteen thirty three as
one of the big first moves of the Nazis to um,
to clean up the land, to clean up the Weimar
Republic which is what Germany was basically known as from
nineteen eighteen to nineteen thirty three. Yeah, the Weimar Republic
was an experiment at democracy in Germany and it almost
(05:34):
took like the last five years of the republic showed
like economic growth. It was during the jazz Age, so
everybody was kind of partying, as we'll see. And UM,
it wasn't until the Great Depression started in nineteen twenty
nine that this really fragile republic, this really fragile democracy
just could not handle that kind of economic hit, and
(05:56):
it gave Hitler in the National Socialism Party this per
ficct entree into power by saying, first of all, we
can we can turn things around economically. The Wymar Republic
couldn't do it. And secondly, this all Wymar Republic thing,
everybody's on drugs, they're all degenerates. And then they used
that idea of degenerate art of people being on cocaine
(06:20):
and morphine, and and tied it in with Judaism. And
so anybody who was on drugs, anyone who was gay,
anyone who would say like a roma, Um, they were
all tied in with the Jews, and all of those
people were subject to the Holocaust um right out of
the gate. Yeah, so the stage is set. They're locking
(06:41):
up their imprisoning, their sterilizing addicts, UM, denouncing these users. Uh.
And then and these are, like we said, cocaine and morphine,
which Germany was like one of the leading or maybe
the leading producer of cocaine in the world at the time. Right,
you gotta tell them those statistics. Yeah, in the nineteen
twenties Germany, UH, companies in Germany generated of the world's
(07:07):
morphine and controlled eight of the global cocaine market. That is,
in the nineteen twenties. Astounding, and so you can imagine
that the Weimar Republic is awash in this. And so
there really was like a lot of I mean, there
was tons of wow, almost just said something else. There
were tons of tons of horrible broken lives and addiction.
(07:30):
There was a lot of homelessness. There was a lot
of prostitution. There was a lot of um, a lot
of I mean issues and problems that the society had.
But there was also a lot of really interesting and
good things that was coming out of this combination of
a democracy of washing drugs. There were things like a
lot more gender equality than there had been before. There
(07:53):
was a lot of androgyny going on, and kind of
like the art and social scene, there was some really
good art coming out. But again the Nazis came along
and denounced it as degenerate art and actually held an
exhibition chuck in a degenerate art exhibition where they showed
everybody in Germany, this is bad art, and we're going
to destroy a lot of this and replace it with um.
(08:18):
The three k's. It was kinder couch, I think couch, yeah,
k you with the new and Kirsch, which is family
home in church. And that is what our art, that
is what our culture is going to be about. So
the Weimar Republic provided this really great foil to what
(08:38):
the Nazis were kind of rousing Germany out of, like, hey,
let's all get off the cocaine, let's all get off
the morphine. And in fact, if you know an addict,
tell the cops, you neighbor, you co worker, you family member,
go and form on on the drug users in this country.
Let's let's clean Germany up. Let's clean Germany's bodies up,
(08:59):
and let's move forward with an emphasis on family home
in church. That's what the Nazis came to Germany with
in in right. And as this is going on literally,
as all this stuff is happening in the nineteen thirties,
early in mid nineteen thirties, they're denouncing these people, locking
them up um, talking about how toxic these drugs are.
(09:24):
Germany and companies in Germany were switching over to synthesizing
drugs and making speed and all kinds of drugs synthetic,
like precursors to OxyContin and uh, meth basically. Uh. There
was a firm in Berlin called the Timbler Firm, and
they were headed up and this is a seven by
(09:45):
man named Fritz house Child, who uh later on was
the sort of leading dude in East Germany's sports doping program.
So he's he knows what he's doing. So they synthesized
basically crystal meth into something and you know, at least
as the same kind of active ingredients as a little
pill called purvitin V E R V I T I
(10:08):
N and um. It wasn't just the army that uses
and we'll get into all that, because the German military
was definitely hopped up on what we now know as
crystal meth. But this stuff was over the counter at first,
and a lot of Germany was using this, housewives were
using it. And we should say that like the same
(10:30):
stuff was going on as benz adrine in the United States,
like they were. It seems like the whole world was
hopped up on speed in the nineteen thirties, not just
the thirties, like well into the sixties, well, I mean
starting in the nineteen thirties. Uh, And so purviton was
over the counter at first, eventually, uh, you know, some
alarm bell started going off, so they just like, we
(10:51):
might want to make this prescription. And then they said, well,
you know what, we don't know if the general public
should have this at all, but we totally want our
military to still have it. Yeah, it was called the
Stimulant Decree where the head of the German um physiology
department in the in the Defense ministry, his name was
(11:12):
Otto Ranki. He said, give me thirty five million of
those stimulant tabs because we're waging a war on exhaustion,
as we'll see. Let's let's before we hop into the military.
You want to take a break, Yes, okay, I'm ready.
We need to starting now, George, okay, Chuck. So in
(11:53):
Germany before before there's a really important point that I
don't want to gloss over. Germany went from this. As
far as the Nazis were concerned, it's kind of shiftless um,
high unemployment, fragile economic state where a lot of people
were selling and doing cocaine and morphine recreationally and to
(12:16):
stave off depression. I mean, they were in a pretty
bad spot as a country weight or like you know, well,
well no not yet, not yet that was not the
point of it. Yet. It was strictly to get high,
is what they were doing in the Ymar Republic was
just a perk when the well, no, that was a
Nazi thing. So then the Nazis come along and they say,
we're not doing cocaine and morphine anymore. Let's try these
(12:37):
other synthetic stimulants that can be produced strictly in Germany.
And one of the things that is a benefit is
weight loss or I saw first date jitters or um
just self confidence, depression, anything you could think of that
you might need a little boost for. Purvitin was was
advertised for, I almost prescribed, but like you said, it
(12:58):
was over the counter. And so it's really interesting that
that um Norman Ohler makes this point. Around the time
the perviting came out and started to become into widespread use,
the German economy started cranking into full gear. So one
of the first points that Owlder makes is without this speed,
(13:19):
Germany probably wouldn't have been able to get onto wartime
footing as fast as it did because it happened overnight
in terms of like huge social social change, and that
was a big part of it. Was this pervitin the
speed that everyone in Germany was on. And now thinking
about you know, the German the health of the German
(13:41):
country in Germany itself. Yeah, and you know, if you
think about a military being hopped up on speed um,
it has a lot of initially may have a lot
of advantages and that not only are you feeling euphoric
and confident and you're super focused, but you can also
battle it up and wore it up for two days
(14:02):
straight without sleeping and still feel good. So they were
passing them out literally in chocolates. Uh some of them
were called uh ponza chocolata tank chocolate for the tank
drivers and tank crews. And then they would give them
to the Air Force. They would give them to pilots
and they called it either pilot salt or pilots chocolate.
(14:22):
And between, dude, between April and July, just what is that?
Four months? Yes, in nineteen forty more than thirty five
million doses of purbiton were manufactured for the army. In
the Air Force alone over three three and a half
four months, thirty five million doses. And I mean there
(14:43):
are plenty of accounts um like on record. This is
not speculation at all. There was a Nobel Prize winner
named Einrich Bowl who won the Nobel Prize in nineteen
seventy two for literature, and he was he was in
the army back before he was an author, and like
the our letters home where he's like, perhaps you could
obtain some more purbaton for my supplies and just send
(15:06):
it on over. So they love the stuff, yeah, oh yeah,
they loved it, um, not not just like the the
actual like soldiers loved it, which they very much did
from all from all appearances, but also the people running
the show, um of the military, the Wehrmacht loved it
too well. They were on it themselves, sure, but they
(15:26):
also loved like the effects, like they it turned German
soldiers into like super soldiers. Basically they didn't need sleep.
They could they could hike through forests for days on end,
and they did. Actually, the blitz creak into France was
carried out over about three three plus days and um
(15:47):
Norman Ohler says in his book that in in less
than a hundred hours, Germany gained more land in France
than it did throughout the entirety of World War One,
and it was because it was one big push all
the way into France that took place over three days, NonStop.
There wasn't like let's let's move like twenty miles and
(16:08):
then camp for the night and then pick up the
next morning. It was a NonStop move into France. And
from what I understand, no one in in the modern
world had ever seen anything like that from a military.
It didn't make any sense. And that was it for France.
I mean, like, this was May of nineteen forty France.
France fell like almost immediately just in the face of this.
(16:29):
And they used the same tactic in Poland the year before,
and all of this was they think, it's not like, oh,
this coincides with the time that you know, the military
was was ordering pervitin. It's documented that pervitin was the
reason that this these pushes were able to happen and
why Germany looked like they really were going to take
over the world in the early stages of World War two. Yeah,
(16:51):
and this stuff was, I mean, it was it was
from the top down. And we'll we'll get to Hitler's
drug use in the third act of this podcast because
that stuff is super interesting. Um, but it was definitely
top down, like the head of the Research Institute of
Defense Physiology, basically the the lead physiologist for the German military.
(17:12):
His name was Otto Runk. Yeah I mentioned him. Yeah, Yeah,
he was. He was. He was hopped up on it himself.
He's the one that endorses from the beginning. And basically
it's like medically documented that he he essentially at a
certain point was living in a constant state of speed
meth overdose. So uh, all right, so the army, the
(17:36):
Air Force, everyone's all hopped up on this drug. Um,
they are literally like prescribing this as like these young
like seventeen eighteen year old German soldiers or are signing
up for the army or did they sign up or
did they just get absorbed. It depends on when in
the in the war you're talking about. Towards the end
(17:56):
of the war, they had no choice. They were just drafted.
Well any rate, they would say like here's your outfit. Um,
it's very sharp, I think you must admit, and you
go boss yeah, And the soldier would say thinks a lot.
And they would say here's your weapon, and here's your speed,
like put this under your tongue starting now. Yeah, And
then here's all the rest of your speed to carry
(18:18):
around with you. Just come back when you need some more. Yeah,
and the short term, you know, it's it's like we've
done plenty of episodes on drugs and on crystal meth,
and the short term we've been on crystal meth while
we've done the episodes that the short term effect was
was great and like you said, they made so many
(18:38):
gains so much more quickly, to the point where Churchill
was apparently dumbfounded by how fast they operated. But like,
over time, it's gonna have the effect of any other drug.
Just because it comes packaged and marketed as a prescription
doesn't mean it wasn't crystal meth. And over time what
happens is sleep deprivation and very poor decision making, not
(19:02):
sharp focus, and soldiers who would die of heart failure
or who would take their own lives during psychotic breakdowns,
and you know, withdrawal when they couldn't get their hands
on the purvitend. So this very much ended up biting
them on their German highnees. Uh, even after their initial successes. Right. Yeah,
(19:22):
And and um, I mean you can point to the
places where the where the war started to turn that
that coincide with um. You know, points where it had
been years that the German army had been on stimulants
and speed for basically every day since then, and like,
(19:44):
I mean, you don't even have to You could be
the most drug naive person in the world and you
still know that space staying on speed for three years,
there's eventually going to be a bottoming out. And that's
not a place where you want to be as a military,
especially when you're deep into Russia in the winter. If
your whole army is bottoming out after Matthews, yes, that's
(20:06):
not good. And that seems to be what happened. Like
one of the reasons why the Russia offensive was was
um was not was not successful. It is because there
was a lot of um, A lot of UM. I
keep using the word followed or bottoming out what's it
called when like you oh, crashing from speed sure and
like and and suffering from psychosis and all sorts of
(20:28):
other problems. And then even if it wasn't directly like
their their decision making wasn't affected or even if you
take all that out, being in Russia, caught in Russia
in the winter, um while being addicted to speed for
three years. That is not a good place. Your body
(20:48):
is not in the kind of place where it can
fight off pneumonia easily or stay warm easily. It's severely compromised.
Just on like say, a first dose of speed in
that situation, but after being on speed every day for
three years, that's a really bad situation. So in that sense,
at the very least, speed would have contributed to a
(21:08):
really huge um set back for the German Army that
a lot of people point to is one of the
at least the real nail in the coffin for Germany,
which was um Russia not being successful in Russia turning
the tides and pushing Germany back or the German army
back into Germany and then chasing it into it. That
(21:28):
was that was a big deal, and it's possible that
speed played a really big factor in it. Well for sure.
I mean, we we talked about older speculation about some
of this stuff, but again it's it's sort of a
numbers game. I mean, there there are studies that show
that if you take crystal meth a lot for three years,
that two thirds of the people who use that drug
(21:51):
in that way are going to suffer from serious psychosis.
So it's just a math problem. If that many pills
were literally being handed out in the army and they
were all using it for that amount of time, then
that means, according to studies, that two thirds of the
German army at some point we're suffering from psychosis drug
induced psychosis. That's not good. And apparently towards the end
(22:15):
of the war UM German chemists were trying to come
up with new drugs. There was one that didn't get
deployed UM, but that was tested or I think it
might have been deployed, I can't remember UM called Drug
nine or d I X Roman Numeral nine, and it
was basically like cocaine and morphine and then another kind
of morphine, and it was it was meant to combat
(22:38):
the to get the German army back on its feet, UM.
But it was just so over the top that it
was never never issued in like any kind of wide
supply because it was just it was basically like here, addicts,
here's a brand new super drug that's going to keep
you going. But it didn't quite work. But they found
(22:59):
I saw that in tests on on concentration camp inmates.
They would they would hike in a colaw in a
circle like ninety kilometers in a day without rest, so
it would work. But I think they also tried it
on some some one man subs and it didn't work
out very well. D nine So sounds like like the
(23:22):
dude in college that's like, dude, I got some D nine. Man.
It was this like this German drug back in World
War Two that was a combination. It's the ultimate super
drug and some guy in uh Indiana is making it now. Yep, yep,
that's where they would make it, when in fact it
was just you know, white Crosses smashed up right and
(23:44):
mixed with um, you know, Pillsberry sugar cookie dough. Alright,
so I think we should take another break. We're going
to finish up with what I think is the most
interesting part of this whole thing, which is Adolf Hitler's
rampant drug use in his his own Michael Jackson esque
personal doctor who injected up on a daily basis right
(24:07):
after this ge alright, so there's this doctor. His name
(24:36):
was doctor Morrel, Dr Theodore Morrel, and he kind of
wormed his way into He was not a highly um
thought of doctor. He was not highly credited. To begin with,
he was sort of known as a quack. He was
a dermatologist though, and I think that's how he first
curried favor with Hitler was in curing is his long
(24:57):
time exema, right, And he also just uh he worked
on venereal diseases and stuff like that, and starting in
ninety six, he managed to worm his way in there
such that Hitler made him his private physician. And it's
like you always hear about these private physicians, whether it's
Michael Jackson or Elvis or anyone in this high position
(25:18):
of power or world leader who has their own doctor
Field Good essentially, and that's what happened with Hitler. He uh,
I mean, should we just go ahead and talk about
the daily routine? Sure, there's so many interesting things here.
Hitler would. First of all, Hitler had bad um. I mean,
I guess you'd call it ib s um notoriously flatulent
(25:41):
and diarrhea and just had a bad bad stomach problems
and intestinal issues like gas that Dr Morrell once noted
in his journals, because he kept extensive journals untreating Hitler,
who he called patient A, he referred to it as
colossal gas. The likes of which he's never seen before.
Like that was the kind of gas that Hitler was
(26:02):
dealing with. Of course, Hitler had the worst farts of
all time, of all times, worst farts in history. So, uh,
he goes vegetarian, and he did not help things. It
did not help things because he basically subsisted on a
diet of baby food. Um they didn't call it baby
food or serve it to him with a plastic spoon
(26:23):
from a little tiny jar, but he ate purade, watery
vegetables basically, which is not going to cure your flatulence. Uh,
and he was he started to get uh, doped up
a little bit from Morrel, and he's like, hey, I
feel a little bit better with this stuff. And it
got to the point where he didn't care what he
was getting as long as the result was that it
(26:45):
made him feel better. And so eventually Morrel got up
to the point where he was injecting him daily, multiple
times a day, with anywhere from I've seen twenty five
to dy different drugs over the course of about nine years. Yeah,
and so and all of this it started in ninety
(27:07):
six and like you said, ran for nine years, and
at first it was you know, doctor Morrell was one
of the first doctors in Germany to espouse the healing
and health benefits of vitamins. Before that, vitamins weren't really
thought of as healthy, and he was like, no, they're
super healthy. Watch, I'll show you under fear. And remember
(27:27):
one of the things about Nazi Germany was that like,
you kept your body pure to help the German state.
It was like a component of fascism was was like
being pure and drug free. But if they were vitamins
and they were injected by a doctor, that's fine, we
can do all those. So um, this idea of keeping
Hitler seeming like fit and active and like full of
(27:50):
um spit and vinegar, you know. Um, that was supposedly
from Morrel's vitamin injections. But then as time went off
and Hitler started to suffer more ill health again, some
of these vitamins were supplemented by just straight up, straight
up drugs that were produced by Germany, like Purveton and
like you could all, yeah, so Hitler's getting injected um
(28:15):
with and like you said, he like Hitler notoriously was
thought of as a teetotler. He didn't even drink coffee.
He quit smoking and he was supposed to be this
picture of health. All the while he's getting injected with
everything from literal cocaine to morphine, to precursors to OxyContin
two uh extractions of bull semen because Hitler very notoriously
(28:42):
had um issues in the in the E. D department testosterone.
I mean, it's crazy the amount of drugs that he
was getting injected with multiple times daily. I saw a
d was the high estimate on with one source. I
saw ninety elsewhere. But a cocktail and not just like
(29:02):
here's one drug and then the next day, here's a
different drug, a cocktail of up to combinations of up
to ninety different drugs, you know, during during the course
of this this time repeatedly getting injected like daily injections.
Apparently towards the end of the war, Hitler's veins had
started collapsing. But UM to Hitler, or at least the
(29:24):
way that Hitler pretended was that this was his doctor,
you know, shooting him up with vitamins UM when he
when he got I when he got a cocaine, it
was given in the form of eye drops. Yeah, well
that was that was early on, Like this was before
they started shooting him up. They would give it to
him and I drive, I dropped it ten times the
concentration that because cocaine was used in medicine a little
(29:47):
bit um but at very low doses, so he would
ramp it up by ten times, squirt it in his eye,
and eventually, like anything else, you have to ramp it
up to get that same high. So that's when the
injection started. Well, he also started snorting it. I saw
to um to clear his to clear his sinuses and
keep his throat clean, or throat um to ease a
(30:07):
sore throat. Just stupid stuff like that. But it was
through that Elvis paradigm, which was if a doctor's giving
it to me, it's legal, it's a it's not it's
not a drug. Drug. It would have been scandalous if
it had gotten out that that Hitler was snort in
cocaine because again like the Nazis had associated that with
(30:27):
you know, degenerates in the Weimar Republic, so no one
did cocaine. If Hitler had been caught doing cocaine, that
would have been a big deal. Yeah, and you know,
by all accounts, by the end of the war, you know,
those final dark dark days of Hitler the Bunker, and
and this we know the stuff because Dr Morrell left
behind a treasure trove of documentation to kind of cover
(30:50):
his own but just in case anything ever happened. So
we have all this documentation. But from what everyone has
written in history, in the final days, hit Or was
just a straight up junkie. Yeah, that's that's that's certainly
how Older characterizes the whole thing. Um, And it's not
just him, like a lot of people are like, no,
Hitler's health decline tremendously, Like he didn't go into the
(31:14):
war with too many health problems aside from eczema and
something called spina bifida occulta, which they think was responsible
for his um his problematic um bowels and gas. But
like he didn't have massive problems, he didn't have Parkinson's.
By the end of the war, he seemed to have
developed Parkinson's he um, he had trouble walking. He uh,
(31:38):
he was very much emaciated and sallow and so um.
Older for the first time really lays this at the
feet of Dr Morrell and his injections, because not only again,
not only is it like cocaine and morphine and oxycoxycontin
and um uh speed that he's giving Hitler. Some of
(31:59):
these other can coxin's are like really not good. There
was an anti gas pill called Dr Couster's Anti gas Pills.
They had had Strict nine in it. Yeah, Hitler took
a lot of those. And you know, if you take
a lot of Strict nine every day over the course
of years, it's going to have some really negative impacts
(32:20):
on you. So not only was it that Hitler was
addicted to drugs, he was also being given some very
poisonous toxic materials by his doctor in other ways too,
and that was it accumulatively had this effect. But I
think the big money thing, Chuck is like, how did
it impact Hitler's judgment? How does that correlate towards the
(32:41):
end of the war, And that's where Ohler is really
going into town. He's like, dude, Hitler was, like you said,
just totally addicted to drugs morphine, OxyContin, um speed, cocaine
by the end of the war, and it had clouded
his judgment. And even though no call off, he's still
I think it might have been Himmler or Spear, one
(33:05):
of his close advisors had said like man when when
the war started Hitler, Hitler could make a decision in
a snap. By the by the towards the end of
the war, bye, he it was just like a nightmare
watching him like go back and forth and try to
come to a conclusion in a decision, and that that
(33:25):
was directly related to the drugs he was on well
and increasingly sequestered and paranoid. Like the whole thing was
a recipe for disaster. Uh, you know, you've talked about Morrel.
What he had to gain was obviously the prestige of
being Hitler's personal physician. But he had a lot of
money in the in the game here because he was
(33:47):
cranking out this preparation that he called Vita Molton that
was marketed across Europe, and he was essentially in the
drug business, like he was making it tons of money,
and he could try out Hitler as his star patient
and even went so far as to basically he wrote
a letter to the Reich Health Office because you know,
(34:07):
eventually doctors and people started coming out and saying, hey,
like this stuff is not good. We need to outlaw this.
This is having a bad effect. And so he wrote
the Reich Health Office and said, the fewer has authorized
me to do the following. If I bring out in
test a remedy and then applied in the fureer's headquarters
and applied successfully that it could be applied elsewhere in
Germany and no longer needs authorization. So so yeah, it's
(34:30):
like you just try to try to come back with
a response to that. Yeah. And in the meantime and
building a factory and getting rich, uh making speed for
all of Germany. Yeah, this Vita Molton, there was like
a billion packets ordered by just you know, the um,
the Hrmacht alone, let alone like all of the German people.
(34:51):
UM that he sold a lot and made a lot
of money off of it. Um. But from from what
seems to be UM, I guess Older Owler's research has
kind of shown that UM, that Morrell was very much
dedicated not just as a doctor, but like personally to
Hitler too, and that he most likely over the years
(35:13):
historians have accused Morrel of purposefully trying to harm Hitler
or um something along those lines. But the apparently Older
is like, no, this guy really was a true believer
and was really like very much proud that he was
Hitler's physician. He didn't know what he was doing. He
definitely turned Hitler into an addict of multiple drugs, a
(35:37):
super I think a super addict is how um Owlder
puts it. But he he was still devoted to him.
He wasn't doing it to cause deliberate harm, right. Um,
It's just so interesting this this same thing with like
Michael Jackson and Elvis. It's like there's this weird thing
that happens where these doctors completely so their souls to
(36:01):
work alongside these people in positions of power and essentially
kill them eventually, uh, by just feeding them whatever drug
they needed. Like he was not only on speed obviously
to counteract that. You need something to bring you down.
So then he would get injected with something called you
could all that's the OxyContin uh relative. Yeah, so he
(36:25):
I mean, he didn't know which way it was up
at a certain point. Um, eventually, like he would he
fired Morrel on April seventeen. Two weeks later, Hitler put
a bullet in his brain. Morrell gets tried for war
crimes and goes to jail and then I believe died
of a stroke in nine. Yeah, he he was not
(36:47):
tried for war crimes, but he was interrogated, No, he wasn't. Um,
he was interrogated in prison for two years by the
Allies who just pumped him for all the information they
could get about Hitler. He was just in prison being questioned. Yes, interesting,
And he ended up producing or contributing to like a
forty seven page report about Hitler and Hitler's health that
(37:07):
the Allies had that didn't come out until I think
the nineties in the US. But um, he was a
huge trove of information. But more than that, and the
fact that he got Hitler addicted to OxyContin that led
to Hitler making some terrible decisions, to becoming increasingly paranoid,
to stop listening to his generals, to becoming embarrassed for
(37:28):
these defeats, and like withdrawing even further and then ultimately
losing the war, and um taking his own life. In
that sense, the world owes a tremendous debt to Theodore Morrell.
It's kind of funny when you think about it, like
we owe that dude. And imagine this also another way
to look at this, Chuck, Imagine that you had gotten
(37:49):
behind this, this cult of personality, this leader, this charismatic
leader who said we are going to take over the world,
and you decided that you were on board with that.
You're a German who was going along with it. Maybe
you were pepped up on a little bit of speed um.
And then over time, right in the middle of this
taking over the world thing that's actually starting to seem
(38:09):
like it might work, that leader decides that he's going
to go and get hooked on like five different extraordinarily
addictive drugs right in the middle of taking over the world,
and that that would be the thing that brought about
the downfall, which you which Older makes the cases like, yes,
you can lay a lot of this the downfall of
of the Third Reich, at the feet of drugs. Well,
(38:30):
I mean it's certainly you can't fault Older for for
going there, because is such a juicy thing to take
all these facts about all this drug use, rampant drug use,
and then years later go back and say, like what
if this hadn't happened, or what was the overall effect
not just that they did these drugs, but what how
did it affect history? Super interesting? Yeah, it's extraordinarily interesting.
(38:55):
I mean, that's that's good stuff. Oh, I found I
found one other thing too. I want to mention. There's
something called Muda floor or Muta floor m U t
A f l o R. It's still available. It was
Hitler's go to probiotic, and it was isolated in nineteen
seventeen from a stool sample taken from a World War
(39:17):
One soldier who, while everybody else in his troop was
like getting dysentery left and right, he was healthy. And
this doctor noticed and and isolated a particular kind of
bacteria in this guy's stool. And you can buy um
pills made from that line of bacteria to this day,
except it's illegal in the US for some reason, which
makes me really want to see what it's all about.
(39:40):
But you're eating World War One poop bacteria when you
take this Muta floor. But it was given to Hitler
and apparently it worked, so Hitler's probiotic, which I'm I'm
sure Muta floor is like, please don't call it Hitler's probiotic.
We're still trying to sell that stuff. Uh. Well, do
you want to know more about Hitler and drugs, Just
(40:03):
go read um Blitzed The Third Reich and Drugs by
Norman Ohler, or you can go read all the book
reviews about it, Uh like I did. And since I
said that, it's time for a listener mail, I'm gonna
call this uh epic pants story in the Science of Breakups? Um,
(40:23):
you were talking about getting pants? Oh yes, I remember.
So this is from anonymous. Hey guys, it happened in
high school. I was gathering up the nerve to ask
a girl out on a date that I had a
crush on, to set the scene and highlight the level
of embarrassment I'm setting myself for. It's worth noting that
at this point in my life I had never actually
asked a girl out this boldly. I was going to
(40:45):
do it face to face in the classroom in front
of her friends and my friends. Geez, it's not a
good idea. Can't you like Catcher by her locker? And
she's not surrounded by people. He was hopped up on
purvet and feeling really confident. Maybe, Uh, this out of
character for me, But I couldn't find the courage on
my own, so I confided in a close friend who
agreed to be my wingman. He was very supportive, Plus
(41:06):
he had inside her info. They actually heard her say
that she liked me. Man, Remember those days? How sweet
that was yes, does she like me? Yes? Or maybe? Uh?
The teacher left the classroom for a minute. My trusty
mate said I should go for it and do it
right now. So with the encouragement from him, I needed uh,
(41:30):
and I was nervous as h I walked over to
her table of friends, interrupted them, had her full attention,
and started asking her out on the date I was
actually doing it. Guys, I felt amazing, and then bam,
super supportive mate had set me up and pants to
me in front of her and the whole class. Now
(41:52):
it gets worse, he think, Huh, I'm not gonna say.
I think you know what's coming. The execution was perfect, guys.
One pantst full monty before the whole class and for
a whole second before I could halt the process. Dude,
could you imagine I would never recover? Hey, No, I'd move.
(42:16):
I'd go home and be like, we have to move
to a new school in a new state, maybe a
new country, wasn't It's funny you mentioned that, because I
think every school also had some kid who didn't show
up after summer the next fall and when in fact
his dad got a transfer, but there would be some
story cooked up on why I saw him on a
milk carton. Wait, that was a kid at our school
(42:37):
who supposedly moved because he masturbated in class and got caught.
And I don't think any of it was true. Oh
my gosh, Oh my gosh. But is there like a
kernel of truth to that, you know what I mean?
Last years later the playground say it, actually, don't say,
but it's funny. I haven't thought about that since the
ninth grade. I'm gonna totally look him up and see
if he's out there. Um. Anyway, guys, the betrayal was set.
(43:00):
Gainst was second to Judas and the wave of embarrassment
so Gargantelin that all I could do was just take
a seat and die inside. We were an art class,
but if the subject was advanced pantsing, my mate would
have gotten an A plus. He's like, I was so embarrassed.
I couldn't even pull my pants up when I took
a seat. I just sat down with my bare butt
(43:20):
and fruit basket right on the lunch room bench. I
just gave into it, guys, and went dong out for
the rest of the semester. Um what no, no, no,
he did. I was like, Wow, good for this. I
was just riffing on your bit, like I feel like
I'm about to throw up. I must I love green
right now right. So he keeps saying mate. It turns
out he is Australian because he says ps in Australia
(43:41):
instead of saying pants. Do we say dacked d A
c K E D. I saw that somewhere dacks refer
to pants like tracky decks are track pants. To put
it in a sentence, my mate is such a dog.
He full dacked me in front of this chick. I
like h And that's from anonymous. Thanks a lot of
anymous appreciate you sharing that, even though it was anonymously.
(44:04):
That's right. If you have a horrifically cringe worthy story,
we want to hear it. We'll make it through it together.
You can go on to stuff you Should Know dot
com and check out our social links. You can also
hit us up via email if you want to stuff
podcast at i heeart podcast Network dot com. Stuff you
(44:28):
Should Know is a production of iHeart Radios. How stuff
works for more podcasts for my heart Radio because at
the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows,
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of My
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and
there's other Josh over there, the O J. You're the
O G. Yes, he's the O J. That's right. We
(00:23):
should probably come up with a different nickname for you, Josh.
That's tried. Um. So, oh, yeah, this is Stuff you
Should Know the podcast Nazi Crankhead Edition. We've been doing
a lot on Nazis lately, have we. I guess we have.
We did the July twenty plot to assassinate Hitler this one. Yeah,
(00:45):
it's a lot. It's a lot. Uh, yeah, this is
I thought this is interesting and I remember hearing a
lot about this when um, I mean there's been plenty
of people in books about Nazis doing lots of drugs.
The big one that came out called Blitzed from author
Nomen Ohler really made a lot of hey in the
(01:06):
news for sure. Um, it was a it was a
big deal when it came out just I think in
two thousands seventeen, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, and we're
endorsing that book is a good read. Have you read it?
I read a lot of it, Okay, I got I
heard it's a very exhaustive book. It's pretty exhaustive, so
it um. I have not read it, but it does
(01:29):
seem from from some of the stuff I've read about it.
Some of the book reviews are like, yeah, this, this
guy's got the goods. This guy, Norman Ohler um spent
like five years at least in the archives. So this
isn't just like conjecture. This is very well researched and
um fact based. Well, I guess there's a little conjecture
to it, because he's basically saying drugs drove the Third
(01:54):
Reich initially and then just like you know, anybody becoming
strong out on a drug, it led to the deterioration
and ultimately downfall of the Third Reich. And that's a big,
big thing to say, Like there's there are very few
things in history, especially massive world changing things like the
(02:14):
Third Reich and World War Two and the Holocaust, that
you can just pin one thing on. And I'm sure
he's not saying like that is it, there's nothing else
to it, But he's saying like this is a huge
contributor of it, and he's the first. He's not the
first person to say, yeah, the Nazis did a lot
of drugs, he seems to be the first author to
to really say, yeah, the Nazis did a lot of
(02:36):
drugs and this was the result. Yeah. And I think
from what I uh, the parts of the book that
I read and doing this research, it is it's not
much of a leap. So when you have facts and
like the number of pills, which we'll get into, and
what these pills were, there's just no disputing the physiological
(02:58):
effect that it has on people and what these drugs
do because that's why they were taking them. So it's
not much of a leap, even though it is some
conjecture to say, you know, the blitz creek was uh,
probably super effective because they were all on crank. Yeah,
it gives blitz creek bop like a new meaning, you know.
(03:20):
I I that was totally off the cuff, too off
the dome. Yeah. So should we talk about Old Germany
and sort of the seed of this whole thing. Yeah,
but first one more thing while we're kind of on
this particular riff. Um, I don't know, because again I
haven't read the book. I don't know that Ohler is saying,
and I don't think he is that like the Holocaust
wouldn't have happened if if Germany hadn't been hopped up
(03:42):
on drugs. Um He's something some people do say that.
There's some revisionist historians who say, yeah, it was it
was drugs that was that had gripped Hitler's mind, and
had he not been on drugs, the Holocaust wouldn't have happened.
That appears to be patently untrue. The earliest um, the
earliest deaths executions in the Holocaust that I found go
(04:06):
back to nineteen thirty three, and the Nazis had such
a tenuous grip on power that um that that they
had to basically make it look like these executions of
these four Jews at Dachau um were were for were
them trying to escape? Like they were shot trying to escape.
It was such a terrible obvious lie that three SS
(04:28):
officers and the camp commandant at Dachau were indicted for murder.
That's how new the Nazis were into power that they
these guys were indicted for murder. The indictments went away.
But again this was three, way early, way before anybody
was on drugs and UM, and the Holocaust was just
that was like the earliest beginnings of the Holocaust, and
(04:49):
it showed this mentality and this drive and desire to
carry out the Holocaust later on. So so anybody who
says that it was drugs that brought about the Holocaust
is wrong from what I understand. So you mentioned nineteen
thirty three, Uh, that is interesting that data is because
there were plenty of drugs. The Nazis weren't doing them yet,
(05:12):
but they started passing laws in nineteen thirty three as
one of the big first moves of the Nazis to um,
to clean up the land, to clean up the Weimar
Republic which is what Germany was basically known as from
nineteen eighteen to nineteen thirty three. Yeah, the Weimar Republic
was an experiment at democracy in Germany and it almost
(05:34):
took like the last five years of the republic showed
like economic growth. It was during the jazz Age, so
everybody was kind of partying, as we'll see. And UM,
it wasn't until the Great Depression started in nineteen twenty
nine that this really fragile republic, this really fragile democracy
just could not handle that kind of economic hit, and
(05:56):
it gave Hitler in the National Socialism Party this per
ficct entree into power by saying, first of all, we
can we can turn things around economically. The Wymar Republic
couldn't do it. And secondly, this all Wymar Republic thing,
everybody's on drugs, they're all degenerates. And then they used
that idea of degenerate art of people being on cocaine
(06:20):
and morphine, and and tied it in with Judaism. And
so anybody who was on drugs, anyone who was gay,
anyone who would say like a roma, Um, they were
all tied in with the Jews, and all of those
people were subject to the Holocaust um right out of
the gate. Yeah, so the stage is set. They're locking
(06:41):
up their imprisoning, their sterilizing addicts, UM, denouncing these users. Uh.
And then and these are, like we said, cocaine and morphine,
which Germany was like one of the leading or maybe
the leading producer of cocaine in the world at the time. Right,
you gotta tell them those statistics. Yeah, in the nineteen
twenties Germany, UH, companies in Germany generated of the world's
(07:07):
morphine and controlled eight of the global cocaine market. That is,
in the nineteen twenties. Astounding, and so you can imagine
that the Weimar Republic is awash in this. And so
there really was like a lot of I mean, there
was tons of wow, almost just said something else. There
were tons of tons of horrible broken lives and addiction.
(07:30):
There was a lot of homelessness. There was a lot
of prostitution. There was a lot of um, a lot
of I mean issues and problems that the society had.
But there was also a lot of really interesting and
good things that was coming out of this combination of
a democracy of washing drugs. There were things like a
lot more gender equality than there had been before. There
(07:53):
was a lot of androgyny going on, and kind of
like the art and social scene, there was some really
good art coming out. But again the Nazis came along
and denounced it as degenerate art and actually held an
exhibition chuck in a degenerate art exhibition where they showed
everybody in Germany, this is bad art, and we're going
to destroy a lot of this and replace it with um.
(08:18):
The three k's. It was kinder couch, I think couch, yeah,
k you with the new and Kirsch, which is family
home in church. And that is what our art, that
is what our culture is going to be about. So
the Weimar Republic provided this really great foil to what
(08:38):
the Nazis were kind of rousing Germany out of, like, hey,
let's all get off the cocaine, let's all get off
the morphine. And in fact, if you know an addict,
tell the cops, you neighbor, you co worker, you family member,
go and form on on the drug users in this country.
Let's let's clean Germany up. Let's clean Germany's bodies up,
(08:59):
and let's move forward with an emphasis on family home
in church. That's what the Nazis came to Germany with
in in right. And as this is going on literally,
as all this stuff is happening in the nineteen thirties,
early in mid nineteen thirties, they're denouncing these people, locking
them up um, talking about how toxic these drugs are.
(09:24):
Germany and companies in Germany were switching over to synthesizing
drugs and making speed and all kinds of drugs synthetic,
like precursors to OxyContin and uh, meth basically. Uh. There
was a firm in Berlin called the Timbler Firm, and
they were headed up and this is a seven by
(09:45):
man named Fritz house Child, who uh later on was
the sort of leading dude in East Germany's sports doping program.
So he's he knows what he's doing. So they synthesized
basically crystal meth into something and you know, at least
as the same kind of active ingredients as a little
pill called purvitin V E R V I T I
(10:08):
N and um. It wasn't just the army that uses
and we'll get into all that, because the German military
was definitely hopped up on what we now know as
crystal meth. But this stuff was over the counter at first,
and a lot of Germany was using this, housewives were
using it. And we should say that like the same
(10:30):
stuff was going on as benz adrine in the United States,
like they were. It seems like the whole world was
hopped up on speed in the nineteen thirties, not just
the thirties, like well into the sixties, well, I mean
starting in the nineteen thirties. Uh, And so purviton was
over the counter at first, eventually, uh, you know, some
alarm bell started going off, so they just like, we
(10:51):
might want to make this prescription. And then they said, well,
you know what, we don't know if the general public
should have this at all, but we totally want our
military to still have it. Yeah, it was called the
Stimulant Decree where the head of the German um physiology
department in the in the Defense ministry, his name was
(11:12):
Otto Ranki. He said, give me thirty five million of
those stimulant tabs because we're waging a war on exhaustion,
as we'll see. Let's let's before we hop into the military.
You want to take a break, Yes, okay, I'm ready.
We need to starting now, George, okay, Chuck. So in
(11:53):
Germany before before there's a really important point that I
don't want to gloss over. Germany went from this. As
far as the Nazis were concerned, it's kind of shiftless um,
high unemployment, fragile economic state where a lot of people
were selling and doing cocaine and morphine recreationally and to
(12:16):
stave off depression. I mean, they were in a pretty
bad spot as a country weight or like you know, well,
well no not yet, not yet that was not the
point of it. Yet. It was strictly to get high,
is what they were doing in the Ymar Republic was
just a perk when the well, no, that was a
Nazi thing. So then the Nazis come along and they say,
we're not doing cocaine and morphine anymore. Let's try these
(12:37):
other synthetic stimulants that can be produced strictly in Germany.
And one of the things that is a benefit is
weight loss or I saw first date jitters or um
just self confidence, depression, anything you could think of that
you might need a little boost for. Purvitin was was
advertised for, I almost prescribed, but like you said, it
(12:58):
was over the counter. And so it's really interesting that
that um Norman Ohler makes this point. Around the time
the perviting came out and started to become into widespread use,
the German economy started cranking into full gear. So one
of the first points that Owlder makes is without this speed,
(13:19):
Germany probably wouldn't have been able to get onto wartime
footing as fast as it did because it happened overnight
in terms of like huge social social change, and that
was a big part of it. Was this pervitin the
speed that everyone in Germany was on. And now thinking
about you know, the German the health of the German
(13:41):
country in Germany itself. Yeah, and you know, if you
think about a military being hopped up on speed um,
it has a lot of initially may have a lot
of advantages and that not only are you feeling euphoric
and confident and you're super focused, but you can also
battle it up and wore it up for two days
(14:02):
straight without sleeping and still feel good. So they were
passing them out literally in chocolates. Uh some of them
were called uh ponza chocolata tank chocolate for the tank
drivers and tank crews. And then they would give them
to the Air Force. They would give them to pilots
and they called it either pilot salt or pilots chocolate.
(14:22):
And between, dude, between April and July, just what is that?
Four months? Yes, in nineteen forty more than thirty five
million doses of purbiton were manufactured for the army. In
the Air Force alone over three three and a half
four months, thirty five million doses. And I mean there
(14:43):
are plenty of accounts um like on record. This is
not speculation at all. There was a Nobel Prize winner
named Einrich Bowl who won the Nobel Prize in nineteen
seventy two for literature, and he was he was in
the army back before he was an author, and like
the our letters home where he's like, perhaps you could
obtain some more purbaton for my supplies and just send
(15:06):
it on over. So they love the stuff, yeah, oh yeah,
they loved it, um, not not just like the the
actual like soldiers loved it, which they very much did
from all from all appearances, but also the people running
the show, um of the military, the Wehrmacht loved it
too well. They were on it themselves, sure, but they
(15:26):
also loved like the effects, like they it turned German
soldiers into like super soldiers. Basically they didn't need sleep.
They could they could hike through forests for days on end,
and they did. Actually, the blitz creak into France was
carried out over about three three plus days and um
(15:47):
Norman Ohler says in his book that in in less
than a hundred hours, Germany gained more land in France
than it did throughout the entirety of World War One,
and it was because it was one big push all
the way into France that took place over three days, NonStop.
There wasn't like let's let's move like twenty miles and
(16:08):
then camp for the night and then pick up the
next morning. It was a NonStop move into France. And
from what I understand, no one in in the modern
world had ever seen anything like that from a military.
It didn't make any sense. And that was it for France.
I mean, like, this was May of nineteen forty France.
France fell like almost immediately just in the face of this.
(16:29):
And they used the same tactic in Poland the year before,
and all of this was they think, it's not like, oh,
this coincides with the time that you know, the military
was was ordering pervitin. It's documented that pervitin was the
reason that this these pushes were able to happen and
why Germany looked like they really were going to take
over the world in the early stages of World War two. Yeah,
(16:51):
and this stuff was, I mean, it was it was
from the top down. And we'll we'll get to Hitler's
drug use in the third act of this podcast because
that stuff is super interesting. Um, but it was definitely
top down, like the head of the Research Institute of
Defense Physiology, basically the the lead physiologist for the German military.
(17:12):
His name was Otto Runk. Yeah I mentioned him. Yeah, Yeah,
he was. He was. He was hopped up on it himself.
He's the one that endorses from the beginning. And basically
it's like medically documented that he he essentially at a
certain point was living in a constant state of speed
meth overdose. So uh, all right, so the army, the
(17:36):
Air Force, everyone's all hopped up on this drug. Um,
they are literally like prescribing this as like these young
like seventeen eighteen year old German soldiers or are signing
up for the army or did they sign up or
did they just get absorbed. It depends on when in
the in the war you're talking about. Towards the end
(17:56):
of the war, they had no choice. They were just drafted.
Well any rate, they would say like here's your outfit. Um,
it's very sharp, I think you must admit, and you
go boss yeah, And the soldier would say thinks a lot.
And they would say here's your weapon, and here's your speed,
like put this under your tongue starting now. Yeah, And
then here's all the rest of your speed to carry
(18:18):
around with you. Just come back when you need some more. Yeah,
and the short term, you know, it's it's like we've
done plenty of episodes on drugs and on crystal meth,
and the short term we've been on crystal meth while
we've done the episodes that the short term effect was
was great and like you said, they made so many
(18:38):
gains so much more quickly, to the point where Churchill
was apparently dumbfounded by how fast they operated. But like,
over time, it's gonna have the effect of any other drug.
Just because it comes packaged and marketed as a prescription
doesn't mean it wasn't crystal meth. And over time what
happens is sleep deprivation and very poor decision making, not
(19:02):
sharp focus, and soldiers who would die of heart failure
or who would take their own lives during psychotic breakdowns,
and you know, withdrawal when they couldn't get their hands
on the purvitend. So this very much ended up biting
them on their German highnees. Uh, even after their initial successes. Right. Yeah,
(19:22):
And and um, I mean you can point to the
places where the where the war started to turn that
that coincide with um. You know, points where it had
been years that the German army had been on stimulants
and speed for basically every day since then, and like,
(19:44):
I mean, you don't even have to You could be
the most drug naive person in the world and you
still know that space staying on speed for three years,
there's eventually going to be a bottoming out. And that's
not a place where you want to be as a military,
especially when you're deep into Russia in the winter. If
your whole army is bottoming out after Matthews, yes, that's
(20:06):
not good. And that seems to be what happened. Like
one of the reasons why the Russia offensive was was
um was not was not successful. It is because there
was a lot of um, A lot of UM. I
keep using the word followed or bottoming out what's it
called when like you oh, crashing from speed sure and
like and and suffering from psychosis and all sorts of
(20:28):
other problems. And then even if it wasn't directly like
their their decision making wasn't affected or even if you
take all that out, being in Russia, caught in Russia
in the winter, um while being addicted to speed for
three years. That is not a good place. Your body
(20:48):
is not in the kind of place where it can
fight off pneumonia easily or stay warm easily. It's severely compromised.
Just on like say, a first dose of speed in
that situation, but after being on speed every day for
three years, that's a really bad situation. So in that sense,
at the very least, speed would have contributed to a
(21:08):
really huge um set back for the German Army that
a lot of people point to is one of the
at least the real nail in the coffin for Germany,
which was um Russia not being successful in Russia turning
the tides and pushing Germany back or the German army
back into Germany and then chasing it into it. That
(21:28):
was that was a big deal, and it's possible that
speed played a really big factor in it. Well for sure.
I mean, we we talked about older speculation about some
of this stuff, but again it's it's sort of a
numbers game. I mean, there there are studies that show
that if you take crystal meth a lot for three years,
that two thirds of the people who use that drug
(21:51):
in that way are going to suffer from serious psychosis.
So it's just a math problem. If that many pills
were literally being handed out in the army and they
were all using it for that amount of time, then
that means, according to studies, that two thirds of the
German army at some point we're suffering from psychosis drug
induced psychosis. That's not good. And apparently towards the end
(22:15):
of the war UM German chemists were trying to come
up with new drugs. There was one that didn't get
deployed UM, but that was tested or I think it
might have been deployed, I can't remember UM called Drug
nine or d I X Roman Numeral nine, and it
was basically like cocaine and morphine and then another kind
of morphine, and it was it was meant to combat
(22:38):
the to get the German army back on its feet, UM.
But it was just so over the top that it
was never never issued in like any kind of wide
supply because it was just it was basically like here, addicts,
here's a brand new super drug that's going to keep
you going. But it didn't quite work. But they found
(22:59):
I saw that in tests on on concentration camp inmates.
They would they would hike in a colaw in a
circle like ninety kilometers in a day without rest, so
it would work. But I think they also tried it
on some some one man subs and it didn't work
out very well. D nine So sounds like like the
(23:22):
dude in college that's like, dude, I got some D nine. Man.
It was this like this German drug back in World
War Two that was a combination. It's the ultimate super
drug and some guy in uh Indiana is making it now. Yep, yep,
that's where they would make it, when in fact it
was just you know, white Crosses smashed up right and
(23:44):
mixed with um, you know, Pillsberry sugar cookie dough. Alright,
so I think we should take another break. We're going
to finish up with what I think is the most
interesting part of this whole thing, which is Adolf Hitler's
rampant drug use in his his own Michael Jackson esque
personal doctor who injected up on a daily basis right
(24:07):
after this ge alright, so there's this doctor. His name
(24:36):
was doctor Morrel, Dr Theodore Morrel, and he kind of
wormed his way into He was not a highly um
thought of doctor. He was not highly credited. To begin with,
he was sort of known as a quack. He was
a dermatologist though, and I think that's how he first
curried favor with Hitler was in curing is his long
(24:57):
time exema, right, And he also just uh he worked
on venereal diseases and stuff like that, and starting in
ninety six, he managed to worm his way in there
such that Hitler made him his private physician. And it's
like you always hear about these private physicians, whether it's
Michael Jackson or Elvis or anyone in this high position
(25:18):
of power or world leader who has their own doctor
Field Good essentially, and that's what happened with Hitler. He uh,
I mean, should we just go ahead and talk about
the daily routine? Sure, there's so many interesting things here.
Hitler would. First of all, Hitler had bad um. I mean,
I guess you'd call it ib s um notoriously flatulent
(25:41):
and diarrhea and just had a bad bad stomach problems
and intestinal issues like gas that Dr Morrell once noted
in his journals, because he kept extensive journals untreating Hitler,
who he called patient A, he referred to it as
colossal gas. The likes of which he's never seen before.
Like that was the kind of gas that Hitler was
(26:02):
dealing with. Of course, Hitler had the worst farts of
all time, of all times, worst farts in history. So, uh,
he goes vegetarian, and he did not help things. It
did not help things because he basically subsisted on a
diet of baby food. Um they didn't call it baby
food or serve it to him with a plastic spoon
(26:23):
from a little tiny jar, but he ate purade, watery
vegetables basically, which is not going to cure your flatulence. Uh,
and he was he started to get uh, doped up
a little bit from Morrel, and he's like, hey, I
feel a little bit better with this stuff. And it
got to the point where he didn't care what he
was getting as long as the result was that it
(26:45):
made him feel better. And so eventually Morrel got up
to the point where he was injecting him daily, multiple
times a day, with anywhere from I've seen twenty five
to dy different drugs over the course of about nine years. Yeah,
and so and all of this it started in ninety
(27:07):
six and like you said, ran for nine years, and
at first it was you know, doctor Morrell was one
of the first doctors in Germany to espouse the healing
and health benefits of vitamins. Before that, vitamins weren't really
thought of as healthy, and he was like, no, they're
super healthy. Watch, I'll show you under fear. And remember
(27:27):
one of the things about Nazi Germany was that like,
you kept your body pure to help the German state.
It was like a component of fascism was was like
being pure and drug free. But if they were vitamins
and they were injected by a doctor, that's fine, we
can do all those. So um, this idea of keeping
Hitler seeming like fit and active and like full of
(27:50):
um spit and vinegar, you know. Um, that was supposedly
from Morrel's vitamin injections. But then as time went off
and Hitler started to suffer more ill health again, some
of these vitamins were supplemented by just straight up, straight
up drugs that were produced by Germany, like Purveton and
like you could all, yeah, so Hitler's getting injected um
(28:15):
with and like you said, he like Hitler notoriously was
thought of as a teetotler. He didn't even drink coffee.
He quit smoking and he was supposed to be this
picture of health. All the while he's getting injected with
everything from literal cocaine to morphine, to precursors to OxyContin
two uh extractions of bull semen because Hitler very notoriously
(28:42):
had um issues in the in the E. D department testosterone.
I mean, it's crazy the amount of drugs that he
was getting injected with multiple times daily. I saw a
d was the high estimate on with one source. I
saw ninety elsewhere. But a cocktail and not just like
(29:02):
here's one drug and then the next day, here's a
different drug, a cocktail of up to combinations of up
to ninety different drugs, you know, during during the course
of this this time repeatedly getting injected like daily injections.
Apparently towards the end of the war, Hitler's veins had
started collapsing. But UM to Hitler, or at least the
(29:24):
way that Hitler pretended was that this was his doctor,
you know, shooting him up with vitamins UM when he
when he got I when he got a cocaine, it
was given in the form of eye drops. Yeah, well
that was that was early on, Like this was before
they started shooting him up. They would give it to
him and I drive, I dropped it ten times the
concentration that because cocaine was used in medicine a little
(29:47):
bit um but at very low doses, so he would
ramp it up by ten times, squirt it in his eye,
and eventually, like anything else, you have to ramp it
up to get that same high. So that's when the
injection started. Well, he also started snorting it. I saw
to um to clear his to clear his sinuses and
keep his throat clean, or throat um to ease a
(30:07):
sore throat. Just stupid stuff like that. But it was
through that Elvis paradigm, which was if a doctor's giving
it to me, it's legal, it's a it's not it's
not a drug. Drug. It would have been scandalous if
it had gotten out that that Hitler was snort in
cocaine because again like the Nazis had associated that with
(30:27):
you know, degenerates in the Weimar Republic, so no one
did cocaine. If Hitler had been caught doing cocaine, that
would have been a big deal. Yeah, and you know,
by all accounts, by the end of the war, you know,
those final dark dark days of Hitler the Bunker, and
and this we know the stuff because Dr Morrell left
behind a treasure trove of documentation to kind of cover
(30:50):
his own but just in case anything ever happened. So
we have all this documentation. But from what everyone has
written in history, in the final days, hit Or was
just a straight up junkie. Yeah, that's that's that's certainly
how Older characterizes the whole thing. Um, And it's not
just him, like a lot of people are like, no,
Hitler's health decline tremendously, Like he didn't go into the
(31:14):
war with too many health problems aside from eczema and
something called spina bifida occulta, which they think was responsible
for his um his problematic um bowels and gas. But
like he didn't have massive problems, he didn't have Parkinson's.
By the end of the war, he seemed to have
developed Parkinson's he um, he had trouble walking. He uh,
(31:38):
he was very much emaciated and sallow and so um.
Older for the first time really lays this at the
feet of Dr Morrell and his injections, because not only again,
not only is it like cocaine and morphine and oxycoxycontin
and um uh speed that he's giving Hitler. Some of
(31:59):
these other can coxin's are like really not good. There
was an anti gas pill called Dr Couster's Anti gas Pills.
They had had Strict nine in it. Yeah, Hitler took
a lot of those. And you know, if you take
a lot of Strict nine every day over the course
of years, it's going to have some really negative impacts
(32:20):
on you. So not only was it that Hitler was
addicted to drugs, he was also being given some very
poisonous toxic materials by his doctor in other ways too,
and that was it accumulatively had this effect. But I
think the big money thing, Chuck is like, how did
it impact Hitler's judgment? How does that correlate towards the
(32:41):
end of the war, And that's where Ohler is really
going into town. He's like, dude, Hitler was, like you said,
just totally addicted to drugs morphine, OxyContin, um speed, cocaine
by the end of the war, and it had clouded
his judgment. And even though no call off, he's still
I think it might have been Himmler or Spear, one
(33:05):
of his close advisors had said like man when when
the war started Hitler, Hitler could make a decision in
a snap. By the by the towards the end of
the war, bye, he it was just like a nightmare
watching him like go back and forth and try to
come to a conclusion in a decision, and that that
(33:25):
was directly related to the drugs he was on well
and increasingly sequestered and paranoid. Like the whole thing was
a recipe for disaster. Uh, you know, you've talked about Morrel.
What he had to gain was obviously the prestige of
being Hitler's personal physician. But he had a lot of
money in the in the game here because he was
(33:47):
cranking out this preparation that he called Vita Molton that
was marketed across Europe, and he was essentially in the
drug business, like he was making it tons of money,
and he could try out Hitler as his star patient
and even went so far as to basically he wrote
a letter to the Reich Health Office because you know,
(34:07):
eventually doctors and people started coming out and saying, hey,
like this stuff is not good. We need to outlaw this.
This is having a bad effect. And so he wrote
the Reich Health Office and said, the fewer has authorized
me to do the following. If I bring out in
test a remedy and then applied in the fureer's headquarters
and applied successfully that it could be applied elsewhere in
Germany and no longer needs authorization. So so yeah, it's
(34:30):
like you just try to try to come back with
a response to that. Yeah. And in the meantime and
building a factory and getting rich, uh making speed for
all of Germany. Yeah, this Vita Molton, there was like
a billion packets ordered by just you know, the um,
the Hrmacht alone, let alone like all of the German people.
(34:51):
UM that he sold a lot and made a lot
of money off of it. Um. But from from what
seems to be UM, I guess Older Owler's research has
kind of shown that UM, that Morrell was very much
dedicated not just as a doctor, but like personally to
Hitler too, and that he most likely over the years
(35:13):
historians have accused Morrel of purposefully trying to harm Hitler
or um something along those lines. But the apparently Older
is like, no, this guy really was a true believer
and was really like very much proud that he was
Hitler's physician. He didn't know what he was doing. He
definitely turned Hitler into an addict of multiple drugs, a
(35:37):
super I think a super addict is how um Owlder
puts it. But he he was still devoted to him.
He wasn't doing it to cause deliberate harm, right. Um,
It's just so interesting this this same thing with like
Michael Jackson and Elvis. It's like there's this weird thing
that happens where these doctors completely so their souls to
(36:01):
work alongside these people in positions of power and essentially
kill them eventually, uh, by just feeding them whatever drug
they needed. Like he was not only on speed obviously
to counteract that. You need something to bring you down.
So then he would get injected with something called you
could all that's the OxyContin uh relative. Yeah, so he
(36:25):
I mean, he didn't know which way it was up
at a certain point. Um, eventually, like he would he
fired Morrel on April seventeen. Two weeks later, Hitler put
a bullet in his brain. Morrell gets tried for war
crimes and goes to jail and then I believe died
of a stroke in nine. Yeah, he he was not
(36:47):
tried for war crimes, but he was interrogated, No, he wasn't. Um,
he was interrogated in prison for two years by the
Allies who just pumped him for all the information they
could get about Hitler. He was just in prison being questioned. Yes, interesting,
And he ended up producing or contributing to like a
forty seven page report about Hitler and Hitler's health that
(37:07):
the Allies had that didn't come out until I think
the nineties in the US. But um, he was a
huge trove of information. But more than that, and the
fact that he got Hitler addicted to OxyContin that led
to Hitler making some terrible decisions, to becoming increasingly paranoid,
to stop listening to his generals, to becoming embarrassed for
(37:28):
these defeats, and like withdrawing even further and then ultimately
losing the war, and um taking his own life. In
that sense, the world owes a tremendous debt to Theodore Morrell.
It's kind of funny when you think about it, like
we owe that dude. And imagine this also another way
to look at this, Chuck, Imagine that you had gotten
(37:49):
behind this, this cult of personality, this leader, this charismatic
leader who said we are going to take over the world,
and you decided that you were on board with that.
You're a German who was going along with it. Maybe
you were pepped up on a little bit of speed um.
And then over time, right in the middle of this
taking over the world thing that's actually starting to seem
(38:09):
like it might work, that leader decides that he's going
to go and get hooked on like five different extraordinarily
addictive drugs right in the middle of taking over the world,
and that that would be the thing that brought about
the downfall, which you which Older makes the cases like, yes,
you can lay a lot of this the downfall of
of the Third Reich, at the feet of drugs. Well,
(38:30):
I mean it's certainly you can't fault Older for for
going there, because is such a juicy thing to take
all these facts about all this drug use, rampant drug use,
and then years later go back and say, like what
if this hadn't happened, or what was the overall effect
not just that they did these drugs, but what how
did it affect history? Super interesting? Yeah, it's extraordinarily interesting.
(38:55):
I mean, that's that's good stuff. Oh, I found I
found one other thing too. I want to mention. There's
something called Muda floor or Muta floor m U t
A f l o R. It's still available. It was
Hitler's go to probiotic, and it was isolated in nineteen
seventeen from a stool sample taken from a World War
(39:17):
One soldier who, while everybody else in his troop was
like getting dysentery left and right, he was healthy. And
this doctor noticed and and isolated a particular kind of
bacteria in this guy's stool. And you can buy um
pills made from that line of bacteria to this day,
except it's illegal in the US for some reason, which
makes me really want to see what it's all about.
(39:40):
But you're eating World War One poop bacteria when you
take this Muta floor. But it was given to Hitler
and apparently it worked, so Hitler's probiotic, which I'm I'm
sure Muta floor is like, please don't call it Hitler's probiotic.
We're still trying to sell that stuff. Uh. Well, do
you want to know more about Hitler and drugs, Just
(40:03):
go read um Blitzed The Third Reich and Drugs by
Norman Ohler, or you can go read all the book
reviews about it, Uh like I did. And since I
said that, it's time for a listener mail, I'm gonna
call this uh epic pants story in the Science of Breakups? Um,
(40:23):
you were talking about getting pants? Oh yes, I remember.
So this is from anonymous. Hey guys, it happened in
high school. I was gathering up the nerve to ask
a girl out on a date that I had a
crush on, to set the scene and highlight the level
of embarrassment I'm setting myself for. It's worth noting that
at this point in my life I had never actually
asked a girl out this boldly. I was going to
(40:45):
do it face to face in the classroom in front
of her friends and my friends. Geez, it's not a
good idea. Can't you like Catcher by her locker? And
she's not surrounded by people. He was hopped up on
purvet and feeling really confident. Maybe, Uh, this out of
character for me, But I couldn't find the courage on
my own, so I confided in a close friend who
agreed to be my wingman. He was very supportive, Plus
(41:06):
he had inside her info. They actually heard her say
that she liked me. Man, Remember those days? How sweet
that was yes, does she like me? Yes? Or maybe? Uh?
The teacher left the classroom for a minute. My trusty
mate said I should go for it and do it
right now. So with the encouragement from him, I needed uh,
(41:30):
and I was nervous as h I walked over to
her table of friends, interrupted them, had her full attention,
and started asking her out on the date I was
actually doing it. Guys, I felt amazing, and then bam,
super supportive mate had set me up and pants to
me in front of her and the whole class. Now
(41:52):
it gets worse, he think, Huh, I'm not gonna say.
I think you know what's coming. The execution was perfect, guys.
One pantst full monty before the whole class and for
a whole second before I could halt the process. Dude,
could you imagine I would never recover? Hey, No, I'd move.
(42:16):
I'd go home and be like, we have to move
to a new school in a new state, maybe a
new country, wasn't It's funny you mentioned that, because I
think every school also had some kid who didn't show
up after summer the next fall and when in fact
his dad got a transfer, but there would be some
story cooked up on why I saw him on a
milk carton. Wait, that was a kid at our school
(42:37):
who supposedly moved because he masturbated in class and got caught.
And I don't think any of it was true. Oh
my gosh, Oh my gosh. But is there like a
kernel of truth to that, you know what I mean?
Last years later the playground say it, actually, don't say,
but it's funny. I haven't thought about that since the
ninth grade. I'm gonna totally look him up and see
if he's out there. Um. Anyway, guys, the betrayal was set.
(43:00):
Gainst was second to Judas and the wave of embarrassment
so Gargantelin that all I could do was just take
a seat and die inside. We were an art class,
but if the subject was advanced pantsing, my mate would
have gotten an A plus. He's like, I was so embarrassed.
I couldn't even pull my pants up when I took
a seat. I just sat down with my bare butt
(43:20):
and fruit basket right on the lunch room bench. I
just gave into it, guys, and went dong out for
the rest of the semester. Um what no, no, no,
he did. I was like, Wow, good for this. I
was just riffing on your bit, like I feel like
I'm about to throw up. I must I love green
right now right. So he keeps saying mate. It turns
out he is Australian because he says ps in Australia
(43:41):
instead of saying pants. Do we say dacked d A
c K E D. I saw that somewhere dacks refer
to pants like tracky decks are track pants. To put
it in a sentence, my mate is such a dog.
He full dacked me in front of this chick. I
like h And that's from anonymous. Thanks a lot of
anymous appreciate you sharing that, even though it was anonymously.
(44:04):
That's right. If you have a horrifically cringe worthy story,
we want to hear it. We'll make it through it together.
You can go on to stuff you Should Know dot
com and check out our social links. You can also
hit us up via email if you want to stuff
podcast at i heeart podcast Network dot com. Stuff you
(44:28):
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