Blitzed Quotes

“What is past is prologue’.”
― Norman Ohler, Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany

“The fact was that between the autumn of 1941, when he started being given hormone and steroid injections, and the second half of 1944, when first the cocaine and then above all the Eukodal kicked in, Hitler hardly enjoyed a sober day.”
― Norman Ohler, Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich

“Heroin is a fine business,” the directors of Bayer announced proudly and advertised the substance as a remedy for headaches, for general indisposition, and also as a cough syrup for children. It was even recommended to babies for colic or sleeping problems.4”
― Norman Ohler, Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich

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

“Hitler had sometimes canceled medical investigations to conceal wounds on his body from Eva Braun’s aggressive sexual behavior.”
― Norman Ohler, Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich

“Heroin is a fine business,” the directors of Bayer announced proudly and advertised the substance as a remedy for headaches, for general indisposition, and also as a cough syrup for children. It was even recommended to babies for colic or sleeping problems.”
― Norman Ohler, Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich

“While we have driven out other Nazi verbal monstrosities, the terminology of the war on drugs has lingered. It's no longer a matter of Jews - the dangerous dealers are now said to be part of different cultural circles.”
― Norman Ohler, Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany

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

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

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

“The so-called stimulant decree was sent out to a thousand troop doctors”
― Norman Ohler, Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich

“A political system devoted to decline instinctively does much to speed up that process. —Jean-Paul Sartre”
― Norman Ohler, Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich

“good 14 milligrams of methamphetamine was included in each individual portion—almost five times the amount in a Pervitin pill. “Hildebrand chocolates are always a delight”
― Norman Ohler, Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich

“The development of modern societies is bound as tightly with the creation and distribution of drugs as the economy is with advances in technology. In 1805 Goethe wrote Faust in classicist Weimar, and by poetic means perfected one of his theses, that the genesis of man is itself drug-induced: I change my brain, therefore I am.”
― Norman Ohler, Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany

“135 A clear lie, because Handloser must have been aware of both the 35 million tablets ordered for the Western campaign and Ranke’s report from France.”
― Norman Ohler, Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich

“On September 13, 1940, the Milan daily Corriere della Sera reported on a “courage pill” used by the Germans, which had gone from medicine to secret weapon. The military effectiveness of this “pillola di coraggio,” the article said, wasn’t a match for a Stuka bomb, but it did guarantee the German General Staff the uninterrupted operational capability of its soldiers. Britain went on to study and eventually use Benzedrine (which has fewer side-effects than Pervitin) as a result of the Milan piece.”
― Norman Ohler, Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich

“So he is no more and no less than a buffoon, a historical curiosity, and he embodies those deviant qualities that historians usually ignore.129”
― Norman Ohler, Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich

“It’s possible that Göring was referring to Udet when he observed: “There are departments you have no idea about, but all at once they appear, and promptly some mess happens. . . . And swiftly you discover: there’s been a department there for years, and no one knows anything about it. In all seriousness: it’s happened a few times. There are people who have been thrown out three times, and then they reappear in a different department, and become bigger and bigger.”
― Norman Ohler, Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich

“A general described one such surprising transformation: “Göring had the air of being newborn, he looked magnificent and fixed his sparkling blue eyes on us. The difference in his whole appearance between the first and second parts of our conference was notable. For me it was clear that he had been taking some form of stimulant.”123”
― Norman Ohler, Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich

“An officer described the Reich Marshal’s appearance: “We struggled to keep a straight face. He dons a white silk, blouse-like shirt with flowing sleeves, and over it a yellow, sleeveless, fur-lined suede jacket. With this he sports long, medieval-looking bloomers, and around his waist a broad, gold-studded leather belt, with a short Celtic sword jangling from it. Long silk stockings and golden-yellow Saffiano leather sandals complete the picture.”122 The face of the powerful minister was covered in makeup, and his fingernails were painted red. Often during discussions Göring, once the opium content of his blood had dropped, felt so deranged that he would leave the room abruptly without a word of explanation, then return a few minutes later, plainly much refreshed.”
― Norman Ohler, Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich

“But anyone who passed through the big cast-iron gate and crossed the broad forecourt stepped into a realm of chaos, of unbridled alcohol and drug abuse, of intrigues and general mismanagement. The conditions in Göring’s three-thousand-room fortress (which today houses the Federal Ministry of Finance) were symptomatic of the regime’s loss of political reality and the wrong track that Germany had set off on.”
― Norman Ohler, Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich

“After landing, reality was a strange world for the zonked pilot: I kept my course precisely, in spite of my euphoric indifference and my seemingly weightless state. Upon landing, I find the place in a state of complete stasis. Nothing moves, there’s no one to be seen, rubble of the hangars forlornly looms . . . between the bomb craters. As I roll on to the squadron’s stand my right tire bursts. I’ve probably driven over a bomb splinter. Later I meet Dr. Sperrling and ask him in passing what kind of “crap” this Pervitin really is, and whether it mightn’t be better to warn pilots in advance? When he learns that I’ve taken three tablets, he nearly faints, and forbids me to touch a plane, even from outside, for the rest of the day.121”
― Norman Ohler, Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich

“The launch was very often late, ten o’clock, eleven o’clock, and then you were over London or some other English city at about one or two in the morning, and of course then you’re tired. So you took one or two Pervitin tablets, and then you were all right again. . . . I had a lot of night operations, you know. And, of course, the commander always has to have his wits about him. So I took Pervitin as a precautionary measure. Imagine the commander being tired in battle! Uh, yes, please, that’s not going to work. . . . One wouldn’t abstain from Pervitin because of a little health scare. Who cares when you’re doomed to come down at any moment anyway!118 This certainly wasn’t a one-off remark. There are no statistical studies of Pervitin among the Luftwaffe, and by historiographical standards there is little supporting evidence of the comprehensive use of the “speedamin” among pilots, apart from Ranke’s original order of 35 million doses for the army and the Luftwaffe together.”
― Norman Ohler, Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich

“The scientist, considered unimpeachable at his institute at the Military Medical Academy, whitewashed the inquiries into the stimulant prepared for Berlin. At the same time he revealed his own, very personal inadequacy: he knew the drug better than anybody, and he was aware of its dangers, but he had become dependent upon it and played down the negative effects both to himself and to others. A classic case of an addicted dealer.”
― Norman Ohler, Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich

“He describes the prescribed mass drug use in critical terms: “Pervitin was delivered officially before the start of the operation and distributed to the officers all the way down to the company commander for their own use and to be passed on to the troops below them with the clear instruction that it was to be used to keep them awake in the imminent operation. There was a clear order that the Panzer troop had to use Pervitin.”107”
― Norman Ohler, Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich

“After seventeen days awake: sleeping after the Blitzkrieg.”
― Norman Ohler, Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich

“It wasn’t just chocolate that replaced lunch, as the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger claimed. It was also the little round pills from Temmler; they drove away the feeling of hunger. Ranke, who was driving with Guderian and who had traveled over three hundred miles in just three days, was given confirmation by a medical officer of the Panzer troop that units were using between two and five Pervitin tablets per driver per day. German propaganda, however, tried to depict the surprisingly fast victory as proof of the morale of the National Socialists, but this had little bearing on reality. Ranke’s military medical diary is proof that other forces were involved, chemical ones: “Senior Staff Doctor Krummacher has experience with Pervitin. He introduces me to Colonel Stockhausen. . . . Signed out with Lieutenant Colonel Kretschmar, who insistently requests Pervitin. . . . Since the start of the campaign he has used a tube of 30 tabs apart from 6 tabs.”103”
― Norman Ohler, Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich

“He was envious of his rival, Hitler’s surgeon, who had a proper Wehrmacht rank: “From today Dr. [Karl] Brandt wears the epaulettes of a lieutenant colonel (army).”87 In response, Morell tried to acquire his own regular rank as a military doctor, but his attempts fell on deaf ears. Even Hitler didn’t support him in his project. That was precisely the appeal of his personal physician: it was only if he remained an outsider, without a position in the Party, the Wehrmacht, or any other mass organization, that he couldn’t be manipulated or abused—and he belonged to him, the Führer, alone.”
― Norman Ohler, Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich

“The Führer wasn’t leading this campaign. Instead he was panting along behind his headstrong, independent tank generals. Even though they were successful, the dictator could not cope with the fact that he had effectively handed over control. Was this still “his” war? Had the senior officers, who had been opposed to the attack for so long, now seized the initiative, and were they charging along faster than the planning in the map house allowed? Hitler’s fear of the highly specialized military officers, all better educated than him, a simple lance corporal, rushed to the forefront. He sensed problems where none existed and accused the generals of being drunk on victory, of not covering their flanks, making themselves vulnerable to attack: what if the Allies coming from Belgium and the south carried out a pincer attack on the extended front? In fact, because of the unholy confusion on the opposing side this had never been a possibility. But Hitler didn’t recognize reality. He was guided instead by his own anxieties, fueled by a latently smoldering inferiority complex.”
― Norman Ohler, Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich

“Time Is Meth Blitzkrieg was guided by methamphetamine. If not to say that Blitzkrieg was founded on methamphetamine. —Dr. Peter Steinkamp, medical historian72”
― Norman Ohler, Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich