#481 – Norman Ohler: Hitler, Nazis, Drugs, WW2, Blitzkrieg, LSD, MKUltra & CIA

Norman Ohler: I think you're right to ask about the context, because without the context, it's not really understandable. So what was the situation? In the 20s, the Nazi movement basically started and it started in Bavarian beer halls. So alcohol was the drug of choice of the early Nazi movement. The only guy that didn't drink was Hitler. He was a teetotaler, I guess you say. So that was happening in Munich. So alcohol and national socialism are very closely connected. At the same time in the 20s in Berlin, there was a completely different thing going on. People were taking all kinds of drugs. This had to do actually with the defeat of Germany in the First World War... Everything in Berlin was cheap, and the people were using also substances that were very cheap in huge quantities. So while in Bavaria, they were drinking alcohol and alcohol in the brain stimulates behavior, a group behavior, us against them. While in Berlin, the drugs that were used were morphium, there was cocaine, there was mescaline, there was ether. So people were experimenting. Everyone developed a different mindset. It was all, you didn't behave in a way that some kind of authority would like you to behave in, because the authority had just lost the First World War, and there was no real authority in Berlin. People were doing whatever they wanted to do, and they were intoxicating themselves in the way they wanted to do it. So the population, in a way, if you just look at Munich and Berlin, was growing apart. Like there were the alcohol people in Munich, the Nazis, and then there were these weird, diverse LGBTQ, whatever scene in Berlin, like actresses sniffing Ethan in the morning and then making crazy moves... When the Nazis then were able to take power in 1933, one of the first things they did was to really prosecute people who were taking drugs because they wanted to bring everyone back into the fold.

Norman Ohler: I think he's absolutely right that you shouldn't argue in a monocausal way. And this is actually what Mommsen also said to me, because of course I was enthusiastic about all my drug findings. And he said, don't argue in a monocausal way, especially the war. There's a lot of variables, a lot of factors, a lot of things going on, yes. So that sentence of his, don't argue in a monocausal way, that always stayed with me. And I think that I didn't deviate from that path, actually. But it was still interesting that Evans thought that I put too much emphasis on the drugs. I think it's a totally fine opinion. I would disagree, otherwise I wouldn't have written the book. What I can state here is that I invented nothing. In all of my 3 non-fiction books, nothing is invented... I got an angry letter by a German army employee, quite a high officer and a military historian. And he said that he also thought I overemphasized the drug use of the methamphetamine in the Western campaign because he said the German army was just so good. And you kind of diminish their capability by saying they were only so good because they took methamphetamine. I thought that was kind of funny because the Wehrmacht doesn't exist anymore.

Norman Ohler: I read a report when Rommel, high on math, at night doesn't stop, of course, because they all, they don't stop at night, but every army usually stops at night. So the French army were stopping. They were in a village camping out and the German Rommel was going with the tank through that village with his division, just running over people. And he was standing like in the open lid of the tank and he was like going through that thing, you know, and like a berserk type of warrior. And that was when, that to me is a war crime. That is when the Wehrmacht lost its innocence in that push of Rommel through the French countryside. Because you don't do that, you know, your enemy is sleeping. Because the French also had a drug regulation. They received 3/4 of a liter of red wine per man per day. So of course at night they're going to be sleepy on red wine and the Germans were like on meth and they were just running over them. There's descriptions of the chains of the tank becoming bloody. I don't think he did it and he was like, oh my god, what did I just do? I'm sorry, you know, what am I doing here? He was in the movie, you know. This is the dark thing about human nature that in war, if you dehumanize, if you allow your brain to dehumanize the enemy, the opponent, the humans on the other side, you can actually, I think hate can take over. And in that hate, you can find pleasure when you murder the other... I wouldn't excuse people, actually, and I certainly would not excuse high-ranking politicians that make policies, because the genocidal policies that the Nazis developed, and the war policies that they developed had nothing to do with drugs. And I never write that in any, because there's no documents... the Nazi ideology has nothing to do with drugs, maybe with alcohol, you know, but it's... the law says, if you plan a crime and then maybe when you commit it, you are under the influence, it does not diminish your responsibility... I think that criticism by Evans was short-sighted.