The Blitzkrieg victory over France in 1940 was enabled by the systematic use of methamphetamine — Professor Ranke's stimulant decree prescribed the drug to the entire invading army, and 35 million doses were delivered to keep soldiers awake for three days and nights to push through the Ardennes.

(00:00:00) The following is a conversation with Norman Oler, author of Blitzed, Drugs in the Third Reich, a book that investigates what role psychoactive drugs, particularly stimulants such as methamphetamine, played in the military history of World War II. (00:00:18) It is a book that two legendary historians, Ian Kershaw and Anthony Beaver, give very high praise to. (00:00:24) Ian Kershaw describes it as very well-researched, serious piece of scholarship, and Anthony Beaver describes it as remarkable work of research. (00:00:35) And it is indeed a remarkable work of research. (00:00:38) Norman went deep into the archives using primary sources to uncover a perspective on Hitler and the Third Reich that is before this, but mostly ignored by historians. (00:00:49) He also wrote Tripped, Nazi Germany, the CIA, and the Dawn of the Psychedelic Age, and he's now working on a new book with the possible title of Stoned Sapiens. (00:01:02) Great title. (00:01:03) Looking at the history of human civilization through the lens of drugs. (00:01:09) And now a quick few second mention of each sponsor. (00:01:12) Check them out in the description or at lexfriedman.com slash sponsors. (00:01:17) It is in fact the best way to support this podcast. (00:01:19) We got Uplift Desk for beautiful standing desks, Finn for AI agents, Shopify for selling stuff online, Element for electrolytes, and Hampton for connecting with CEOs. (00:01:33) Choose wisely my friends. (00:01:36) And now onto the full ad reads. (00:01:37) I try to make them interesting, but if you skip, please still check out the sponsors. (00:01:42) I enjoy their stuff. (00:01:43) Maybe you will too. (00:01:44) To get in touch with me for whatever reason, go to lexfriedman.com/contact. (00:01:49) All right, let's go. (00:01:51) This episode is brought to you by Uplift Desk, my go-to for all office and podcast studio furniture. 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(00:05:05) Because if you're not interested in Ruby on Rails, first of all, it's very likely that you will be. (00:05:10) by the end of the episode, but you at least will get a chance to listen to a human being that sees the beauty in the programs he creates. (00:05:21) So to know that a little bit of that love went behind the engineering of Shopify is really great to know. (00:05:28) Anyway, it is also a company and it is also a company that helps companies. (00:05:33) sell stuff online. (00:05:34) So you should sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com/lex. (00:05:39) That's all lowercase. (00:05:40) Go to shopify.com/lex to take your business to the next level today. (00:05:46) This episode is also brought to you by Element, my daily zero sugar and delicious electrolyte mix that I'm currently drinking as I dredge the prospects after I'm done speaking these words. (00:06:01) I will be doing a very long run in the Texas heat. 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(00:06:59) But so much of that information, quite honestly, from the bottom of my heart, is bullshit. (00:07:07) You have to talk to other leaders. (00:07:09) You have to talk to other CEOs that have done it, that are doing it, that are in the middle of the battle. (00:07:15) Anytime I talk to somebody like Jason Calacanis, who I'm a big fan of, and he's here in Austin now, aside, of course, from the All In podcast that I'm also a fan of, he's the host of This Week in Startups, (00:07:28) that I recommend you listen to. (00:07:31) The reason I bring that up is because he has seen and he has helped so many people in that battle of creating a business, of growing a business. (00:07:39) And it's so fun to talk to him because he has a lot of wisdom about the different ways to do it. (00:07:46) And that's what I'm trying to get at is you need to talk to the people that have done it, that are not 5, 10, 20 years ago, but are doing it now. (00:07:54) And that's what Hampton is good at. (00:07:56) It connects you with other people. (00:07:58) that are in the midst of that battle. (00:08:00) And you could have candid conversations with them. (00:08:03) They have groups forming in New York City, Austin, San Francisco, LA, Miami, Denver, and other top cities nationwide. (00:08:10) Quit reading the bullshit online and go talk to actual founders, actual people that are building high growth companies. (00:08:18) Find your group at joinhampton.com slash Lex. (00:08:23) That's joinhampton.com slash Lex. (00:08:26) This is the Lex Friedman Podcast. (00:08:28) To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description or at lexfriedman.com slash sponsors. (00:08:34) And consider subscribing, commenting, and sharing the podcast with folks who might find it interesting. (00:08:40) And now, dear friends, here's Norman Oler. (00:09:00) Tell me the origin story of meth, methamphetamine, and Pervitin, this brand name drug version, in the context of Nazi Germany in the late 1930s. (00:09:11) Let's start there. (00:09:12) I think you're right to ask about the context, because without the context, it's not really understandable. (00:09:18) So what was the situation? (00:09:22) In the 20s, the Nazi movement basically started. (00:09:26) and it started in Bavarian beer halls. (00:09:29) So alcohol was the drug of choice of the early Nazi movement. (00:09:34) The only guy that didn't drink was Hitler. (00:09:36) He was a teetotaler, I guess you say. (00:09:39) So that was happening in Munich. (00:09:42) So alcohol and national socialism are very closely connected. (00:09:46) At the same time in the 20s in Berlin, there was a completely different thing going on. (00:09:51) People were taking all kinds of drugs. (00:09:54) This had to do actually with the defeat of Germany in the First World War. (00:09:58) I mean, the context is a big context. (00:10:01) The Versailles Treaty had the effect that the German economy was not really able to recover after the end of World War I. (00:10:11) The Versailles Treaty was written basically by the Western victorious powers. (00:10:15) Germany had no say in the negotiations. (00:10:20) And (00:10:21) I'm certainly not a German nationalist, not even a German patriot. (00:10:25) But even I would say that the Versailles Treaty treated Germany somewhat unfair. (00:10:32) I mean, it laid all the blame on Germany. (00:10:36) And I mean, a war is a very complex thing. (00:10:40) And the First World War, (00:10:44) to examine how it actually started is a very complex story, and there's many factors to it. (00:10:50) But the Versailles read just said it was Germany's fault, and then Germany had to do all these payments to the allies. (00:10:56) It couldn't create a new economy. (00:10:59) It couldn't have a new army. (00:11:00) So it was, the economy really went down. (00:11:02) Everything in Berlin was cheap, and the people were using also (00:11:07) substances that were very cheap in huge quantities. (00:11:10) So while in Bavaria, they were drinking alcohol and alcohol in the brain stimulates behavior, a group behavior, us against them. (00:11:20) You can actually examine this as a neuroscientist would know exactly how this works. (00:11:26) While in Berlin, the drugs that were used were morphium, there was cocaine, there was mescaline, there was ether. (00:11:36) So people were experimenting. (00:11:37) Everyone developed a different mindset. (00:11:39) 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. (00:11:52) People were doing whatever they wanted to do, and they were intoxicating themselves in the way they wanted to do it. (00:11:58) So the population, in a way, if you just look at Munich and Berlin, (00:12:02) was growing apart. (00:12:03) 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. (00:12:20) Could you speak to the nature, the motivation of the drug use in Berlin at the time? (00:12:26) Was it a rebellion? (00:12:27) Was it a way to deal with the (00:12:29) a difficult economic depression? (00:12:32) Was it just the natural thing that young people do to explore themselves, to understand the world, to develop their culture? (00:12:41) Like what do we understand about drug use there? (00:12:43) All of these factors come together. (00:12:46) But it was the first time in modern history, in Germany at least, that there was no emperor. (00:12:53) Like before that, Kaiser Wilhelm (00:12:56) Everything was very strict, you had to, you couldn't go crazy, as a young person. (00:13:01) You couldn't be a young person. (00:13:02) But now in the Weimar Republic in the 20s, you could. (00:13:05) No one stopped you. (00:13:06) So people went crazy. (00:13:07) Like that's what made Berlin into the city that it still somehow is. (00:13:12) And maybe later we talk about contemporary Berlin. (00:13:15) It kind of, it still has that vibe, you know. (00:13:18) That's why people still come to Berlin. (00:13:20) Drugs are cheap. (00:13:20) You can move however you want. (00:13:22) There's no authority. (00:13:23) So that created a rift between the Nazis in Munich and they always hated Berlin and what was going on in Berlin. (00:13:30) So for example, Goebbels, the later propaganda minister, he called the situation in Berlin, the hated asphalt reality of Berlin. (00:13:40) He hated that. (00:13:41) And 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, you know, (00:13:53) bring everyone back into the fold. (00:13:56) And I think that's, you asked what was the reason for people taking so many drugs? (00:14:00) They were accessible, they were cheap. (00:14:03) But I think the most important thing is that they let you find yourself maybe, or lose yourself, you know? (00:14:10) Also possible, Can we also take a tangent there because you have a connection to this place? (00:14:17) Berlin and this part of the world. (00:14:19) Can you just briefly speak to that so we can contextualize even deeper the personal aspect of this? (00:14:28) Because you understand the music of the people, the land, its history. (00:14:32) There's something you can only really understand if you've been there and you have taken it in. (00:14:39) And we'll return to this topic in multiple contexts, but in this particular way, as one human being who writes about this place, what's your own story? (00:14:48) I grew up in West Germany, and this was during the Cold War. (00:14:53) And Berlin, the walled in city, was always like a big fascination. (00:15:00) Because there was a wall, there was actually a wall in the city preventing people to move into another part. (00:15:06) And I was from the West, fortunate enough to be from the free West. (00:15:10) So I could travel to Berlin and I could leave, I could look at it. (00:15:12) And I always loved Berlin. (00:15:14) I thought it was (00:15:15) very vibey place. (00:15:17) And then when the wall came down, I was still in school, but I like immediately got into the car of my parents and drove there. (00:15:23) I wanted to see how it came down. (00:15:26) And then Berlin really in the 90s became a place that was very attractive to me. (00:15:31) And I moved there then in the 90s. (00:15:33) I was first living in New York. (00:15:34) I wrote my first novel in New York. (00:15:36) And I loved New York before Giuliani became mayor. (00:15:39) It was (00:15:40) He ruined the city. (00:15:42) Before that, it was not gentrified. (00:15:44) Let's say he introduced gentrification, and gentrification is a big topic. (00:15:49) I still lived in the ungentrified New York City for like 300 bucks a month rent, and everyone I knew was an artist. (00:15:56) You loved the diversity of it? (00:15:57) Yeah, I loved it. (00:15:58) I wrote my first novel there. (00:16:00) I took LSD for the first time in downtown Manhattan on a Saturday night. (00:16:04) So you're kind of like a German Kerouac type character, but moved a few decades forward. (00:16:09) I wouldn't compare myself. (00:16:11) to another writer, but I think Eric is pretty cool. (00:16:14) But he's an amphetamine writer. (00:16:17) On the Road was apparently written in two weeks on amphetamines. (00:16:20) And but it's good, you know, amphetamines are not bad per se. (00:16:23) We can also talk about this so-called bad drugs, you know, because basically they're neutral, but let's not lose the thread. (00:16:29) Yes, Even though New York was, oh yeah, and then I was in New York, I was in a health food store, one of the first, like there weren't health food stores back then a lot, but there was one on 1st Avenue. (00:16:41) And suddenly there was an announcement, which was unusual in the health food store. (00:16:45) I think it was called Prana Foods. (00:16:48) And the announcement was that Kurt Cobain had just shot himself. (00:16:51) It was like, and I had been actually, and still am a Nirvana fan. (00:16:56) I've seen one of the last concerts of Nirvana in New York City. (00:17:00) And it was amazing. (00:17:01) But he killed himself. (00:17:03) And like the next day, I received a music cassette from a friend of mine from Berlin with electronic music. (00:17:10) And I realized that there had been a paradigm shift, obviously. (00:17:13) Rock music with the hero on stage was dead. (00:17:16) Now it was, you know, dance electronic music, which a lot of people today think it's kind of simplistic music form, but it's actually a very highly intelligent music form. (00:17:30) At least it was in the 90s. (00:17:31) People were really experimenting with that music. (00:17:33) That was the new music. (00:17:35) That was actually the reason I moved to Berlin. (00:17:36) I really, I decided I leave New York City. (00:17:39) I'm going to move to Berlin. (00:17:40) And then in Berlin, to answer your question, I fell in love with something that probably reminded me of the 20s, even though I wasn't there in the 20s, but there really, the city was very open. (00:17:54) The wall had just, was still, you know, I mean, it's a few years later, but still the wall, it felt like it just came down. (00:18:00) There was, Germany was, Berlin was not yet the capital of Germany that was still in Bonn. (00:18:06) So Berlin was a very, (00:18:08) cheap and cultural and crazy city, probably a bit like in the 20s, actually. (00:18:14) And that's how I fell in love with it. (00:18:17) And that's how I became interested in this electronic scene. (00:18:20) I mean, I visited many dance venues then called so-called clubs. (00:18:25) That's one of the hubs in the world of electronic music. (00:18:28) They claim that techno was kind of invented in Berlin, but it was also it also comes from Detroit. (00:18:33) So Detroit and Berlin are like the techno (00:18:37) Hubs, I would say. (00:18:38) Yeah, electronic music is a soundtrack for some of the most interesting experience this earth has ever created, right? (00:18:45) Just to get people together in some interesting ways. (00:18:48) So it's not just the music itself. (00:18:50) It's the experiences that the music enables. (00:18:52) Well, in Germany, we had a situation that the wall actually kept people apart. (00:18:57) People didn't know each other. (00:18:58) But because the wall came down, people suddenly met in abandoned buildings in the center of Berlin. (00:19:06) which had been owned by the socialist state of East Germany. (00:19:10) The most famous club, Tresor, Tresor means like vault. (00:19:15) It was the big vault with the big door, so that's where Tresor was the club. (00:19:19) It's so funny that the echo 100 years later, Berlin had all these left partiers, young people using drugs in the Munich with a beer, and then that's where Hitler came out. (00:19:32) So is that what we're supposed to imagine in the (00:19:35) early days of the Nazi party when Hitler was giving the speeches to just a handful of folks. (00:19:40) They're all drunk? (00:19:41) Well, it is a fact that the movement came out of the Burger Breu Keller. (00:19:48) It's a certain restaurant pub in Munich. (00:19:51) And that was not only a beer hall, that was also a political venue. (00:19:56) And it was a right-wing venue. (00:19:58) It was for right-wing populist people like communists wouldn't use it, even though communists are in many ways quite similar to the right-wing. (00:20:06) especially back then. But it was used by right-wingers, and Hitler didn't mind, because people who are drunk are more susceptible to right-wing populism, I would claim now here. And Hitler would agree. So he did not think it was bad that these people were a bit drunk, or maybe even very drunk, because if you're drunk, you also get aggressive against others. Like it's (00:20:27) He could play with that, So drunk, aggressive towards others, but drunk in a group. It constitutes the group also. If everyone is on the same alcohol level, you just go to Oktoberfest in Munich, which is not a political thing, but everyone, you know, you can kind of sense how it originated. And actually the first time the Nazis tried to grab power was the so-called Beer Hall Puts. I mean, that's an historical event, took place in 1923. (00:20:54) And it was after a drunk night where they suddenly decided, now we're going to do it. So they came out of the Burgabreukeller and they were all drunk except of Hitler. And they just tried to overtake the Munich government and they miserably failed because it was just a stupid drunk idea. Like they were like, yeah, let's just do it. And the Bavaria police quite sober that day, they just, you know, shot him to the ground. Hitler was almost killed. Like he just jumped. (00:21:22) behind his bodyguard, Goering, during the Beerhold Putsch, was wounded in his stomach with, I think, a gunshot. That's why he became a morphine addict. So this Beerhold Putsch in 23 had severe effects. Also, they were sentenced to prison, and Hitler wrote Mein Kampf in prison. All of these little events come together. It's so interesting that for them it was just life. (00:21:47) But now we look back, these critical moments in history that turn the tides of human civilization, right? So Hitler could have died there, and these characters of Gurring that became larger than life, that influenced the lives and the deaths and the suffering of millions, all, first of all, could have been stopped then, and whatever that means, when you look back at history. But all those are just human beings. (00:22:16) developing their ideas, growing, developing groups, developing ideologies, and using drugs or drinking. I mean, that's why I thought it's interesting, for example, to examine Hitler's drug use. When I announced that to a historian while I was doing research, he helped me a lot with methamphetamine in the army, proper medicine historian from the University of Ulm. And then I said, no, I'm interested in Hitler. He said, no, don't, this is not interesting. This is not serious. (00:22:44) This is not serious history, but it's, even Hitler was a person, And if you understand, for example, the substance abuse of a person, of course you understand more about that person. And historians never had that idea before. Kershaw, for example, who is really a great, he's very knowledgeable about national socialism, like many British historians, they always know more about German history than the German historians. But Kershaw really does. I think he's really good. (00:23:14) But in his biography of Hitler, he just writes one sentence like, and then he had a crazy doctor called Morel who gave him dubious medications and drugs. And he stops there. And then he goes on to describe whatever. Yeah, we should say that Ian Kershaw is widely considered to be probably one of the greatest biographers of Hitler. I think he wrote the best biography of Hitler. Which is, it's so important. Your work is really important because it opens (00:23:44) a whole new perspective on the lives of the individuals and the machinery of the Nazi military that historians haven't looked at. It's so interesting that you can unlock those perspectives. And that's the underlying, really, the foundation of our conversation today and of your work, is there's layers to this thing. You can look at the tactics of war, this (00:24:11) strategic level of war, the operational level of war. You could look at the human suffering of war, the love stories. You could look at the hate, the psychology of propaganda, or you could look at the individual things, substances consumed by the individuals that make up the Nazi Party leadership and the soldiers. And all of those are critically important to understand the war, right? And this piece of drug use and supplement use have been ignored by historians. (00:24:40) That was very surprising to me. I didn't know this myself. I never planned to write this book. It kind of happened to me. And I decided to team up with the leading German historian of national socialism, Hans Mommsen, who has passed away by now. He was quite old, but quite ready to be my mentor for this book, Blitzed. And he (00:25:11) was maybe even shocked when I came back from the military archive of Germany with a lot of copies, all relating to the systematical drug use of the German army, including an experiment done by the Navy who had always pretended to be the clean, German we say Waffen Gattung, weapon. (00:25:38) you have the Army, you have the Air Force, you have the Navy, you have, and in Germany, they had the SS. And the Navy always pretended to be like, we weren't really Nazis, we were like, you know, the German Navy, we had our ethics code. But I found in the archive that the Navy did human experiments in the concentration camp of Sachsenhausen, trying to find a new wonder drug because they had new (00:26:05) what they called wonder weapons or what Hitler called wonder weapons. He always talked about these wonder weapons. Wonder weapons were basically mini submarines, one or two people going in, staying underwater for up to a week and torpedoing, you know, allied ships. So the Navy was trying to do to develop a drug that would keep you awake and combat ready for seven days and seven nights without sleep and without, you know, burning out, very difficult to find. So they hired (00:26:34) penalty unit in the concentration camp. They hired, the SS had the so-called shoe walking unit. It was a penalty unit in the concentration camp, testing shoe soles for the German shoe industry, walking for like days. And then they would measure like how the soles, you know, kept up in the stress. And they had different layers in the concentration camp, like all the surfaces that German soldiers would touch when they conquer Europe. (00:27:04) So this is a very elaborate thing, and if you go to the concentration camp today, it's a museum, you can still see that running track of the shoe runners unit. So the Navy hired the shoe runners unit from the SS, paid them money, and then gave them drugs, different kinds of drug combinations, methamphetamine combined with cocaine and in a chewing gum and like all kinds of things. So this is a (00:27:28) This is a big thing, and there's documents to it. And Momsen, who knew everything about National Socialism, the old, authority. I'm like the young, like I didn't study history. I just, you know, I just try to make sense, you know, but I present him all these documents. He's reading like from this pill patrol and he said, wow. He said, we historians, we never do drugs. We don't understand drugs. (00:27:55) this, we missed this, So he was very clear that we missed this. And he said, this is actually the missing link that historians did not have, especially to explain Hitler's degeneration as a leader. And he made very good decisions, good in meaning militarily effective decisions in the beginning of the war and very bad decisions for the German war effort towards the end. And you can link that (00:28:24) to drugs. You can explain a lot of Hitler through the drugs, but you can also look at this point that historians so far had not been able to figure out, basically. What happened to Hitler? Why did he get crazy? I mean, he was crazy or he was, but why did he get so bad as a leader? Because he was very effective for a long time, and then there's this moment where it turns. Yeah, the generation of decision-making (00:28:50) psychology, behavior, all of that. You cannot understand that fully without understanding his drug use. And we should also say that some of the historians you mentioned, Ian Kershaw and Anthony Beaver, these legends of history, they all gave you compliments. (00:29:08) So Kershaw said that your work is very good, extremely interesting, and a serious piece of well-researched history. Anthony Beaver said that it's a remarkable work of research. So props to them. You have received a bunch of criticism from historians, but you've also received obviously a lot of props. I mean, Kershaw, the legendary historian of Hitler, complimenting how deep your work is. That must feel good. (00:29:38) Maybe this is a good moment to also just, since we're talking about historians, to address some of the criticism. So Richard Evans has been also a great historian, has been one of the bigger critics. He said that your work is crass and dangerously inaccurate account and is morally and politically dangerous. I think that's grounded in the idea that if you say that, well, (00:30:05) all the Nazi forces and Hitler was on drugs, so therefore they're evil can be, they're not really evil. It's just accountability can be removed because they were using drugs. Right. And also another criticism of his, which I also understand and probably can steal, man, is if you look too much through this singular lens of drugs, you can overemphasize it. (00:30:34) you can overemphasize how important it was as an explainer of the effectiveness of Blitzkrieg, for example, because there is some, I mean, I should say, there is something really compelling about a singular theory that explains everything, and you can fall in love with it too much as an explainer. So can you steel man his criticism or criticism you see and also argue against it? (00:31:01) I think he's absolutely right that you shouldn't argue in a monocausal way. And this is actually what Momsen 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. (00:31:29) 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. (00:31:59) If you are a good writer, and I trained as a novelist, for me it was also very unusual to write a non-fiction book. I wanted to write a novel about Nazis and drugs. My publisher said, no, this is, and he looked at the, you know, at the facts. You know, he said, someone has to write the facts. So I said, but the non-fiction books are boring. He said, not necessarily. Maybe you can find a way to write it with your novelistic style, but based (00:32:26) 100% on the facts. And that is like, in German, we say spagat. How do you say that? Split. Like when you do with your legs, like it's hard, you know? Because with a very fluent, sophisticated language, you can easily overpower the reader. If I describe how the German guys, 19-year-old guys took the math and went into the tank, (00:32:52) And the math started kicking in, five guys on math after like one hour of ride into France. You can write that in a powerful way that if you are the reader, you would think, yeah, I mean, the blitzkrieg without math is unthinkable. There is a bit of a, man, I wish I found that kind of feeling for historians, right? Like, how did I miss this piece? So some historians, like great historians, like Kirscher, obviously, see, they kind of give you a (00:33:22) like a slow clap, applaud. And some historians are a little bit skeptical, like this is a little too good. So totally understandable. And also they have a different techniques to write text like this. I used a totally different technique. And I have an apparatus. So it really feels like it could be an academic work. (00:33:48) but still it's written in a way that it kind of overpowers, it kind of colonializes the story in a weird way. I never thought about it like that. But while I was writing it, I was just trying to write it as well as I could. I didn't think about these questions we're talking about now. I just, I got carried away, obviously, but I never left the area of facts. Yes. So we should talk about your process. That's also super fascinating. You went to the archives. You went to the sources. (00:34:18) What's that take? What does it feel? What does it smell like? What does it look like? What does it entail? How much text is there? What language is it in? What's the process there? I never thought of going to the archives. And my girlfriend at the time, she said, you have to go to the archives. And she's an academic, so she, and I was like, yeah, okay, I'll go. I'm fine. I'll check it out. And then when I met a historian (00:34:47) He claims that without methamphetamine, there would be no blitzkrieg victory of Germany. Like he's monocausal. But he was also extremely helpful to me, and he's an academic. He gave me the signatures, it's called in German, where you find stuff in the archives. Signature is like, then it's like H2 slash 538, something like this. And these were the files of Professor Ranke. And Professor Ranke was (00:35:18) He was the head of the Institute for Army Physiology. His job was to improve the performance of the soldier. And all of his stuff was filed in a certain place in the military archives, which in Germany is in Freiburg in the south, in a small town, not in Berlin, because Germany is a bit of a decentralized country. (00:35:43) We don't want to put everything into Berlin again like the Nazis did. We try to avoid our mistakes. So the military archive is in Freiburg and I went there. And because I was, I had this signature, immediately I got, you know, original documents that were all relating to my research. Like I could read the, I had the original. What does it look like? Is it sheets of paper? Yeah, it's like. (00:36:06) So it's not scanned. Well, it's different things. Like the guy who did the meth into the army, the Professor Ranke, he was writing a war diary. That's what the name was, war diary. So every day he would write it by hand. So this war diary was given to me. So you're reading that. So it's like dated, like you have a date, the diary. It was a bit funny with him because he took a lot of meth himself. (00:36:35) Because he thought it was great. He just thought it increases your performance. By now we know a little bit more that methamphetamine is not so healthy because you get used to it and you burn out. You get depressed and then you have to take more. Big problem. And he became depressed and burned out and he didn't realize it's because of the meth that he is like describing to the whole German army. Like he was he made a convincing case and I can explain that in detail how that actually happened. (00:37:02) But just to have his war diary was great. And then also like he would write, he would type letters writing to the company of Temla, how fast they could produce stuff in which time. So you have all these original documents. You have like 500 documents and it goes like he writes like reports what happened in this battle on methamphetamine. Like there's a lot of stuff you can find in the archives if you find them. But (00:37:32) The tricky thing is that you can only look, you kind of look at a so-called find book. In the find book, you cannot type in drugs. It wouldn't find anything because at the time when they were... (00:37:47) taking all the notes from this doctor, his war dive, everything. They didn't put the label drugs there. They put the label, his name, his position, World War II, French campaign, stuff like that. So because at the time they didn't know that I would at one point come and look for drugs in that, you know, but he was the drug guy. But also they didn't realize he was the drug guy. You know, no one realized that he was the drug guy. (00:38:11) So it's not easy to find stuff in the archives. So the archives, you go, it's a Kafkaesque experience. You go into this building and you have to understand the rules and you will never fully understand what's going on. Also, the archivists, they don't really know what's going on because there's so many documents. No one's read them all, you know, no one knows. Like there's history kind of lying there, somehow organized, somehow stored. I mean, it does sound like a very Kafkaesque thing. But it's great if you find something, but you can also sit there. (00:38:41) for a week and not find anything. So what was the process for you? You're just reading open-minded, seeing, trying to see, is there some truth here to be discovered? Well, I have a friend, he's a DJ, and we talked about Berlin. We'll probably talk about it more. And he takes a lot of drugs. And he knows his, let's put it that way, he knows his drugs. (00:39:12) And one day he said to me when I was trying to figure out what I would write about next, he said, the Nazis took a lot of drugs. You should write about that. And I said, the Nazis didn't take drugs. Because, you know, when you grow up in Germany, you get educated about the Nazis quite intensely, especially in West Germany. Like they teach you everything, but they don't teach you drugs. I mean, now they do, maybe, you know, but it was not known. So, and the Nazis always had this (00:39:40) this aura of being law and order, no drugs, of course, no chaos, everything. My grandfather, he was a Nazi, always said, well, at least there was discipline in the country, there was law and order. So this doesn't match with drugs, you know? I should also say, I think that's the experience for a lot of people. Before reading your book, you know, I had the same (00:40:00) kind of feeling that the Nazi ideology was all about law and order and purity and surely they would not be doing drugs. So this was like, this really blew my mind. I think I wasn't quite ready, similar to like Richard Evans, like this is a big like, okay, a narrative transforming into a deeper, more complicated understanding what Nazi forces and the Hitler inner circle actually look like. (00:40:29) That's why I didn't believe Alex. Always take the DJ, the drug expert with a grain of salt. I didn't believe him, but I said it's a great topic. Maybe I could invent it. He said, no, you don't invent this. is real. I said, how do you know? And he said, I have a friend and I know this guy by now. I met him. He's an antique dealer in Berlin and he had bought an old medicine chest in an old Berlin apartment. This was in 2010. And he found Pavitin tablets inside. (00:40:59) which were the methamphetamine product that was marketed in Germany in the late 30s. And this guy, the antique dealer, took some tablets and they were quite old, 70 years old, but they still had an effect on him. And I later asked him and he said, well, we took them for about a month. It was the greatest month we ever had. Like we had so much fun. We were so productive because that methamphetamine back then was also (00:41:27) like a quality product. It was not crystal meth made in a trailer lab. So this is many decades later. They were still potent. They were still potent. Especially Alex convinced me because Alex has a high tolerance. And he said, okay, they still had some. So I said to him, can I have some also? And I took one. And he's like, this was, we were standing in my writing tower, which is at the river in Berlin. And he was like, I took one. And I could feel something. Then I took another one. (00:41:55) And then it's, I could feel more. And then I took a third one. It's like typical Alex, he would like take three, instead of just taking one, he took three methamphetamine tablets from the 40s. And he said, and then I felt like, and he looked at the river and there was a big, like big ship, like a cargo ship going by. And he said, I felt like this ship. Suddenly there was a shoop, he said in German, like a motion that was like energy that was grabbing me. And I could like, I felt so powerful. (00:42:24) And he told me this and I was like, wow, this is like, and I googled like methamphetamine Nazi Germany. This was in 2010. And there was this one professor at the university in Ulm who said the blitzkrieg was only possible because of methamphetamine. So I called up this guy and he said, sure, I'll meet you. And then he gave me the signature for the archive. Then I went to the archive and then I really started to do my own research. And then I went to different archives and I tried to find everything on Nazis and drugs. And that came (00:42:54) everything is in the book. So that crazy meeting with Alex in my writing tower, that kind of got me on this research journey. It makes me wonder what other mysteries like that are in the archives. Do you think there's stuff like that in there that we deeply don't understand? About, for example, there's a bunch of mysteries that we think we understand, maybe about the concentration camps. (00:43:22) maybe about the Eastern Front, the interplay between Stalin and Hitler, maybe about Britain that could be discovered in the letters, in the data that were completely missing. I think so. And I think that also there are archives that are not open. Let's say the Vatican archive, some secret archives that some very powerful structures have, structures (00:43:50) that we might not even know now off the top of our head, which still have a huge influence. So I think that the human history is quite different from what most historians write. I think that's just one version. I think there's several versions. And I think that it goes much deeper and it's much more interesting. (00:44:16) So I guess history is a very active thing, which I also didn't know. I was writing a historical non-fiction book and I suddenly realized that this is like a shark pool, because the history defines the future or it's very connected. Our history teacher always said, if we don't know where we come from, we cannot know where we go. And that is, I think, true. (00:44:41) That is what I now really am interested in for my next book. I'm trying to really understand human history. And obviously I'm not the first. There's a few, you know, alternative historians that go like, because you have to go back in time quite a bit. And then it's not easy to write about it, but it's very interesting to think about it. And I would love to find like the truth on Atlantis, which I don't believe in actually, and we can also talk about that. But maybe there's an archive where we can actually see that they had (00:45:09) this king ruling. I don't think this could be found, but I think we can still also find a lot of documents, but I think especially in closed archives. So we won't find them. You said a lot of really interesting things. It's so important to have people like you that do the daring work of going to the archives of the sources, the evidence, and trying to find a thing that completely transforms history as we thought we understood it. (00:45:36) that's revisionist history at its best. There's revisionist history has a sort of negative connotation sometimes because you go to conspiratorial land without much evidence and you're just being a rebel for rebels' sake. But when you ground it in data and dare to challenge the historical narrative, that's really powerful. So (00:46:01) Now, I should also mention that we've been just setting the, laying out the context. Yeah, we're still in the context phase. Context phase. And for the next 10 hours, and maybe for the rest of our lives, we will be continuing just setting the context. But let us dare return to the original question of perverton. How did that come about? Take me to the 1930s Nazi Germany, the Munich and the Berlin tension that we all laid out beautifully (00:46:29) How did Pervitin come into the picture? Well, the Nazis managed to grab power on January 30th, 1933, and they immediately become an anti-drug regime. That is important to them because the only intoxication they allow from now on in Germany is the Nazi intoxication, is the ideological intoxication. So they quickly install (00:46:56) concentration camps, which were at the time run by the SR, not the SS, takes over later and turns the concentration camps into an industry. The first SR concentration camps were in cellars in Berlin or in the countryside. And some of the first people that landed in these cellars and were disciplined were drug users. Also anti-Semitic policies, which were very important from day one (00:47:26) for the Nazis. Anti-Semitism is the defining pillar of national socialism, the core of it, really. They quickly connected anti-drug policies with anti-Semitic policies. They claimed the Jews in Germany, the German Jews, were taking more drugs than the non-Jewish Germans. And national socialisms (00:47:53) goal was to purify the German body. So they saw the whole folk, the folk folk, the country, the people as a body, one body, and that has to be purified. So all Jews are poison. But not only Jews, everyone who thinks differently, communists are also poison. Jews are the worst poison, but you know, a lot of, you know, and then you create this clean body. (00:48:19) And obviously drugs play have no position in that. If you're addicted to drugs, that's weak, you know, you're morphinist, you use cocaine, that's all degenerate, that's Jewish, that's Jewish doctors are all morphinists, you know. So that Nazi Germany and Hitler was the shining example of the person who doesn't take drugs. He was, he didn't have a private life. He didn't even have, he didn't even have a body. He just, (00:48:47) lead the folk's body, So Hitler was on not putting any poisons into him. He stopped smoking cigarettes in the 20s already. He never touched alcohol. Vegetarian. Vegetarian. No caffeine even. So he was. That's what he was in the beginning. Story, of course. (00:49:12) changes at a certain point in time, but he started as this. As far as you understand, that's true. Yeah, I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure that this is true. Also, vegetarianism was a right-wing thing in Germany. It was an elitist thing. If you were a vegetarian, you had a higher frequency, which kind of gave you a superiority over, let's say, like these (00:49:36) workers who need to eat the sausage so he can do the work. Like Wagner, the composer, he was a vegetarian. Hitler was impressed by Wagner. So vegetarianism, I think that's all true. I think Hitler was like that. And it's hard to be like that, actually. And I think that gave him an attraction inside the movement, (00:49:59) after all, like drunk, drunkers and Gurren using morphine all the time because of his pain, he got used to morphine. So they were, it was not, the movement wasn't like this, but he was like this. So he was, he symbolized, but he symbolized that whole approach of cleanliness, like purity. So then how does methamphetamine come into the picture? It's totally absurd. That's why I thought it was fun researching this because it doesn't make sense, you know. (00:50:30) And, they use this simple trick by, defining what is a drug, an illegal drug, and what is not. Because drugs don't have it written on them, this is an illegal, dangerous drug. drugs are basically neutral. These are molecules, you know. So the methamphetamine molecule was found in a Berlin-based company called the Temla company. (00:50:53) And the head of TEMLA, he was very upset with the Olympics in 1936 because an Afro-American athlete, Jesse Owens, was running faster than German superheroes with the best genes, you know, how can this be? So they thought that he was on something because he won, I think, 5 gold medals. (00:51:16) It was ridiculous. this was supposed to be Germany's games, and then the Afro-American runs better than the Aryan Ubermensch. So the only explanation is he took a drug. He took probably benzedrine, which was a legal amphetamine. And also there were no doping checks at the Olympics. And if you take an amphetamine, of course you can run a bit faster, maybe that, you know, when it kicks in. (00:51:45) This has to do with the immense release of dopamine in the brain. But it was never proven that Owens used any type of drugs. But the head of the Temna company, he said, we have to prevent this. We have to invent a better amphetamine. We have to make a German amphetamine that is stronger than the American benzedrine. So his main chemist, Hauschild, (00:52:12) Fritz Hauschit. He did research and he found that in 1917 in Tokyo, a Japanese chemist had made methamphetamine. And he remade that methamphetamine and they tested it among themselves, the chemists in the Berlin Pharmaceutical Lab, and they loved it. They made pure methamphetamine and they had a really good time and they were more active, they would talkative, because that's what happens on methamphetamine. (00:52:38) So the company really thought this is a great product and they turned it into a product. They went to the patent bureaucracy and got the patent for methamphetamine. And then it quite quickly came onto the market. It was labeled as Pervitin, which is kind of a great name because it has like the perverse already in it. And this Pervitin perverdin was available in any pharmacy. So you just, you didn't need a prescription. A child could go and buy 10 packs of pure methamphetamine. (00:53:08) So methamphetamine was also very cheap. So it became quite popular because people talked about it. Did they understand the side effects and negative effects of methamphetamine? Did they care? They didn't really know what it was. I mean, I also read, I went to the archive of that company also, of course. So they were like, what is it good for? Like, I just feel great when I take it and I have more energy. (00:53:31) They didn't know if that could be a product. Like it was 1937, 38 when they were discovering it. But also, did they, how did they think about the fact that this is a drug? Well, it was, they called it a performance enhancer. Got it. Is drinking a coffee in the morning a drug? I mean, it is a drug, but we don't think of it as a drug. You know, it's legal. And this was kind of how meth was treated in Germany. It was normal to use it. Like you had a, (00:54:00) They're very important business meeting. Of course, you would take a Pavitin. There's a movie by Billy Wilder called One, Two, Three, very good movie. And he shows the American executive. It was the movie set right after the end of the Second World War. So we see like, I think it's a Coca-Cola executive, American, and he says to his secretary, (00:54:24) How should I have the morning coffee? I think half of a Pavitin. So Pavitin was also normal. It wasn't stigmatized. It was not the American just say no propaganda where your teeth fall out. And I mean, it was a German quality product. People liked it. Of course, they did tests at universities, but most of them were quite positive. (00:54:51) Yeah, it reduces your fear. Today we might look for different things, but this was also a performance-driven, totalitarian society moving towards war. So if someone takes Pavitin and says in the clinical tests at the university, I'm not afraid of anything anymore. So that's positive. That's actually what got the guy who worked for the German army interested because he read university reports. I also saw all of these reports. They were also in the military archive. (00:55:19) So he's like, okay, you're not afraid anymore if you take methamphetamine. You don't need to sleep anymore. You don't need to eat so much because your appetite is lowered. This is perfect for a soldier. So negative effects only became public in 1940 when the first Pavitin opponent, he was actually a relative of Albert Speer, Hitler's architect and later armament, arms minister. (00:55:49) He was the despair psychologist. He was the first one who said, wait a minute, first of all, methamphetamine is against the Nazi ideology, because now we're all taking a drug to be high performers. We have to be high performers without a drug. And he also said, you know, the obvious, this is going to make you addicted, et cetera. This will create a tolerance. So only then the first negative reports came out. Before that, what Temla did and then what the universities did, (00:56:17) They all thought methamphetamine is really good. So what was the process of convincing the German military, the Wehrmacht army, to use it at scale? Well, Professor Ranke was employed by the army, so it was his job to find things that would improve the performance of the German soldier. I always imagined him like a James Bond character, like Q, who develops like gadgets and stuff, because he also developed gadgets. (00:56:46) So he was quite a, he was an academic, but he was also a soldier, he was employed, but he was basically running this institute, examining it, and he was so convinced that Pavitin is the answer to his question, how to beat the main opponent of the German soldier. And that was not the British soldier, not the French soldier, not the Russian soldier, that was fatigue. He had been looking for a way (00:57:14) to keep a soldier awake longer. So when he read these reports from universities, he did his own tests in the military academy with young medical officers. They came together at 8 P.m. in the evening, and then they received either methamphetamine, caffeine pill, or placebo, or benzedrine. Like, he had different experiments. And he always concluded at the end, like, (00:57:43) They start at 8 P.m. and at 10 A.m. in the morning, one time he notes the Pavitin people still want to go out and party. Well, like the caffeine guys are like sleeping on the bench and it was clear that Pavitin is the strongest, it gives you the most energy, lets you work for the longest time. So he was convinced, but his superior, like the surgeon general of the German army, he was like an old school dude. And he was like, (00:58:08) He didn't even react to these, like, Frank would write letters, we have to use a synthetic drug in the next campaign, which was against Poland, which he knew about. And because Pavitin was quite known in the civil society, people were using it already. So he said, (00:58:25) He even said a lot of soldiers will just take it with them and we should control that. We should make it an official drug. But the surgeon general didn't understand. He didn't reply. So Germany attacked Poland without a clear like regulatory system on methamphetamine and indeed a lot of soldiers used it. And what Ranke then did was he requested from all of the medical officers in the field in Poland (00:58:51) The war was over after a few weeks, but the German army was occupying Poland. He said, send me all back reports and tell me what, did your people take Pavitin and what were the effects? And he collected all these reports, which I also studied in the military archive. And he came to the conclusion, this is a really good fighting drug. And it probably is because people are still using it today. Methamphetamine is still being used. And Ranke discovered this. He had everything in front of him. And (00:59:19) Poland was beaten, and then Hitler wanted to attack the West. And the West was a different story than Poland, because the West was the world empire of Great Britain combined with La Grande de Armae, the strongest army in the world, the French army. These 2 combined, you know, how can you win that? Poland, they could overpower. They had, you know, better army than Poland. But is the German Wehrmacht really better than both of these armies combined? (00:59:47) His officers didn't think so. High command said, no, we're not going to attack the West. We're going to lose. And Hitler was fanatic about it. He really wanted to attack it. They were planning a coup against him in November 1939 just to prevent him ordering the attack on the West because it would have been a catastrophe for Germany. Because they really cared, you know, if you're a high command, you don't want to start a war that you're going to lose. Very bad. He just (01:00:17) briefly, give us a sense of, do you think this is genius or insanity on Hitler's part to think that he can take on probably what's perceived as to be the most powerful military in the world, which is the French military, or at least in Europe? I think his hatred for the French was very, very deep. He really wanted to go to war with them. It was an ideological, (01:00:44) irrational decision. That's why he was, he was not, he didn't hate the empire. He kind of looked down, he admired it and looked down on. You mean the British Empire? Yeah. But the French, he really hated, and France had been the app find, the genetic enemy of the German people, at least right-wingers would say so. There had been two wars. The first one Germany had won, then First World War, Germany had lost. (01:01:13) So Hitler wanted to kind of revenge and also stop the Versailles Treaty. So he really needed to attack the West, at least in his mindset. But it was an irrational decision, and that's why high command said, no, we're not going to do it, basically. And Hitler's position at the time was not that he could do anything he wanted. I mean, high command is still a high command of the German Wehrmacht. That's a very old, you know, it's a tradition. (01:01:39) They do whatever they want, but also they have to obey Hitler's order. So it's a power struggle, basically. But to invade France was a totally stupid idea, but it changed in the morning, on the morning of February 17th, 1940. Hitler invited three young tank generals to his office, and they had a plan, which was the plan to go through the Aden Mountains. That was the victorious idea. (01:02:08) So it's not the drugs. Actually, that idea to go through the Aden Mountain, if you think monocausal, you would say that's the reason. That idea was genius. And Hitler immediately understood it. Because before, the plan was to attack in the north of Belgium, which is the same as World War I. It becomes a stalemate and they fight for months and no one really moves and it's bloody and nothing's happening. It's bad. But that was the only plan that they had. That's why the high command said, no, we're not going to do it. It's stupid. (01:02:38) But these three tank generals, they had kind of like, somehow they were able to snuck into Hitler's office and they said, look, if we go with the whole army through the Aden mountains and like Hitler, this is not possible. This is like a mountain range. How can the whole German army fit through this eye of a needle, basically? And they said, no, we can do it because everyone misunderstands what tanks can do. Tanks are not slow. (01:03:06) machines in the back that kind of wait for the action to happen and then, I don't know, support this somehow. We're going to use tanks in the front as race cars, basically. We're going to overpower the enemy. We're going to be in France before the French, who are stationed all with the British in northern Belgium and also on the Maginot Line, but not really in the Aden Mountains. That was hardly fortified because no one could imagine that Germany would go through there. (01:03:34) And before they know it, we are already behind them, basically. We are already in France and they're still hanging out in northern Belgium because it takes quite a while, to travel. This was a different time also. So that he was convinced and he then ordered the attack. The attack would happen. And that is then, but it would only work (01:03:58) if you would reach Sedan, the border city of France, within three days and three nights. So the whole army, or at least, the avant-garde of the machinery had to be like a big part of the army had to be in Sedan after three days and three nights. And that was only possible if you don't stop. And that was the problem. The sleep was really then suddenly became a huge problem. And Hitler said, when I was fighting, (01:04:26) In World War I, of course I could stay awake for a week. I'm A German, even though he's not even German, he's Austrian. But that was a problem. But suddenly Ranke realized that his moment had come because he had the recipe, how people could stay awake for three days and three nights. So Ranke suddenly became, before that he was kind of an outsider, like the freak with the drug idea, suddenly he became like, okay, tell us, how does it work? (01:04:55) And he gave lectures in front of the officers. And he wrote a stimulant decree where like a whole army is prescribed a drug, in this case methamphetamine, how much should be taken at what intervals, what are the side effects. So this was a, this became a very big thing. And then Temla had to deliver 35 million dosages to the front lines, which were, no, not the front yet. I mean, it was, they were stationed in the west of Germany. (01:05:24) And then on May 10th, they took their methamphetamine and they started the surprise attack through the Aden Mountain. So the 35 million dosages for the French campaign. I mean, we could probably talk for many hours about this particular campaign because it is, I think it's fair to say, the most successful military campaign from the German side. Ended with a big mistake. (01:05:50) Dunkirk. Dunkirk. It was brilliant up until that point. That is the turning point. That was the first big mistake Hitler did. And it also had to do with drugs. We'll talk about it, but that's just a link on this three days. So we should also mention that's where Blitzkrieg really shined. So it wasn't just the tanks, it was the infantry, it was the aircraft moving very fast behind the French lines. (01:06:14) I mean, what can you speak to just the execution of that campaign and the role of drugs in it? And it is, we should say, a really bold strategic decision to use meth. I mean, it's a big risk. There's a lot of risks taken here, which could be seen as military genius or military insanity or a mixture of both. Well, they were very lucky that it all worked out. (01:06:41) Also, the guys in the tanks could all have freaked out on the meth because then it was never tested before. Can you actually be in a combat situation, in a tank, in enemy territory on meth? Can people actually cope with that and be better fighters? Going through the mountains. It's insane. Against the biggest military in Europe. Well, what meth does is, because I read reports of depressed (01:07:08) the depressed atmosphere right before the attack started, because they were afraid. They thought they would lose, like they didn't want that. soldiers, maybe some, really hardcore Nazi soldiers, but most people were just normal guys, they didn't want to start that. But once they had the methamphetamine, it kind of, you're like in a party mood. So also when you're in the tank, you know, and everyone likes it, you know, it's rather an uplifting thing. Like they were (01:07:35) They were really getting into it and they were really, they started fighting then. It's also intoxication, it's a rush. Like what is, what is, what does meth feel like? Well, meth creates the so-called fight or flight motors. So either you, like it releases all the neurotransmitters in the brain, which are released in situations of high danger, for example. So in a highly dangerous situation, (01:08:05) you become very alert so you can cope with the situation. If you're like, if you're like under life threat and you don't even react to it, you're probably going to be dead, you know. But the body does that and methamphetamine does that. So you take a pill of methamphetamine or you snort a line of methamphetamine and you're like, and you're like this, you're like, and then it's the fight or flight mode. Either you run away, like it's too much, you know, but (01:08:30) On math, you usually don't run away. You kind of think it's really cool what's happening. You like to move, you like to be with your pals, you like to, you know, be in a tank's great. So there is a party aspect to it. I think it was very joyful for the German soldiers because it was springtime. They had immediate successes. And it wasn't heavy fighting. It was just being in the tank. I mean, there was, of course, fighting and there were also war crimes. And I read a report when Rommel, high on math, like, (01:09:00) 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 you know, like a berserk. (01:09:28) 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. (01:09:54) 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. (01:10:22) you can actually, I think hate can take over. And in that hate, you can find pleasure when you murder the other. And people have written about this, have talked about this. It's probably a thing that a person like me can't possibly comprehend unless I experienced it. And you have to be in the mania, in the hysteria, in the insanity, intensity of war. (01:10:50) I mean, what Evans, for example, said is that I excuse the Germans of the war crimes because they were just in an intoxication. I understand that argument. But if you look at individual soldiers, it's quite tricky. Like, it's a 19-year-old guy. He's been drafted. And in Nazi Germany, if you don't go, you land in a concentration camp. So you can choose, you know, concentration camp or you just join the ranks and then you get Pavitin and then you invade France. (01:11:20) There was a trial in Germany because someone said all soldiers are murderers. And I think then the German Bundeswehr sued him, no, soldiers are not murderers. And he actually won in court. So it's legal in Germany to call every soldier a murderer. But it's a tricky question. Yeah, I remember seeing the documentary on the ordinary people. There's also social pressure, again, saying it is to say, (01:11:48) I think the documentary Ordinary People was looking at the Germans that were part of the shooting squads. And they didn't understand what they're signing up for. And they were told that they're free to leave once they understand what they're doing, and many of them didn't. And they didn't have hate for Jews or for the people who they're murdering. You are, again, a 19, 20-year-old young kid. (01:12:15) Like, it's so hard to comprehend the moral insanity that's happening all around you. And you just kind of want to fit in. I mean, that's why I wrote the book, The Bohemians, because there were a few people in Berlin that didn't react this way, but they reacted in a different way. They said, we cannot be part of this. But it's hard to be the person. It's very hard, yeah. And most people are part of it. (01:12:40) because it's much more safe, or at least it seems more safe. I mean, it has its own perils, because you might become a genocidal murderer, that might happen. Are you responsible? I would say you are responsible, but that's just my personal gut feeling. I always thought my grandfather was responsible for the genocide. (01:13:04) because he was working for the German railway system and he once saw a train car full of Jews in a cattle wagon. And he only said to me, yeah, this was against German railway regulations. And I said, so what did you do? And he said, well, there were SS at the station where I was working and I was too scared. I didn't do anything. So I thought that he was, he made himself guilty. I thought that's (01:13:31) And my father, for example, reacted very strongly because of that. He never called him by his first name, the father of his wife, because he still had that, he was a Nazi, because he was working for the railway. So I wouldn't excuse, I wouldn't excuse people, actually, and I certainly would not excuse high-ranking politicians that make policies, because (01:13:57) 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. If I would find documents that say, yeah, when we, but the Nazi ideology has nothing to do with drugs, maybe with alcohol, you know, but it's, and I spoke with my father who had been a high judge in Germany. What does actually the law say? And the law says, if you plan a crime, (01:14:28) And then maybe when you commit it, you are under the influence, it does not diminish your responsibility. Your responsibilities only diminish, let's say you're a totally normal person, never done any harm to anybody, and suddenly you take a drug or you're totally drunk and you don't know what you're doing and you kill someone, then a judge could say maybe you have a lesser responsibility. But this is not the case. (01:14:54) with the crimes of national socialism. And I never even hinted that in my book. So I think that criticism by Evans was short-sighted. I wouldn't, I think he's not right about that. Yeah, I think I agree with you totally. I didn't get that sense. He thought the book was very successful because a lot of right-wing people bought it, but that's not, simply not true. I think your book did a masterful job of never (01:15:24) making itself amenable to that kind of narrative. To the contrary, 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 (01:15:53) 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. The new German, the current German army is called the Bundeswehr. They're not historically, they're not supposed to be connected. Like there was a clear cut, but he still felt that I was kind of hurting the pride of the Wehrmacht. I generally sort of agree with him. In general, it seems like great historians often (01:16:23) I'm just a human, so I'm not a historian. But they undermine the importance of the heroes that make up an army. The Soviet army, the British army, the French army, the German army. Like these are humans. And some of the great military campaigns involve people really stepping up. Now, like the effectiveness of the military tactics with Blitzkrieg, the effectiveness of meth, (01:16:52) the strategic decisions around where to invade, the timing, the speed, all of those are important. But there's humans there. There's real heroes. And sometimes historians kind of diminish that. I don't know what to make sense of it. I might be just an idiot. But I've had a great conversation with James Holland. I've gotten to know him well. He kind of analyzed the mistakes made by Hitler and by Stalin in the Operation Barbarossa. (01:17:21) But I just, through generations, because I grew up in the Soviet Union, you hear these stories of these heroes. my grandfather was a machine gunner and miraculously survived. And like I just knowing those stories, Stalingrad would not have happened without the heroes on the Soviet side. And it's easy to say there's a lot of blunders, a lot of bad tactics, all this kind of stuff. But to me, from the human side, I just know (01:17:50) through my bloodline, the people that have fearlessly given their life to defend their homeland. And that sometimes can be a little bit easily dismissed. So I don't know what to make sense of it. Maybe I'm romanticizing or maybe I'm speaking to the suffering that the people have felt and they just propagate themselves through my life story. And then maybe the gratitude I have (01:18:15) for the people who have stopped the Nazi forces. I think it's amazing what the Russian soldiers actually did because they beat the Wehrmacht. It was really the Red Army on the ground that did the job. And did they love communism and their system? I don't think so. And I think they were, I mean, of course some people, but basically they were defending their country. And (01:18:42) I'm also very grateful to them. Yeah, they're defending their families. Quick pause, bath and break? Okay. All right, we're back. So can we say a bit more about the French campaign? So in, it was over in six weeks. It took six weeks to complete a defeat and occupy most of France. And the initial operation, three days. (01:19:10) was from a military perspective successful. What else do we, what else can we say about the role of drugs, the effectiveness, what was learned from that experience by the Wehrmacht? I mean, for me to research the Western campaign was very interesting because I didn't really know anything about it except that Germany won very quickly. So to actually look at the details is very interesting. (01:19:36) and the drugs give you kind of a way in. What are some things you found in the archives that were interesting, like about maybe letters, reports, diaries, that gave you some insight about the human story of it all? Well, there is letters, for example, by Heinrich Bohl, who won the Nobel Prize later in literature. He writes to his parents, describing in detail what Pavitin did to him, how it