Podbit · Lex Fridman Podcast
Records show Rommel's tank division used more methamphetamine than any other division in the French campaign. Ohler's archival research found reports of Rommel standing in the open hatch of his tank at night, driving through a French village where soldiers slept — chains becoming bloody. Ohler calls it the moment the Wehrmacht lost its innocence.
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The German army was on the outskirts of Dunkirk, one order away from closing the escape route for the entire British military. But Hitler, still fighting intellectually in WWI mode, worried about exposed flanks while his tank generals on meth were ready to sprint. Then Göring, high on morphine, arrived and made his pitch: let the National Socialist Luftwaffe win the campaign from the air, not the army generals who would then become too powerful. Hitler gave the Halt Order. The generals who received it couldn't believe it — they were moments from complete victory. The British evacuated through the gap. Churchill's 'miracle of Dunkirk' was, as Ohler frames it, a side effect of drug-influenced decision-making at the highest level of Nazi command.
The entire French campaign, from the initial attack to the occupation of most of France, lasted only six weeks — aided significantly by the non-stop meth-fueled advance.
Records show Rommel's tank division used more methamphetamine than any other tank division during the French campaign, earning him Ohler's nickname 'Crystal Fox.'
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