Quote · Lex Fridman Podcast
#481 – Norman Ohler: Hitler, Nazis, Drugs, WW2, Blitzkrieg, LSD, MKUltra & CIA
Where this was said
Cocaine
At 2:08:30 · chapter starts 2:07:54
The turning point was August 1941: Hitler sick with the Russian flu, a critical strategic decision about Moscow pending, and Dr. Morell injecting Dolantin — a synthetic opioid — intravenously for the first time. Hitler dominated the room, ordered the catastrophic split toward Leningrad and the oil fields instead of Moscow, and fell in love with what opioids felt like. Over the next two years he became experimental: bull's testicle extracts, pig liver hormones, the full range of Morell's pharmaceutical company output. Then in July 1943, before meeting Mussolini who wanted to quit the war, he received his first Eukodal — oxycodone — intravenously. He monopolized that meeting for two hours while Mussolini couldn't get a word in. By September 1944 he was taking Eukodal every other day. After Stauffenberg's bomb attempt blew out his eardrums, a new doctor (Giesing) began treating him with liquid cocaine — unaware that Morell was simultaneously injecting opioids. The resulting speedball became the signature of Hitler's terminal drug phase. [1] — Norman Ohler "When Hitler fell ill with a severe flu in August 1941 — just as the critical decision to split forces toward Leningrad instead of Moscow wa…" 2:01:03
Hermann Göring was addicted to morphine from 1923 — when he was shot during the Beer Hall Putsch — until his capture by American forces in 1945, a span of 22 years.
After the July 1944 bomb assassination attempt, Hitler began receiving cocaine from Dr. Giesing for his blown eardrums — not knowing that Dr. Morell was simultaneously injecting him with oxycodone. The combined effect was a classic speedball: cocaine plus opioids, a combination Ohler describes as 'the end of your drug career.'
