Speaker
Norman Ohler
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1 episodes
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1
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Quotes & moments
Temmler delivered 35 million doses of Pervitin (methamphetamine) to the German military before the May 1940 invasion of France.
Pervitin (methamphetamine) was sold over the counter in any German pharmacy with no prescription required, and a child could buy multiple packs.
Hitler's first intravenous opioid injection in August 1941 marked the turning point after which his decision-making demonstrably deteriorated as his drug use escalated.
By September 1944, Hitler was taking Eukodal (oxycodone) intravenously every second day — a pattern Ohler describes as a 'junkie rhythm.'
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.'
An antique dealer in Berlin found original 1940s Pervitin tablets in an old medicine chest; they remained potent 70 years later.
After Germany invaded Ukraine, Dr. Morell obtained a monopoly on all organs from all Ukrainian slaughterhouses, sending them by military train to his factory in occupied Czechoslovakia.
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.
The CIA's MKUltra program directly continued Nazi human drug experiments, using LSD as a potential truth drug — a lineage Ohler traced from SS experiments in Dachau.
The German Navy paid SS concentration camp prisoners in the Shoe Runners Unit to test drug combinations including methamphetamine mixed with cocaine in chewing gum.
Hitler's famous Halt Order at Dunkirk, which allowed 300,000+ Allied troops to escape, was influenced by a morphine-high Göring convincing Hitler to let the Luftwaffe finish the job instead.
LSD is described as the strongest substance on earth because it produces powerful effects at microgram doses — even the strongest snake venom has no effect at the same quantity.
When CIA's Sidney Gottlieb arrived in Basel to buy the 'world supply' of LSD, expecting 400 kilograms, Sandoz CEO Stoll informed him they had produced only 400 grams.
The head of the Temmler pharmaceutical company, furious that Jesse Owens outran German athletes at the 1936 Olympics, ordered his chemist to develop a stronger amphetamine. The result was methamphetamine — branded as Pervitin, sold over the counter with no prescription, and eventually prescribed to the entire Wehrmacht.
Before the May 1940 invasion of France, the German military prescribed methamphetamine to its soldiers via an official 'stimulant decree,' ordering 35 million doses delivered to the front. Soldiers who had been depressed and afraid suddenly felt euphoric and unstoppable — driving tanks nonstop for 3 days and 3 nights through the Ardennes Mountains.
When Hitler fell ill with a severe flu in August 1941 — just as the critical decision to split forces toward Leningrad instead of Moscow was being made — Dr. Morell injected him with Dolantin, a German opioid, intravenously for the first time. Hitler dominated the meeting, made the decision that may have cost Germany Moscow, and fell in love with opioids.
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.'
When the Novartis archivist refused to show Ohler the CEO correspondence he needed, Ohler produced a tab of LSD printed with the old Sandoz logo — made by an underground Basel chemist as an inside joke. The archivist took the tab, the ice broke, and Ohler found the smoking gun: a 1943 letter proving the Nazis received LSD from Sandoz.
The German Navy hired the SS's 'Shoe Runners Unit' at Sachsenhausen concentration camp — prisoners who tested shoe soles by walking for days on different terrain replicas — and gave them cocktails of methamphetamine, cocaine, and experimental combinations in chewing gum. The goal: find a drug to keep soldiers awake and combat-ready for seven days straight.
Israeli scholars have proposed that when Moses received the Ten Commandments, he may have been on a DMT-like experience from the Egyptian acacia plant — which contains DMT and grows throughout the Sinai. Moses' group had been fasting, alcohol-free, in the desert for days, effectively a psychedelic retreat. The burning bush vision and the commandment 'thou shalt not kill' may both reflect a trauma-processing trip.
Homo sapiens nearly went extinct when their population fell to around 1,500 individuals. As they migrated through the Central African rainforest — where elephants were observed eating iboga and behaving strangely — over 100,000 years of potential iboga use may have stimulated the frontal cortex expansion that created human consciousness. A Columbia neuroscientist describes iboga as 'a spa for the neurons' that interacts everywhere in the brain simultaneously.
One of the CIA's unwitting LSD guinea pigs was Ken Kesey, who received $75 to take LSD while working in a Menlo Park psychiatric ward. On that CIA-administered trip, he had the insight that the patients might not be crazy — they just saw the world differently. He wrote One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. MKUltra, meant to create mind control, accidentally seeded the counterculture.
Morell was a Berlin celebrity doctor who gave injections to opera stars before big performances. He met Hitler through the Führer's personal photographer, cured Hitler's severe bloating with probiotics, and quickly became his personal physician — then escalated from vitamins to hormones to opioids over the next decade.
Hitler's infamous Halt Order at Dunkirk — which let the British military evacuate — was partly the result of a morphine-intoxicated Göring convincing Hitler to let the Luftwaffe finish the job. The tank generals, many of them on meth, couldn't believe the order to stop. Von Manstein later called it a 'lost victory.'
Harro Schulze-Boysen, a Luftwaffe Ministry officer, built Nazi Germany's largest resistance network — over 100 people — by using Thursday-night parties to recruit. He and his wife Libertas would make a mildly critical remark about the regime and watch how guests reacted. The Gestapo couldn't crack it for years because there was no communist cell structure to infiltrate.
Ohler found a document showing Hitler used an arm expander — resistance bands — specifically to build the endurance to keep his arm raised during military parades that could last for hours. It's a small detail, but one that humanizes Hitler in the most unsettling way: the most powerful man in Europe was doing arm curls to perfect his salute.
Documents in the Novartis archive proved that Nazi biochemist Richard Kuhn received LSD precursors from the Sandoz CEO in 1943 for SS truth-drug experiments in Dachau. When Americans liberated the camp, they immediately debriefed Kuhn, acquired the LSD technology, and handed it to the CIA — which continued the same unethical experiments under MKUltra.
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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- History 50%
- Science 22%
- Education 14%
- Arts 7%
- Health & Fitness 7%
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