February 16, 2026 • 39 mins
The use of stimulants during WWII is no secret, but in the last decade, there has been a lot of discussion and analysis of it. Just how significant was drug use in Nazi Germany, and how did the Allies compare?
Research:
- Ackermann, Paul. “Les soldats nazis dopés à la méthamphétamine pour rester concentrés.” HuffPost France. June 4, 2013. https://www.huffingtonpost.fr/actualites/article/les-soldats-nazis-dopes-a-la-methamphetamine-pour-rester-concentres_19714.html
- Andreas, Peter. “How Methamphetamine Became a Key Part of Nazi Military Strategy.” Time. Jan. 7, 2020. https://time.com/5752114/nazi-military-drugs/
- Blakemore, Erin. “A Speedy History of America’s Addiction to Amphetamine.” Smithsonian. Oct. 27, 2017. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/speedy-history-americas-addiction-amphetamine-180966989/
- Boeck, Gisela, and Vera Koester. “Who Was the First to Synthesize Methamphetamine?” Chemistry Views. https://www.chemistryviews.org/9-who-first-synthesized-methamphetamine/ “Ephedra.” National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health.” https://www.nccih.nih.gov/health/ephedra
- Eghigian, Greg, PhD. “A Methamphetamine Dictatorship? Hitler, Nazi Germany, and Drug Abuse.” Psychiatric Times. June 23, 2016. https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/methamphetamine-dictatorship-hitler-nazi-germany-and-drug-abuse
- Garber, Megan, “‘Pilot’s Salt’: The Third Reich Kept Its Soldiers Alert With Meth.” The Atlantic. May 31, 2013. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/05/pilots-salt-the-third-reich-kept-its-soldiers-alert-with-meth/276429/
- Gifford, Bill. “The Scientific AmericanGuide to Cheating in the Olympics.” Scientific American. August 5, 2016. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-scientific-american-guide-to-cheating-in-the-olympics/
- Gorvett, Zaria. “The Drug Pilots Take to Stay Awake.” BBC. March 14, 2024. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240314-the-drug-pilots-take-to-stay-awake
- Grinspoon, Lester. “The speed culture : amphetamine use and abuse in America.” Harvard University Press. 1975. Accessed online: https://archive.org/details/speedcultureamph0000grin_n3i0/mode/1up
- Gupta, Raghav et al. “Understanding the Influence of Parkinson Disease on Adolf Hitler's Decision-Making during World War II.” World Neurosurgery. Volume 84, Issue 5. 2015. Pages 1447-1452. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wneu.2015.06.014.
- Hurst, Fabienne. “The German Granddaddy of Crystal Meth.” Spiegel. Dec. 23, 2013. https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/crystal-meth-origins-link-back-to-nazi-germany-and-world-war-ii-a-901755.html
- Isenberg, Madison. “Volksdrogen: The Third Reich Powered by Methamphetamine.” The Macksey Journal. University of Texas at Tyler. Volume 4, Article 21. 2023. https://scholarworks.uttyler.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=senior_projects
- Laskow, Sarah. “Brewing Bad: The All-Natural Origins of Meth.” The Atlantic. Oct. 3, 2014. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/10/brewing-bad-the-all-natural-origins-of-meth/381045/
- Lee, Ella. “Fact check: Cocaine in Coke? Soda once contained drug but likely much less than post claims.” USA Today. July 25, 2021. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/07/25/fact-check-coke-once-contained-cocaine-but-likely-less-than-claimed/8008325002/
- Leite, Fagner Carvalho et al. “Curine, an alkaloid isolated from Chondrodendron platyphyllum inhibits prostaglandin E2 in experimental models of inflammation and pain.” Planta medica 80,13 (2014): 1072-8. doi:10.1055/s-0034-1382997
- Meyer, Ulrich. “Fritz hauschild (1908-1974) and drug research in the 'German Democratic Republic' (GDR).” Die Pharmazie 60 6 (2005): 468-72.
- Natale, Fabian. “Pervitin: how drugs transformed warfare in 1939-45.” Security Distillery. May 6, 2020. https://thesecuritydistillery.org/all-articles/pervitin-how-drugs-transformed-warfare-in-1939-45
- Ohler, Norman. “Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich.” Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2017.
- Rasmussen, Nicolas. “Medical Science and the Military: The Allies’ Use of Amphetamine during World War II.” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, vol. 42, no. 2, 2011, pp. 205–33. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41291190
- “Reich Minister of Health Dr. Leonardo Conti Speaks with Hitler’s Personal Physician, Dr. Karl Brandt (August 1, 1942).” German History in Documents and Images. https://germanhistorydocs.org/en/nazi-germany-1933-1945/reich-minister-o
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Frye and I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Wilson.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Hey. For obvious reasons, I have been thinking about people
in military gear being very, very aggressive a lot. I
hate it, Yeah, I hate it so much. That made
me think about a topic that I've sort of had
on a back burner for a while and been like,
how do I tiptoe around this one and like really
get into it because there are a lot of opinions
(00:38):
within the history space about it. That is the use
of very powerful stimulants during World War Two, particularly among
the Wehrmacht, that's the Nazi German military forces. Listen, I'm
not accusing anybody of using anything. I'm not saying anything
is happening. I'm just saying it reminded me of that
seeing aggressive behavior of people in uniforms reminds me of
(01:01):
films I have seen of weirdly aggressive behavior of people
in uniforms. So in twenty fifteen, this whole topic really
exploded in the consciousness of a lot of historians that
particularly are interested in World War Two. Because a non
historian writer named Norman Ohler, who is German, published a
book that was titled Der Toto Rausch probably said that
(01:23):
very poorly, but that means the Total Rush. And it
was about drug use in Nazi Germany, specifically in the
military as well as in the civilian population. And that
book was translated into English. It was published in twenty
seventeen as Blitzed Drugs in Nazi Germany. That book became
a New York Times bestseller. It won a lot of awards,
(01:45):
and this was a really attention getting book in both languages.
It was also translated into more than a dozen others.
It's a very popular piece of writing. Ohler, who had
actually intended to write a novel, initially got so deep
down the rabbit hole of archival information that he found
available that that led him to pivot to writing a
(02:07):
nonfiction book. And in that book he really laid bare
something that had already been talked about for years and
in some cases been speculated about. And there is supporting
documentation that people already knew before that. But this really
put the whole puzzle together in a way that was new,
and that is the seemingly contradictory use of methamphetamine in
(02:29):
the military of an administration that touted, in its very
warped ideology, purity and strength and health as the signifiers
of a perfect race of humans. There has been in
the last decade plus as this book has been out,
a lot of push and pull from historians, as researchers
(02:51):
really tried to identify the true degree to which drug
use was or was not pervasive among the German public
and its mililitary during that time, and how that compares
to stimulant use by the Allies. This is a tricky
thing to measure because it's not as though everybody is
recording every time they pop a tablet in their mouth.
(03:14):
A number of historians have indicated that they feel Oler
is a bit too sensationalist in his work, But there is,
at the same time plenty of information that shows that
there was definitely a lot of stimulant use during World
War Two, and it was not all in Germany's ranks.
So today we are going to look at all of
that and figure out how speed impacted the war, but
(03:36):
also the public in general and how it continues to
And to kick all of this off, we are going
to talk about a German chemist who is often credited
with the invention of methamphetamine, although as we will see,
that is not entirely accurate. Fritz Kurt Hauschild was born
on December eighth in Kimnitz, Germany. His father was a
(03:57):
doctor and Fritz also studied medicine, but he really focused
on chemistry. He enrolled in medical school in Guttingen, Germany
at the age of twenty and four years later, in
nineteen thirty two, he became a certified chemist. Two more
years after that, he completed a doctorate in medicine when
he submitted his dissertation, which was titled on the Pharmacology
(04:20):
and Chemistry of Curing.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Curing is an alkaloid that is used for its anti
inflammatory properties. He took his exam and received his full
medical credentials that year. He had a year long residency.
During that time he worked in two places. One was
that a women's clinic. He also worked at the Pharmacological
Institute of Leipzig. When his residency ended, he was hired
(04:47):
at the Pharmacological Institute as an assistant and he worked
there for two years before moving on to the Temler works.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
So tem Leverka was founded in nineteen seventeen as a
German pharmaceutical company, and it still exists today as the
Temler Group, although it is now part of the larger
company a Nova Group. In nineteen thirty three, Temler started
a large expansion initiative, so when Housechild entered the company
in nineteen thirty seven, it was already rapidly growing. In
(05:19):
nineteen thirty six, Benza Dream was used by a number
of athletes at the Summer Olympic Games in Berlin, or
at least that was the rumor in Germany. We are
absolutely coming back to benson Dream, but at the time
amphetamines were absolutely legal in sport. There were not any
doping tests for it, so it is actually unclear who
may or may not have been using it. But in
(05:41):
Germany there was a common belief that the American competitors
specifically were using benzadrene because it was the only way
in their minds to explain the US team's performance. Remember,
the nineteen thirty six Games were supposed to be this
showcase of German superiority, and when people like Jesseoaans really
trounced them, it made them and immediately think there must
(06:04):
be something suspicious going on. This belief inspired the German
pharmacological industry to seek out their own stimulants that they
could give athletes and other people to give them an edge.
At Timler, that project fell to Fritz hou Shilden. He
turned to the nineteenth century work of a Japanese chemist
named Nagai Nagaoshi, as well as to European chemists who
(06:28):
had worked on ephadrin projects. So for context.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Nagai was born west of Osaka in the Tokushima Prefecture
in eighteen forty five. That was just as the fall
of shogunate rule was beginning. Japan was shifting away from
isolationist policies, and like hou Schild's father, Nagai's father was
in medicine. He practiced herbal medicine, so Nagui also went
(06:55):
into chemistry. That was something he decided after spending more
than a decade studying in Germany. During that time, he
had assimilated into German culture in a lot of ways.
He had converted to Christianity, married to German woman, and
embraced Western science. When he went back to Japan in
eighteen eighty three, he worked to combine the science training
(07:17):
he had received in Europe with the traditions of Asian
herbal medicine, and he did this in his lab at
the University of Tokyo, where he was a chemistry and
pharmacology professor.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
The guy started working with a plant called mahuang. The
Latin name is Efedra senica and Efedro senca is an
herb that grows as a shrub and the stem and
branches of it are the parts that are used for
herbal medicine. It has been used for centuries in Asia
to treat an assortment of symptoms usually associated with cold,
(07:48):
so think things like congestion, fever, and headaches. It has
also been marketed throughout the years as a weight loss
supplement around the world, although its use was banned in
the US in two thousand and four because of the
risks of things like high blood pressure, heart attack, and stroke,
as well as mental side effects like anxiety and irritability.
(08:09):
But Nagai is the first person to isolate the chemical
compound of fedrin from mahuang, and he did this after
he noticed a crystalline substance in the extractions that he
had taken from the plant and started experimenting with that.
In eighteen eighty five, Die Nipon Pharmaceutical Company started manufacturing
a fedron based on this work for asthma treatment, and
(08:32):
then building on that work. Over the next several years,
Niguai's lab was able to synthesize the first methamphetamine. That
lab continued in this area of research for years in
the hands of Nagai's proteges, and over time the intense
stimulant nature of methamphetamine was studied, continuing well after Nagai
died in nineteen twenty nine. At the same time that
(08:55):
Nagai and his lab were working with herbal extractions, other
scientists were working on ways to synthesize a fedrin without
the mahuang. One of these was Romanian chemist Lazar at Ilianu,
working on creating similar molecular compounds.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
To those in ephedra. He did manage to synthesize amphetamine
in Berlin, that was in eighteen eighty seven, but he
didn't go much farther than that with his work. He
moved on to other projects, specifically developing a method for
refining crude oil. It wasn't until a few decades later
that another chemist, Gordon Alice, started to work on the
(09:34):
idea of using synthetic afedrin to create amphetamine. Alice, who
was British but was working in the US at the time,
was apparently not even aware of the work that Adelianu
had done. Alice was hoping to capture the medicinal benefits
of a fedrin in regard to things like asthma, and
once he had his synthesized version, he tested it first
(09:57):
on his pet guinea pig, who showed improvement in congestion,
and then with a colleague standing by for observation and safety,
Alice tested it on himself and like his pet, he
could breathe better, and he also noted that he kind
of felt amazing. He was also apparently very talkative and
apparently his blood pressure was very high. So with this
(10:20):
early testing completed, Alice patented amphetamine sulfate in nineteen thirty two,
and then he pitched his invention to the pharmaceutical industry
and the company Smith, Klein and French partnered with him
to roll out the drug known as Ben's a Dream.
And that was as we mentioned, Ben's a Dream that
athletes used at the nineteen thirty six Berlin Olympics. Makes
(10:44):
sense that they would if it was letting people breathe
better and have more energy.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Coming up, we will talk more about Houshold's work, but
first we'll pause for a sponsor break. By the time
Fritz Houshald turned to Negui's work, many chemists and pharmacologists
(11:11):
around the world knew about that work, and after studying
the available information and through his own experiments, Houschuld and
his team at Temler were able to create a synthetic
form of the Guy's methamphetamine that did not require the
e fedrasenca plant. By the end of nineteen thirty seven,
Temler had patented how Child's production process and had put
(11:33):
the drug into the market under the brand name Pervetin.
There was a massive marketing campaign behind this launch. Temler
hired an agency called mattisen Son, and the agency's approach
was inspired by the marketing of Coca Cola. This was
also because Coca Cola was considered their main competitor. So
(11:53):
when this is written about in a lot of modern articles,
it's often kind of described as this being an issue
of Temler trying to counter the cocaine containing SODA's effects
on consumers and offering theirs as an alternative. But that's
not really correct, because Coca Cola no longer contained cocaine
after nineteen twenty nine, so almost a decade before Temler
(12:17):
patented their process, and even when Coca Cola did still
contain cocaine, it was a very very small amount, so
probably not really comparable to what Temler was making with pervetin.
But nothing about the promotion of pervetin described it as
a drug. They just described it as something that could
enhance a person's life, and as a consequence, nineteen thirty
(12:40):
eight saw a lot of households in Germany buying pervetin
over the counter. So at face value, this would seem
like it's contradictory to the late nineteen thirties ideology of
Nazi Germany. At that time, when that warped concept of
physical purity was being touted as the apex of humanity,
(13:00):
drug use was generally really looked down on. Drugs were
associated with weakness and the lower class, and yet pervetin
was just happily adopted throughout all levels of German culture.
And that's because it was marketed not as a drug
but as a supplement that made people better, and so
that was right in line with the Nazi ideal of
(13:23):
a superhuman and it made people feel strong and confident,
and that also did align with the Nazi ideology. Advertisements
for pervetin touted it as a quote stimulant for the
psyche and the circulatory system, and those ads then offered
a list of things that pervetin could treat, including depression, hypotension, fatigue, narcolepsy,
(13:49):
and postoperative convalescence. Knowing that this drug makes people intensely
energetic makes it seem pretty dangerous to give to somebody
for postop recovery. But it was so dangerous in so
many other ways that that seems kind of a small,
petty detail.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Yeah, it was translating one of the packaging or one
of the advertisements that I found online, and I was
just thinking, like how many people popped their stitches because
they were like, I feel great, Yeah, I gotta get
out of this bed even though I'm supposed to be resting.
Gotta get movin U. Although there had been some clinical
trials before pervetin went to market, they were certainly not
(14:30):
as robust as anything that would be legally required today.
After it was released, a psychiatrist named Fritz Flugel ran
his own tests on patients at a psychiatric hospital, and
while he did see increased energy that in some cases
seemed at least in the short term, almost miraculous, Flugel
also saw the downside. He noted that the drug could
(14:52):
increase anxiety, and he actually reported this to Temler, so
there was a degree of understanding that pervetin might have
some unwe wanted side effects, including being habit forming inside
of Temna Verka. The package label on pervetin was updated
with this information to suggest a slightly lower dose and
(15:13):
to include the warning that it was to be used
quote only from time to time, with an exclamation point
on the end. Listen. That warning was certainly not enough
to keep people from developing habitual use problems with it.
Perveton users didn't experience fatigue, and initially anxiety and stress
were replaced with a sense of euphoria, so of course
(15:35):
it was addictive. The perception of performance enhancement made it
very popular for both students and professionals, and then eventually,
to expand the user market, Temler started producing a chocolate
that contained pervetin and that was designed to appeal to
housewives who wanted a boost to get their daily chores
done more quickly. In a paper published in Psychiatric Times
(15:59):
and twenty sixteen, author Greg Agigean cautions that it's actually
really difficult to understand the true degree to which Germans
were using pervetin quote. In the years leading up to
the Nazi seizure of power, doctors dominated public discussions about
drug consumption, and they tended to reinforce a familiar distinction.
(16:22):
While prescribed drugs were hailed as epitomes of medical progress,
drugs taken by lay people for personal enjoyment, such as
cocaine and opium were demonized and associated with the socially
deviant and marginalized, such as criminals and homosexuals. This therefore
means that one needs to be on guard for the
(16:45):
often unacknowledged biases of existing sources of information. Really, that's
good advice for any research. Yeah, even people that are
contemporary accounts consider going on have biases. It is not
only our lens as we look back. Pervetin, though, got
(17:06):
the attention of a physiologist named Otto Friedrich Ranka. Ranca
was born in Munich in eighteen ninety nine. He was
the son of a psychiatrist, and as a young man
he studied both medicine and mathematics. He became part of
the Military Medical Academy in Berlin in the mid nineteen thirties,
specializing in aviation medicine. He became a member of the
(17:29):
Vermacht Medical Corps in the late nineteen thirties, rising up
through the ranks as an advisor to eventually become director
of the Research Institute of Defense Physiology for the Nazis.
In that role, Ronca was ever on the lookout for
anything that would give Germany the upper hand in the
coming war. One particular area of concern was fatigue among
(17:53):
the troops.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Pervetin though was already sort of tested on the general
public throughout nineteen thirty eight, so Ka had an enough
information to believe that it had the potential to be
quote an excellent substance for rousing a weary squad. Even so,
he did conduct his own tests, beginning with German medical officers.
(18:14):
He used a blind study where some participants got pervetent,
another's got benzoderam or caffeine or placebos. In these tests,
Roanka gave the participants math problems to solve, and he
kept them at it for more than ten hours. The
Pervetent group whipped through all of these tests. Although there's
(18:36):
answers were not necessarily correct, they were alert, not necessarily
focused in a functional way. Though Still, Ronka thought this
test was a success and he deemed pervetent quote a
militarily valuable substance.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Next, Ronca wanted to expand his test to the troops,
and he pitched that, but initially nothing moved forward because
the proposal got a bit wadded up in the Reich's bureaucracy.
But while there wasn't an official endorsement or order to
use it, a lot of the medical officers that Ranka
had worked with were still taking Perveton on their own
(19:14):
after the testing ended. They liked the effects, and through
their use, use then spread quickly to other members of
the military. By the time the war was eminent, a
lot of the Wehrmacht was already taking pervetin.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
Raka himself took pervetin and he got in the habit
of working for days at a time without any sleep.
He noted in writing that Perveton enabled him to go
for dozens of hours without feeling tired. The marketing of
Pervetin had in fact appealed to a lot of the
Third Reich's officers as they sought to keep up with
(19:51):
just an ever growing list of demands from Adolf Hitler.
As they reported and conferred with one another about how
effective this vrog was at making them ultra productive, it
was only natural that Germany's military leadership would support the
idea of giving it to soldiers.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
So the first group of soldiers to be officially issued
perveton by the Wehrmacht was the third Tank Division, and
this was done in nineteen thirty eight when Germany moved
into occupied Czechoslovakia, starting with the annexation of what Germany
called Sudetenland. That's a made up propaganda term for the
areas of the country that had a German speaking population.
(20:31):
And while it was successful, this occupation was not a
combat situation. Ranka and other Vermocht medical officials were really
curious to see how pervetin worked in active battle.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
So when Germany invaded Poland in the autumn of nineteen
thirty nine, a lot of its soldiers were using pervetin
and they subdued Polish resistance within a matter of weeks.
The success of the German army in this first Blitzkrieg
stoked the drug's reputation as one that was associated with
strength and success, so both the military and the general
(21:06):
population use continued to grow to go up. During the
invasion of Ardan and France in nineteen forty, a route
that had been believed to be impassable by the Allies,
perveten fueled the Germans through dense forests that would have
deterred most other enemies. We have to note here, though,
(21:26):
that although many soldiers were taking pervetin, and though it
was issued to German soldiers with a degree of frequency,
there was not ever a blanket order regarding perveten's distribution
to the Wehrmach's troops. Yeah, I just want to make
that very clear, because sometimes you'll read accounts that suggest
that this was given out as a standard part of
(21:48):
ration packs, and in some cases it was issued, but
it wasn't all the time to all ration packs. As
we know today, the side effects and dependency that come
with methem fatamine use are absolutely horrible. In addition to
substance use disorder, users frequently develop insomnia, confusion, anxiety, mood instability, psychosis,
(22:11):
and a decline in cognitive function, and these side effects
can continue when a person is not actively using the drug,
and these side effects absolutely started to appear in the
German population that used pervetin. The usual packaging of pervetin
was a small metal cylinder with a screw cap that
contained thirty tablets. Each tablet contained zero point zero zero
(22:36):
three milligrams of methanphetamine. The label had a contradictory message
to that only from time to time copy that we
mentioned earlier, it suggested taking two to four tablets each day.
Complaints started rolling into Temler's offices about the problems civilians
(22:57):
were having with it. The company did not take the
drug off the market, though, it just transitioned from it
being available over the counter to requiring a prescription. That
happened in nineteen forty one, while the war was still
in full swing and German soldiers were still being issued
methamphetamine pretty routinely. According to an account written by a
(23:19):
German medical officer in nineteen forty two, when some of
the men in his unit were exhausted to the point
that they had laid down in the snow to just
wait for death, he administered pervetin, and thirty minutes later
they were all up and cheerful.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
Pervetin was a boon in the eyes of Nazi military leadership.
Soldiers that used it did not get tired, They did
not complain of hunger, even if their rations were running out.
They felt euphoric and confident, even in the horrific conditions
of war. Prolonged use led to a lot of problems.
Of course, the combination of substance misuse and combat stressors
(23:59):
le to a very high degree of psychosis in soldiers,
and this manifested in a variety of ways, the paranoia
that's common from methamphetamine use, as well as deaths by suicide,
and in some cases, soldiers even turning on their own comrades,
so some of them were shooting themselves and some of
them were shooting the men alongside them. Even if a
(24:20):
soldier was not experiencing these psychological problems from using pervetin,
the drug was still taking a toll on the body.
We know, living in a constantly stimulated state without rest
is incredibly bad for anyone, and young men who should
have been healthy started having heart attacks. Heinrich Bull, who
(24:42):
won a Nobel Prize for literature in nineteen seventy two,
was from an anti Nazi family, but was conscripted into
service for Germany during the war. He was in his
early twenties and he got hooked on purvetin, so much
so that he wrote his family numerous times asking them
to send him more. What he was issued by the
(25:04):
Vermacht as a soldier just wasn't cutting it. He wrote
about how the drug made him forget how awful the
reality was that he was in and that it enabled
him to feel happiness again, as well as being better
for his alertness than multiple cups of coffee. And of course,
Adolf Hitler was also interested in the benefits of a
(25:26):
drug that could make him more alert and seemingly stronger.
He began receiving IV doses of methamphetamine from his doctor,
although these were typically combined with other things like glucose
and vitamin His doctor, Teoda Morrel, kept copious notes about
the treatment that he gave the furor. There have been
(25:47):
a lot of rumors and incorrect information about Hitler's various
health concerns over the years, although before the war he
seemed to only be dealing with fairly minor list of
things like ezema, insomnia, and some gi issues, But starting
in nineteen forty one, he started to have an array
of problems, and Morrell gave him many medications in addition
(26:09):
to methamphetamine, including yucadol, which is a version of oxycodone.
There have been a number of historians who believe that
Hitler's use of pervetin began to affect his judgment and
caused him to make a number of miscalculations that were
instrumental in bringing about the fall of the Third Reich.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
In a moment, we'll talk a little bit about the
use of stimulants among the Allies in World War Two,
as well as another Axis power. We will do that
after we hear from the sponsors that keep Stuffy Mius
in history class going. Stimulant misuse during the war was
(26:52):
not an exclusively German problem. Just as Fritz Household had
been inspired in part by the rumors of beneficial drug
use on the part of US Olympians in creating pervetin,
the Allied forces were very interested in this alleged miracle
drug that the Germans had created that enabled their military
to fight with greater vigor. So it wasn't long before
(27:15):
the Allies were testing out pervetin with their own people.
Specifically pilots. According to a BBC article from March of
twenty twenty four, this interest started after a vial of
pervetin tablets was found in the pocket of a German
pilot after he had been shot down. The Allies tests
noted increased alertness with pervetin use, but they also documented
(27:39):
the downsides like agitation and the way pilots started to
have psychological issues and perception problems after taking multiple doses.
While it made people more alert initially than it led
to things like compulsive behavior and poor decision making, so
methamphetamine use was as an option for US and British forces,
(28:03):
although ben Zadream was still given to Allied soldiers. Japan
was also aware of Germany's use of pervetin for performance enhancement,
and they started to manufacture their own version, called Philipon,
which was given to kamikaze pilots. Near the end of
nineteen thirty nine, Reich health leader Leonardocanti tried to pull
(28:26):
back on perveton use as the drugs and negative side
effects were reported up the chain of command. He actually
made a speech at one point to the Nazi Parties
Medical Association stating quote Anyone who thinks they can eliminate
fatigue with pervetin can be certain that its boosting effect
will one day abruptly cease. It may be useful to
(28:46):
combat fatigue in the case of a short flight, but
in the long term only sleep can truly compensate for
a state of fatigue. We have to pause here for
a moment because a lot of the time articles about
pervetin's un use by the Third Reich make it sound
almost like Kanti was because some kind of a reasonable
voice here within the Nazi structure, and that's flatly not correct.
(29:11):
To be clear, Kanti was a monster. His only interest
was in protecting German assets. He was one of the
architects of the various processes of so called racial enhancements
under Hitler's rule. That meant he helped plan programs like
Tiergarten Strasofour, which murdered more than seventy thousand people because
(29:33):
they had incurable diseases or hereditary conditions that fell outside
of that Nazi ideal of physical perfection. He also worked
on a children's euthanasia program with doctor Carl Brandt, which
led to the murders of thousands of babies and children.
His concerns about Pervetent were linked to just making sure
(29:55):
they had enough warm bodies to keep killing their enemies,
and about maintaining a image of a perfect race. This
was not out of any kind of altruistic or even
medically ethical motivation.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
Yeah, I get a little bit frustrated when it's like, well,
one Nazi understood, and I'm like, oh, that's not given
too much credit. My guy was still a Nazi, that's
the problem. Still a Nazi, and he did horrifying things.
Those are only a couple of the horrifying things that
he did that Tracy just mentioned. But even though he
did raise a flag over this, Kanti's concerns were dismissed
(30:29):
and his warnings were not heated by his superiors. In
their eyes, if pervoting got them closer to their goals,
it was worth any of the downsides, and Timbler, the
company that made it, didn't seem to be especially worried
about the side effects either. By nineteen forty, the company
was producing more than eight hundred thousand pervetent tablets a
day just to try to keep up with demand. The
(30:52):
use of methamphetamine made Germany formidable and terrifying to its
enemies for a while. Anyway, Soldiers who don't sleep can
keep marching. Tank drivers could just keep going, constantly advancing
the line as they were ordered to go for days
without stopping, and remember they were all happy and confident
(31:13):
as well. The blitzkrieg strategy of relentless surprise attacks was
made possible in large part by the troops being drugged.
Nineteen forty was really the heyday of purveton use for Germany.
By the end of that year, instances of heart attacks
among the troops and officers had started to tally up,
and soldiers were given less and less of the drug
(31:35):
over time. There were still instances, though, of surge rationing
during demanding campaigns. After the Reich collapsed and after Hitler's suicide,
and well after the war was over, Temler continued to
manufacture Pervetin for prescription use. It also continued to sell
it to military organizations. It was purchased in bulk by
(31:58):
both East and West German militaries because even though it
had caused a lot of trauma in its World War
II use, it was still perceived as being worth all
of those problems if it could give soldiers an edge
and enable them to continue fighting for longer with fewer rations.
West Germany discontinued their issuing of perveton to soldiers in
(32:19):
the nineteen seventies, but East Germany continued well into the
nineteen eighties, and Germany was not the drug's only market
despite those early tests with pilots during World War II,
after which perveton use was abandoned, the US also reportedly
used pervetin during the Vietnam War.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
Leonardo Conti was unsuccessful in his effort to limit purvetent
use in the German army. He died by suicide in
a cell in Nuremberg on October sixth, nineteen forty five,
rather than facing trial. Fritz Hauschuld died in Leipzig on
January thirteenth, nineteen seventy four. His invention, Pervetent stayed on
(33:00):
the market until nineteen eighty eight. As we mentioned earlier,
throughout the Second World War, the United States used benzadrine
for all the same reasons that the Germans were using pervetin. Similarly,
benzadrine had a huge jump in civilian use after the
war was over, as soldiers returned home to non military
(33:22):
work and as new users picked it up. Benzadrine became
available only with a prescription in nineteen fifty nine, but
for a long time, and fetamine was prescribed in the
US with pretty minimal medical consultation for everything from depression
to weight loss. It is of course also habit forming.
(33:44):
In nineteen seventy and fetamine was classified as a controlled
substance when the Controlled Substances Act was passed, and today
it's a Schedule too drug that means it has the
potential for abuse and dependence. For context, another Schedule two
drug is fentanyl. Methamphetamine is of course still a commonly
(34:05):
taken drug, and meth labs making the crystallized version of
it seem to pop up everywhere and create a scourge
on communities due to its high degree of addiction. I
saw more articles about this that would talk about the
war and then be like and last year eleven thousand
meth labs were busted in this country and that was
from various countries. I'm pulling numbers, but it's an ongoing,
(34:30):
big problem. Yeah. And also to be clear, stimulants are
still part of military programs around the world.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
I also have a little bit of listener mail which
is very peppy and about a thing I'm addicted to,
which is handicrafts, which just seems a little bit more
of a positive note to end this one on. Yeah,
this is from our listener. I'm guessing Gina. Her spelling
(34:59):
makes me not ae hundred confident of that, so hopefully
I got it right. Gina writes high Lovelies. I just
listened to the Embroidery series and I wanted to write
in with two related points. One, you noted that humans
often turned to embroidery and other handwork during challenging times.
During winter twenty twenty, we all remember that first winter
of the Covid lockdown. I started a seasonal project called
(35:21):
Winter of Care and Repair, in which I mended, tended, repaired, maintained,
or otherwise cared for my belongings each day between the
winter solstice and spring equinox. I have always been into knitting, quilting, sewing, etc.
And had been getting into visible mending at the time,
so ended up doing a lot of garment mending and
doing something with my hands and eyes and brain is
(35:43):
really grounding for me as well. Six years later, Winter
of Care and Repair is still going strong with people
all over the world creating care and repair plans of
their own. And I get so much feedback about how
much people love doing something with their hands when things
are stressful. So there is an online spot other listeners
want to go check this out. Just do a search
for winter care and Repair you will find it. Gin
(36:05):
writes too, I wanted to share this really amazing Spanish
author illustrator embroiderer Beeleima. She published this amazing autobiographical graphic
novel based on her childhood perception of her mother's struggles
with mental illness. Illustrated in both drawings and embroidery, it
is available in both French and Spanish, but not English yet.
(36:26):
I found this book when walking through a bookshop in Spain.
The obviously embroidered book cover stopped me in my tracks
as I glimpsed it out of the corner of my eye.
Both the story and the illustrations are tremendously impactful. She
is super talented and I highly recommend checking out her
work and for the obligatory pet tax. Are two little
furry loves. Lucy is our fifteen and a half year
(36:48):
old Border Collie mix, pictured here enjoying a sunny December
Day at the beach Skippio is our two year old
one eyed rescue cat seen here assisting my partner with
some vehicle mechanics that he clearly takes very seriously, and
a bonus picture of the two of them snuggled together. Seriously.
I cannot even okay, this dog is so I love
(37:09):
old dogs. There's just something so sweet about them that
transcends what the Earth should even allow in terms of sweetness.
And this kiddy is so sweet, and I love the
their buddies. Okay, but I was very excited that Beelema's
work came up because, in case you don't know Gina
(37:31):
or other listeners, there has actually been a short film
made out of that graphic novel, which is also animated embroidery. Nice.
I haven't seen it. I've only seen the trailer for it.
It looks brain breakingly amazing, and because I'm also an
animation it really hit my magic zone where the backgrounds
(37:51):
are all hand embroidered and then scanned in, and then
the animation uses embroidered components that are then digitized and animated,
and it looks like it's so beautiful I can't even amazing,
So seek that out. There have been a few articles
about it lately because it has finished recently and it's
(38:11):
starting to be shown, and I just am blown away
by how beautiful it is. I love when art surprises me,
and I really love that kind of way of blending things.
I am also very fascinated by the idea of, you know,
how kids perceive things like like mental illness in their
authority figures. And it's just a beautiful story and it's
(38:34):
an amazing, amazing piece of work as a graphic novel.
And I am so excited for this movie. So thank you,
thank you, thank you for writing me that, because it
reminded me that I could tell people about the follow
up to it that has taken several years to complete.
So I am not sure yet where to see it,
so hopefully I will find that out soon because I
want to see it desperately. It is very much in
(38:55):
my wheelhouse. If you would like to write to us
and share your thoughts on embroidery or animation or anything
really uh, you don't even have to have pet pictures,
although we sure do love them. You can do that
at History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. Thank you for
joining us, and if you have not subscribed to the
(39:16):
podcast yet. That is very easy to do. You can
do it on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen
to your favorite shows.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Frye and I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Wilson.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Hey. For obvious reasons, I have been thinking about people
in military gear being very, very aggressive a lot. I
hate it, Yeah, I hate it so much. That made
me think about a topic that I've sort of had
on a back burner for a while and been like,
how do I tiptoe around this one and like really
get into it because there are a lot of opinions
(00:38):
within the history space about it. That is the use
of very powerful stimulants during World War Two, particularly among
the Wehrmacht, that's the Nazi German military forces. Listen, I'm
not accusing anybody of using anything. I'm not saying anything
is happening. I'm just saying it reminded me of that
seeing aggressive behavior of people in uniforms reminds me of
(01:01):
films I have seen of weirdly aggressive behavior of people
in uniforms. So in twenty fifteen, this whole topic really
exploded in the consciousness of a lot of historians that
particularly are interested in World War Two. Because a non
historian writer named Norman Ohler, who is German, published a
book that was titled Der Toto Rausch probably said that
(01:23):
very poorly, but that means the Total Rush. And it
was about drug use in Nazi Germany, specifically in the
military as well as in the civilian population. And that
book was translated into English. It was published in twenty
seventeen as Blitzed Drugs in Nazi Germany. That book became
a New York Times bestseller. It won a lot of awards,
(01:45):
and this was a really attention getting book in both languages.
It was also translated into more than a dozen others.
It's a very popular piece of writing. Ohler, who had
actually intended to write a novel, initially got so deep
down the rabbit hole of archival information that he found
available that that led him to pivot to writing a
(02:07):
nonfiction book. And in that book he really laid bare
something that had already been talked about for years and
in some cases been speculated about. And there is supporting
documentation that people already knew before that. But this really
put the whole puzzle together in a way that was new,
and that is the seemingly contradictory use of methamphetamine in
(02:29):
the military of an administration that touted, in its very
warped ideology, purity and strength and health as the signifiers
of a perfect race of humans. There has been in
the last decade plus as this book has been out,
a lot of push and pull from historians, as researchers
(02:51):
really tried to identify the true degree to which drug
use was or was not pervasive among the German public
and its mililitary during that time, and how that compares
to stimulant use by the Allies. This is a tricky
thing to measure because it's not as though everybody is
recording every time they pop a tablet in their mouth.
(03:14):
A number of historians have indicated that they feel Oler
is a bit too sensationalist in his work, But there is,
at the same time plenty of information that shows that
there was definitely a lot of stimulant use during World
War Two, and it was not all in Germany's ranks.
So today we are going to look at all of
that and figure out how speed impacted the war, but
(03:36):
also the public in general and how it continues to
And to kick all of this off, we are going
to talk about a German chemist who is often credited
with the invention of methamphetamine, although as we will see,
that is not entirely accurate. Fritz Kurt Hauschild was born
on December eighth in Kimnitz, Germany. His father was a
(03:57):
doctor and Fritz also studied medicine, but he really focused
on chemistry. He enrolled in medical school in Guttingen, Germany
at the age of twenty and four years later, in
nineteen thirty two, he became a certified chemist. Two more
years after that, he completed a doctorate in medicine when
he submitted his dissertation, which was titled on the Pharmacology
(04:20):
and Chemistry of Curing.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Curing is an alkaloid that is used for its anti
inflammatory properties. He took his exam and received his full
medical credentials that year. He had a year long residency.
During that time he worked in two places. One was
that a women's clinic. He also worked at the Pharmacological
Institute of Leipzig. When his residency ended, he was hired
(04:47):
at the Pharmacological Institute as an assistant and he worked
there for two years before moving on to the Temler works.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
So tem Leverka was founded in nineteen seventeen as a
German pharmaceutical company, and it still exists today as the
Temler Group, although it is now part of the larger
company a Nova Group. In nineteen thirty three, Temler started
a large expansion initiative, so when Housechild entered the company
in nineteen thirty seven, it was already rapidly growing. In
(05:19):
nineteen thirty six, Benza Dream was used by a number
of athletes at the Summer Olympic Games in Berlin, or
at least that was the rumor in Germany. We are
absolutely coming back to benson Dream, but at the time
amphetamines were absolutely legal in sport. There were not any
doping tests for it, so it is actually unclear who
may or may not have been using it. But in
(05:41):
Germany there was a common belief that the American competitors
specifically were using benzadrene because it was the only way
in their minds to explain the US team's performance. Remember,
the nineteen thirty six Games were supposed to be this
showcase of German superiority, and when people like Jesseoaans really
trounced them, it made them and immediately think there must
(06:04):
be something suspicious going on. This belief inspired the German
pharmacological industry to seek out their own stimulants that they
could give athletes and other people to give them an edge.
At Timler, that project fell to Fritz hou Shilden. He
turned to the nineteenth century work of a Japanese chemist
named Nagai Nagaoshi, as well as to European chemists who
(06:28):
had worked on ephadrin projects. So for context.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Nagai was born west of Osaka in the Tokushima Prefecture
in eighteen forty five. That was just as the fall
of shogunate rule was beginning. Japan was shifting away from
isolationist policies, and like hou Schild's father, Nagai's father was
in medicine. He practiced herbal medicine, so Nagui also went
(06:55):
into chemistry. That was something he decided after spending more
than a decade studying in Germany. During that time, he
had assimilated into German culture in a lot of ways.
He had converted to Christianity, married to German woman, and
embraced Western science. When he went back to Japan in
eighteen eighty three, he worked to combine the science training
(07:17):
he had received in Europe with the traditions of Asian
herbal medicine, and he did this in his lab at
the University of Tokyo, where he was a chemistry and
pharmacology professor.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
The guy started working with a plant called mahuang. The
Latin name is Efedra senica and Efedro senca is an
herb that grows as a shrub and the stem and
branches of it are the parts that are used for
herbal medicine. It has been used for centuries in Asia
to treat an assortment of symptoms usually associated with cold,
(07:48):
so think things like congestion, fever, and headaches. It has
also been marketed throughout the years as a weight loss
supplement around the world, although its use was banned in
the US in two thousand and four because of the
risks of things like high blood pressure, heart attack, and stroke,
as well as mental side effects like anxiety and irritability.
(08:09):
But Nagai is the first person to isolate the chemical
compound of fedrin from mahuang, and he did this after
he noticed a crystalline substance in the extractions that he
had taken from the plant and started experimenting with that.
In eighteen eighty five, Die Nipon Pharmaceutical Company started manufacturing
a fedron based on this work for asthma treatment, and
(08:32):
then building on that work. Over the next several years,
Niguai's lab was able to synthesize the first methamphetamine. That
lab continued in this area of research for years in
the hands of Nagai's proteges, and over time the intense
stimulant nature of methamphetamine was studied, continuing well after Nagai
died in nineteen twenty nine. At the same time that
(08:55):
Nagai and his lab were working with herbal extractions, other
scientists were working on ways to synthesize a fedrin without
the mahuang. One of these was Romanian chemist Lazar at Ilianu,
working on creating similar molecular compounds.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
To those in ephedra. He did manage to synthesize amphetamine
in Berlin, that was in eighteen eighty seven, but he
didn't go much farther than that with his work. He
moved on to other projects, specifically developing a method for
refining crude oil. It wasn't until a few decades later
that another chemist, Gordon Alice, started to work on the
(09:34):
idea of using synthetic afedrin to create amphetamine. Alice, who
was British but was working in the US at the time,
was apparently not even aware of the work that Adelianu
had done. Alice was hoping to capture the medicinal benefits
of a fedrin in regard to things like asthma, and
once he had his synthesized version, he tested it first
(09:57):
on his pet guinea pig, who showed improvement in congestion,
and then with a colleague standing by for observation and safety,
Alice tested it on himself and like his pet, he
could breathe better, and he also noted that he kind
of felt amazing. He was also apparently very talkative and
apparently his blood pressure was very high. So with this
(10:20):
early testing completed, Alice patented amphetamine sulfate in nineteen thirty two,
and then he pitched his invention to the pharmaceutical industry
and the company Smith, Klein and French partnered with him
to roll out the drug known as Ben's a Dream.
And that was as we mentioned, Ben's a Dream that
athletes used at the nineteen thirty six Berlin Olympics. Makes
(10:44):
sense that they would if it was letting people breathe
better and have more energy.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Coming up, we will talk more about Houshold's work, but
first we'll pause for a sponsor break. By the time
Fritz Houshald turned to Negui's work, many chemists and pharmacologists
(11:11):
around the world knew about that work, and after studying
the available information and through his own experiments, Houschuld and
his team at Temler were able to create a synthetic
form of the Guy's methamphetamine that did not require the
e fedrasenca plant. By the end of nineteen thirty seven,
Temler had patented how Child's production process and had put
(11:33):
the drug into the market under the brand name Pervetin.
There was a massive marketing campaign behind this launch. Temler
hired an agency called mattisen Son, and the agency's approach
was inspired by the marketing of Coca Cola. This was
also because Coca Cola was considered their main competitor. So
(11:53):
when this is written about in a lot of modern articles,
it's often kind of described as this being an issue
of Temler trying to counter the cocaine containing SODA's effects
on consumers and offering theirs as an alternative. But that's
not really correct, because Coca Cola no longer contained cocaine
after nineteen twenty nine, so almost a decade before Temler
(12:17):
patented their process, and even when Coca Cola did still
contain cocaine, it was a very very small amount, so
probably not really comparable to what Temler was making with pervetin.
But nothing about the promotion of pervetin described it as
a drug. They just described it as something that could
enhance a person's life, and as a consequence, nineteen thirty
(12:40):
eight saw a lot of households in Germany buying pervetin
over the counter. So at face value, this would seem
like it's contradictory to the late nineteen thirties ideology of
Nazi Germany. At that time, when that warped concept of
physical purity was being touted as the apex of humanity,
(13:00):
drug use was generally really looked down on. Drugs were
associated with weakness and the lower class, and yet pervetin
was just happily adopted throughout all levels of German culture.
And that's because it was marketed not as a drug
but as a supplement that made people better, and so
that was right in line with the Nazi ideal of
(13:23):
a superhuman and it made people feel strong and confident,
and that also did align with the Nazi ideology. Advertisements
for pervetin touted it as a quote stimulant for the
psyche and the circulatory system, and those ads then offered
a list of things that pervetin could treat, including depression, hypotension, fatigue, narcolepsy,
(13:49):
and postoperative convalescence. Knowing that this drug makes people intensely
energetic makes it seem pretty dangerous to give to somebody
for postop recovery. But it was so dangerous in so
many other ways that that seems kind of a small,
petty detail.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Yeah, it was translating one of the packaging or one
of the advertisements that I found online, and I was
just thinking, like how many people popped their stitches because
they were like, I feel great, Yeah, I gotta get
out of this bed even though I'm supposed to be resting.
Gotta get movin U. Although there had been some clinical
trials before pervetin went to market, they were certainly not
(14:30):
as robust as anything that would be legally required today.
After it was released, a psychiatrist named Fritz Flugel ran
his own tests on patients at a psychiatric hospital, and
while he did see increased energy that in some cases
seemed at least in the short term, almost miraculous, Flugel
also saw the downside. He noted that the drug could
(14:52):
increase anxiety, and he actually reported this to Temler, so
there was a degree of understanding that pervetin might have
some unwe wanted side effects, including being habit forming inside
of Temna Verka. The package label on pervetin was updated
with this information to suggest a slightly lower dose and
(15:13):
to include the warning that it was to be used
quote only from time to time, with an exclamation point
on the end. Listen. That warning was certainly not enough
to keep people from developing habitual use problems with it.
Perveton users didn't experience fatigue, and initially anxiety and stress
were replaced with a sense of euphoria, so of course
(15:35):
it was addictive. The perception of performance enhancement made it
very popular for both students and professionals, and then eventually,
to expand the user market, Temler started producing a chocolate
that contained pervetin and that was designed to appeal to
housewives who wanted a boost to get their daily chores
done more quickly. In a paper published in Psychiatric Times
(15:59):
and twenty sixteen, author Greg Agigean cautions that it's actually
really difficult to understand the true degree to which Germans
were using pervetin quote. In the years leading up to
the Nazi seizure of power, doctors dominated public discussions about
drug consumption, and they tended to reinforce a familiar distinction.
(16:22):
While prescribed drugs were hailed as epitomes of medical progress,
drugs taken by lay people for personal enjoyment, such as
cocaine and opium were demonized and associated with the socially
deviant and marginalized, such as criminals and homosexuals. This therefore
means that one needs to be on guard for the
(16:45):
often unacknowledged biases of existing sources of information. Really, that's
good advice for any research. Yeah, even people that are
contemporary accounts consider going on have biases. It is not
only our lens as we look back. Pervetin, though, got
(17:06):
the attention of a physiologist named Otto Friedrich Ranka. Ranca
was born in Munich in eighteen ninety nine. He was
the son of a psychiatrist, and as a young man
he studied both medicine and mathematics. He became part of
the Military Medical Academy in Berlin in the mid nineteen thirties,
specializing in aviation medicine. He became a member of the
(17:29):
Vermacht Medical Corps in the late nineteen thirties, rising up
through the ranks as an advisor to eventually become director
of the Research Institute of Defense Physiology for the Nazis.
In that role, Ronca was ever on the lookout for
anything that would give Germany the upper hand in the
coming war. One particular area of concern was fatigue among
(17:53):
the troops.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Pervetin though was already sort of tested on the general
public throughout nineteen thirty eight, so Ka had an enough
information to believe that it had the potential to be
quote an excellent substance for rousing a weary squad. Even so,
he did conduct his own tests, beginning with German medical officers.
(18:14):
He used a blind study where some participants got pervetent,
another's got benzoderam or caffeine or placebos. In these tests,
Roanka gave the participants math problems to solve, and he
kept them at it for more than ten hours. The
Pervetent group whipped through all of these tests. Although there's
(18:36):
answers were not necessarily correct, they were alert, not necessarily
focused in a functional way. Though Still, Ronka thought this
test was a success and he deemed pervetent quote a
militarily valuable substance.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Next, Ronca wanted to expand his test to the troops,
and he pitched that, but initially nothing moved forward because
the proposal got a bit wadded up in the Reich's bureaucracy.
But while there wasn't an official endorsement or order to
use it, a lot of the medical officers that Ranka
had worked with were still taking Perveton on their own
(19:14):
after the testing ended. They liked the effects, and through
their use, use then spread quickly to other members of
the military. By the time the war was eminent, a
lot of the Wehrmacht was already taking pervetin.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
Raka himself took pervetin and he got in the habit
of working for days at a time without any sleep.
He noted in writing that Perveton enabled him to go
for dozens of hours without feeling tired. The marketing of
Pervetin had in fact appealed to a lot of the
Third Reich's officers as they sought to keep up with
(19:51):
just an ever growing list of demands from Adolf Hitler.
As they reported and conferred with one another about how
effective this vrog was at making them ultra productive, it
was only natural that Germany's military leadership would support the
idea of giving it to soldiers.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
So the first group of soldiers to be officially issued
perveton by the Wehrmacht was the third Tank Division, and
this was done in nineteen thirty eight when Germany moved
into occupied Czechoslovakia, starting with the annexation of what Germany
called Sudetenland. That's a made up propaganda term for the
areas of the country that had a German speaking population.
(20:31):
And while it was successful, this occupation was not a
combat situation. Ranka and other Vermocht medical officials were really
curious to see how pervetin worked in active battle.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
So when Germany invaded Poland in the autumn of nineteen
thirty nine, a lot of its soldiers were using pervetin
and they subdued Polish resistance within a matter of weeks.
The success of the German army in this first Blitzkrieg
stoked the drug's reputation as one that was associated with
strength and success, so both the military and the general
(21:06):
population use continued to grow to go up. During the
invasion of Ardan and France in nineteen forty, a route
that had been believed to be impassable by the Allies,
perveten fueled the Germans through dense forests that would have
deterred most other enemies. We have to note here, though,
(21:26):
that although many soldiers were taking pervetin, and though it
was issued to German soldiers with a degree of frequency,
there was not ever a blanket order regarding perveten's distribution
to the Wehrmach's troops. Yeah, I just want to make
that very clear, because sometimes you'll read accounts that suggest
that this was given out as a standard part of
(21:48):
ration packs, and in some cases it was issued, but
it wasn't all the time to all ration packs. As
we know today, the side effects and dependency that come
with methem fatamine use are absolutely horrible. In addition to
substance use disorder, users frequently develop insomnia, confusion, anxiety, mood instability, psychosis,
(22:11):
and a decline in cognitive function, and these side effects
can continue when a person is not actively using the drug,
and these side effects absolutely started to appear in the
German population that used pervetin. The usual packaging of pervetin
was a small metal cylinder with a screw cap that
contained thirty tablets. Each tablet contained zero point zero zero
(22:36):
three milligrams of methanphetamine. The label had a contradictory message
to that only from time to time copy that we
mentioned earlier, it suggested taking two to four tablets each day.
Complaints started rolling into Temler's offices about the problems civilians
(22:57):
were having with it. The company did not take the
drug off the market, though, it just transitioned from it
being available over the counter to requiring a prescription. That
happened in nineteen forty one, while the war was still
in full swing and German soldiers were still being issued
methamphetamine pretty routinely. According to an account written by a
(23:19):
German medical officer in nineteen forty two, when some of
the men in his unit were exhausted to the point
that they had laid down in the snow to just
wait for death, he administered pervetin, and thirty minutes later
they were all up and cheerful.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
Pervetin was a boon in the eyes of Nazi military leadership.
Soldiers that used it did not get tired, They did
not complain of hunger, even if their rations were running out.
They felt euphoric and confident, even in the horrific conditions
of war. Prolonged use led to a lot of problems.
Of course, the combination of substance misuse and combat stressors
(23:59):
le to a very high degree of psychosis in soldiers,
and this manifested in a variety of ways, the paranoia
that's common from methamphetamine use, as well as deaths by suicide,
and in some cases, soldiers even turning on their own comrades,
so some of them were shooting themselves and some of
them were shooting the men alongside them. Even if a
(24:20):
soldier was not experiencing these psychological problems from using pervetin,
the drug was still taking a toll on the body.
We know, living in a constantly stimulated state without rest
is incredibly bad for anyone, and young men who should
have been healthy started having heart attacks. Heinrich Bull, who
(24:42):
won a Nobel Prize for literature in nineteen seventy two,
was from an anti Nazi family, but was conscripted into
service for Germany during the war. He was in his
early twenties and he got hooked on purvetin, so much
so that he wrote his family numerous times asking them
to send him more. What he was issued by the
(25:04):
Vermacht as a soldier just wasn't cutting it. He wrote
about how the drug made him forget how awful the
reality was that he was in and that it enabled
him to feel happiness again, as well as being better
for his alertness than multiple cups of coffee. And of course,
Adolf Hitler was also interested in the benefits of a
(25:26):
drug that could make him more alert and seemingly stronger.
He began receiving IV doses of methamphetamine from his doctor,
although these were typically combined with other things like glucose
and vitamin His doctor, Teoda Morrel, kept copious notes about
the treatment that he gave the furor. There have been
(25:47):
a lot of rumors and incorrect information about Hitler's various
health concerns over the years, although before the war he
seemed to only be dealing with fairly minor list of
things like ezema, insomnia, and some gi issues, But starting
in nineteen forty one, he started to have an array
of problems, and Morrell gave him many medications in addition
(26:09):
to methamphetamine, including yucadol, which is a version of oxycodone.
There have been a number of historians who believe that
Hitler's use of pervetin began to affect his judgment and
caused him to make a number of miscalculations that were
instrumental in bringing about the fall of the Third Reich.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
In a moment, we'll talk a little bit about the
use of stimulants among the Allies in World War Two,
as well as another Axis power. We will do that
after we hear from the sponsors that keep Stuffy Mius
in history class going. Stimulant misuse during the war was
(26:52):
not an exclusively German problem. Just as Fritz Household had
been inspired in part by the rumors of beneficial drug
use on the part of US Olympians in creating pervetin,
the Allied forces were very interested in this alleged miracle
drug that the Germans had created that enabled their military
to fight with greater vigor. So it wasn't long before
(27:15):
the Allies were testing out pervetin with their own people.
Specifically pilots. According to a BBC article from March of
twenty twenty four, this interest started after a vial of
pervetin tablets was found in the pocket of a German
pilot after he had been shot down. The Allies tests
noted increased alertness with pervetin use, but they also documented
(27:39):
the downsides like agitation and the way pilots started to
have psychological issues and perception problems after taking multiple doses.
While it made people more alert initially than it led
to things like compulsive behavior and poor decision making, so
methamphetamine use was as an option for US and British forces,
(28:03):
although ben Zadream was still given to Allied soldiers. Japan
was also aware of Germany's use of pervetin for performance enhancement,
and they started to manufacture their own version, called Philipon,
which was given to kamikaze pilots. Near the end of
nineteen thirty nine, Reich health leader Leonardocanti tried to pull
(28:26):
back on perveton use as the drugs and negative side
effects were reported up the chain of command. He actually
made a speech at one point to the Nazi Parties
Medical Association stating quote Anyone who thinks they can eliminate
fatigue with pervetin can be certain that its boosting effect
will one day abruptly cease. It may be useful to
(28:46):
combat fatigue in the case of a short flight, but
in the long term only sleep can truly compensate for
a state of fatigue. We have to pause here for
a moment because a lot of the time articles about
pervetin's un use by the Third Reich make it sound
almost like Kanti was because some kind of a reasonable
voice here within the Nazi structure, and that's flatly not correct.
(29:11):
To be clear, Kanti was a monster. His only interest
was in protecting German assets. He was one of the
architects of the various processes of so called racial enhancements
under Hitler's rule. That meant he helped plan programs like
Tiergarten Strasofour, which murdered more than seventy thousand people because
(29:33):
they had incurable diseases or hereditary conditions that fell outside
of that Nazi ideal of physical perfection. He also worked
on a children's euthanasia program with doctor Carl Brandt, which
led to the murders of thousands of babies and children.
His concerns about Pervetent were linked to just making sure
(29:55):
they had enough warm bodies to keep killing their enemies,
and about maintaining a image of a perfect race. This
was not out of any kind of altruistic or even
medically ethical motivation.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
Yeah, I get a little bit frustrated when it's like, well,
one Nazi understood, and I'm like, oh, that's not given
too much credit. My guy was still a Nazi, that's
the problem. Still a Nazi, and he did horrifying things.
Those are only a couple of the horrifying things that
he did that Tracy just mentioned. But even though he
did raise a flag over this, Kanti's concerns were dismissed
(30:29):
and his warnings were not heated by his superiors. In
their eyes, if pervoting got them closer to their goals,
it was worth any of the downsides, and Timbler, the
company that made it, didn't seem to be especially worried
about the side effects either. By nineteen forty, the company
was producing more than eight hundred thousand pervetent tablets a
day just to try to keep up with demand. The
(30:52):
use of methamphetamine made Germany formidable and terrifying to its
enemies for a while. Anyway, Soldiers who don't sleep can
keep marching. Tank drivers could just keep going, constantly advancing
the line as they were ordered to go for days
without stopping, and remember they were all happy and confident
(31:13):
as well. The blitzkrieg strategy of relentless surprise attacks was
made possible in large part by the troops being drugged.
Nineteen forty was really the heyday of purveton use for Germany.
By the end of that year, instances of heart attacks
among the troops and officers had started to tally up,
and soldiers were given less and less of the drug
(31:35):
over time. There were still instances, though, of surge rationing
during demanding campaigns. After the Reich collapsed and after Hitler's suicide,
and well after the war was over, Temler continued to
manufacture Pervetin for prescription use. It also continued to sell
it to military organizations. It was purchased in bulk by
(31:58):
both East and West German militaries because even though it
had caused a lot of trauma in its World War
II use, it was still perceived as being worth all
of those problems if it could give soldiers an edge
and enable them to continue fighting for longer with fewer rations.
West Germany discontinued their issuing of perveton to soldiers in
(32:19):
the nineteen seventies, but East Germany continued well into the
nineteen eighties, and Germany was not the drug's only market
despite those early tests with pilots during World War II,
after which perveton use was abandoned, the US also reportedly
used pervetin during the Vietnam War.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
Leonardo Conti was unsuccessful in his effort to limit purvetent
use in the German army. He died by suicide in
a cell in Nuremberg on October sixth, nineteen forty five,
rather than facing trial. Fritz Hauschuld died in Leipzig on
January thirteenth, nineteen seventy four. His invention, Pervetent stayed on
(33:00):
the market until nineteen eighty eight. As we mentioned earlier,
throughout the Second World War, the United States used benzadrine
for all the same reasons that the Germans were using pervetin. Similarly,
benzadrine had a huge jump in civilian use after the
war was over, as soldiers returned home to non military
(33:22):
work and as new users picked it up. Benzadrine became
available only with a prescription in nineteen fifty nine, but
for a long time, and fetamine was prescribed in the
US with pretty minimal medical consultation for everything from depression
to weight loss. It is of course also habit forming.
(33:44):
In nineteen seventy and fetamine was classified as a controlled
substance when the Controlled Substances Act was passed, and today
it's a Schedule too drug that means it has the
potential for abuse and dependence. For context, another Schedule two
drug is fentanyl. Methamphetamine is of course still a commonly
(34:05):
taken drug, and meth labs making the crystallized version of
it seem to pop up everywhere and create a scourge
on communities due to its high degree of addiction. I
saw more articles about this that would talk about the
war and then be like and last year eleven thousand
meth labs were busted in this country and that was
from various countries. I'm pulling numbers, but it's an ongoing,
(34:30):
big problem. Yeah. And also to be clear, stimulants are
still part of military programs around the world.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
I also have a little bit of listener mail which
is very peppy and about a thing I'm addicted to,
which is handicrafts, which just seems a little bit more
of a positive note to end this one on. Yeah,
this is from our listener. I'm guessing Gina. Her spelling
(34:59):
makes me not ae hundred confident of that, so hopefully
I got it right. Gina writes high Lovelies. I just
listened to the Embroidery series and I wanted to write
in with two related points. One, you noted that humans
often turned to embroidery and other handwork during challenging times.
During winter twenty twenty, we all remember that first winter
of the Covid lockdown. I started a seasonal project called
(35:21):
Winter of Care and Repair, in which I mended, tended, repaired, maintained,
or otherwise cared for my belongings each day between the
winter solstice and spring equinox. I have always been into knitting, quilting, sewing, etc.
And had been getting into visible mending at the time,
so ended up doing a lot of garment mending and
doing something with my hands and eyes and brain is
(35:43):
really grounding for me as well. Six years later, Winter
of Care and Repair is still going strong with people
all over the world creating care and repair plans of
their own. And I get so much feedback about how
much people love doing something with their hands when things
are stressful. So there is an online spot other listeners
want to go check this out. Just do a search
for winter care and Repair you will find it. Gin
(36:05):
writes too, I wanted to share this really amazing Spanish
author illustrator embroiderer Beeleima. She published this amazing autobiographical graphic
novel based on her childhood perception of her mother's struggles
with mental illness. Illustrated in both drawings and embroidery, it
is available in both French and Spanish, but not English yet.
(36:26):
I found this book when walking through a bookshop in Spain.
The obviously embroidered book cover stopped me in my tracks
as I glimpsed it out of the corner of my eye.
Both the story and the illustrations are tremendously impactful. She
is super talented and I highly recommend checking out her
work and for the obligatory pet tax. Are two little
furry loves. Lucy is our fifteen and a half year
(36:48):
old Border Collie mix, pictured here enjoying a sunny December
Day at the beach Skippio is our two year old
one eyed rescue cat seen here assisting my partner with
some vehicle mechanics that he clearly takes very seriously, and
a bonus picture of the two of them snuggled together. Seriously.
I cannot even okay, this dog is so I love
(37:09):
old dogs. There's just something so sweet about them that
transcends what the Earth should even allow in terms of sweetness.
And this kiddy is so sweet, and I love the
their buddies. Okay, but I was very excited that Beelema's
work came up because, in case you don't know Gina
(37:31):
or other listeners, there has actually been a short film
made out of that graphic novel, which is also animated embroidery. Nice.
I haven't seen it. I've only seen the trailer for it.
It looks brain breakingly amazing, and because I'm also an
animation it really hit my magic zone where the backgrounds
(37:51):
are all hand embroidered and then scanned in, and then
the animation uses embroidered components that are then digitized and animated,
and it looks like it's so beautiful I can't even amazing,
So seek that out. There have been a few articles
about it lately because it has finished recently and it's
(38:11):
starting to be shown, and I just am blown away
by how beautiful it is. I love when art surprises me,
and I really love that kind of way of blending things.
I am also very fascinated by the idea of, you know,
how kids perceive things like like mental illness in their
authority figures. And it's just a beautiful story and it's
(38:34):
an amazing, amazing piece of work as a graphic novel.
And I am so excited for this movie. So thank you,
thank you, thank you for writing me that, because it
reminded me that I could tell people about the follow
up to it that has taken several years to complete.
So I am not sure yet where to see it,
so hopefully I will find that out soon because I
want to see it desperately. It is very much in
(38:55):
my wheelhouse. If you would like to write to us
and share your thoughts on embroidery or animation or anything
really uh, you don't even have to have pet pictures,
although we sure do love them. You can do that
at History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. Thank you for
joining us, and if you have not subscribed to the
(39:16):
podcast yet. That is very easy to do. You can
do it on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen
to your favorite shows.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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