Danny Jones Podcast - #290 - Hitler’s Favorite Way to Get High: Drugs in the Third Reich | Norman Ohler
Episode Date: March 18, 2025Get every episode ad-free & uncensored on Patreon: https://patreon.com/dannyjones Norman Ohler is an author and screenwriter whose non-fiction books include "Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany," and "Trip...ped: Nazi Germany, The CIA and the Dawn of the Psychedelic Age." SPONSORS https://hims.com/danny - Start your FREE online visit today. https://www.ridge.com/dannyjones - Take advantage of Ridge’s once a year anniversary sale & get up to 40% off. https://truewerk.com/danny - Get 15% off your first order. https://whiterabbitenergy.com/?ref=DJP - Use code DJP for 20% off. GUEST LINKS https://www.instagram.com/normanohler https://www.normanohler.de FOLLOW DANNY JONES https://www.instagram.com/dannyjones https://twitter.com/jonesdanny OUTLINE 00:00 - Hitler's favorite drug 07:53 - Eating 85 year old Nazi meth pills 22:39 - Meth being used by Russian soldiers in Ukraine war 28:06 - Researching Nazi archives 40:09 - Scientific studies on Hitler's poop 47:12 - The Nazi 'stimulant decree' 57:45 - Nazi History in German schools 01:07:53 - LSD came from the Nazis 01:25:16 - Carl Ruck and ancient drugs 01:36:17 - Ergot 01:42:21 - JFK doing LSD 01:48:47 - Patreon questions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Do you listen to punk rock?
I listen to the sex pistols.
Yeah.
When I saw you, my initial reaction was like,
this is like a kind of a grungy German punk rock dude.
Well, but I mean...
Literary punk rock kind of dude.
If you say grunge,
I saw actually one of the last concerts of Nirvana in New York.
And then I was in the grocery store.
store like an organic store and they announced that Kurt Cobain had shot himself and that day I received
a music tape from Berlin with electronic music and I kind of concluded all this punk rock grunge stuff
that's dead and the new music is electronic music so that's actually why I moved back from New York
where I was living in 95 to Berlin. Really? Yeah and then you started listening to dubstep in Europe.
I don't know, I just went to clubs in Berlin, which were playing techno music, which was new at the time.
Yeah, it exploded right around then.
Yeah, I thought it was always...
They called it house music, though, right?
That's what it was called.
Well, no, there's different kinds of electronic music.
House is one, techno is another.
Then drum and bass came, so it was a big kind of flourishing culture, which at one point stagnated.
I think it's just stagnated, but I think it's still fascinating.
But at the time, it was like new, so...
Yes.
I don't know where we're trying to go.
but this is...
We're not trying.
We're not trying.
We're just going.
I'm happy.
Good, me too.
Your shirt is amazing.
That's the meth that the Nazis were taking on your shirt, right?
The pervitin?
Yeah, I mean, I like the branding, the design.
Also, the name is very good.
It's a good brand name for methamphetamine, pavitin,
because it's the word pavarse, perverse, kind of...
Perverse.
In it.
Yeah.
Which it is a perverse, you know,
toxin, I would say.
Methamphetamine.
Yeah.
The saying that, the famous saying,
that everything goes back to the Nazis,
couldn't be more true.
Even the fucking drugs go back to the Nazis.
Well, I mean,
somehow it's not surprising because they were really interested
in performance enhancement.
You know, they were,
the Nazi,
The Nazi movement was a very modern movement.
They were applying the news technology, the news forms of propaganda, the news medicines.
So they were on the cutting edge of everything.
That's correct.
But they didn't have empathy and they didn't have the right morals.
So that can always be a problem.
A very efficient system can also go off the rails.
You need some kind of, I guess you would call it morals.
term that Nietzsche hated, but what do you do without morals?
And you just become kind of a soulless machine that can go anywhere and in a big way too, you know.
Yeah.
So you've written two books on the history of drug use in the Third Reich, right?
You've written the first one, which was Blist, which was all about the amphetamines and the uppers
and all the kind of shit that Hitler's doctor was giving him.
And the second one was tripped, which was more about the psychedelics and the LSD research.
They were doing trying to find truth serums, serums, which is a, a,
eventually what the CIA got his hands on in the Cold War.
First of all, how did you get into writing
and what made you want to write a book about Hitler doing meth?
Actually, we have to be very precise
what we say in Hitler was actually not into meth.
The German army was into meth.
They were really methed up.
But he didn't do it?
No, because he thought this is for the foot soldier,
just the robot that has to function.
because that's what meth does.
It just releases neurotransmitters
and you just follow orders good.
But it's not the drug to use the highest,
the most complex questions
that you don't do that on math.
So Hitler wasn't using meth.
He was using a certain opioid,
which is actually the same one
that is now being used in America excessively,
which is oxycodone, it's called, right?
Or oxycodone.
I always confuse it.
Yeah, oxycodone.
between oxycodone and oxyconcone?
That's a good question. I'm not sure.
I think codeone, I'm not sure.
Okay.
I think codone comes from codeine, which is like a syrup and the content is just...
I think that has a time release in it somehow.
Yes, I think so.
So that was Hitler's favorite drug, actually, the opioid, which at the time was a German product called oikodal.
So it was a German product.
It wasn't a crazy, you know, illegal drug that he was taking.
Yeah.
Was any mixing it?
Wasn't he mixing it with?
No, maybe he was doing, maybe he was speedballing it with Coke, right?
Yeah, he was doing that.
Oh, okay.
Only for like two months, then he stopped the Coke.
He wasn't a Coke guy.
No?
He was an opioid guy.
Okay.
Usually they go hand in hand with those kind of dudes.
I don't know.
I mean, I think, but yeah, maybe.
But his doctor, like his personal physician, Morrell, he was the opioid guy.
He always gave him the oxycodone.
and a new doctor came in after the bomb attack on July 20th Operation Valkyrie
a new doctor
an ear specialist because Hitler's eardrums were blown in the explosion
done by the bomb of Stauffenberg
And this ear doctor brought the cocaine
Because cocaine was like also an anesthetic against you know
It was against pain and he had pain
So he received the cocaine but the doctor realized immediately
that Hitler loved also the high of the cocaine
like this guy wrote a report
that I found in the National Archives
in Washington
is quite funny
like he realized immediately
that Hitler's like a totally drug
like some people really like drugs
take a lot, experiment with it
and Hitler was one of these guys
I mean that and the doctor realized that
immediately when Hitler was demanding
more and more coke and then
Hitler was happy when the guy left
and Morrell came and gave him the opioid
so he was kind of speedballing for a while
but then this other doctor fell out
of favor because he was actually trying to get into Morrell's role, but he didn't succeed.
So he had to leave. So also the cocaine left. So Hitler remained with opioids.
And didn't they get the Coke from one of like the biggest pharmaceutical companies that's
still around today? Wasn't it Merck? Well, that's Merck. Merck. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merck's cocaine was apparently the best in the world. It was very famous.
Peru's annual production of Coca-Lease was shipped to the Hamburg Harbor and then processed by Merck into the finest cocaine in the world.
Wow.
Do they still make it?
Not anymore.
I know they use cocaine for like certain surgeries.
Yeah, right.
Actually, every pharmacy has cocaine.
Like there's eye drops containing cocaine.
No way.
Yeah.
But it's not, it's in a very small quantity.
So back then cocaine was actually a big hit.
You know, it was a very successful product because it was so famous, the MAC cocaine.
There were a product pirates in China that faked the label of the MAC cocaine
and put it on different cocaine bottles, but none was as good as the one from her.
They were trying to make knock off Coke with the Merck level.
Kind of, yeah.
Kind of like they make like fake Nike Jordans today.
Yeah, right.
Yeah.
Wow.
You could probably get it in Bangkok at the market or something.
So how did you first become interested in all this stuff and start writing about it?
Well, I grew up in West Germany and we were, West Germany was considered the world championship in dealing with its shitty past.
Like we were always getting educated about it, which I actually thought was good because it would be weird to grow up in Germany and not knowing.
about the Holocaust.
That would be a weird way of dealing with it.
But it's also a possible way.
Like Japan is not looking at its past like Germany does.
Like Germany has an obsession with looking at it.
Right.
So I grew up kind of knowing a lot about fascism and the Third Reich.
And it was always, there was always like this image created of like a law and order system.
where like everything was disciplined and so like it has nothing to do with drugs you know the
Nazis are too square to take drugs basically it's not and no one ever combined this so a friend of
mine then in 2010 found all purvitin packages in an old east Berlin apartment which were still there
from the 40s and he took them and he still could feel the methamphetamine effect and he told me
this story that's kind of how it started
Whoa. How many years? This was like 70 something years after?
Yeah, that's what they used to mean with like quality coming from Germany, you know.
Pharmaceutical company, Temla makes pavitine in the 40s, and some guy finds it in 2010,
uses it and tells me that it was really quite strong actually.
And he's a DJ, so he knows his drugs. He could really evaluate it.
Oh, yeah. He took three in a row because he liked them so much. And he said after the third
meth pill from Nazi Germany
he really felt like a strong drug effect
that's what got me researching
you know because that's pretty
interesting you know no historian had ever
evaluated that he's DJing at like
nightclubs all night long you got to stay awake
so why not take some Nazi meth
well I mean he yeah he would take
probably meth anyhow you know so
right but he was interested
because if people take meth today they usually
snort lines right
that's the crystal meth that
comes from black glass.
They just take, I mean, the most sophisticated version of meth now, which everyone takes is Adderall.
Pretty much. Every kid in college.
Is that meth or is it amphetamine?
Isn't it pretty similar or no?
Well, Methamphetamine is like a stronger sort of amphetamine.
And I've heard that Adderal is methamphetamine, but I'm actually not quite, I'm not sure.
What is the difference between Adderall and meth?
Adderall and methamphetamine are both stimulant drugs that belong to the amphetamine class,
but they have distinct differences in their chemical structures.
Methamphetamine has an additional methyl group which makes it more potent and able to cross the blood-brain barrier more quickly.
Meth is like a Porsche and emphetamines is like a Volkswagen or something.
That's how you can compare it.
Right, right, right, right.
And the Purvitin was like a Lamborgh – like a golden Lamborghini?
Well, not – I mean, actually it was like a folks pill because it was like a pill for everybody.
It wasn't like you take one pill and you go like in something.
sane. It was like you go one pill and you have like, you know, you can just drive a bit,
your engine is a bit stronger. Let's put it that way. But it's still the same kind of.
So it enhances your performance. And that's why it became very popular, you know. It wasn't,
like now we're drinking a. We're drinking cratum. I got this whole entire table is
loaded with drugs. Yeah, right. Legal drugs, mostly.
So it was not so unusual, actually, to take a pill of meth.
Because also at the time, they didn't have so many substances at their availability as we have now.
It was in 19, late 30s.
When Pavitin came onto the market, people liked it.
They talked about it. Everyone would use it.
And not just soldiers and people in the military.
Like everyday people, business people were using it.
It was kind of like a common thing for folks.
Yeah, also it wasn't so available, popular to go into like a coffee shop.
I mean, there were coffee shops, but not as many as today.
And I think especially women would often not go into coffee shops.
Because the cafe hoys, they were male dominated, which they still are in some parts of the world.
So it's not so, what do you take?
You know, you take methamphetamine.
I can understand it.
I probably would have taken it back then.
Yeah.
Because also it's beneficial in a dictatorship that's all about functionality to function, you know.
You don't, and methamphetamine is a good, it's a stimulant that makes you, you know.
Makes you, it doesn't make you think, right?
It makes you just kind of like a machine.
Like you get you just like.
Machine is a bit exaggerated.
Well, I mean, I've done Adderall before and I know the feeling.
I hate it.
I hate it.
You kind of can't stop, right?
Right.
You're not, it kind of kills creativity,
and it makes you just want to get more things done
and get more shit checked off the checklist.
Yeah, I don't think, for example,
amphetamine is a good drug for writing
because you do write a lot,
but it lowers your ability to self-criticize yourself
because you just feel too good
and you just do it too fast.
And that's not what literature is actually about.
You have to be very subtle
in each step you take forward.
So amphetamine.
I'm surprised like some writers can write
like stuff on amphetamines
like Philip Kate Dick was writing on amphetamines.
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Oh yeah. That's crazy.
But also on the road was written on amphetamines by Chiroac,
supposedly in two weeks without sleep, which is possible,
because you can actually write a lot of pages quite quickly.
Was it Stephen King also doing loads of Coke when he was writing some of his books like Cujo?
I'm not familiar with that. I could imagine it.
I'm pretty sure he was. I'm pretty sure he was like drinking like crazy and doing it.
Freud was developing a lot of his theories on Coke.
Yes, Freud.
My favorite philosopher.
Sherlock Holmes was created probably on Coke by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
I think Holmes himself used Coke to solve his cases.
Really?
But I'm also another Sherlock Holmes specialist.
I'm just a Hitler specialist.
Some of the most prolific, most famous works in history.
were done by authors who were bombed on drugs.
Like just from just the last couple people we mentioned, right?
Like that's, did you, when you were writing this,
did you, did you try any of these drugs
and try to dive deeper into the literature
and understand them better?
Actually, I did because I thought
I have to make this experience to write about it.
Yeah, I would do the same thing, I would think.
So I was a bit, to be honest,
a bit afraid to use crystal meth
because I had heard.
Like I was also, you know, introduced to this by mostly American anti-drug propaganda,
which says if you take crystal meth.
Like I was a U.S. high school student in the late 80s, so this was, I think Reagan was still president.
So it was like just say no.
And if you take crystal meth once, you will automatically be addicted, like forever.
Right.
That was kind of what I had in mind, which is total bullshit.
I mean.
But so I asked my grass dealer at the time marijuana was still illegal in Germany.
Can you help me find?
Like I just want to have like one sample of crystal meth.
I was kind of and still I am a fan of taxi driver.
It's one of my favorite movies.
And Schrader, when he wrote it, he had a gun in his writing desk in the drawer to be kind of closer to the vibration of his story.
So I thought it's good to have like a gram of crystal meth like with me.
Yeah.
And but she said, no, I don't want to bring it because she was a weed dealer.
And weed and crystal meth, they don't go together.
Like totally different animals, basically.
But she said, I know a guy who has crystal meth.
And then she asked him and he actually brought me one gram.
And he brought a Xerox copy of the old Pavitin patent.
that they made on methamphetamine.
He zero-k-study gave it with the gram
without knowing that I was researching this book.
Oh, shit.
So he was like some kind of crystal meth dealer
that was like a history buff or a freak or whatever
and wanted to educate where it comes from.
It's kind of funny.
I don't...
And I took it also to try it.
What was it like?
Versus like what did you expect it to be like?
Because usually those two are vastly different.
Well, I've...
I know the effects of amphetamines, just like legal emphetamines, but also illegal emphetamines.
So I was expecting it to have this effect but stronger, and that's exactly what it is.
So the effect in itself can be quite interesting and pleasurable.
You're not going to feel bad on crystal meth, you know, while the high lasts.
But the problem for me was once the high receded, I actually felt worse than I had felt before.
I took it and that's something I don't like so I it didn't really become my drug basically I thought
I thought this coming down effect is a very bad structure for like a drug a drug like a drug
like a drug effect basically which is different with a psychedelic drug you have the problematic
experience in the beginning when the psychedelic drug starts to kick in but then once you're
stable it's going to be great and there's no like hang up afterwards
I think that's much, it feels much healthier.
It does. It does.
Yeah, it feels almost psychedelics and mushrooms and LSD.
They almost feel like, like, godly.
Like you're getting closer to God in some way.
And cocaine and crystal meth and stimulants almost sort of like the devil.
It's like you're going to hell.
Yeah.
Because it borrows your, it sucks up all your dopamine.
So you feel like, you feel like dog shit when you're done.
And you either need more to keep, keep, keep,
that thing going, stay on the wagon.
It's quite horrible, actually.
Or you're going to dive off head first.
So what else did you, what else did you, did you actually get a hold of any of the, the
perveting or how do you say it?
Pervetin?
No, I've never taken it myself because my friend, he took everything he found.
It was actually a couple.
They were, and still are antique dealers, and they found it.
and they took it amongst themselves.
Like I spoke to the guy and he said
for one month we were taking methamphetamine
like every day. It was great.
So that pill actually from the company
Temla which is Pavitin
it was probably a good product
you know. It did lead
obviously to addiction and problems
but it's a
in terms of performance enhancement
is a very good product.
Yeah. Seems like it worked.
I mean, well, no, I mean, in the end it didn't really work, but...
It works for specific tasks while it happens, but it doesn't work in the long run.
It works in the short run, but not in the long run.
And a war was in this case a long war.
The only chance for the Nazis to win this war was if everything becomes a blitzkrieg,
if every campaign is a quick campaign, like the one against the West.
Yeah.
Because that's how long the Pavantine works.
It works like for one, two months.
And you can stay awake the whole time.
The whole army is like fighting like mad, you know, but then they come down.
So if this victory has been achieved after like two months, they cannot sustain it.
So they're like sprinting instead of running a marathon.
Right.
They're trying to run as gosh as they can.
That was a new idea.
You sprint, you don't go slow.
Right, right.
Which is kind of shock and awe.
It's a very modern approach.
I mean, it's very, it's a progressive military approach, I would say.
but it only works in certain situations.
I just read a report on, I forget who sent it to me.
I think Travis Kitchens sent me this report,
and it was about how the Russians in the Ukraine war
are using a certain kind of methamphetamine.
Russia is giving their soldiers,
like they're all jacked on meth.
I forget the name of it.
It's like a newer version.
there was a brand name for it.
Right now in the war?
Yes, right now in the war, the Russians are freaking jacked on meth.
What was the name of that drug?
Captagon?
Have you heard of that?
Yeah.
Caphtagon is interesting.
Because Caphtagon was made by the Assad regime in Syria.
That's how they kept themselves in power.
and they had obviously strong ties with Russia
Assad. Assad is now in Moscow.
Yes, right.
So it kind of
makes sense that this captagon was made
probably even in Syria and then brought to the Russian troops
because it is a good fighting drug.
It's not good for the, you know, it's not healthy
and it's good for the soldier, but it might be beneficial
if used, you know, intelligently.
Can you Google Captagon?
Caphtagon
ingredients
or like what is in Capitagon
it's just a different form of
amphetamine
Right but is it actually meth-enphetamine
Or is it just amphetamine?
Phenethylene
Okay it's just an
Infetamine
They can't contain
Oh, amphetamines and caffeine
But it's a very strong infatamine
Very strong infatamine
So it's not metal
But crystal meth is stronger
Well yeah, I'm sure
So this is actually
I think a pill of pervitin would have been stronger than a pill of Caphtagone.
Yeah, I'm sure.
I'm sure it would have been.
Yeah.
Because the Nazis always wanted the strongest, you know.
Even though it wasn't a Nazi invention, it was just the German invention of its pharmaceutical company.
It has nothing to do with the Nazi party.
It's just a German company.
Yeah.
It's just a product.
Drugs are neutral.
Also, there's in that same report that I read, there was, they're saying that they're giving Ibogaine to the soldiers on the
Ukrainian side. And I don't think it's just their, the report was saying that it was for brain
injuries and for PTSD, but I think they're also using it for on the battlefield, for things like
edge detection and stress and combat fatigue. So like, that's an interesting thing. And I know
DARPA, I've read some stories that DARPA has been funding psychedelic research for soldiers,
not just for after the war, but for when they're in war. Like, how can,
psychedelics enhance a soldier moving through the battlefield and shooting and being more accuracy,
being more accurate with his shots or things like that, you know?
I spoke with the doctor of the Matt Orlando Magic team after the NBA game about psychedelics,
whether it's good also for basketball player.
And the problem is that basketball just as I think fighting in a war is, is a lot of
about motor precision and that could be not enhanced through psychedelics which maybe
make you think too long or you know on the battlefield I think you have to react you
don't need to you don't need complex thought processes I think you need it maybe
yeah maybe for strategy you know for generals it might be good to to see it in a
different way and well I think actually now that you mentioned that I think what
But I heard about DARPA studying this stuff
was they're trying to take the trip out of it.
So you get the benefits of visual acuity
and edge detection and other things
without having the trip.
Right?
So maybe that would have some benefits to it
if they were able to alter it somehow.
Yeah, and this story only says
that they're using it for PTSD and anxiety.
But what I read and what I heard from Dana
was they're using it.
He's trying to fly it into Ukraine
and with other stuff that David Nichols is working on with DARPA trying to take the trip out of this stuff for enhancing soldiers on the battlefield while they're in combat.
That's very interesting, especially with ibogaine, because ibogaine is so unexamined yet.
But I would imagine that it's probably quite healthy for the brain to use ibogaine.
so an army on the one side using amphetamines if it's true then this would be the Russian army
and another army using iBogaine is of course looks much better for the Ukrainian side
because it's a much smarter you know more sustainable way of being yeah because ibukin is
good for your brain while emphetamine is not good for your brain
not in the long term right yeah so when you wrote your first book you didn't do the way typical authors do
like i've had a lot of people that in this on this podcast that talk about jfk and they write books about
jfk and um the vast majority of them in fact all of them except for one of them when they write
their books they read other people's books right to come up with their ideas and to write about
you know to come up with their material and they rework it or whatever
Very rarely when somebody writes a story or a book, do they actually go to the sources of things?
And if I'm not mistaken, when you were writing your first book, you weren't basing this off any other writer's book or any sort of previous research.
You were doing it sort of like going to the grassroots of this stuff.
Well, I mean, once my friend told me about having all these parotene pills and being like stone on methamphetamine.
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Now back to the show.
I became interested
and then I started researching it for...
Actually, I wanted to write a novel.
But then my publisher said,
this topic is too interesting
to turn it into a novel.
It should be a non-fiction book.
So I had never written a non-fiction book before,
but I had written three novels.
so I thought, okay, now I can't invent anything anymore.
That kind of sucks because I like to invent things for novels.
Obviously, it's why you write a novel.
So my first idea was to write a novel, but then publisher said,
no, it must be a nonfiction book.
And he was right with his decision.
It must be a nonfiction book.
Because if it's a novel about Nazis and drugs,
you as the reader, you don't know if it's true or whether I imagined it.
Sure.
Yeah.
So in a nonfiction book, this is not the case.
case.
So for me it was, I don't know, what was your question?
I'm sorry.
I was just asking you about like how, like the research process.
Like you didn't go and read other books to come up with your.
So I was trying to figure out what is a nonfiction book.
How do you write a nonfiction book?
Yeah.
Which is obviously, you know, if you find out something, it must be the original materials.
So for me, it, uh, actually.
my girlfriend at the time, she said you should go to the archives and it immediately clicked and
it made sense to me, you know, that I really want to find out the actual truth and from that
in the beginning I wanted to construct a novel, but later on I made it into a nonfiction book,
but I wanted to actually know the truth. And I mean, there was one book out at the time by
actually a friend of mine, but it was more like a random collection of, you know, articles he found
on drugs in the Third Reich, but it wasn't really structured.
shirt, it was like a treasure trove.
So I kind of expand, I started expanding on this.
And especially everything changed when I met a historian who had researched this for a paper,
and he told me where in the archives to actually find it.
Because it's very difficult to find stuff in the archives.
Because at the time, like this archive about the military, about World War II,
these documents were filed probably sometime in the 50s.
these. They were all collected and then filed, but they didn't file them for drugs.
They didn't read through where it was methamphetamine used and then we make like a note
that if anyone ever in the future searches for this keyword drugs, he will find these papers
because the archivist didn't think of drugs as a relevant category. So you have a big archive
and probably you have a lot of documents relating to drugs, but how do you find them?
So I was lucky enough that a scientist who had recently.
researched this before, told me exactly, so he shared his knowledge.
It's actually quite important. People share that knowledge.
Yeah.
Which is kind of a spirit probably amongst researchers, because most people don't research.
It's kind of a secret cult if you actually go to the archive.
It's very fun, you know, and everyone is kind of friendly because you're like such on the fringe.
But at the same time, you're like at the center of it all because only at the archive are the documents, you know, in their original form.
They have not been processed by, let's say, books.
So being a historian, just copying passages in books of others or ideas in other books.
I mean, you can probably write a compelling book,
but it's more interesting to try to find these documents.
I guess I was also lucky to find them.
You know, it's not so easy.
I bet it's way more exciting to do it that way,
because you feel like you're probably getting something out that hasn't been out before.
Right?
Yeah, right.
The world hasn't seen this shit yet.
Like, that's a lot, that's a lot of work to do,
to actually go somewhere physically dig through paperwork,
like ancient paperwork.
Versus just like looking up some shit online on a directory.
Well, and also you find different things in the archive.
Because what's in the archive is not online.
Like, it's really, you have to find, you have to find stuff.
And sometimes you don't find stuff.
There's actually people whose job this is,
the historical detectives. You can hire them. You can like say, like I met one guy in the National
Archives in D.C. And he said his client wants him to find out why a relative of his, a U.S.
soldier, died falling out of a window in Heidelberg in summer of 1945. There's like all the information.
Then he goes to the archive to actually find that story. Wow. If he's good, you'll find it.
It seems highly improbable, actually. Very. Oh, yeah, I bet. But who knows?
how good a detective you are.
So I have like the side hobby,
which is like a hobby,
I'm like a hobby detective also.
But basically I'm a writer.
Yeah.
Sometimes it has the shape of nonfiction books
and sometimes the shape of novels.
Both are great.
I mean, both forms are interesting.
Yeah.
I bet you, like the difference between writing about stuff
that you're finding in archives,
like how does that,
how is that process different versus like just writing?
Well, when you find,
find something in an archive, there's no one that helps you at first to evaluate what you've seen.
Like the problem with Hitler's drugs was the writing of Morel who shot him these drugs,
his personal physician, is a bit hard to read.
Like most doctors' handwriting is hard to read for some reason.
They kind of hide, they want to hide stuff all the time.
Like he was, it's hard to read.
And the Americans who investigated his papers, they misread Eukodal.
They thought it's Enkadole, which doesn't exist.
So it was just, that's how it was, you know, filed, but it was never examined.
So when I found this, I also, I didn't know what is Eukodal, you know.
I just found it.
And I also showed it to Alex, my friend, the DJ, who told me first bought Nazis and drugs.
Because he became like an advisor because he's such a knowledgeable guy on history and on drugs.
like the perfect like actually like a Sherlock Holmes doctor Watson situation and he's like
oh godal are you insane hitler took oikodal this is like the heaviest most euphoric making opioid
he shot like 20 milligrams intravenously are you crazy you don't realize what this means so that's
yeah thanks to alex from at this point and what was exactly was oikudal well that's the oxycodone
that's the that's the that was the drug that defined
and Hitler basically.
Oh.
That was his favorite drug.
Yeah.
So is that the drug that he first took before that famous meeting with Mussolini?
Yeah, right.
Pull out of the...
Yeah, that was like in July, 1993 or something.
Right, right.
Mussolini wanted to kind of leave the war because it was not looking so good for the access of evil.
So he wanted to become like neutral and Hitler hated that idea.
but so he was very nervous before the meeting
and also he was
Morel describes him as depressed
so he was like depressed and he was like not
was not really happening he didn't
and as the Fuhrer you always
you can't be depressed I mean that was also
John Fennedy's problem he was suffering from depression
and as the US president you can't be depressed you know
can you say maybe you can say sorry
American people I'm depressed
I don't want to take any big decisions.
I hope everything's going to be cool.
But Kennedy didn't do that, so he was taking medicine.
Same obviously for Hitler.
So before that meeting with Mussolini, he was taking Eukudal for the first time and intravenously.
Because I think Morel tried to keep that a bit away from Hitler because he was realizing
once Hitler tastes those opioids, it's not going to stop.
Which is then exactly what happened.
So Morel wasn't a difficult position of having to admit.
finished these opioids like on a regular basis kind of making his patient who's also the leader of Germany into an addict which he must have known or you know because Hitler wanted these opioids and when he wanted them he just wanted them he didn't want to like argue you know can't argue with Hitler about anything especially not about when he wants his opioids right so Morrell just gave him the opioids so it's an interesting it's an interesting Hitler biography that's kind of enclosed in this
blitzed book. So Morel, what was his first name? Teo. Teo Morrell? Teo Morrell.
How much would you say that, how much literature was there on him that you had to read?
I mean, first of all, when I researched where that stuff was, and that's in one archive in Koblenz, in Germany, the Federal Archive.
and then I went there
and
I could see like
the history of
recent checkouts of this material
of Theo Morel
the personal physician of Hitler
and it had only been checked out
like three times
since the end of the war
or something
wow really
no one actually thought of
doing what I did
which is wild
I thought that that would be like
standard for a historian
you know
right
because Morel played a
very important role he was like with hitler like all the time right they were close very close buddies and
he wouldn't leave home without him not really because he's your and i mean eventually he's basically he's
your dealer you know because you he shot he shoots he injects you with a very strong opioid into
your vein you know every other day so that becomes a very important person to you know so that that that
without this morale story that you can't really understand the hitler story i would say that that's
fascinating.
Actually, some stuff I left out, which
concerned Hitler's shit. Like, Hitler's shit is
like examined by this doctor
and there's like tons of
writings about it and what's
in there and is it bad for him,
was it good for him?
His shit? Yeah. It was always like sent to
a certain lab in Bavaria
even during the war. It was like a special
career. Why did they do that?
Because the Fuhrer had to be healthy.
So it was all about the health.
you know, Heil Hitler also means health to Hitler.
It was like the health, the status of this person's health was kind of the status of the whole, you know, so-called Third Reich.
Interesting.
He was a vegetarian, wasn't he?
Well, I mean, I discovered that he had basically three drug phases, which was 36 to 41, mostly like vitamins and harmless stuff.
And 41 to 43, he used a lot of animal concoctions like pigs, liver excels.
extract injected and thyroid glands extract that he used.
Like he became a bit crazy because Morel was like inventing new medicines.
Morel had his own pharmaceutical company.
So he was like inventing stimulants.
Like you take the most something from the animal.
It could be stimulant, you know.
So he was using a lot of animal products basically.
I don't know if you could technically call that a vegetarian.
He didn't eat.
It wasn't in his diet.
but he was blasting it into his veins.
Yeah, so he's like even more of it.
Like, I don't know if he realized this,
that technically speaking, I think he's not a vegetarian.
So that I also uncovered this, by the way,
that he's not a vegetarian,
but only through your help because I didn't even think about it anymore.
That's so weird that they were studying his shit
and setting off his shit to labs to see how he would.
If I would shoot a movie on the Third Reich or on Blitz,
that Blitz is not a movie,
it is very strange to me
because that's like
it has a lot of good scenes
and one of them would be
you know the shit moving through the front lines
and moving all across Germany
and then being examined by the
you know German scientists
and reports are written
which are now in the archive
on Hitler's poop
yeah
I mean yeah
shit was a big part of the movement
I mean it's a brown movement
yeah yeah no
you're right
have a fascination with shit.
That famous video of him at the Olympics, I think in like 36, I think it was, where he's like
gyrating back and forth. What was he on in that video? Do you know?
Well, I mean, I studied Morales' writings and Morales' writings are very extensive.
Like almost about every day he writes like how Hitler looked and not only how the shit was,
what he said, what, how his skin, the color of his skin. He writes.
a lot but
he never
yeah he never
he never he doesn't mention this
thing so i
i kind of think it looks a bit unnatural
it looks sped up doesn't it yeah i think it's definitely
sped up i think it's not natural i
my research actually uh would say that um
this this is not a this is a fake video uh because at the time hitler had no
problems he was very health
He was also younger looking.
How old was he here?
Do you know?
Not off the top of my head.
But he was pretty young.
In his 30s?
He looks older in this.
He doesn't, something's off with this, but that's just my gut feeling.
What do you mean is off?
How do you think it's fake?
Just the movement doesn't seem natural.
I think it's, I think it was done by a director.
Oh, really?
Interesting.
So someone staged?
this and recreated it.
I think it's digitally manipulated to look this way.
Maybe he was moving a bit and maybe there's a way to kind of speed that up.
They definitely sped it up.
You can tell by the guys in the background how they're moving their arms.
Maybe he was nervous and doing like this, but if you speed that up, it looks already weird.
So for me, this video is nothing, basically.
Maybe he's just got to pee really bad.
Maybe, yeah.
That's kind of what I do when I have to take it when I have to pee.
I have some insight on the sped up.
Hang on, Steve.
Can you see when this video was uploaded, by the way?
Oh, this one.
This one is...
Three years ago.
Okay, yeah, it could have easily been faked.
What do you think?
What's your video analysis on this one, Steve-o?
So, film cameras back in the day, if they were cheap or small or portable, they were hand crank,
which means that the speed of the film going through it is dictated by your hand movement.
And so when you play that back on a machine that plays it back at 24 frames a second,
it's typically sped up.
You're not going to speed.
your speed is never going to be as consistent or as fast as, you know, a machine.
And you'll see that a lot with like the Charlie Chapman videos and stuff.
Oh, okay. Interesting.
That's why the old black and white stuff looks sped up.
So 36 was before he was really experimenting hardcore with drugs.
Yeah, that's when he met Morrell.
That's when he met him in 36.
Yeah, so he was basically on nothing.
Huh.
Yeah, but he could still, you know, behave oddly.
Who knows?
He's an odd guy.
But he was on nothing in 36.
At least Morrell doesn't write about it.
Maybe he gave him something, but it's a slow increase of...
Maybe...
Methamphetamine wasn't invented yet, so also he wasn't on meth.
It wasn't invented yet?
No.
Was Coke invented yet?
Yeah.
When was Coke invented?
I don't know.
We would have to look at when, like, for example, Mark patented Coke, but that was older.
Methamphetamine was patented.
in october 37 1856 by a german chemist frederick gaich the germans invented all the drugs of course the
germans invented everything just drugs and cars and time machines and spaceships flying saucers
apparently came from them too rockets yes yeah rockets um isolated act to agree from the coca leaf
how crazy the coca leaf is illegal it's illegal to own a coca leaf
in the United States of America.
Yeah, I landed once in an airport in Kusko, Peru,
and I was given a koka tea as a welcome presence
so I could like deal with the elevation.
Yeah, they used it for...
It was pretty cool.
You know, at the airport you drink a...
How crazy is that, right?
For altitude sickness.
Yeah.
I think it's actually quite healthy, the koka leaf.
Yeah.
It's just like a stimulant.
It's like a normal stimulant.
But we're not allowed to have it here because we might mix it with gasoline.
mix it with gasoline and other chemicals and try to produce fucking cocaine.
But so the soldiers in war, they weren't necessarily giving the soldiers cocaine because cocaine,
I'm sure, would be too hard to manage.
You have to constantly be taking it and ripping lines all day long.
And it's not like with the pervitin is the meth, andphetamine.
You can take it one pill and I'm sure it lasts for hours.
Well, I mean, they did, you know, they wrote a so-called stimulant decree, which kind of says, you know,
when you should, you know, you should take the first dose before it starts.
Oh, really? So they had like a guidebook for it.
Yeah, they had a, it's the stimulant decree. It's also in the archives. It's like, I think it's.
Okay, the stimulant decree was a significant order issued by the German Army High Command on April, 1940, which mandated the production and distribution of stimulants to the military personnel.
The decree was crucial in enabling soldiers to stay awake for extended periods of time, which was seen as a sensual.
for the success of military operations.
For instance, during the invasion of France in 1940,
soldiers were instructed to take parvitan,
a former method.
Yeah, right?
In an intervals to maintain alertness.
Did they source your book here?
And strategic positioning.
Wow.
Yeah, they cite blitzed.
Oh, look at that.
At least one of them.
Look at that.
Yeah, Blitz is the first one.
Good shit.
Yeah, I kind of uncovered it, I guess.
But basically, Alex uncovered it.
Oh, look at that photo. Can you pull up that photo of the little bottle of it?
No way. Look at that, dude.
Yeah. It was a successful product.
Yeah.
I mean, it's normal for a soldier to take drugs in battle.
This has, like, happened since there's...
It's happening today.
Since there's war.
And because you always want to...
Because it's such a weird situation, you have to deal with anxiety.
You want to improve your performance.
It's a very complex situation to be in a combat situation.
Also, it's risky to take a drug, you know.
You might go wrong, you know.
But drugs are a big topic for the soldier.
And in World War I, cocaine played like a small role for pilots,
because they're the coolest anyhow, so they take cocaine and they fly better.
But it wasn't the...
It makes perfect sense.
it's a pilot's drug maybe but it's not a it's not a mass drug really because it's too expensive so that
you kind of really give it to like three million men like it doesn't make sense but methamphetamine
was quite cheap to manufacture and um that's it that's why it became meth and um and not cocaine
while the french for example still banked on their red wine so every french soldier when germany
attacked them, drank three quarters of a liter of red wine, while each German soldier was using
up to like 20 milligrams of methamphetamine. So they're running circles around these French guys.
I mean, the French guys didn't really stand a chance. Right. They're running around drunk.
These fucking Germans are in their tanks. I mean, yeah, I mean, just imagine the
grinding their teeth down in the tank, you know. Because the tanks received
the most private team because they were used differently than before four guys three of I don't know
how many are in a tank three guys or four guys so let's say four guys I always I always think of four
guys so they're in the tank oh yeah and the tanks were used as the avant-garde of the military movement
usually before that tanks and the old thinking tanks are like the backup so you you run you know
and then you have the tanks and a big machinery from the back
you yeah so three tank generals had the idea to kind of reverse it and put the tanks in the
front and race with the tanks through the aden mountains and that kind of paved the way for like
the others to kind of run after run after them and these tank divisions also received most of the
methamphetamine because they had to reach the french border city of sardons within three days and
three nights being that fast they would cut off the british and french who were north of them in
Belgium because they thought the Germans would attack up there. So the Germans kind of ran
through the mountains on tanks and that was only possible because of the
methamphetamine. That was used especially by people in the tanks. So that's why I always
think of the tank with the four guys high on crystal meth like racing into France.
They were young guys, you know. They were just like in the tank on meth. Like
I think it must have been a very intense experience
and then it just kept going
and that's what led to this victory against France
which no one thought would have been possible
because it was Britain and France together
stronger army
the defenders always are
you know it to invade successfully
you have to be like you have to be
overpower
overpowering you have to have much more strength than the defenders
usually three to one
but in this case the Germans were weaker
but still won because they had the better strategy to go through the Arden Mountains on crystal math basically.
Wow.
Crazy.
That's what happened.
And the French, they still, like, I received a lot of feedback from France when my book came out there.
They said, finally, because for them it had been the unanswerable question, why did we lose?
What happened? Why did these fucking Germans, like overrunners and we didn't know what was going?
on and because they were still fighting on old they had a different mindset right they were not there
yet so that has been a problem for the french psyche for decades which now is finally being
solved yeah yeah the germans were ahead of their time i know like some of the guys that were
close to hitler were really upset i think maybe it was himmler who was obsessed with like ancient
civilizations and like what the egyptians were doing and the pyramids what he had he had a
Tibet expedition, for example, where he sent scientists to Tibet.
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now back to the show
to find like the origins
of mankind
and so
the Nazis were about
creating like a big story
like they were
it's not just limited to Germany
it's a global kind of narrative
that they spin
of the super humans
who then conquer everything
and where they come from
so they had like
historians look at history
in a totally different way
and we do today
because they were supposed to
interpreted it a certain way.
Do you know if they were into
like the Greeks and what the Greeks were doing?
Well that's classical
because the Greeks were big
into drugs.
Yeah but I don't think the Nazis
looked up to the classical Greek
period because of drugs.
Because drugs also was not
something
that was officially
enhanced. Officially the
Nazi government was an
anti-drug government.
And when they took power,
some of the first people they threw into concentration camps.
And already in 1933 were like drug users.
So they were,
that's why I growing up always thought,
you know, Nazis, they're all about purity and cleanliness.
So that was also the image to the,
that was a big part of their image.
So what did I want to say?
I was asking you about like how they looked at like
the crassies.
classical greek civilization and like how much how much attention did they pay to the stuff that was
going on then or did they read any of that stuff did they translate any of it or were they taking any
ideas from classical civilizations or any other ancient civilizations that you know about that you've
discovered i mean the swastika is uh does exist in the in india it's just reversed so and himla
apparently did three hours of yoga each morning in his office because he was connecting with the
you know ancient aryan roots that come you know out of india or out of the Himalayas or like i think he was
he was like believing in magic and that there was something higher going on you know that more
than the eye can see well hitler was much more like on the ground you know but himla was this
kind of evil dreamer.
Yeah.
So he's a very interesting character actually, quite scary.
How was, so you said you went to high school here in the US and then went to Germany?
Well, I grew up in a German town, which was 30,000 Germans and 10,000 American soldiers.
So you could say there was like a bigger military presence.
So I kind of grew up with the American culture.
And then when I was 16, I was 16.
was the offer to go to the United States as an exchange student.
This was financed by the US Congress and the German parliament to like make people get to
know each other better. Like Americans would go to Germany for a year, Germans would go to
America. Yeah, sure. Which I think makes a lot of sense actually because if you live in another
country for a year, you learn the language, you understand the culture. So I actually became
a state sponsored, something that probably, I don't even know if it still exists.
exchange student.
Yeah.
And at the end, we were all invited to Washington,
and I was chosen to give a speech at the Senate of the United States,
but not in the big hall, but like in a smaller room,
but it was still big, you know, about the different perceptions
of the term freedom in Germany and in America.
And I delivered that speech.
Interesting.
And that night I got late for the first time.
Oh, really?
I was in the audience, so the speech was good.
No way.
What a great story.
At Georgetown University, Washington.
I've never told that story.
Very cool.
Very exciting stuff.
That sort of changed the trajectory of your life, didn't it?
It did.
We're still good friends.
Really?
Yeah, she's my oldest friend.
Wow.
Amazing.
Does she live here or Germany now?
She lives in Berlin.
Berlin, okay.
Yeah, that's something.
I was curious about too.
Like when you go to school in Germany,
like what do they teach you about the Nazis?
Like what is the view on?
And I know they put a lot of emphasis on
how we don't want to go.
Like the Germans obviously don't want to go down that path anymore
and there's like an inherent guilt that they have.
Like what is that like?
Oh my God.
Now it's getting deep
after talk about the German psyche.
I think it's interesting, man.
Because I know Annie talked about this a little bit when she came on here.
She was talking about the research she was doing for Operation Paperclip.
But she's not German.
Exactly.
But she was explaining to me sort of like the people she was dealing with some of these German scientists' children.
And talking to them, like this was, the German psyche was really becoming aware to her on how they felt about all this stuff.
And she had to explain to, I forget this guy's name, which is terrible,
but one of the most prominent Russian scientists that was brought here,
or not Russian, German scientists, that was brought here during paperclip.
Maybe Werner von Braun.
It wasn't von Braun.
It was someone else, a guy who did a lot of evil shit.
But he eventually had to leave his wife and his kid behind in Germany.
And he, like, she met with his son.
And he absolutely resented his father.
for all of this horrific shit
being a part of the Nazis
and doing all these experiments
and like
basically she sat there
and had like a three hour conversation
with this guy
and this guy was like every day
writing love letters to his wife and his son
about how much he missed them
and how much he wanted to reunite with them
and how he was back in America
doing this stuff
and like this guy had like a deep love
for his family and he thought his dad
just abandoned him
and like it was a really complex like
deep story, but like this guy ended up giving Annie all of the material, all the books,
all the letters that he's been writing his son his whole life.
And she went back to America and she had to hide all this stuff because some of these letters
had swastikas on them and stuff.
And she had to like hide all this in the bottom of her bag because I think you go to prison
for trying to take this stuff out of Germany.
Like they're very, very strict about any kind of anything.
to do with studying Nazi history or Nazi propaganda or anything like this?
Well, I mean, yeah, we are taught a lot, but it's always, we see like secondary, you know,
how other people evaluate it. So it's kind of, in a way, you could say it's force-fed to you.
You know, you learn that the Nazis are bad and that everything's horrible. And it's
it's probably the right way to go about it, you know, because the general consensus is that it was bad.
that it shouldn't happen again that we don't want to engage in such behavior anymore so I think
that's good at the same time I think certain things might be weird like I'm not sure for example if
my income is prohibited or not so maybe you know usually it's maybe some sources are not
I don't know I think generally we're dealing with it quite okay actually I mean there's
now yeah there's no there's no there's no the call from the new right in
Germany to to pay less attention because the they said that it has been
over emphasized you know the negative side of the German history
right German history so much more which of course it is you know but
it's just it's just kind of a choice you make you know how you how you present
But it's interesting how a society deals with its past.
I think Germany is doing a pretty good job actually compared to some other countries.
Like Great Britain, I think there's very little critical examination generally about its role as colonizing the whole world and what it actually did to the world.
So I think we're doing a fairly good job.
but it's actually getting less and less
the teachings
yeah it's so it's so different for different countries
right because like
I don't think there's really much
because like in Germany with the Nazis
like it was all happening there right
like all the death and the concentration camps
and all the fucking war was there
in Europe
but like for Americans
we never saw anything
everything was away from us like we
He dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan.
Right.
And, you know, killed millions of civilians and children and innocent people.
And like we don't sort of have, it doesn't feel like to me, at least, that there's any sort of like guilt for lack of a better term in all our culture for doing that.
Right.
In American culture, there's more guilt over like Jim Crow era, you know, when like women and blacks didn't have the right to vote or we're at least.
you know, slavery, which is, you know, it's humanity evolves.
Right.
Right.
But like, and I don't want to compare evil, but dropping nuclear bombs and killing people is like crazy.
Crazy, crazy.
And yeah, like I said, there's no real like, I mean, it's fascinating stuff.
Like people, like the, there's still development of the, of the bomb, too, which was a huge, you know, in part hugely to people that we brought over here from,
Germany, right? Like that that Cold War history is just so, so fascinating and complex and how like
that put America at least into the trajectory that started the trajectory of where America
has ended up now with like this bolstering of this military that spends more money on weapons
than anywhere, any other country, all other countries combined, I think. And like, you know,
getting its foot
and controlling governments of all these other countries
it's it's interesting how that
that moment in history after World War II
was such a pivoting point
and it's I think very directly dictated
where we've ended up now
I mean basically this is what I examined
for my second book tripped
yeah
let me think how I want to put it
once more
so what do you do you always cut it out
or do you just leave it
we just put it in there we do drugs on camera huh no we just do it right i mean in general do you
leave it running or do you cut the the talk we don't cut anything we leave it all in here i think it's
better it's more raw it's quite good i love it yeah when it's brand new when it's fresh when
you first get it out of the package and you take a whiff out of it it'll literally ruin your day
because it's so strong so yeah i just kind of like did like uh i i really
was long-winded on that elaboration
on how the Cold War
and bringing the Nazis
over here to develop the bombs
and the creation
of the CIA and all that shit kind of
spiraled out of World War II
and you were, so your book
tripped essentially is
about LSD
and how we got LSD
from the Nazis and tried to use it
as a truth serum to try to
do different things and you know people are familiar
with shit like in K Ultra
and Operation Chaos and all the stuff that was going on.
I mean, I wanted to write about the early history of LSD,
not about what went wrong in the 60s
and all the hippies were taking it.
So I was actually curious about why was Sandoz,
the Swiss company that made it,
not able to turn it into a product.
Because I had found reports,
Like when they found LSD in 1943, they didn't really know what it was.
So they created an intoxication room within the company.
And employees could just go there.
And then they would receive LSD maybe 20 milligrams or micrograms, 100 micrograms.
And people then just took LSD and looked out the window.
They'd be in there all day?
Yeah, I mean, there was a secretary typing.
and people really liked it.
They loved it.
They were like, finally, I feel like
I always want to feel, I can think much better.
So Sandoz thought that they had a potential big hit on their hands
because this was in 1943, World War II raging.
Yeah.
So a lot of people have and will have mental problems.
Right.
Like depression and trauma.
Also, I didn't bring this up earlier,
but I meant to.
weren't the Nazis spending a lot of time in the Amazon jungle studying this stuff and trying to find different plants and herbal stuff?
I'm not familiar with the Nazi expedition to the Amazon.
No?
But I heard rumors about it, but also this would have to be carefully checked, you know, because this could also be...
Fake news that I heard.
Fake news, yeah.
But it's, I mean, I would imagine it's possible, like I wouldn't be surprised.
So when the Nazis were looking for the truth jug in 1943,
there was one guy that played a crucial role in this search,
and his name is Richard Kuhn,
and he was the leading German biochemist.
He received a Nobel Prize for Chemistry.
And he was best friends with a Swiss CEO who had discovered LSD,
and they had been friends since the 20s,
so they had been friends for a long time.
And they had always shared their knowledge.
and I found the document, like the letters between them, I read the letters between them.
And so this Nazi chemist who's supposed to find the truth drug for Hitler receives the knowledge in 43 from his best friend Stoll.
We found this compound that works so potently in the mind.
You only need like a few micrograms and someone has completely different perceptions and everything.
So the Nazi scientists, and you can call Kuhn a Nazi scientist,
I mean, he was basically a German scientist, but he like started his lectures with Heil Hitler and stuff like that.
So he makes it clear that he's part of the system.
So he finds this very interesting and he asks Stolt to send him half a gram and he receives half a gram.
And then the Nazis, the SS, which is a Nazi organization, the SS started tests with psychedelic substances in the concentration camp of Dachau at that time.
So the Nazis were...
They were testing the prisoners with Theleste?
Yeah, and masculine.
They were trying to...
And then they would talk to them, like it was one-on-one, you know.
And sometimes the person was told that in the coffee there's a drop of something, sometimes not.
But it was like checking out whether you can use that situation to your advantage in an interrogation,
which I guess would be true, you know, because the other person would be confused
and that gives you an edge over that other person, I would imagine.
and if the trip's very strong, if you're able to exploit that somehow with your power position,
that's like scary mind control experiments done in the concentration camp of Dachau.
And I've read some reports, like one guy who has like the most amazing trip on masculine,
and he really loves it.
And during the trip, he realizes that the trip will be over and he'll come back to his life as an inmate in the concentration camp.
He said that was pretty hard.
Wow.
That's crazy.
Yeah.
But he survived it and later wrote about this.
Oh, really?
So that basically put LSD in a position where when the U.S. military,
when they invaded the concentration camp of Dachau,
became aware of it because they confiscated the SS papers.
They had them reviewed by their drug expert,
which was Professor Beecher from Harvard University.
So suddenly the knowledge of LSD was in American hands.
and then Americans, I mean, they thought if the Nazis were so interested in it,
maybe there's something, you know, we should also look at this.
And the U.S. started their own search for truth drug back then
because right after World War II ended, the Cold War started the confrontation that's going on until today.
I'm sure they knew Russia had it, so we had to figure out everything we knew about it too.
And Sidney Gottlie was a huge.
part of this well godly was like a weirdo who was chosen because he was not like usually the cia
directors and higher officials they were they were all wasps and godly was jewish so he was like an
odd was he jewish yeah really i didn't know he i mean gotley i would imagine that that is i guess that's
he was from the bronz yeah and his parents came from hungary they would choose from
from Hungary that came to the United States.
Okay.
So he was like an odd choice,
but the kind of department
that he was leading, where the program
MK Ultra was so secretive
that
he was kind of the right choice.
He kind of merged with that
program. And that program
I guess was understanding
the human mind in order to
pass through certain means.
Like for example, LSD was a
big topic for
but not only LSD, but LSD for him was very interesting.
Can we as the CIA investigate, like properly how to develop LSD into a pharmacological weapon?
Yep.
Which is very difficult, you know, because LSD is so weird.
You know, what does LSD do?
Right.
They didn't know at the time, really.
We're only starting to understand it more now, and I'm very happy to talk about what we understand now
what actually happens in the brain because it is quite interesting.
I don't think we know, do we?
We know certain things.
Really?
Yeah.
What do we actually know?
And it's how do you prove anything?
Like, it's all like, so much of it is subjective and anecdotal.
Well, there's a brain scans are being done with brains on substances.
So you can see the difference in the energy flows in the brain.
And one of the leading experts in the field is,
Professor Follenweider.
I write about him in Tript.
He's a professor at Zurich University.
And he's been putting people on psychedelics
since the 90s and put them in brain scanners
and then examines exactly what changes in the brain
and what changes in the brain is...
You said in their 90s?
Yeah, early 90s.
He's added for a long time.
That's why he's the words leading.
How old are the patients that he's doing this stuff too?
I don't know.
I think it's countless.
Because you also say that this stuff was used for your mother because she had some, she had Alzheimer's, is that right?
Yeah, I mean, I actually asked Follenweider while doing research for the book, I got to know him because I knew he's the world's leading expert.
He can actually tell me what happens in the brain.
And I had read a white paper that low dosages of LSD are good against Alzheimer and therefore we decided to, you know, research this properly and then maybe administer it in the family.
So it was kind of my family job to research the true story of LSD.
That's basically the story of Tript of this book,
which I therefore wanted to call LSD for mom,
because it was basically about LSD for my mom.
And so the story of Trip, the story of LSD is what I came back with at the end to my father,
who had been a judge before, not a drug person, but a man of the law.
And he read my report on LSD, and he said,
look, he also thought it was a good idea.
So we all, in the family, decided to use it.
It's been very helpful for my mom.
And for example, in Australia, it is now patients, dementia patients are receiving LSD legally.
Australia is the first country that has made this kind of treatment legal and possible.
And from my experience, I think psychedelics are very interesting in terms.
treating dementia. I think this is something that has to be looked at. It's very important because
dementia is the pandemic of the future. It's what a lot of people will be getting. More, it's an
increasing disease. And we have no medication right now. Do we know why it's increasing?
More people, more old people, but I'm not a dementia expert. But I know it works, LSD works against
dementia for my mother. And that score is quite amazing to see whenever she does that. And what is the
law in Germany in regard to using psychedelics to treat different ailments like this? Is it the same
in the U.S.? Yeah, it's illegal. And my father was visited by four young policemen. And since he was like
one of the highest judges in the state, and everyone knows that, they were very timid and approached him
a shy and respectful manner but asked to have a glance into the fridge and because I write about it
in Tript so apparently they had read the book and I write about that he takes it out of the fridge and
but that day there was nothing in the fridge so they were like okay we see there's nothing in the
fridge and they left and they stopped the investigation so it was officially dropped it's officially
been dropped. He was already kind of looking forward
to it. That's the benefit of having
being a judge. I'm just kidding.
No, he was actually, he thought
it would be fun to be in court.
Oh, yeah? Yeah.
Did you guys ever, did you ever convince your dad
to try it?
Yeah, he's tried it a few times in
microdosis and usually doesn't
feel anything. You can't feel like the hallucogenic
effect. You, uh, or that
microdose, but you could
feel a little like drinking
in an espresso maybe. It does something
to the brain, right? Like it does like the first time I microdosed mushrooms, like I didn't feel
I didn't feel high at all, but I felt just like smiley and happy and like was just, I thought
everything was funny. I mean, so what, what foreign writer found out is that certain areas of the
brain receive less energy when you are on a psychedelic and the area that receives less is
the, is kind of a command center. Some neuroscientists call it.
the default mode network.
Oh, yes.
And that is what kind of tells you right now that you're doing a podcast with me
and that it's like...
Associated with like the ego, right?
Like me, I'm here doing this now.
Yeah.
And if this receives less energy, then you're more open to perceiving something not being
separate because you don't...
The ego, like, immediately judges this as a can, you know.
But if that judgment wouldn't be there, you look at it and you kind of maybe see how beautiful it is, maybe as an opt, I don't know, you would see something else.
So that is what he could see actually in energy flows.
Also, he could detect that on psilocybin, unpleasant memories are less often recall.
than not on psilocybin.
And that makes the anti-depressant effect.
Really?
Yeah.
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Because we all have negative things inside of us, obviously.
Some more severe than others, but we all have them.
Yes.
It's just a question, do you access them the whole time?
Do you get into loops and repeat them the whole time?
My psychedelics disrupt that.
Interesting.
So you think about something else,
and then it immediately becomes a little less relevant to you,
if you can get out.
Isn't that so, so wild about psychedelics?
Because with marijuana, for me,
when I smoke a lot of marijuana,
or if I do like a marijuana gummy,
which can be like 10 times more potent, psychoactive,
all of the dark shit creeps in.
Like, for me, like, if I take too much,
if I get too stoned,
I will be like in the fetal position
in the corner with my world caving in on me
but at the end of it usually it's positive
right at the end of it I kind of like
I have an epiphany about something
you know what I mean
but it's not the same with like DMT for example
like the first time I tried DMT I thought it was going to be like that
times a million right
and it was completely on not even in the same universe
yeah have you done DMT
um
yeah I've done it
I don't know a few times
I had once a DMT vape, which was kind of nice,
because you could just vape DMT.
But it's also a bit crazy because it's a very strong drug.
Just to use it so casually, it's a bit weird.
Yeah, it's interesting because it's the one drug,
one of the few drugs that's illegal that is in every living thing
on this world.
Like it's in every plant, it's in every biological creature.
Yeah, DMT is a bit under-examined, I think.
Yeah.
Like it's very important substance, but we'd
don't really know that much about it.
Mm-hmm.
So it's a different thing than the other drugs, right?
That's like, it's a, it's like almost impossible to become addicted to it.
To DMT.
To DMT.
Or to like-
Ayahuasca.
Because for most people when you talk, people like psychonauts, people that are very into this kind of stuff, they, when you ask them about like their experiences, they'll explain to you like in vivid detail, everything they've learned from it, you know, how they do it and and what they see.
and what it's like and how it changes their brains.
It's like, when's the last time you did it?
It'd be like, oh, it was October of 2022.
But I can describe it like they did it yesterday.
It never leaves you.
It's not something that you constantly are chasing
and want to do it again.
Like heroin or cocaine or meth or some of these things.
Yeah, it's hard to become addicted to psychedelics.
I tried it once with LSD,
and I took like every other day LSD for like half a year
and I wouldn't leave the house without LSD.
and I just stopped.
I never became addicted.
You did it every day?
Every other day.
Every other day?
In micro doses or like big doses?
No, hero doses.
Hero doses.
Yeah, with my girlfriend.
We were both experimenting.
This was in Berlin in the mid-90s, so you didn't have to work because everything's so cheap.
Right.
You just party.
Wow.
Yeah.
How did that affect you?
I think I couldn't have written a Nazi drug book without drug experiences
because I was able to understand much more
because of the drug experiences I have had
and I worked on the book closely with an elderly German historian
Hans Momsen who was like the leading German historian on National Socialism
and he kind of said that we historians
We don't know anything about drugs.
That's why we have overlooked it the whole time.
He immediately understood it when he saw all the Xerox copies I had made from the archives.
He said, this is it, this is the missing piece.
We just never thought about it because we don't use drugs.
So in a way, I know I'm kind of thankful for using these drugs.
First of all, it was a lot of fun while I was using them.
I thought for a while I would become like just like going to parties and nothing ever comes out of it.
this is what usually happens if you become a berlin kind of party person you just kind of you have fun but you kind of waste your years maybe you know yeah so i could use it all for this book so that was that was actually i i think it really helped me to grow up in berlin to understand that much about drugs and about german history because berlin you know this is where it all happened you know this is where the banker was and whatever you know have you heard of um a guy that named a karl ruck yeah
He wrote that book with Gordon Watson and Albert Hoffman.
I spoke with him.
Oh, did you really?
Yeah.
I wanted to know.
When you were researching your book?
Yeah, I wanted to know if he still thinks that it's a valid case.
And he was totally convinced.
In the book, the Roto Yelousis, they tried to prove that a hallucinogenic potion was used at the ritual there.
For the Kukion mix that they would take.
Right.
Which is...
Ergot.
That's what they think.
Yeah.
So they went there and Hoffman, being the chemist who had found LSD,
like his drive was to show to the world that this freak that he found, LSD,
was actually a compound that has helped us evolve as a culture,
especially as, you know, the Western culture, Western civilization,
the most important ritual, elusive for Athens, secret ritual.
had a psychoactive drink called Kukyon.
That was the thesis.
But the problem is it was,
so far it has not been proven.
Right.
And it has not been proven
because technology only recently
is able to examine like residue in like pots.
Yes.
So when they were trying,
when they were writing the book,
the rotulosis,
this was like, I would say in the 80s.
No, it was in the 60s, I think.
Yeah.
I think it might have been later.
Ruck was at, I think he was at Harvard in the 60s, as early as the 60s.
And maybe it was the, find out when the road tweet Luce's first came out.
But he was blacklisted from academia when he came out with that.
It's crazy.
Yeah, now you're like the hottest shit.
If you're doing psychedelic research, back then you were blacklisted.
Yeah.
Yeah, Steve, I'm sorry, but you're going to have to go back to Chrome, man.
There's just some stuff.
Okay, 78, published in 78.
Interesting.
So they didn't know, and the problem in the book is that it all makes sense.
It's very probable, but it still just remains a speculation because they don't find the proof.
Like, Hoffman really goes all the way, you know.
He, like, examines, like, plans and, like, tries to find Ergot there.
I think he finds something and then they brew it there and then they take it, but it's not
strong enough.
So it's like they really tried to figure out what was taken back then, but the only way to figure
it out would be to examine like cups where the Kukion was in and then we would know.
Yeah.
So this was probably going to happen.
Yeah.
I think one of the reasons that Ruck was sort of blacklisted and there was a famous guy from
Boston University named John Silber.
I think he was one of the, I think he was the head of Boston University who basically came
said that Ruck's work was vanity press.
And I think the academic institutions didn't want.
They didn't like the idea that Ruck was basically vindicating the psychedelic
renaissance, which was happening with the Vietnam War and the psychedelic movement in the United States,
connecting that with the people that founded Western civilization,
the people that came up with democracy and the scientists,
method. These people were doing the same thing that these crazy psychedelic anti-war people are doing,
right? So it kind of like validated that. The problem is not that there's no proof, but still
it's an interesting work that they did in this book. And I mean, today I visited the Tampa
art museum and there's a famous, now famous, like cup. A best, the god best? Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
Pull up that article, Steve.
That's fascinating.
They found like breast milk and vaginal fluids in this thing.
It's weird.
So you went and saw this?
Yeah.
And I had a conversation with the curator.
Yeah, one of the things that Galen, Marcus Aurelius's physician writes about, is the use of bodily fluids as antidotes for viper venom.
because a lot of people were getting bit by snakes around that area, right?
They were everywhere.
So what they were doing was one of these classical philologists that I had in here,
Amin Hillman, wrote about this stuff how they were taking bandages and impregnating them
the bandages with these venoms, these viper venom.
And they were making cuts on people and wrapping the bandage around the cut.
So it would slowly induce the venom into their body and they're young people, young kids who had robust immune systems.
So they would develop the antibodies to this stuff.
So they could use the bodily fluids of children as antidotes to snake bites and viper venoms and stuff like this.
The curator basically said that there's so many artifacts that could have contained at one point, like psychoactive stuff.
but since it's not evaluated
we basically look at these artifacts in museums
and we have no idea really what was in all these vases
especially in Greece
the problem is that it's expensive
to examine it there's no funding for it
so we don't pay enough
because he said actually
he said it's important to imagine
the people back then
because there were also drugs, psychoactive drugs
found in this mug
he said it brings us
these people closer.
If we imagine that they were, you know, maybe using
same drugs as we are today,
because the trip is a trip, you know.
If it's a certain strength
on a mushroom trip, I think today your trip
would be very similar to someone tripping
thousands of years ago.
So it does kind of
create an empathetic, like,
a notion.
It's very interesting that
some of the
most brilliant and bright
minds of antiquity were engaging in these rights and these rituals and then we're so into if these if the
illucinian mysteries and the kikian were they were you know partaking in some sort of psychedelic trip
you know people like aristotle and doing all this stuff and coming up with all these crazy ideas
like democracy and the scientific method um it's crazy to think that you know that's
stuff kind of got buried. I think it was in the third century or something like that.
You know, the church kind of, they burned it down, they burned down to Lusis and made all of this stuff, the devil.
I have to actually examine how it degenerated. It's interesting.
I think it was going on for like a thousand years.
Yeah. I've been there. I looked at the ruins because as historian, you have to look at archives and documents.
but if you look at a time that's older than documents,
then you have to actually look at ruins.
You have to basically become an archaeologist,
which is also an interesting profession
because it's just like a story, you know.
You just see like something carvings.
So you're working on a new book right now,
which is about, what's it about?
It's basically about all kinds of historical,
epochs and how drugs played roles in them.
That's why I was interested in this bass head
because that sheds some light on a certain period in time
that psychoactive drugs for sure were used
because it's hard to find proof.
If you examine the residue in an old cup, that's a proof.
If you see, like, for example, there's ruins in South America
where you can see San Pedro,
cactus that's also a proof
that this cactus was known there
you know
um
so
I don't know where was I going
your new book
oh
you want more cratum
um
no
because you said the second one makes it tired
right
yeah
yeah the second one's a downer
I would drink another green tea
yeah sure
Steve would you mind uh cooking them up another green tea
man.
Absolutely.
Sweet, we can take a little break.
I got to take a leak anyways.
We're back.
Yeah, I think it's important
to try to figure out
why we think this is interesting.
Because I think
that it does actually connect us
with the people back then
when they were using the same alkaloids
that we're using.
Even though here it's not so clear
because so many different things
have been found,
it was like
like a magic concoction.
But it had psychoactive stuff in there too, the blue water lily.
Oh yeah, the blue water lily. That was a huge thing with the Egyptians, I think.
It was growing all over Egypt.
Right?
I think so, yeah. And it had, but it had more like a calming effect.
It was like lotus, eating lotus.
But also harmonine was found in there, which is basically an M-A-O.
inhibitor. So I think it's still not
pharmacologically clear what was in this
bas-mug. Yeah. But it was something very intense,
obviously. And
Branco van Oppen, who's the curator of the museum,
he thinks maybe it has something to do with giving birth, because
giving birth was very difficult back then. Yeah. A lot of women
actually died, and a lot of infants died.
The mortality was like 50%, I think.
like a big challenge to actually keep the humanity going basically.
Yeah.
And apparently because this was also because vaginal fluids are founded there in mother's milk and blood,
it seemed to have some kind of connection to something very female going on here.
Very.
Yeah.
The ergot things interesting, though.
There was one, there was a guy that you mentioned, I think, in your book who was like he was the guy who did the most.
research on ergot?
Oh, well, I know the guy who produced the most LSD, which is Leonard Picard.
I don't know if you mean him.
Maybe.
But there's also a scientist in Switzerland that met on the mountains who did a lot of ergot research.
It's a very nerdy topic to become an ergot expert, but it's quite interesting.
Well, it's an alkaloid that comes from a fungus, right?
It grows on.
And people were getting stoned off it by accident because, you know, wheat and barley was just infected
with it.
I think in the middle ages it was a problem, ergot poisoning.
Yes.
That could lead to like mass psychosis and people freaking out.
But per Salzelsus said it's always the dosage that makes the poison.
So that was the idea of Sandoz who created later LSD to extract the potent alkaloids from ergot
and turn that into medicines.
Their first medicine in the 20s was a migraine, anti-higraine medicine, headache, anti-headache medicine.
because ergoat basically makes you contract your vessels like your blood vessels
oh really so they also made in a successful medication that is i think still given during birth
that after the birth it contracts the blood vessels so bleeding the bleeding stops that's how a lot
of women died in antiquity from bleeding out after birth so sandals developed a medicine against that
that was one of the big early hits.
So LSD for them was just a freak medicine.
They didn't want to develop LSD.
It just happened.
I just didn't know really what it is.
Right.
They weren't very good in bringing it to the market
because they basically sold it to Richard Kuh, a Nazi scientist.
They was looking for a truth drug.
So that was the big mistake to see what it did.
And that's why LSD is not legal at this moment.
Right.
I wonder
I always wonder like what kind of version of
MK Ultra are they working on right now
that we'll find out about in 10 years
you know
who knows who knows if they're even still interested in drugs that much
you know other than like
that guy who I mentioned earlier
who's doing the DARPA funded research on soldiers
trying to make better soldiers with psychedelics
I think it can improve soldiers with psychedelics
not for the actual battle situation.
Yeah, because if you're giving them psychedelics,
why are we here?
Like, we shouldn't be here.
We all need to give each other hugs.
But I mean, if you try to create a powerful army,
you need a powerful narrative.
Yeah.
And so a truthful narrative would be better
than like a fictional ideology.
So it would make sense, actually,
to make your people aware of,
who they are and their surroundings.
Maybe then they wouldn't want to be soldiers anymore.
Right, that's what I'm saying.
But maybe, you know, maybe you can create a narrative of an army that makes sense to serve.
Yeah, if you could take the hallucination or the psychoactive element out of it
and just induce the other benefits that you get from it.
where the brain enhancement or focus, vision.
Yeah, I mean, what also happens is apart from the default mode network,
receiving less energy, is that for a window of two weeks after the psychedelic experience,
your so-called neuroplasticity is enhanced.
Oh, yeah.
Your brain is more kind of flexible and moving.
It's not like rigid, like it always always the same thoughts.
It's more like, let's reinvent ourselves and look at everything.
So, I mean, on a new way.
Yeah.
So it seems, it makes sense to me that this is a healthy process.
But maybe if your brain is very unstable,
that additional instability could cause you problems.
So I think everyone has to decide for him or herself.
It's just very weird that the US government or any government in the world
would kind of put up a chemical wall.
on our brains and kind of dictate what we can do and what we cannot do.
And I mean, Kennedy claimed that he would reevaluate this and legalize psychedelics,
but I'm somehow very skeptical, but that's at least,
it would be a very libertarian thing to do also to remove these kind of regulations
because I think that's what the new administration is all about,
kind of removing regulations and kind of disrupting what was,
was here before and anti-drug laws
like really old-school stuff
you know they come from the cold war like they have no
correlation to reality they just
they're not working they're not
they're not contemporary anymore
so that would be that should be one of the first
things that need to be re-evaluated
yeah the drug cartels would
lose a lot of business
they would yeah they would not be happy
um
I think it's interesting also
I mean I would
like to like it said like like big corporations will benefit from like a change like this but i
actually don't think so if they could patent it if they could get control of the patents
yeah i don't i think psychedelics is more it's not a big it's not a big company thing i think
it's i have a feeling it would be interesting for a lot of startups to come up with stuff and develop
things and get into the market and I think it would be a shift you know big companies would lose
money obviously there would not sell their products as well anymore so Kennedy um Kennedy
said you you have a theory that Kennedy did LSD well I mean there's a one source only for this and
it's Timothy Leary's autobiography so if you believe the source then he received a visitor in
April, 1963,
Mary Pinchot,
who was kind of Kennedy's
lover. She was always in the White
House with him,
when they, also, they were alone a lot.
And she said to Leary
that she
wants LSD for a very important
person. And
Leary kind of suggested that he
would do the ritual with them, but
she never said, she never said it was
JFK. She was like a...
What year was this?
63.
Okay.
She was like an influencer kind of.
How do you spell her name?
Steve, can you look her up?
What's her name?
P-I-N-C-H-O-T, Mary.
Pinshot, Mary P-N-Shot.
Yeah, she was married to a CIA guy,
but divorced him and then became kind of a peace advocate in D.C.
He was trying to...
Interesting.
So she went to Leary.
She's quite hot, actually.
Is she hot?
Oh, there she is.
Look at this.
Oh yeah, she's not bad.
She's great fun in the White House.
So they were smoking wheat.
That's proven that they were smoking weed together in the White House.
And she had been married to the CIA operative before and divorced him and then kind of changed.
And she was murdered at this.
What?
Yeah, she was shot in the head a few months after Kennedy was assassinated.
And I read, but I don't know if that's true.
I just read that her diary also was confiscated and was never seen.
Pinshot was murdered in the Chesapeake, Ohio Canal,
a towpath in Washington, D.C. in October 12, October 12th.
So a year after Kennedy was killed.
We'll have to wait a bit.
A suspect, Ray Camp Jr. was arrested and charged with her murder,
but he was ultimately acquitted.
Wow.
Beginning in 1976, Pinchot Myers' life,
her relationship with Kennedy and her murder
became a subject of numerous articles and books,
including a full-length biography by Nina Burley.
Yeah, I think it's a good book.
So in any case...
So she went to...
She went to Timothy Leary.
Because Leary was like known that he's the LSD guy.
I mean, he made it pretty clear.
Oh, yeah.
So she wanted to turn on JFK
and she received LSD from Leary.
And then she gave...
Well...
He wanted to go,
but she was like, he wanted to go and participate,
but she was like, no, no, you can't go.
You're just going to teach me how to do it.
Because this guy's a big shot.
Yeah, he's too big.
Find some more photos over.
Is there any other photos?
And also you should look up Kennedy's peace speech at the American University.
Oh, yeah, I'm familiar with that one.
Which he held after she returned from Harvard with the LSD.
So that's the theory that they took.
they tripped on LSD together and then he realized and this was in what what
month this was late right like close to his death well like half a year before half a year
because he changed his policies he was like a hawk before like really into arms race and
with the peace speech he kind of said the arms race is bullshit and let's just he basically is
kind of hippie-esque you know and he wasn't like that before um in June 10 19603 rather than
a speech at Harvard. However, Kennedy gave a speech
at Harvard University on 14th, 56,
where he expressed his views
on the importance of peace in the rural
United States.
If more politicians do poetry
and more poets new politics, I'm convinced
the world would be a better place in which to live.
He says a lot of things
like, oh, the Russians also have
children like just like us and
we just want to take care of our children
and friends and peaceful.
Yeah.
And I think that's
I think that's the reason why he got assassinated
because he wanted to end the arms race
and really make peace on earth.
Of course.
Yeah, no, they...
The Joint Chiefs of Staff were planning
a global nuclear war.
They wanted to nuke China and Russia
and they wanted to do that
before Russia got intercontinental ballistic missiles
because they knew that they wouldn't be able to retaliate
before the beginning of 1964
when they did get ICBMs.
Only in 64.
Yeah, they got ICBMs in the beginning of 64.
America had an advantage.
We had an advantage, right?
They didn't cheap parity until later.
Technology.
Renaf von Braun.
Right, right.
Well, hey man, thanks for coming and doing this.
This was fun.
Thanks for having me.
Of course.
I love learning about all this crazy history of the Nazis and drugs
and throughout history has also been super fascinating,
fascinating to me.
So thanks, thanks.
again, I really enjoyed it. Tell people
where they can find your books
and find more about
you on the internet.
Well,
I want to do a substack,
but so far I haven't done it yet, but I think it's a
really good medium because it's kind of
you kind of
own the content, I think, well, let's
say on Instagram, you don't really own anything
you put out there. Right now I'm just
posting shit on Instagram, but I
think it's
unworthy somehow. I
I think reading books is quite good.
I find it hard to focus and actually read,
but I would encourage everyone to actually try to read maybe tripped and blitzed.
And my third book, The Bohemians, which is also out in English.
Okay.
They're on audio too, right?
You can listen to it.
Yeah, right.
Okay.
Well, thanks for having it.
Beautiful.
I'll link it all below as well as your Instagram.
Cool.
We also have our super secret community of Patreon subscribers.
Okay.
who have very detailed questions for you.
I'm going to have you answer as soon as we wrap up this podcast.
So that's the end of the podcast, folks.
Thanks again, Norman.
It's been amazing.
I really enjoyed this.
And if you're not on Patreon, sorry about your luck.
All right, this guy said, what surprised you most about the role in drugs shaping the Third Reich's military strategy?
How long should I answer?
A minute, maybe, 30 seconds to a minute.
You don't have to elaborate too much.
You can keep it pretty short.
Well, I think understanding that methamphetamine will be enhancing the fighting capabilities.
I think it's quite something to discover that and then to actually turn that into a program that millions of soldiers are using.
And then it actually works, at least in the beginning against France.
That was kind of surprising.
Okay.
Tristan says, how much of an effect did Hitler's drug use have on his motivation to talk?
target the Jews besides the master race claim.
How far did the Nazi super soldier program?
Okay, these are like three questions.
How much of an effect did Hitler's drug use have on his motivation to target Jews?
I think none.
I didn't read any description of morale where he says like Hitler's taking this and this,
and then he realizes that the Jews are bad or something.
So I also think this answers the question of accountability.
I think the responsibility is not lessened because he took drugs once.
in a while because I think
the crimes were really
had nothing to do with drugs but with his
kind of evil ideology.
Right.
Okay, Sharma, this is a long one.
What's the biggest difference between
an amphetamines of today and the
stimulants the Nazis were using?
Kind of explain that on the podcast.
Yeah, we did.
What's the long-term result of the drug used
amongst the average soldier? Any evidence
that, any evidence of typical substance
use disorders associated with symptoms or behaviors that we see now, or did they just return
to whatever the new normal looked like?
Was there a long-term side effects of all this stuff with those guys?
It was never examined.
I mean, the Army had a program, like a rehab program, but they didn't put it into place
because the war became so chaotic and they didn't have any resources anymore.
So the people just came back.
I spoke to one guy
his father was a writer
and he said he just took it
then in the evening
when we all went to bed
and at 10 he took a Pavitin
in the 50s and wrote his books
until like two at night
so people knew about it
also Pavitine is not like heroin
you know it's not
the withdrawal it probably just stops
you know you take methamphetamine
for two years in the war and then you come out of the war
I think many people just didn't take it anymore
Right. Are you still microdosing with your mom? Any positive long time changes? Got any updates?
Well, it was really good for quite a while, like over two years. And then my father, now my mother is in an old people's home because my father couldn't take care of her anymore by himself. And he stopped giving the microdosis since she's in the home because it's still illegal. And he doesn't want to give it secretly. And he doesn't also doesn't feel like.
talking to like the nurses there that he wants to do this which i think i think he should try
harder because it's always been good for her because it's just it seems to be good for her brain i
think he's giving up too quickly but i respect his decision she cannot make the decision anymore
right because i'd say my does not i think he said so before she went into the home that
Alzheimer gets slowed down through the LSD,
but it doesn't get stopped.
So the Alzheimer basically wins even over the LSD.
It's just more and more Alzheimer's in the brain.
Okay.
Thank you for the work you've done.
What is you saying?
Questions.
I know, right?
How did the Nazis source the ingredients?
Well, Temla, the company that made Pavi,
made it very clear from the beginning
when they advertised the medicine to doctors
and then later to the military
that the ingredients for methamphetamine
are very easy to come by.
It's nothing that's scarce
or couldn't be found anymore during the war.
And so it was just like basic chemicals
that a company just has.
So they were able to make still millions
of dosages of methamphetamine
in 1945 when
you know there was not much being produced anymore.
Germany because of the bombing campaigns, but Temla kept producing.
They relocated their production facilities to a brewery in West Germany.
So in this brewery, they made beer and methamphetamine at the same time.
Oh, wow.
Like in 1945.
Was there any connection to, I can't see it, Steve.
Was there any indications of hallucinogenic drugs used by the Nazis in regards to their occult worship?
I didn't find anything.
No.
Also, the whole occult thing, I think.
think it played a role and I think Himmler was really into it but I don't think Hitler was really
into it and so it's not so I mean people might disagree but I don't think it's so important
this this occult part of the Nazi movement were the allies on drugs they were they noticed
in the fall of 1941 that the German pilots had been using methamphetamine and then
Churchill ordered a drug program also for the Royal Air Force and they examined different types
of amphetamines and methamphetamine and they decided then to use amphetamines and they started
in an amphetamine program but they thought methamphetamine is too strong for them oh okay but
amphetamine is actually a better choice yeah i mean the nazis would say so right right uh do you see
any correlation with the current day big pharma medical industrial complex and the massive amounts of
vaccines and drugs given to people?
Is there a way to control, dumb down, or make people sick?
Wow.
This guy thinks you got all the answers.
Yeah, I think the pharmaceutical industry is not really helping people to get more healthy.
I think it really needs the legalization of psychedelics.
I think that will be a game changer because then it's like the truth is there, you know.
Sure.
Then they have to compete with that.
Yeah.
Right now they have like a protected playing field.
because the right stuff that can really help is not allowed.
Right, right.
That really needs to change.
Were mushrooms used in any ways?
No, were mushrooms used in the same way as Nordic cultures,
or was it mainly narcotics?
I think there have been, I haven't examined it properly enough,
but there have been like mushroom depictions on like boats and stuff.
So I think they used mushrooms.
but I haven't researched this properly yet.
Thoughts on Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Psychon.
Thomas Pynchon.
It's actually my favorite novel, and I read it in the mid-90s in Berlin,
what I was like coming home from Kit Kat Club and other underground venues in Berlin.
So still high on acid.
And I think it's one of the greatest novels ever written.
It's very complex, very hard to understand.
What's it about?
It's basically, it's set in Germany during the war and right after the war,
and it's about an American special agent, Tyrone Slothrop.
And they find out, first he's in London,
and he always has sex in places where then the next day the German V2 rockets land.
So he's kind of psychically connected to this.
And so they kind of follow him.
And wherever he's going to fucks at night,
they're going to evacuate the area the next day.
because the V2 rocket is going to hit there.
And then he later goes into Berlin,
and he has all kinds of crazy adventures.
I think it's an amazing novel,
and I'm wondering really how Thomas Pinchin wrote it
because he has so much esoteric information
about drugs and rocket science in Germany,
and it's a very knowledgeable book.
It's a bit hard to read.
When was he?
When was he around?
He's still around.
Oh, is he really?
He's the most famous, completely unknown American author.
No one knows where he lives and how he looks.
i gotta write his name i gotta get him on here he won't i'll have him in here tomorrow
he's very hard to trace down he lives here though um i know the city where he lives but i wouldn't
disclose it oh because he that's he just doesn't want to be of it doesn't want to be known right
it's hard you know yeah i'm sure he's not gonna do instagram stories you know right but he doesn't need to
you know he's great he should he should receive
the Nobel Prize for literature, I would be
interested in whether he would come out for that.
Yeah?
Interesting.
What year did he write that novel?
The 70s.
70s?
Solar panel death sentence?
I don't even know what that means.
Do you know what that means?
No, I don't know what that means.
Let's skip that.
All right.
It sounds like a band.
It does.
Hit me that lid.
Do you think the Nazis' history of drug use
and experimentation influence the knowledge
or practices transferred operation paper club?
Yeah, I think we talked about that, right?
Yeah.
What's the best drug for inducing lucid dreaming or enhancing a creative flow state?
AI says that maybe gallantamine and modafinil.
Well, AI is pretty bad, actually.
Everyone, like, praised it, how intelligent it is.
I think it's pretty stupid still.
And it makes a lot of mistakes.
And which drug did it recommend?
Oh, medafin.
Modafin is okay, you know, it's like...
What the hell is?
medafinil. It's like
it works a little bit like an amphetamine, but it's
not an amphetamine. It's like
a brain enhancer
or performance enhancer. Like the German
army, when they were deployed
in Afghanistan, they would use medaphanal
in certain combat situations because
it makes you more awake and more
alert. But it doesn't really have
a great trip. It's kind of like what
you said. It doesn't have
an intoxication effect, but it does have
like a stimulating effect.
Okay.
And galantamine, I don't know.
But I think the AI didn't give a very good answer.
This guy's talking about lucid dreaming and flow state.
Yeah, you need something else.
Yeah, I wouldn't imagine that to get into a flow state,
you would be wanted to go towards like stimulants like that.
I don't know.
That's just me.
Mr. Oler, are you suggesting that your work shifts the blame from Hitler to drugs?
Yes, Farouk.
That's exactly what are you saying?
Are drugs? No, he's not, you're not saying drugs are responsible.
No.
I don't know what. I don't know. He clearly did not read your book.
Well, I mean, it's a legit question, so I'm not, but I'm not suggesting that.
It could be, it could be my angle if I was like a right-wing kind of guy, but it's not really my angle at all.
Yeah.
What historical connections are there between the pharmaceutical giants of today and the Nazi regime?
Well, Merck is still around, right?
I mean,
IG Faben was like a conglomerate
of the biggest German pharmaceutical companies
and they were like...
weren't they also making rubber?
Yeah, they were making rubber
but they also made like Cyclone B
which was the gas chamber.
So they were like
a big influence
from a business side
into the government kind of.
That's...
Mussolini said democracy dies
when money has too much influence
on the political process.
And this was certainly what the Nazis did.
They allowed, you know,
CEOs to talk into their politics.
Wow.
Crazy quote coming from Mussolini.
Yeah.
I mean, it's a very interesting quote
what fascism actually is.
It makes sense to me.
He thought that was good, you know,
and a lot of people think it is good.
But it's...
What?
Think what's good.
If money kind of decides...
Politics.
has a big, you know...
Mussolini thought it was good?
Well, he was a fascist.
He was invented fascism.
Right, right.
What's the most surprising discovery in your research for Blitz?
I mean, I actually didn't think Hitler was on drugs, you know,
before I started this research.
And then when I read all the notes by his doctor,
which are very detailed and very vivid,
also kind of well written sometimes,
like how he washes the syringe.
He actually used the same syringe over and over again.
yeah because it didn't have like all you know it was a different time also the syringe was much thicker so it was
actually oh god must have been quite painful but i think hitler was a bit of a masochist he kind of liked that
yeah that pain going into yeah so he really liked to get injections um okay what was the question
keep going to the question yeah that was one of the questions okay uh the other ones we talked about
Thanks again. This person just said thanks.
Good.
This person is saying,
Danny, get up with me on Instagram.
Okay.
All right.
That's it, man.
Thanks, guys.
Thank you very much, sir.
Sure.
Fascinating shit.
All right.
Thanks, Patreon.
Mw-Wha.
