Danny Jones Podcast - #290 - Hitler’s Favorite Way to Get High: Drugs in the Third Reich | Norman Ohler

Episode Date: March 18, 2025

Get 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)
Starting point is 00:00:01 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,
Starting point is 00:00:26 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.
Starting point is 00:01:09 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...
Starting point is 00:01:29 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.
Starting point is 00:01:38 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.
Starting point is 00:01:58 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,
Starting point is 00:02:14 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.
Starting point is 00:02:33 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?
Starting point is 00:03:02 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.
Starting point is 00:03:34 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,
Starting point is 00:03:57 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.
Starting point is 00:04:17 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?
Starting point is 00:04:31 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.
Starting point is 00:04:53 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.
Starting point is 00:05:09 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.
Starting point is 00:05:25 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
Starting point is 00:05:51 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
Starting point is 00:06:06 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
Starting point is 00:06:22 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.
Starting point is 00:07:00 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.
Starting point is 00:07:16 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.
Starting point is 00:07:42 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.
Starting point is 00:08:19 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.
Starting point is 00:08:49 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,
Starting point is 00:09:34 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
Starting point is 00:09:59 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
Starting point is 00:10:16 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.
Starting point is 00:10:36 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?
Starting point is 00:11:10 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.
Starting point is 00:11:51 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.
Starting point is 00:12:25 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.
Starting point is 00:12:50 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.
Starting point is 00:13:17 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
Starting point is 00:13:31 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.
Starting point is 00:13:51 I'm surprised like some writers can write like stuff on amphetamines like Philip Kate Dick was writing on amphetamines. My fellow men, if you've lost your hair, it doesn't mean you can't find it again. Try Hymns' hair loss solutions and you'll be joining hundreds of thousands of subscribers who have found their hair again
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Starting point is 00:15:04 Prescription products require an online consultation with a health care provider who will determine if a prescription is appropriate. Restrictions apply. See website for full details and important safety information. Make your hair great again with Hymns. 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,
Starting point is 00:15:27 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.
Starting point is 00:15:58 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,
Starting point is 00:16:24 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
Starting point is 00:16:43 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.
Starting point is 00:17:11 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.
Starting point is 00:17:46 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.
Starting point is 00:18:14 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...
Starting point is 00:18:31 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.
Starting point is 00:18:58 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.
Starting point is 00:19:43 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.
Starting point is 00:20:03 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?
Starting point is 00:20:22 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
Starting point is 00:20:49 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.
Starting point is 00:21:08 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.
Starting point is 00:21:36 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.
Starting point is 00:21:53 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,
Starting point is 00:22:15 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?
Starting point is 00:22:39 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.
Starting point is 00:23:02 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
Starting point is 00:23:24 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
Starting point is 00:23:40 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
Starting point is 00:23:57 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.
Starting point is 00:24:09 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.
Starting point is 00:24:26 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?
Starting point is 00:25:15 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
Starting point is 00:26:01 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.
Starting point is 00:26:20 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.
Starting point is 00:26:57 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
Starting point is 00:27:53 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. I don't want to be like George Costanza and have a wallet that feels like I'm smuggling a potato. Sitting on a rock appeals to no one. And who wants their wallet to give them sciatica?
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Starting point is 00:29:54 Ridge.com slash Danny Jones. It's linked below. 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
Starting point is 00:30:12 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,
Starting point is 00:30:33 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.
Starting point is 00:30:49 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.
Starting point is 00:31:10 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.
Starting point is 00:31:49 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.
Starting point is 00:32:24 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.
Starting point is 00:32:56 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.
Starting point is 00:33:40 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,
Starting point is 00:33:54 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,
Starting point is 00:34:18 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,
Starting point is 00:34:54 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.
Starting point is 00:35:06 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.
Starting point is 00:35:40 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.
Starting point is 00:36:07 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.
Starting point is 00:36:48 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.
Starting point is 00:37:04 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
Starting point is 00:37:32 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.
Starting point is 00:37:53 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.
Starting point is 00:38:53 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
Starting point is 00:39:20 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
Starting point is 00:39:31 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
Starting point is 00:39:50 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
Starting point is 00:40:18 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.
Starting point is 00:40:35 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.
Starting point is 00:41:12 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.
Starting point is 00:41:34 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.
Starting point is 00:41:57 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
Starting point is 00:42:12 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
Starting point is 00:42:25 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?
Starting point is 00:42:48 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
Starting point is 00:43:14 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?
Starting point is 00:43:39 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?
Starting point is 00:43:54 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.
Starting point is 00:44:18 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.
Starting point is 00:44:36 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?
Starting point is 00:44:48 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.
Starting point is 00:45:19 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?
Starting point is 00:45:37 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.
Starting point is 00:45:54 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
Starting point is 00:46:24 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.
Starting point is 00:46:53 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.
Starting point is 00:47:04 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,
Starting point is 00:47:37 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,
Starting point is 00:48:13 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.
Starting point is 00:48:28 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.
Starting point is 00:48:47 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.
Starting point is 00:49:08 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...
Starting point is 00:49:37 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.
Starting point is 00:50:27 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
Starting point is 00:51:15 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.
Starting point is 00:52:02 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
Starting point is 00:52:22 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.
Starting point is 00:52:46 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
Starting point is 00:53:27 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. This episode is brought to you by TrueWork, a clothing company hell-bent on bringing you the most technical high-performance workwear in the world. The True Work story begins in the Colorado Mountains where a trade worker knew. There had to be a better solution than the wet, heavy gear that was weighing him down. Then True Work was born.
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Starting point is 00:55:06 It's linked below. 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
Starting point is 00:55:18 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
Starting point is 00:55:32 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
Starting point is 00:55:49 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
Starting point is 00:56:05 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.
Starting point is 00:56:25 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
Starting point is 00:56:58 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.
Starting point is 00:57:46 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
Starting point is 00:58:23 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,
Starting point is 00:58:53 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.
Starting point is 00:59:10 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.
Starting point is 00:59:28 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.
Starting point is 00:59:37 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.
Starting point is 01:00:00 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.
Starting point is 01:00:18 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.
Starting point is 01:00:50 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
Starting point is 01:01:13 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
Starting point is 01:01:27 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
Starting point is 01:01:51 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
Starting point is 01:02:30 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
Starting point is 01:03:30 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
Starting point is 01:04:17 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
Starting point is 01:04:35 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.
Starting point is 01:05:03 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,
Starting point is 01:05:41 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
Starting point is 01:06:18 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
Starting point is 01:06:40 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
Starting point is 01:07:19 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
Starting point is 01:07:35 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,
Starting point is 01:07:59 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.
Starting point is 01:08:29 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
Starting point is 01:08:55 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,
Starting point is 01:09:16 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.
Starting point is 01:09:49 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.
Starting point is 01:10:16 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.
Starting point is 01:10:58 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.
Starting point is 01:11:33 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.
Starting point is 01:12:14 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,
Starting point is 01:12:35 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.
Starting point is 01:13:10 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.
Starting point is 01:13:51 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
Starting point is 01:14:07 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.
Starting point is 01:14:32 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.
Starting point is 01:14:50 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,
Starting point is 01:15:17 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?
Starting point is 01:15:35 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.
Starting point is 01:16:00 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.
Starting point is 01:16:36 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
Starting point is 01:17:16 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
Starting point is 01:18:14 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.
Starting point is 01:18:42 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
Starting point is 01:18:58 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.
Starting point is 01:19:35 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...
Starting point is 01:20:00 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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Starting point is 01:21:16 Watch the Stanley Cup playoffs on TNT, TBS, True TV and HBO Max. 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.
Starting point is 01:21:40 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,
Starting point is 01:21:59 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
Starting point is 01:22:17 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
Starting point is 01:22:34 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.
Starting point is 01:22:57 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.
Starting point is 01:23:15 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.
Starting point is 01:23:44 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
Starting point is 01:24:01 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.
Starting point is 01:24:14 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.
Starting point is 01:24:30 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.
Starting point is 01:25:02 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
Starting point is 01:26:00 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.
Starting point is 01:26:15 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,
Starting point is 01:26:39 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.
Starting point is 01:27:11 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,
Starting point is 01:27:32 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.
Starting point is 01:27:57 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.
Starting point is 01:28:17 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.
Starting point is 01:28:48 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
Starting point is 01:29:18 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.
Starting point is 01:30:07 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?
Starting point is 01:30:40 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.
Starting point is 01:31:21 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
Starting point is 01:31:50 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
Starting point is 01:32:06 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,
Starting point is 01:32:24 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
Starting point is 01:33:03 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,
Starting point is 01:33:41 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
Starting point is 01:34:09 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
Starting point is 01:34:36 you know um so I don't know where was I going your new book oh you want more cratum um
Starting point is 01:34:53 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
Starting point is 01:35:05 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.
Starting point is 01:35:19 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,
Starting point is 01:35:33 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.
Starting point is 01:35:57 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
Starting point is 01:36:30 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.
Starting point is 01:36:56 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.
Starting point is 01:37:26 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.
Starting point is 01:37:47 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.
Starting point is 01:38:33 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.
Starting point is 01:38:52 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
Starting point is 01:39:12 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,
Starting point is 01:39:34 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.
Starting point is 01:39:53 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.
Starting point is 01:40:23 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.
Starting point is 01:40:57 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.
Starting point is 01:41:22 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
Starting point is 01:41:57 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
Starting point is 01:42:13 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
Starting point is 01:42:51 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
Starting point is 01:43:26 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
Starting point is 01:43:42 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?
Starting point is 01:43:54 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.
Starting point is 01:44:14 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.
Starting point is 01:44:26 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.
Starting point is 01:44:55 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,
Starting point is 01:45:15 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.
Starting point is 01:45:30 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.
Starting point is 01:45:50 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.
Starting point is 01:46:14 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
Starting point is 01:46:50 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
Starting point is 01:47:06 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.
Starting point is 01:47:21 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
Starting point is 01:47:41 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.
Starting point is 01:47:55 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.
Starting point is 01:48:09 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
Starting point is 01:48:25 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
Starting point is 01:48:41 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.
Starting point is 01:48:58 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.
Starting point is 01:49:13 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?
Starting point is 01:49:35 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.
Starting point is 01:50:08 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.
Starting point is 01:50:35 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.
Starting point is 01:50:57 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
Starting point is 01:51:14 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
Starting point is 01:51:45 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
Starting point is 01:51:57 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.
Starting point is 01:52:41 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.
Starting point is 01:53:20 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
Starting point is 01:53:39 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.
Starting point is 01:53:57 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.
Starting point is 01:54:19 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
Starting point is 01:54:51 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?
Starting point is 01:55:36 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.
Starting point is 01:56:00 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?
Starting point is 01:56:23 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.
Starting point is 01:56:55 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.
Starting point is 01:57:24 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,
Starting point is 01:57:44 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.
Starting point is 01:57:58 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
Starting point is 01:58:37 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?
Starting point is 01:58:49 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.
Starting point is 01:59:00 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.
Starting point is 01:59:24 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
Starting point is 01:59:38 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
Starting point is 01:59:55 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.
Starting point is 02:00:12 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.
Starting point is 02:00:33 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?
Starting point is 02:01:02 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
Starting point is 02:01:17 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
Starting point is 02:01:33 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
Starting point is 02:01:50 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...
Starting point is 02:02:01 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,
Starting point is 02:02:21 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
Starting point is 02:02:48 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.
Starting point is 02:03:17 That's it, man. Thanks, guys. Thank you very much, sir. Sure. Fascinating shit. All right. Thanks, Patreon. Mw-Wha.

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