The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Tripped: Nazi Germany, the CIA, and the Dawn of the Psychedelic Age by Norman Ohler

Episode Date: April 11, 2024

Tripped: Nazi Germany, the CIA, and the Dawn of the Psychedelic Age by Norman Ohler https://amzn.to/3PWxLlE The author of the New York Times bestseller Blitzed returns with a provocative new history of drugs and postwar America, examining the untold story of how Nazi experiments into psychedelics covertly influenced CIA research and secretly shaped the War on Drugs. Berlin 1945. Following the fall of the Third Reich, drug use—long kept under control by the Nazis’ strict anti-drug laws—is rampant throughout the city. Split into four sectors, Berlin's drug policies are being enforced under the individual jurisdictions of each allied power—the Soviet Union, Britain, France, and the US. In the American zone, Arthur J. Giuliani of the nascent Federal Bureau of Narcotics is tasked with learning about the Nazis’ anti-drug laws and bringing home anything that might prove “useful” to the United States. Five years later, Harvard professor Dr. Henry Beecher began work with the US government to uncover the research behind the Nazis psychedelics program. Begun as an attempt to find a “truth serum” and experiment with mind control, the Nazi study initially involved mescaline, but quickly expanded to include LSD. Originally created for medical purposes by Swiss pharmaceutical Sandoz, the Nazis coopted the drug for their mind control military research—research that, following the war, the US was desperate to acquire. This research birthed MKUltra, the CIA's notorious brainwashing and psychological torture program during the 1950s and 1960s, and ultimately shaped US drug policy regarding psychedelics for over half a century. Based on extensive archival research on both sides of the Atlantic, Tripped is a wild, unconventional postwar history, a spiritual sequel to Norman Ohler’s New York Times bestseller Blitzed. Revealing the close relationship and hidden connections between the Nazis and the early days of drugs in America, Ohler shares how this secret history held back therapeutic research of psychedelic drugs for decades and eventually became part of the foundation of America’s War on Drugs.About the author Norman Ohler is an award-winning German novelist, screenwriter, and journalist. He spent five years researching Blitzed in numerous archives in Germany and the United States, and spoke to eye-witnesses, military historians, and doctors. He is also the author of the novels Die Quotenmaschine (the world's first hypertext novel), Mitte and Stadt des Goldes (translated into English as Ponte City). He was co-writer of the script for Wim Wenders' film Palermo Shooting.

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We have, as always, the most amazing, smartest minds, the authors that bring you the greatest, latest stories, tales of their journeys, lessons of life, all that sort of good stuff on The Chris Voss Show. Today we have an amazing gentleman on the show. His newest book comes out April 9th, 2024. It's called Tripped, Nazi Germany, the cia and the dawn of the psychedelic age we're gonna find out a lot of history that i didn't even know about i was like what what is all

this stuff about i did not know uh norman oler joins us on the show with us today he'll be talking to us about all of his insights well hello norman how you? I'm quite good. Very happy to be on the show. Very happy to have you. I am good as well. Give us any dot coms. Where do you want people to find you on the interwebs? Well, my website is

NormanOller.com. Also, you can find me on Instagram at Norman Oller. Go for it. There you go. So you're an award-winning German novelist, screenwriter, and journalist.

You spent five years researching Blitz in numerous archives, your previous book, in Germany and the U.S. So tell us what, give us a 30,000 overview of your new book, Tripped. Well, I was researching Blitz, all aspects of Nazi drug abuse. I came across also psychedelic research that the Nazis did with mescaline and another substance at the concentration camp of Dachau.

And I thought this is actually an interesting topic because I thought the early history of psychedelics must be interesting because they shaped the way how we see psychedelics today. So I decided for a new book to kind of look at that particular situation. There you go. And so you prompted it because you wrote Blitz. Do you have an update on what Blitz was so people are familiar with that book as well? Well, Blitz examines, and it was the first time this was examined, how National Socialism, who proclaimed to be the first anti-drug government in Europe and actually in the world, was actually using a lot of substances to promote their own goals.

The German army, the Wehrmacht, was high on methamphetamine when they invaded first Poland and then the West, and Hitler himself took a crazy drug cocktail, which I examined, and from which you can see his developments and his decision-making, so that was in research terms

quite interesting for me, actually. There you go, and you talk about how the Third Reich was saturated with cocaine, opioids, meth, but they were just having a party over there while they were running over well i mean they were kind of the four the forerunners in trying to use drugs for their own you know goals so this was like a government regulated drug policy so they weren't doing it to have fun they were actually doing it to you know promote you know national socialism and win the war so they were utilizing drugs to their ends basically at least they tried to i know the the british uh pilots i think were were on adderall or something weren't they were they were on something to keep them awake so they could keep flying well they kind of learned from

the germans because the germans were the first army to actually use a very potent synthetic drug which was methamphetamine crystal meth as we know it today in order to keep soldiers awake longer to reduce their fear levels to make them more aggressive and the brits at one point understood that the germs were kind of using a trick or were using a new type of you know weapon which is the pharmaceutical weapon so they also made tests and then they decided that they would use amphetamines, not methamphetamines, because that was too strong, the British thought, that only the Nazis should take methamphetamine. We take amphetamines. But that also influenced the British war machine quite a bit, and even armies today use amphetamines.

So this is kind of a Nazi invention that had a career even after the end of World War II. Wow. And so you go into the depth of this tript and what you call the dawn of the psychedelic age. Why do you call this the dawn of the psychedelic age? I mean, LSD, which is the most potent psychedelic substance, was founded in 1943. And the company that founded it is Swiss pharmaceutical company, Sandos in Basel, Switzerland, like very normal pharmaceutical firm, thought they had a big hit on their hands because LSD was the first medication that actually worked on the mind. And they realized in 43, we have a world war going on.

We'll have lots of traumatized people, lots of people with psychological problems after this conflict. So maybe LSD is going to be a huge hit. They actually thought this was a game changer for the pharmaceutical industry in general, more like psychedelics. They kind of invented and developed psychedelic medicines. But then something happened,

and LSD kind of was not able to develop normally like a medicine. They couldn't put it on the market, and I was curious in finding out why. Interesting, interesting. Now, of course, we beat Germany in the wars, and so you have the U.s is interested in i guess the russians and the britain and france who are overseeing um germany at that time uh you have you have uh the u.s get interested in the cia i guess in in what the germans were doing with these

drugs i mean the americans were extremely interested in all, you know, things that German scientists were working on because German scientists had this aura of being geniuses and they're really far advanced. Also, in terms of the nuclear weapon, the Americans developing their own weapon thought the Germans might, you know, have some steps ahead of us. So when America liberated Germany, thought the germans might might you know be kind of have some steps ahead of us so they were when they when america liberated germany they were they had a secret uh uh unit attached to many

military units which was called it was called the also unit and also job it was a mixture of soldiers and agents was to interview like to first find and then interview German scientists regarding nuclear weapon technology, but also the biochemical weapons. And under this area also, they were interested in drugs as possible weapons. And then they found that the Nazis had already experimented with LSD, which actually no one had ever written about that LSD has this Nazi past because we think LSD is this hippie drug. So I thought it's very interesting to look at that, you know, what actually happened. The Nazis thought it could be used as a weapon. So the Americans also thought it could be used as a weapon. That's why Sandoz, the Swiss company, was not able to just bring it on the market because they got huge pressure from the newly founded CIA, who was very interested in

winning this new war that was now starting, which was the Cold War, which was brain warfare, as the CIA head Dulles also called it, because it was about ideologies. It was this struggle against the Soviet Union. Who has the better model? So the thought that a drug would actually help you overpower the mind of someone else, for example, in an interrogation, which was attractive to the Nazis, was now very attractive to the CIA. Yeah, kind of interesting. What if it had become an open drug for sale on the market? You wonder sometimes how these things would have happened if things would have been different.

I mean, today we know that LSD can be good against dementia, against depression, against trauma, just like psilocybin and some other psychedelic substances. But at the time, they were suspecting this. And at Sundance, in this pharmaceutical pharmaceutical company they opened up a so-called they called it intoxication room it was like a room within the company and people this was in the in the mid 40s could go there like the chemists could go there or secretaries or bookkeepers of the company and they got lsd and they they they didn't know what it was they just took it and then they described and everyone described like wonderful experiences like looking

out the window this guy became very beautiful suddenly they understood their own life or they just became happy they couldn't stop smiling so sometimes really thought this lsd is like a brain food is like something that really makes people feel better and think better so this was this is actually the dawn of the psychedelic age, which was then put, you know, kind of had to go underground because LSD became illegal in the United States and then worldwide. And now the research is actually starting up again. So in a way, now we have a second dawn of the psychedelic age. Now we have a real dawn because now scientists are actually more and more able to research LSD, psilocybin, ketamine, MDMA

in the lab to see, can it really help against dementia? How long will it take until we have the first psychedelic medicine against Alzheimer's? These questions are now really being examined in the universities worldwide. So actually now we have the dawn of the psychedelic age. Was it made illegal so that other governments couldn't get a hold of it or interest in it to try and squash any sort of, you know, other governments doing what the CIA wanted to do it, do you think? Was there like a dirty tricks there going on? I mean, the documents are pretty clear about it that there was the big fear or at least the fear was proclaimed or was, you know, worded that the other side, the Soviet Union uses truth drugs. But later on, it became clear that the Czechoslovakia, which was a Soviet satellite, actually had a huge LSD program.

So the Eastern Bloc, they actually were working on it, but they were not really working on it to develop it as a weapon, but they were just kind of researching it in the East. So the CIA created a program called MKUltra, which was headed by one guy. He became very worried that Dundas, the Swiss company, Switzerland being a neutral country, would just sell it to everyone. So he visited the CEO of Dundas and requested that larger amounts of LSD that are being sold by the company have to be run through the FDA, the CIA. So the American, basically the CIA, always knew about the supply situation of LSD in the world. They wanted to control it because they thought it's such a potent molecule, basically.

That's what it is. It's just a molecule. And it is very potent. Yeah. Here I thought the war of drugs, they thought they were doing something good. Like maybe everyone should be high all the time. Turns out it was the CIA being an asshole. They did the same thing with crack.

So that was interesting. So you document how the CIA basically starts trying to turn LSD into a truth serum and they even did some pretty evil stuff during the psychological brainwashing torture program during the 50s and 60s well I mean when the guy who headed MK ultra his name was Sidney Sidney Godley when he first received LSD on his visit to Switzerland from the CEO of Sun does the companyley, when he first received LSD on his visit to Switzerland from the CEO of Sundance, the company that made it, he first tried it on himself. He realized that on himself it has a very powerful effect, like he can think differently. And then he wondered, what happens if I give this to someone without telling that person

that I do this? So that's the human experiment that then starts. And in this, he included American universities. So American universities were testing how would LSD affect the mind? How does it increase your fear level? If you take it unwittingly, what happens if you take it in a nice surrounding? Can you destabilize someone? So they looked at all kinds of questions. So this MKUltra program was in a way a research, a big, big research program, secret research program by the CIA in order to find out,

could we somehow perhaps smuggle LSD into the water supply of a Soviet battleship? What would happen then? Would they all go crazy? Would they, you know? So they really tried to get a grip on how to weaponize lsd and that is that is the mk ultra program and obviously it's an unethical program because it used it used uh american citizens foreign foreign citizens

without their knowledge like the cia created two safe, one in Greenwich Village, New York, one in San Francisco. It kind of picked up people from the street or from bars, invited them to private parties in the apartments, gave them LSD without knowing, and then they saw how people changed. So these are actually kind of weird.

Yeah, they're kind of dark experiments. And they're all based on what the Nazis did in the concentration camp of Dachau. Because the Nazis started it and the Americans kind of dark experiments. And they're all based on what the Nazis did in the concentration camp of Dachau. Because the Nazis started it and the Americans kind of saw it and kind of copied it, softened it maybe a little bit, but not much actually. So we can see that drug abuse from the Nazis actually is mirrored in the U.S. and then lead to the prohibition of the substance. Because at one point the CIA realized this is not a weapon and actually people like it and some get uh quote-unquote turned on by it or develop new thought forms or become creative and this is not what uh what the CIA had in mind so um it's not surprising

that in in 66 suddenly LSD then becomes illegal it's being called a class one substance. Class one is like the most dangerous one that have no medicinal use. And you cannot even from now on, you cannot even examine it in universities anymore because it's also illegal to research it. Wow. That's crazy, but it does sound like the CIA and how they did things.

So you're able to track all this stuff. Sadly, people were put into jail for this, probably for long periods of time. What do you hope people come away with on the book, and what do you hope that they learn from the story? Well, right now we hear quite a lot about the so-called psychedelic renaissance, and more and more states in the US are legalizing

this substance or that substance. And the war on drugs is not really going very well for the American government. Everyone knows that the war on drugs is basically not winnable. So slowly new concepts are being discussed. Like, what are these drugs actually? Is LSD maybe not a dangerous substance but maybe it's a brain food that everyone should take in micro dosages that's what the new science actually points at but we don't know this yet because we need much more

research so much more research will actually happen because we as a species especially in the west we always like to go like a little further like this is this is the new front frontier it's the frontier of the mind why would a government not allow us to develop freely why is there like a chemical wall set up in our brain which is not founded on scientific uh you know uh conclusions that the anti-drug laws are not based on lots of studies done uh by you know, conclusions that the anti-drug laws are not based on lots of studies done by, you know, independent scientists that prove that drugs are dangerous. These drug laws are based on ideological footing. And this is what I examine in the books, that just people get a little bit more of a sense of the history of these drugs. What are psychedelics? Where do they come from?

Why did they become illegal? What is the danger of them. So I think it just helps you to understand for yourself about the topic and I think it is an important topic and also to be able to talk about it because people will talk about it more and more. So TRIP actually gives you a good advantage in that discussion, I think. There you go. And then on your book, Blitz,

I mean, it's kind of an extension of that, really, when it comes down to it, I think, isn't it? This book, Tripped? Yeah, I mean, they both are concerned with drugs in history. Tripped, obviously, is more also about American history because the psychedelic era is really, you know, it's just like the internet boom that was a few decades ago. Now it's a psychedelic boom.

And again, America, it's happening in America. And so it's more of an American book, while Blitz was more of a German book. But they kind of, they give each other their hand. So you can read the one without the other. But if you read both of them, obviously, you get a very good uh overview and picture there you go uh so it's pretty interesting man i guess they were really high over there in germany the whole was the whole country high you you write in the book blitz about how everyone from uh mothers to to uh everybody it's all the way up to Hitler. We're having a pretty interesting time. I mean, I can only look at the production numbers

and the sales numbers and then at the population numbers. I mean, methamphetamine was in Germany in the late 30s just as popular as coffee is in our society because there was no coffee, actually. I mean, maybe you could get a coffee somewhere, but it wasn't like today. And people always need stimulants. Like we're living in a capitalist,

performance-oriented society. We all want to be the best. Like that's how we survive. So if there's something on the market from which we think this makes us, you know, perform better, then we use it. And in Germany, it was methamphetamine

i mean it sounds sounds crazy but it was not also not crystal meth that was cooked in some black market lab you know it was done by a german pharmaceutical company the name was temla they invented methamphetamine these tablets were pure they were not so high dose so you could you know take a methamphetamine and it was like drinking maybe three cups of coffee but it lasts for like six hours so it's not that everyone was crazy but everyone was kind of going on a certain level you know not everyone you know also not everyone took it but it was a mass drug a mass product there was even chocolate on the market laced with methamphetamine for the housewives because not just wanted the women to stay at home and clean the house.

It was like the role model so that they were eating meth chocolate so it would be at least more fun to clean the house. Yeah, I've known people that when they want to clean their house, they do meth and for three days they'll be awake cleaning their house. I'm just like, Chris, if you ever want to clean your house, some meth and i'm like nothing because i really like my teeth but uh there's that well for example the meth in germany you didn't the teeth didn't fall out i mean those are like uh those are like black meth crystal meth you know from the black market you know yeah and still obviously it's not a healthy product because you develop at least a psychological dependency.

You want to have it. That's why people wrote about depression. Like suddenly you don't. They didn't understand it in Germany because it was not considered a drug. It was like legally, you could buy it at any pharmacy. Just walk in and say, I want some meth, and you got it. Wow. It's like living.

I don't have a joke for that um so this is really interesting um it it's with all the drugs that were going on do you think it's what contributed to the moral uh failure of germans to you know the horrors they did to the jewish people the holocaust um the the experiments they were doing on live people. Do you think the drugs contributed to the moral failures of what most of us that try and consider ourselves humans, you know, the drugs were contributing to some very poor decision-making, basically? Do you think that was maybe part of what was creating some of that?

Well, I think the creation of these programs, like the racist ideology of the Nazis and the plan of the Holocaust and all this, I think this was... ...methamphetamine, and also they developed these ideas before methamphetamine was actually invented. Oh, really? But it's a fact that people, I mean, Hitler wrote Mein Kampf in the late 20s and methamphetamine was invented in 1938. So it's not like that the Nazis became bad because they took a lot of methamphetamine, but it is a fact that people working within the machine, for example,

being concentration camp guards i mean these were also you know normal people like you and me that that job was to guard a concentration camp obviously this is not this is not easy you know because you see things you do things that are absolutely horrendous and the methamphetamine does help you to actually do these things and we have seen that uh people who do uh for shootings for example or even uh uh the the hack against israel on october 7th they found uh which is a an arabic type of methamphetamine uh with with the fighters so of methamphetamine with the fighter. So this methamphetamine does, this was actually proven at German universities in the late 30s. It lowers your inhibitions. Like you're ready to commit things that you otherwise wouldn't do because you resist.

People usually don't kill other people. Like it's very hard. We don't want other people like it's very hard we don't want to do this but on on crystal meth on methamphetamine it's easier because you're like in a in a in a in a bad movie so to say and you have this energy and in your brain all those neurotransmitters are released that that that send you into high alert so you're like at higher alert you're fighting fight or flight for your life you're not normal calm you know you're not sitting cross-legged meditating on on crystal meth on

methamphetamine so i believe that it was easier for people to take part also as a soldier i mean amphetamines and methamphetamines are perfect for soldiers you take it you have more energy you have less fear you just want to go it's it's it's uh it's it's certainly uh contributed to the horrors of the third right if they all would have smoked weed i think a lot less atrocities would have happened because it is just you just don't care you just don't want to do these things honestly we're not on methamphetamine you might want to do these things because you're so like hyper and you just want to act i mean i wouldn't but you know soldiers who are already in in combat situation on crystal meth are more crazy in those combat situations and they shoot more and they do more and they kill more i think you know that's what my research

showed for for sure yeah maybe we should have pot because you're right pot you're just like well it's not fight let's just all get along and and uh it does explain i had heard that one of the aspects was germans who lived outside of the of the camps um would have from time to time ash from the winds of the um of the holocaust uh furnaces um the ash would fall into their neighborhoods and then sometimes they would call it they would say you know today's a a day where there's going to be a lot of ash and so keep everyone inside and maybe you know mothers and people at home getting high on their supply contributed to them turning a blind eye to that sort of lack of humanity going on. I mean, they knew what was going on inside of the concentration camps, evidently.

Oh. So, but yeah, when you've got ash falling in your neighborhood and you know that it's from human beings well yeah it probably takes a lot to turn a blind eye to that because it's really something but you know like you say i guess once you go down that um rabbit hole of hate and anti-semitism and you know the racial purity sort of bs they put in Mein Kampf and stuff and promoted just adding drugs to that, drug fueling that probably is not going to lead to better things. I imagine we might have been kind of, it's a weird way of saying it, we might have been blessed that Hitler was as high as he was more of the time

because he really made some bad decisions in the end you know one of the decisions to open two fronts to attack Russia at the same time he was fighting through Europe um you know that was that was the downfall of the of the military uh in Germany and you know some of the decisions he made I think there at the end really helped helped us win the war I mean you think if he had a bit high maybe he'd been had been more dangerous when it came to strategy in the end I would I would assume so I mean I discussed my findings about Hitler with Hans Mommsen who was at the time when I did when I researched the book, the leading historian, like the old gentleman of history in Germany on national socialism. Like he knew actually quite a lot, but he had never concerned himself with Hitler's

drug use. And he said that my findings actually explain this shift in Hitler's career as a military leader, which kind of changes in the summer of 1941. After that, basically every decision he makes is completely wrong. And before that, every decision he made militarily was brilliant. He only had successes before, and then he slides down into making a lot of bad decisions. And you can actually see it. You can trace it. You can connect it to his drug use, which started in the summer of 1941 in August

when he was having quite a high fever during the campaign against Russia. And for the first time, he received an opioid. And before that, he had a crazy doctor who gave him injections every day, Theo Morel. I examined for blitz the patient's book of the notes of Morel that I found in the archives. I could see like every day what Hitler received. And in the first five years, he became Hitler's doctor in 36. And from 36 to

41, Hitler basically received vitamins all the time. He was a nut for vitamins. He thought like, if I take enough vitamins every day, I'm never going to be sick it was actually true but then in the summer of 41 he actually got sick he couldn't go to the military briefing so he requested from his doctor from theodora hitler enters a new world which is the world of hardcore drugs that he gets injected intravenously and he starts liking them because he's a freak in his bunker so he doesn't meet people anymore

he becomes very shut in so he kind of gets into an artificial world more and more and this world doesn't correspond less and less with the real world where he has to take decisions how the army should move what weapons are being developed like

what strategy like the whole thing got completely over his head because he started living in a fantasy world he was not in a fantasy world until 41 i mean a big big big mistake anyhow was to attack the soviet union uh that was that was. That's unconnected to drugs, but once he's in the Soviet Union war, then he gets into more and more drugs, more and more bad decisions, less and less support from his officers,

more drugs to counterbalance his dwindling charisma. So you can actually explain the late Hitler much better if you understand that he became ultimately a junkie who was using intravenously high dosages of oxycodone, which created the American opioid crisis. And people usually snorted or swallow it. He was actually getting it into the vein injected by his doctor in high dosages. So he really was not really in this world, but very high for a lot of times. And that actually led also to the degeneration of his health, which we can see clearly if

we look at pictures over the years. Wow. Well, you're kind of probably half lucky you did that because it helped us win the war probably. Well, the British intelligence wanted to assassinate Hitler for a long time, and then at one point they realized we should drop that plan because this Hitler is actually helping us involuntarily by making bad decisions. Yeah, there you go.

Well, this has been really insightful. I've learned a lot of stuff that I didn't know about Hitler and the war and, of course, the war on drugs. A lot more states in the United States are legalizing everything. I mean, they're just finding out that it's not. It just doesn't work. It's better to spend the money to open centers to get people off addiction and help people than it is to throw them in jail and just have them recidivate back. So there you go. Tell people where they can find you, Norman, on the interwebs and order up the book. You can find me on NormanOller.com.

You can find me on Instagram at NormanOller, Facebook. You can find the books anywhere, I guess. Obviously go to your local bookshop and get tripped first because that's a new book. And then you should, I mean, you should just have,

everyone needs to have this, this book on Nazis and drugs because it's also quite funny actually. Oh, wow. There you go. and drugs because it's also quite funny, actually. Oh, wow. There you go. You know, it's important to kind of learn history. Those who don't learn their history are doomed to repeat it, as I like to say. So there you go. Thank you very much, Norm, for coming to the show.

We really appreciate it. Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure. There you go. Order up the book, folks folks Where refined books are sold It's available on April 9th 2024 Tripped, Nazi Germany

The CIA and the Dawn of the Psychedelic Age Thanks for coming on the show Norman Thanks for tuning in Go to goodreads.com, forteschrissfoss, linkedin.com Forteschrissfoss and all those crazy places On the internet Thanks for tuning in, be good to each other, stay safe And we'll see you guys next time