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Blitzed : drugs in the Third Reich / Norman Ohler ; translated by Shaun Whiteside.

By: Contributor(s): Language: English Original language: German Publisher: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017Edition: Drugs in the Third Reich; First U.S. editionDescription: 292 pages : illustrations ; 24 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9781328663795
  • 1328663795
Uniform titles:
  • Totale Rausch. English.
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 362.29/95094309044 23
LOC classification:
  • HV5840.G3 O3513 2017
Contents:
Methamphetamine, the Volksdroge (1933/1938) -- Sieg high! (1939/1941) -- High Hitler: Patient A and his personal physician (1941/1944) -- The wonder drug (1944/1945) -- Acknowledgments.
Summary: "The Nazi regime preached an ideology of physical, mental, and moral purity. But as Norman Ohler reveals in this gripping new history, the Third Reich was saturated with drugs. On the eve of World War II, Germany was a pharmaceutical powerhouse, and companies such as Merck and Bayer cooked up cocaine, opiates, and, most of all, methamphetamines, to be consumed by everyone from factory workers to housewives to millions of German soldiers. In fact, troops regularly took rations of a form of crystal meth--the elevated energy and feelings of invincibility associated with the high even help to explain certain German military victories. Drugs seeped all the way up to the Nazi high command and, especially, to Hitler himself. Over the course of the war, Hitler became increasingly dependent on injections of a cocktail of drugs--including a form of heroin--administered by his personal doctor. While drugs alone cannot explain the Nazis' toxic racial theories or the events of World War II, Ohler's investigation makes an overwhelming case that, if drugs are not taken into account, our understanding of the Third Reich is fundamentally incomplete"--Provided by publisher.

Translated from the German.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Methamphetamine, the Volksdroge (1933/1938) -- Sieg high! (1939/1941) -- High Hitler: Patient A and his personal physician (1941/1944) -- The wonder drug (1944/1945) -- Acknowledgments.

"The Nazi regime preached an ideology of physical, mental, and moral purity. But as Norman Ohler reveals in this gripping new history, the Third Reich was saturated with drugs. On the eve of World War II, Germany was a pharmaceutical powerhouse, and companies such as Merck and Bayer cooked up cocaine, opiates, and, most of all, methamphetamines, to be consumed by everyone from factory workers to housewives to millions of German soldiers. In fact, troops regularly took rations of a form of crystal meth--the elevated energy and feelings of invincibility associated with the high even help to explain certain German military victories. Drugs seeped all the way up to the Nazi high command and, especially, to Hitler himself. Over the course of the war, Hitler became increasingly dependent on injections of a cocktail of drugs--including a form of heroin--administered by his personal doctor. While drugs alone cannot explain the Nazis' toxic racial theories or the events of World War II, Ohler's investigation makes an overwhelming case that, if drugs are not taken into account, our understanding of the Third Reich is fundamentally incomplete"--Provided by publisher.