Blitzed Read online

  Contents

  * * *

  Title Page

  Contents

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Methamphetamine, the Volksdroge

  Sieg High!

  High Hitler: Patient A and His Personal Physician

  The Wonder Drug

  Acknowledgments

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Photo Credits

  Index

  About the Author

  Connect with HMH

  Footnotes

  First U.S. edition 2017

  Copyright © 2015 by Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch GmbH & Co. KG, Cologne Germany

  Copyright © 2015 by Norman Ohler

  Translation copyright © 2017 by Shaun Whiteside

  All rights reserved

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [email protected] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

  www.hmhco.com

  First published in the German language as Der Totale Rausch: Drogen im Dritten Reich by Norman Ohler with an afterword by Hans Mommsen. Published by arrangement with Penguin Books Ltd.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  ISBN 978-1-328-66379-5

  Photo credits appear on page 272.

  Cover design by Albert Tang

  Cover photograph by Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images

  eISBN 978-1-328-66409-9

  v1.0217

  A political system devoted to decline instinctively does much to speed up that process.

  —Jean-Paul Sartre

  1

  * * *

  Methamphetamine, the Volksdroge

  (1933–1938)

  National Socialism was toxic, in the truest sense of the word. It gave the world a chemical legacy that still affects us today: a poison that refuses to disappear. On one hand, the Nazis presented themselves as clean-cut and enforced a strict, ideologically underpinned anti-drug policy with propagandistic pomp and draconian punishments. On the other hand, a particularly potent and perfidious substance became a popular product under Hitler. This drug carved out a great career for itself all over the German Reich, and later in the occupied countries of Europe. Under the trademark Pervitin, this little pill became the accepted Volksdroge, or “people’s drug,” and was on sale in every pharmacy. It wasn’t until 1939 that its use was restricted by making Pervitin prescription-only, and the pill was not subjected to regulation until the Reich Opium Law in 1941.

  Its active ingredient, methamphetamine, is now either illegal or strictly regulated,1 but with the number of consumers currently at over 100 million and rising, it counts today as our most popular poison. Produced in hidden labs by chemical amateurs, usually in adulterated form, this substance has come to be known as “crystal meth.” Usually ingested nasally in high doses, the crystalline form of this so-called horror drug has gained unimaginable popularity all over Europe, with an exponential number of first-time users. This upper, with its dangerously powerful kick, is used as a party drug, for boosting performance in the workplace, in offices, even in parliaments and at universities. It banishes both sleep and hunger while promising euphoria, but in the form of crystal meth* it is a potentially destructive and highly addictive substance. Hardly anyone knows about its original rise in Nazi Germany.

  Breaking Bad: The Drug Lab of the Reich

  Under a clean-swept summer sky stretching over both industrial zones and uniform housing, I take the suburban train southeast, to the edge of Berlin. In order to find the remnants of the Temmler factory I have to get out at Adlershof, which nowadays calls itself “Germany’s most modern technology park.” Avoiding the campus, I strike off across an urban no-man’s-land, skirting dilapidated factory buildings and passing through a wilderness of crumbling brick and rusty steel.

  The Temmler factory moved here in 1933. It was only one year later that Albert Mendel (the Jewish co-owner of the Tempelhof Chemical Factory) was expropriated by the racist laws of the regime and Temmler took over his share, quickly expanding the business. These were good times for the German chemical industry (or at least for its Aryan members), and pharmaceutical development boomed. Research was tirelessly conducted on new, pioneering substances that would ease the pain of modern humanity or sedate its troubles. Many of the resulting pharmacological innovations shape the way we consume medicine today.

  The Temmler factory in Berlin-Johannisthal, then . . . and now (following images).

  By now the former Temmler factory in Berlin-Johannisthal has fallen into ruin. There is no sign of its prosperous past, of a time when millions of Pervitin pills a week were being pressed. The grounds lie unused, a dead property. Crossing a deserted parking lot, I make my way through a wildly overgrown patch of forest and over a wall stuck with broken bits of glass designed to deter intruders. Between ferns and saplings stands the old wooden “witch’s house” of the founder, Theodor Temmler, once the nucleus of the company. Behind dense alder bushes looms a forsaken brick building. A window is broken enough for me to be able to climb through, stumbling into a long dark corridor. Mildew and mold grow from the walls and ceilings. At the end of the hallway a door stands beckoning, half open, encrusted with flaking green paint. Beyond the door, daylight peers through two shattered, lead-framed industrial windows. An abandoned bird’s nest hides in the corner. Chipped white tiles reach all the way to the high ceiling, which is furnished with circular air vents.

  This is the former laboratory of Dr. Fritz Hauschild, head of pharmacology at Temmler from 1937 until 1941, who was in search of a new type of medicine, a “performance-enhancing drug.” This is the former drug lab of the Third Reich. Here, in porcelain crucibles attached to pipes and glass coolers, the chemists boiled up their flawless matter. Lids rattled on potbellied flasks, orange steam released with a sharp hiss while emulsions crackled and white-gloved fingers made adjustments. Here the methamphetamine produced was of a quality that even Walter White, the drug cook in the TV series Breaking Bad, which depicts meth as a symbol of our times, could only have dreamed of.

  Prologue in the Nineteenth Century: The Father of All Drugs

  Voluntary dependence is the finest state.

  —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  To understand the historical relevance of methamphetamine and other substances to the Nazi state, we must go back before the beginning of the Third Reich. The development of modern societies is bound as tightly with the creation and distribution of drugs as the economy is with advances in technology. In 1805 Goethe wrote Faust in classicist Weimar, and by poetic means perfected one of his theses, that the genesis of man is itself drug-induced: I change my brain, therefore I am. At the same time, in the rather less glamorous town of Paderborn in Westphalia, the pharmaceutical assistant Friedrich Wilhelm Sertürner performed experiments with opium poppies, whose thickened sap anesthetized pain more effectively than anything else. Goethe wanted to explore through artistic and dramatic channels what it is that holds the core of the world together—Sertürner, on the other hand, wanted to solve a major, millennium-old problem that has plagued our species to a parallel degree.

  It was a concrete challenge for the brilliant twenty-one-year-old chemist: depending on the conditions they are grown in, the active ingredient in opium poppies is present in varying concentrations. Sometimes the bitter sap does not ease the pain quite strongly enough, and other times it can lead to an unintended overdose and fatal poisoning. Thrown back entirely on his own devices, just as the opiate laudanum consumed Goethe in his study, Sertürner made an astonishing discovery: he succeeded in isolating morphine, the crucial alkaloid in opium, a kind of pharmacological Mep
histopheles that instantly magics pain away. Not only a turning point in the history of pharmacology, this was also one of the most important events of the early nineteenth century, not to mention human history as a whole. Pain, that irritable companion, could now be assuaged, indeed removed, in precise doses. All over Europe, apothecaries had to the best of their ability (and their consciences) pressed pills from the ingredients of their own herb gardens or from the deliveries of women who foraged in hedgerows. These homegrown chemists now developed within only a few years into veritable factories, with established pharmacological standards.* Morphine was not only a method of easing life’s woes; it was also big business.

  In Darmstadt the owner of the Engel-Apotheke, Emanuel Merck, stood out as a pioneer of this development. In 1827 he set out his business model of supplying alkaloids and other medications in unvarying quality. This was the birth not only of the Merck Company, which still thrives today, but of the modern pharmaceutical industry as a whole. When injections were invented in 1850, there was no stopping the victory parade of morphine. The painkiller was used in the American Civil War of 1861–65 and in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71. Soon morphine fixes were doing the rounds as normal procedure.2 The change was crucial; the pain of even seriously injured soldiers could now be kept within bounds. This made a different scale of war possible: fighters who before would have been ruled out for a long time by an injury were soon coddled back to health and thrust onto the front line once again.

  With morphine, also known as “morphium,” the development of pain relief and anesthesia reached a crucial climax, both in the army and in civil society. From the worker to the nobleman, the supposed panacea took the whole world by storm, from Europe via Asia and all the way to America. In drugstores across the United States, two active ingredients were available without prescription: fluids containing morphine calmed people down, while drinks containing cocaine, such as in the early days Vin Mariani, a Bordeaux containing coca extract, and even Coca-Cola,3 were used to counter low moods, as a hedonistic source of euphoria, and also as a local anesthetic. This was only the start. The industry soon needed to diversify; it craved new products. On August 10, 1897, Felix Hoffmann, a chemist with the Bayer Company, synthesized acetylsalicylic acid from willow bark; it went on sale as Aspirin and conquered the globe. Eleven days later the same man invented another substance that was also to become world famous: diacetyl morphine, a derivative of morphine—the first designer drug. Trademarked as Heroin, it entered the market and began its own campaign. “Heroin is a fine business,” the directors of Bayer announced proudly and advertised the substance as a remedy for headaches, for general indisposition, and also as a cough syrup for children. It was even recommended to babies for colic or sleeping problems.4

  Business wasn’t just booming for Bayer. In the last third of the nineteenth century several new pharmaceutical hotspots developed along the Rhine. Unlike other, more traditional industries, the chemical industry didn’t require as much in terms of overhead to get business going, only needing relatively little equipment and raw material. Even small operations promised high profit margins. What was most important was intuition and specialist knowledge on the part of the developers, and Germany, rich in human capital, was able to fall back on an inexhaustible stock of excellent chemists and engineers, trained in what was at the time the best education system in the world. The network of universities and technical colleges was recognized as exemplary: science and business worked hand in hand. Research was being carried out at top speed, and a multitude of patents were being developed. Where the chemical industry was concerned, Germany was the “workshop of the world.” “Made in Germany” became a guarantee of quality, especially for drugs.

  Germany, the Global Dealer

  This didn’t change after the First World War. While France and Great Britain were able to acquire natural stimulants such as coffee, tea, vanilla, pepper, and other natural medicines from colonies overseas, Germany, which lost its (comparatively sparse) colonial possessions under the terms of the Versailles Treaty, had to find other ways—stimulants had to be produced synthetically. In fact, Germany was in dire need of artificial assistance: the war had inflicted deep wounds and caused the nation both physical and psychic pain. In the 1920s drugs became more and more important for the despondent population between the Baltic Sea and the Alps. The desire for sedation led to self-education and there soon emerged no shortage of know-how for the production of a remedy.

  The course was set for a thriving pharmaceutical industry. Many of the chemical substances that we know today were developed and patented within a very short period of time. German companies became leaders in the global market. Not only did they produce the most medicines, but they also provided the lion’s share of chemical raw materials for their manufacture throughout the world. A new economy came into being, and the picturesque Rhine Valley became a Chemical Valley of sorts. Previously unknown little outfits prospered overnight and grew into influential players. In 1925 the bigger chemical factories joined together to form IG Farben, one of the most powerful companies in the world, with headquarters in Frankfurt. Opiates above all were still a German specialty. In 1926 the country was top of the morphine-producing states and world champion when it came to exporting heroin: 98 percent of the production went abroad.5 Between 1925 and 1930, 91 tons of morphine were produced, 40 percent of global production.6 Under the obligations of the Versailles Treaty, Germany reluctantly signed the League of Nations International Opium Convention in 1925, which regulated the trade. It was not ratified in Berlin until 1929. The local alkaloid industry still processed just over 200 tons of opium in 1928.7

  The Germans were world leaders in another class of substances as well: the companies Merck, Boehringer, and Knoll controlled 80 percent of the global cocaine market. Merck’s cocaine, from the city of Darmstadt, was seen as the best product in the world, and commercial pirates in China printed fake Merck labels by the million.8 Hamburg was the major European marketplace for raw cocaine: every year thousands of pounds were imported legally through its port. Peru sold its entire annual production of raw cocaine, over five tons, almost exclusively to Germany for further processing. The influential Fachgruppe Opium und Kokain (Expert Group on Opium and Cocaine), put together by the German drug manufacturers, worked tirelessly on a close integration of the government and the pharmaceuticals industry. Two cartels, each consisting of a handful of companies, divided up between them the lucrative market “of the entire world,”9 the so-called cocaine convention and opiates convention. Merck was the business leader in both cases.10 The young Weimar Republic, swimming in consciousness-altering and intoxicating substances, delivered heroin and cocaine to the four corners of the world and rose to become a global dealer.

  The Chemical Twenties

  This scientific and economic development also resonated with the spirit of the age. Artificial paradises were in vogue in the Weimar Republic. People chose to flee into worlds of make-believe rather than engage with the often less rosy reality—a phenomenon that more or less defined this very first democracy on German soil, both politically and culturally. Many were reluctant to admit the true reasons for the military defeat and repressed the shared responsibility of the imperial German establishment for the fiasco of the First World War. The malicious legend of the “stab in the back” gained currency, claiming the German Army had only lost the war because of internal sabotage from the left.11

  These escapist tendencies often found expression either in sheer hatred or in cultural excess, most of all in Berlin. Alfred Döblin’s novel Berlin Alexanderplatz identified the city as the “Whore of Babylon,” with an incomparably grubby underworld, a place seeking salvation in the most appalling, barely imaginable, excesses, particularly drugs. “Berlin nightlife, oh boy, oh boy, the world has never seen the like! We used to have a great army, now we’ve got great perversities!” wrote the author Klaus Mann.12 The city on the Spree became synonymous with moral reprehensibility. When Ger
many’s currency collapsed—in autumn of 1923 one U.S. dollar was worth 4.2 billion marks—all moral values seemed to plummet with it as well.

  Everything whirled apart in a toxicological frenzy. The icon of the age, the actress and dancer Anita Berber, dipped white rose petals in a cocktail of chloroform and ether at breakfast, before sucking them clean. Films about cocaine or morphine were showing in the cinemas, and all drugs were available on street corners without prescription. Forty percent of Berlin doctors were said to be addicted to morphine.13 In Friedrichstrasse Chinese traders from the former German-leased territory of Tsingtao ran opium dens. Illegal nightclubs opened in the back rooms of the Mitte district. Smugglers distributed flyers at Anhalter Station, advertising illegal dance parties and “beauty evenings.” Big clubs like the famous Haus Vaterland, on Potsdamer Platz, and Ballhaus Resi, notorious for its extravagant promiscuity, on Blumenstrasse, attracted potential fun-lovers in droves, as did smaller establishments like the Kakadu Bar or the Weisse Maus, where masks were distributed on the way in to guarantee the anonymity of the guests. An early form of sex-and-drugs tourism from Western neighbors and the United States began, because everything in Berlin was as cheap as it was exciting.

  The world war was lost, and everything seemed permitted: the metropolis mutated into the experimental capital of Europe. Posters on house walls warned in shrill Expressionist script: “Berlin, take a breath / bear in mind your dance partner is death!” The police couldn’t keep up: order collapsed first sporadically, then chronically, and the culture of pleasure filled the vacuum as best it could, as illustrated in a song of the times: