Hitler was a meth addict, new documentary says
WASHINGTON - Adolf Hitler is remembered as many things: a genocidal warmonger, a hateful ideologue, a failed art student. But the phrase drug addict is usually not high among the list of epithets.
WASHINGTON - Adolf Hitler is remembered as many things: a genocidal warmonger, a hateful ideologue, a failed art student. But the phrase
drug addict
is usually not high among the list of epithets.
A documentary, to be aired this weekend by Britain's Channel 4, digs into the Führer's "hidden drug habit." Based on details in a 47-page American military dossier compiled during the war, Hitler was taking a cocktail of 74 drugs, including a form of what is now commonly known as crystal meth. He also took "barbiturate tranquilizers, morphine, bulls' semen," according to reports.
Methamphetamines, pioneered in Germany at the end of the 19th century, were used by various armies in World War II as stimulants to aid fatigued soldiers. The drug was popularly consumed in Germany as Pervitin, a pill Hitler took among various medications.
As a young soldier in the Wehrmacht, Heinrich Böll - who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1972 - wrote forlorn, bleak letters home. "Perhaps you could obtain some more Pervitin so that I can have a backup supply?" he requested in a 1940 letter, cited by the German publication Der Spiegel.
Doctor's letters
Hitler was apparently prescribed these drugs by Theodor Morell, an unconventional doctor who examined Hitler daily beginning in 1936. The American dossier drew upon Morell's personal letters.
The Nazi leader was supposedly injected with extracts from bull's testicles to boost his libido - the Führer needed to cut a virile figure in public and, as reports suggest, keep up with Eva Braun, his much younger consort. Other medicines were aimed at combating a host of Hitler's maladies, ranging from stomach cramps to symptoms related to a potential bipolar disorder.
Unraveling
He was apparently under the influence of methamphetamine when he held his last meeting with Italian dictator Benito Mussolini in July 1943 - a reportedly tense, one-sided affair with Hitler lecturing his counterpart, whose hold on power was about to unravel.
Hitler's addictions should not obscure the vast scale drugs like methamphetamine were consumed by both sides in World War II. Millions of tablets of various narcotics were given as stimulants to soldiers. The nickname for Pervitin in Germany was Panzerschokolade, or "tank chocolate."
"Two tablets taken once eliminate the need to sleep for three to eight hours, and two doses of two tablets each are normally effective for 24 hours," said the Nazi military command, in a communique released in 1942.
The German invasions of Poland and France, says Der Spiegel, were driven by soldiers hooked on meth and copious amounts of alcohol.