I had naively assumed, from the tidbits I’d picked up over the years, that the Germans had used amphetamines in small quantities, near the end of the war, in the same way that they’d used any number of experimental weapons, but Germany was a drug-producing powerhouse going into the war, and methamphetamine was an important ingredient in Blitzkrieg, a drug that was seen as largely beneficial, unlike heroin and cocaine, which had been abused in the decadent Weimar Republic:
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.
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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.
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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, were used to counter low moods, as a hedonistic source of euphoria, and also as a local anesthetic.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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. Between 1925 and 1930, 91 tons of morphine were produced, 40 percent of global production.
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The local alkaloid industry still processed just over 200 tons of opium in 1928.
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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.
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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.
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Peru sold its entire annual production of raw cocaine, over five tons, almost exclusively to Germany for further processing.
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When Germany’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.
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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.
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Forty percent of Berlin doctors were said to be addicted to morphine.
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In Friedrichstrasse Chinese traders from the former German-leased territory of Tsingtao ran opium dens.
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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.
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1928 in Berlin alone 160 pounds of morphine and heroin were sold quite legally by prescription over the pharmacist’s counter.
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The chairman of the Berlin Medical Council decreed that every doctor had to file a “drug report” when a patient was prescribed narcotics for longer than three weeks, because “public security is endangered by chronic alkaloid abuse in almost every case.”
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“For decades our people have been told by Marxists and Jews: ‘Your body belongs to you.’ That was taken to mean that at social occasions between men, or between men and women, any quantities of alcohol could be enjoyed, even at the cost of the body’s health. Irreconcilable with this Jewish Marxist view is the Teutonic German idea that we are the bearers of the eternal legacy of our ancestors, and that accordingly our body belongs to the clan and the people.”
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Expansion was also on the cards at Temmler. The head pharmacist, Dr. Fritz Hauschild, had heard how the Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936 had been influenced by a substance called Benzedrine, a successful amphetamine from the United States — and still a legal doping product at the time.
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Hauschild turned to the work of Japanese researchers who had synthesized an extremely stimulating molecule called N-methylamphetamine as early as 1887, and crystallized it in its pure form in 1919.
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The drug was developed out of ephedrine, a natural substance that clears the bronchia, stimulates the heart, and inhibits the appetite. In the folk medicine of Europe, America, and Asia, ephedrine had been known for a long time as a component of the ephedra plant and was also used in so-called Mormon tea.
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Hauschild perfected the product and in autumn 1937 he found a new method of synthesizing methamphetamine. A short time later, on October 31, 1937, the Temmler factory patented the first German methylamphetamine, which put American Benzedrine very much in its shadow. Its trademark: Pervitin.
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The molecular structure of this pioneering material is similar to adrenalin and so it passes easily through the blood and into the brain. Unlike adrenalin, however, methamphetamine does not cause sudden rises in blood pressure but works more gently and lasts longer.
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Methamphetamine does not only pour neurotransmitters into the gaps but also blocks their reabsorption. For this reason the effects are long-lasting, often more than twelve hours, a length of time that can damage the nerve cells at higher doses as the intracellular energy supply is drawn into sympathy.
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It was marketed as a kind of counter-drug to replace all drugs, particularly illegal ones.
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“We live in an energy-tense time that demands higher performance and greater obligations from us than any time before,” a senior hospital doctor wrote. The pill, produced under industrial laboratory conditions in consistently pure quality, was supposed to help counteract inadequate performance and “integrate shirkers, malingerers, defeatists, and whiners” into the labor process.
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Ranke, the leading defense physiologist in the Third Reich, had one main enemy. It wasn’t the Russians in the East or the French or the British in the West. The adversary he was determined to defeat was fatigue — a strange antagonist, hard to grasp, one that regularly knocked out fighters, put them on the ground, and forced them to rest.
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In Ranke’s words: “Relaxing on the day of fighting can decide the battle…. Often in combat perseverance in that last quarter of an hour is essential.”
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A claim preyed on his mind: supposedly this substance helped subjects achieve a 20 percent increase in lung capacity and absorb greater amounts of oxygen — standard measurement parameters at the time for increased performance. He decided to explore the subject in depth, testing a rising number of medical officers — 90 at first, then 150; he organized voluntary blind tests, giving them Pervitin (P), caffeine (C), Benzedrine (B), or placebos (S, for Scheintablette). Test subjects had to solve math and logic problems through the night until 4 p.m. the following day. The results seemed unambiguous; at around dawn the “S men” had their heads on their desks, while the “Pervitin gang” were still manically working away, “fresh-faced, physically and mentally alert,” as the experimental record has it. Even after over ten hours of constant concentration they still felt “that they wanted to party.”
But after the test sheets were evaluated, not all of Ranke’s findings were positive. Procedures that demanded greater abstract achievements from the cerebellum were not performed well by consumers of Pervitin. Calculations might have been carried out more quickly, but they contained more mistakes. Neither was there any increase in capacity for concentration and attention during more complex questions, and there was only a very small increase during less high-level tasks. Pervitin kept people from sleeping, but it didn’t make them any cleverer. Ranke concluded without a trace of cynicism that this made it ideal for soldiers, according to results gathered from what was probably the first systematic drug experiment in military history: “An excellent substance for rousing a weary squad…. We may grasp what far-reaching military significance it would have if we managed to remove natural tiredness using medical methods…. A militarily valuable substance.”
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Less than a week before the start of the war he wrote to a military general surgeon at High Command: “Of course it’s a double-edged sword, giving the troops a different medicine which cannot be restricted to emergencies.”
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The reports by the medical service on methamphetamine use in the attack on Poland, which began on September 1, 1939, and sparked the Second World War, fill whole dossiers in the Freiburg Military Archive.
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War was seen as a task that needed to be worked through, and the drug seemed to have helped the tank units not to worry too much about what they were doing in this foreign country, and instead let them get on with their job — even if the job meant killing: “Everyone fresh and cheerful, excellent discipline. Slight euphoria and increased thirst for action. Mental encouragement, very stimulated. No accidents. Long-lasting effect. After taking four tablets, double vision and seeing colors.”
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“The feeling of hunger subsides. One particularly beneficial aspect is the appearance of a vigorous urge to work. The effect is so clear that it cannot be based on imagination.”
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A medical officer from the IX Army Corps raved: “I’m convinced that in big pushes, where the last drop has to be squeezed from the team, a unit supplied with Pervitin is superior. This doctor has therefore made sure that there is a supply of Pervitin in the Unit Medical Equipment.”
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“An increase in performance is quite evident among tank drivers and gun operators in the long-lasting battles from 1 to 4 September 1939 and the reconnaissance division, which has used this substance with great success on tough long journeys at night, as well as to maintain and heighten attentiveness on scouting patrol operations,” another report read.
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“We should particularly stress the excellent effect on the working capacity and mood among severely taxed officers at divisional headquarters, all of whom acknowledged the subjective and objective increase in performance with Pervitin.”
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“Among the drivers many accidents, mostly attributable to excessive fatigue, could have been avoided if an analeptic such as Pervitin had been administered.”
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“These contradictory reports make it clear beyond any doubt that Pervitin is not a harmless medication. It does not seem at all appropriate for it to be handed out at random to the troops.”
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Alarmed at its prophylactic use, Ranke wrote: “The question is not whether Pervitin should be introduced or not, but how to get its use back under control. Pervitin is being exploited on a mass scale, without medical checks.”
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How casually Pervitin was thought of, and how widespread its use was, is also apparent in the fact that Ranke himself took it regularly and freely reported the fact in his wartime medical diary as well as in letters. He eased an average working day with two Temmler tablets, using them to overcome his work-related stress and improve his mood. Even though he knew about the dangers of dependency, he, the self-appointed expert on Pervitin, drew no conclusions about his own use of the substance.
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“It distinctly revives concentration and leads to a feeling of relief with regard to approaching difficult tasks. It is not just a stimulant, but clearly also a mood-enhancer. Even at high doses lasting damage is not apparent…. With Pervitin you can go on working for thirty-six to fifty hours without feeling any noticeable fatigue.”
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As coffee had hardly been available since the start of the war, methamphetamine was often added as a substitute to pep up ersatz versions of the drink.
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In November 1939 Conti made Pervitin available “on prescription only, in every case,” and a few weeks later delivered a speech in the Rathaus in Berlin to members of the National Socialist German Association of Doctors, warning against the “big, new threat of addiction, with all its side-effects, which faces us all.” But his words were not taken seriously and consumption continued to rise.
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The “sickle cut” only had a chance if the Germans could drive day and night. No stopping, and, above all, no sleeping.
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The so-called stimulant decree was sent out to a thousand troop doctors, several hundred corps doctors, leading medical officers, and equivalent positions in the SS.
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“The experience of the Polish campaign has shown that in certain situations military success was crucially influenced by overcoming fatigue in a troop on which strong demands had been made. The overcoming of sleep can in certain situations be more important than concern for any related harm, if military success is endangered by sleep. The stimulants are available for the interruption of sleep. Pervitin has been methodically included in medical equipment.”
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The recommended dosage was one tablet per day, at night two tablets taken in short sequence, and if necessary another one or two tablets after three to four hours. In exceptional cases sleep could be “prevented for more than twenty-four hours” — and was an invasion not an exceptional case? One possible negative side-effect according to the decree was “a belligerent mood.” Should that be seen as a warning or an inducement? “With correct dosage the feeling of self-confidence is clearly heightened, the fear of taking on even difficult work is reduced; as a result inhibitions are removed, without the decrease in the sensory function associated with alcohol.”
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Eight hundred thirty-three thousand tablets could be pressed in a single day. An adequate amount; the Wehrmacht had ordered an enormous quantity for the army and the Luftwaffe: 35 million in all.
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Methamphetamine was one such unusual means, and the men desperately needed it when General Guderian ordered: “I demand that you do not sleep for at least three days and nights, if that is required.”
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The first battle began in the morning. The Belgian defenders had entrenched themselves near Martelange, a small border community, in bunkers on a hillside. In front of them lay a slope, several hundred yards of open terrain: impossible to take except by a frontal attack, which was apparent suicide. But that’s exactly what the pepped-up infantrymen of the Wehrmacht did. The Belgians, shocked by this fearless behavior, retreated. Rather than securing their position, as military practice would normally have decreed, the completely uninhibited attackers immediately chased after them and set their enemies unambiguously to flight. This first clash was symptomatic.
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Until their capitulation the French were no match for Germany’s chemically enhanced dynamism. They kept acting too slowly, were surprised and overrun, and continually failed to grab the initiative. A Wehrmacht report dryly states: “The French must have been thrown into such confusion by the sudden appearance of our tanks that their defense was carried out very weakly.”
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“We encountered the Germans everywhere, they were crisscrossing the terrain,” Bloch writes, describing the crazed confusion that the attackers were sowing: “They believed in action and unpredictability. We were built on immobility and on the familiar. During the whole campaign the Germans maintained their terrible habit of appearing precisely where they shouldn’t have been: they didn’t stick to the rules of the game…. Which means that certain, hardly deniable, weaknesses are chiefly due to the excessively slow rhythm that our brains have been taught.”
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Contrary to later accounts, it had never been conceived consistently as a Blitzkrieg, but had, after the breakthrough at Sedan, boosted by the large-scale use of Pervitin on the German side, developed a dynamic of its own that was countered only by Hitler, who didn’t understand its speed.
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Ranke’s superior, Army Medical Inspector Waldmann, also traveled to the warzone and praised Pervitin without directly specifying it: “Maginot Front broken through. Extraordinary marching achievements: 60–80 km! Extra supplies, increased performance. Evacuation — all much better than 1918.” In this war the German troops dashed over the summer countryside with unparalleled speed. Rommel, who by now was avoiding roads to go round the last French defense positions, often drove cross-country, and on June 17, 1940, traveling 150 miles, established a kind of “military world record.” The head of the Luftwaffe staff noted: “The marching achievements are incredible.”
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Ranke, who was driving with Guderian and who had traveled over three hundred miles in just three days, was given confirmation by a medical officer of the Panzer troop that units were using between two and five Pervitin tablets per driver per day. German propaganda, however, tried to depict the surprisingly fast victory as proof of the morale of the National Socialists, but this had little bearing on reality.
