by Norman Ohler
An advertisement for the supposed panacea Pervitin. It stimulates the psyche and the circulation and has an undefined impact on depression, hypotonia, fatigue, narcolepsy, and postoperative depression.
Whether it was secretaries typing faster, actors refreshing themselves before their shows, writers using the stimulation of methamphetamine for all-nighters at the desk, or hopped-up workers on conveyor belts in the big factories raising their output—Pervitin spread among all social circles. Furniture packers packed more furniture, firemen put out fires faster, barbers cut hair more quickly, night watchmen stopped sleeping on the job, train drivers drove their trains without a word of complaint, and long-distance truck-drivers bombed down freshly constructed autobahns completing their trips in record time. Post-lunchtime naps became a thing of the past. Doctors treated themselves with it, businessmen who had to rush from meeting to meeting pepped themselves up. Party members did the same, and so did the SS.54 Stress declined, sexual appetite increased, and motivation was artificially enhanced.
A doctor wrote: “Experimenting on myself, I also observed that both physically and mentally one may receive a pleasant boost in energy, which for six months has allowed me to recommend Pervitin to manual and clerical workers, fellow colleagues who are temporarily short of time, and also speakers, singers (with stage fright), and examination candidates. . . . One lady likes to use the medication (c. 2 x 2 tablets) before parties; another successfully on particularly demanding working days (up to 3 x 2 tablets daily).”55
Pervitin became a symptom of the developing performance society. Boxed chocolates spiked with methamphetamine were even put on the market. A good 14 milligrams of methamphetamine was included in each individual portion—almost five times the amount in a Pervitin pill. “Hildebrand chocolates are always a delight” was the slogan of this potent confectionery. The recommendation was to eat between three and nine of these, with the indication that they were, unlike caffeine, perfectly safe.56 The housework would be done in a trice, and this unusual tidbit would even melt the pounds away, since Pervitin, a slimming agent, also curbed the appetite.
Making housework more fun—methamphetamine chocolates: “Hildebrand chocolates always delight.”
Another part of the highly effective campaign was an essay by Dr. Fritz Hauschild in the respected Klinische Wochenschrift. In this, and again in the same journal three weeks later, under the headline “New Specialities,” he reported on the extremely stimulating effect of Pervitin, its ability to increase energy and boost both self-confidence and decisiveness.57 Associative thought became much faster and physical work easier. Its multiple applications in internal and general medicine, surgery, and psychiatry seemed to give it a wide field of indication, and at the same time to stimulate scientific research.
Universities all over the Reich pounced on these investigations. First to engage was Professor Rudolf Schoen from the Poliklinik in Leipzig, who reported “psychic stimulation lasting for several hours, sleepiness and weariness disappearing and making way for activity, loquacity, and euphoria.”58 Pervitin was fashionable among scientists, perhaps not least because at the start there was so much pleasure involved in taking it yourself. Self-experimentation was only common courtesy, after all: “First of all we may report on our personal experiences based on self-experimentation after repeated consumption of 3–5 tablets (9–15 mg) of Pervitin, which were what enabled us to draw conclusions about its psychical effects.”*59 More and more advantages came to light. Possible side-effects remained in the background. Professors Gerhard Lemmel and Jürgen Hartwig from the university in Königsberg testified to greater focus and concentration and advised: “In these eventful times of conflict and expansion it is one of the doctor’s greatest tasks to maintain the performance of the individual and where possible to increase it.”60 A study by two brain researchers from the southern town of Tübingen claimed they had demonstrated an acceleration of the thought process through Pervitin, along with a general increase in energy. Inhibitions of the decision-making process, inhibitions generally, and depressive conditions had been ameliorated. An intelligence test had demonstrated a distinct improvement. A Munich-based Professor C. Püllen released data from “many hundreds of cases” supporting these statements. He reported a generally stimulating effect on the cerebrum, the circulation, and the autonomic nervous system. He had also, with a “high dose of 20 milligrams administered once only, established a distinct reduction in fear.”61 Hardly a surprise that Temmler should have supplied doctors with these positive results by mail, and ensured that they were regularly updated.
Pervitin was a perfect match for the spirit of the age. When the medication conquered the market, there actually seemed to be a reason for thinking that all forms of depression had come to an end. At least those Germans who profited from the Nazis’ tyranny thought so, and that was most of them. If, in 1933, many had still believed that the new chancellor’s career would be short-lived, and didn’t think him capable of very much, a few years later everything looked very different. Two miracles had occurred, one economic and one military, covering the two most urgent problems for Germany in the 1930s. When the Nazis took power there were 6 million unemployed and only 100,000 poorly armed soldiers; by 1936, in spite of a continuing global crisis, almost full employment had been achieved, and the Wehrmacht was one of the most powerful military forces in Europe.62
Successes in foreign policy mounted up, whether it was a matter of the remilitarization of the Rhineland, the annexation of Austria, or “bringing the Sudeten Germans home to the Reich.” The Western powers did not punish these breaches of the Versailles Treaty. Quite the contrary, they made greater and greater concessions because they hoped to prevent a new war in Europe. But diplomatic successes didn’t mollify Hitler. “Like a morphine addict who can’t give up his drug, he couldn’t give up his plans for new seizures of power, new surprise attacks, secret marching orders and grand parades,” the historian Golo Mann wrote, describing the character of the emperor from Braunau.63 The Allies misjudged the situation: Hitler would not be mollified by diplomatic success. Hitler was never content. Boundaries had to be crossed in every respect and at all times, and state borders in particular. From the German Reich to the Greater German Reich to the planned Teutonic World Reich: the constant hike in doses was in the nature of the National Socialist cause, and this lay first and foremost in the hunger for new territories. The slogans “Home to the Reich” and “A People without Space” summed it up.
Dr. Morell, the personal physician, was even directly involved with the defeat of Czechoslovakia. On the night of March 15, 1939, the Czech president, Emil Hácha, in poor health, attended a more or less compulsory state visit to the new Reich Chancellery. When he refused to sign a paper that the Germans laid in front of him, a de facto capitulation of his troops to the Wehrmacht, he suffered a heart attack and could no longer be spoken to. Hitler urgently summoned Morell, who hurried along with his case and his syringes and injected the unconscious foreign guest with such a stimulating medication that Hácha rose again within seconds, as if from the dead. He signed the piece of paper that sealed the temporary end of his state. The very next morning Hitler invaded Prague without a fight. During the following years, Hácha sat at the powerless head of the “Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia,” to which parts of his country had been reduced, remaining Morell’s loyal patient. In that respect, pharmacology worked as a way of continuing politics by other means.
During those first months of 1939, the last months of peace, Hitler’s popularity reached a temporary peak. “Look at everything this man has achieved!” was a standard proclamation, and many of his countrymen also wanted to put their potential to the test. It was a time when effort seemed to reap rewards. It was also a time of social demands: you had to be part of it, you had to be successful—if only so as not to arouse suspicion. The general upturn also produced a concern that you might not be able to keep up with the new rapid pace. The increasingly schematic nature of wo
rk placed fresh demands on the individual, who became a cog in the works. Any help was welcome when it came to putting yourself in the mood—even chemical help.
Pervitin made it easier for the individual to have access to the great excitement and “self-treatment” that had supposedly gripped the German people. The powerful stuff became a sort of grocery item, which even its manufacturer didn’t want to keep stuck just in the medical section. “Germany, awake!” the Nazis had ordered. Methamphetamine made sure that the country stayed awake. Spurred on by a disastrous cocktail of propaganda and pharmaceutical substances, people became more and more dependent.
The utopian ideal of a socially harmonized, conviction-based society, like the one preached by National Socialism, proved to be a delusion in terms of the competition of real economic interests in a modern high-performance society. Methamphetamine bridged the gaps, and the doping mentality spread into every corner of the Reich. Pervitin allowed the individual to function in the dictatorship. National Socialism in pill form.
2
* * *
Sieg High!
(1939–1941)
Music is sometimes really a great consolation to me (not forgetting Pervitin, which provides a wonderful service—particularly during air raids at night).
—Heinrich Böll1
The man writing home from the front line to his parents was later a Nobel Laureate for literature. He couldn’t go without the “wonderful service” of methamphetamine even after the war had ended and he was sitting back at his desk. He became dependent on it as a soldier in order to be able to endure the exertions of war and carry on functioning: “Please remember to send me, at the next opportunity, an envelope containing Pervitin. Father can pay for it out of what he lost to me from our bet,” he says in another letter from the war.2
Heinrich Böll speaks of his Pervitin consumption with a matter-of-factness that lets us conclude that he was aware of the effect, but not of the dangers: “If next week goes as quickly as last, I’ll be glad. Send me more Pervitin if you can; I can use it on my many watches; and a bit of bacon, if possible, to fry up with potatoes.”3 His mentions of the upper, as short as they are frequent, suggest that his family was familiar with it and did not disapprove of its use. “Dear parents and siblings! Now I have time to write to you, and more importantly the peace to do so. Of course I am dog-tired, because last night I only slept for two hours, and tonight again I won’t have more than three hours of sleep, but I’ve just got to stay awake. The Pervitin will soon start working, by the way, and help me over my tiredness. Outside the moonlight is unusually bright, there’s a clear, starry sky and it’s very cold.”4 Again and again sleep seems to be Böll’s great adversary: “I’m exhausted and now I want to knock off. If possible send me some more Pervitin and some Hillhall or Kamil cigarettes.”5 And elsewhere: “Duty is strict, and you must understand if in future I write only every 2–4 days. Today I’m mostly writing to ask for Pervitin!”6
Gunner Heinrich Böll was an enthusiastic early consumer of the drug.
Is Heinrich Böll unique? Or did soldiers also engage in widespread substance abuse, as was happening in civil society? Were hundreds of thousands of German fighters waging their campaigns under the influence of methamphetamine? Did this addictive drug influence the course of the Second World War? A trip into the depths of the archives begins.
Looking for Clues at the Military Archive
The Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv in Freiburg is surrounded by a barbed-wire fence and guarded by a doorman with a strong Saxon accent. Anyone who can prove a genuine research interest will have the steel gates opened to him by photoelectric sensor, and subsequently be drawn into the meticulously tidy study rooms. Their computers provide access to storerooms full of documents, stacked from floor to ceiling. Millions of dead have left behind millions of files, and here is where you can research the drama of the wars that shook the twentieth century.
At least, in theory. A lot has been stored, but navigating the clutter isn’t easy. The headings of each folder only describe minimal aspects of its content. An additional complicating factor is that the keywords were chosen decades ago, when researchers were focused on different areas. In the immediate post-war years, for example, less importance was placed on medical-history details than today. Therefore access to the past, although it is supported by the latest technology, is based on an outmoded understanding of history.
One of the many Pervitin letters by the future Nobel Laureate for literature. “Dear parents and grandparents . . . today I am writing mostly about Pervitin!”
The German Army Discovers a German Drug
The rise of methamphetamine in the Wehrmacht is inseparably connected with an ascetic-looking senior staff doctor with a narrow face and dark-brown eyes, which appear worryingly intense in the few photographs that survive of him. Professor Dr. Otto F. Ranke was thirty-eight years old when he was appointed director of the Research Institute of Defense Physiology—a key position even though no one would have thought so at the time.
Back then, physiology was a marginal discipline in medicine. A holistic approach toward understanding an organism, it treats the interactions between the physical and biochemical processes of cells, tissue, and organs. Defense physiology, in turn, dealt with the specific burdens of soldiers with the aim of boosting the performance of the army in the face of excessive demands and a stressful environment. The military was starting to see itself as a modern organization and soldiers were described as “animated engines.”7 Ranke’s task was to protect them against “wear,” meaning incapacity. He was to oil the cogs of the machine, and functioned as a kind of performance coach for the German Army, as well as a gadget inventor. Over the years Ranke developed a sighting device for spotting artificial green (camouflage uniforms within a forest, for example), new anti-dust goggles for motorcyclists, tropical helmets that were both bulletproof and sweat-permeable for the Afrika Korps, and directional microphones to help the counterintelligence service listen in on its targets.
Ranke’s Research Institute of Defense Physiology was a section of the Military Medical Academy on Invalidenstrasse in Berlin. A large building in eighteenth-century neo-Baroque style, it is now home to the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. Curved gold letters read SCIENTIAE HUMANITATI PATRIAE in a relief on the mansard roof above the main door: “To Science—to Humanity—to the Fatherland.” From 1934 until 1945 this was where the army trained its rising medical officers. The Prussian elite institution, known as the MA for short, had the biggest medical and scientific library in Europe and a two-story laboratory building fully equipped with the latest technology; several big auditoria; reading rooms; and a hall of honor with busts of Virchow, von Helmholtz, von Behring, and other doctors and researchers who had, it was said, each performed an immortal service for science. The complex also included the most modern gymnasiums and swimming pools, as well as a five-story residential block with comfortable double rooms for the eight hundred trainee medical officers. These were known as Pfeifhähne, a complex Berlin play on the word “Pépin,” a derivative of “Pépinière,” the former training institute for military doctors under the Prussian kings, which had turned out the cream of medical scientists in the nineteenth century. In their wake, the MA students confidently wore the Reich eagle and the swastika on their smart uniforms. There was also a riding stable with ninety horses, several racing tracks, and nursing stables for sick horses, veterinary officers, and a smithy.
The scientific departments were housed in the big block to the rear of the inner courtyard: the Institute for Pharmacology and Army Toxicology, the Laboratory for Serum Conservation, and the Aeronautical Medical Research Institute directed by Professor Hubertus Strughold (who would pioneer American space travel after the war along with Wernher von Braun), as well as the Research Institute of Defense Physiology, run by Otto Ranke, which in 1938 consisted of only an additional auxiliary doctor, three medical interns, and a few civilian clerical staff. But the amb
itious Ranke wanted to build up his department very quickly. He planned to do this through something he promoted for the Wehrmacht—a small molecule about to have a grand career.
From Brown Bread to Brain Food
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. A sleeping soldier is a useless soldier, incapable of action. Fatigue causes your coordination to deteriorate, you fire randomly, and you lose the capacity to drive motorbikes, cars, or tanks. 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.”8
