Blitzed Lib/E: Drugs in the Third Reich

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, Dr. Morell. 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. Carefully researched and rivetingly readable, Blitzed throws surprising light on a history that, until now, has remained in the shadows.

About the Author :
Norman Ohler is an award-winning German novelist, screenwriter, and journalist. He spent five years researching Blitzed in numerous archives in Germany and the United States, and spoke to eyewitnesses, military historians, and doctors. He is also the author of the novels Die Quotenmaschine (the world's first hypertext novel), Mitte, and Stadt des Goldes (translated into English as Ponte City). He was cowriter of the script for Wim Wenders' film Palermo Shooting. Visit him online at www.NormanOhler.com. Shaun Whiteside, originally from Northern Ireland, graduated with a first in modern languages from King's College, Cambridge, and translates from German, French, Italian, and Dutch, having previously worked as a business journalist and television producer. His translation of Magdalena the Sinner by Lilian Faschinger won the 1996 Schlegel-Tieck Prize. He is a former chair of the Translators Association and lives in London with his wife and son. Claire Bloom, CBE, is an English film and stage actress, known for leading roles in plays such as Streetcar Named Desire, A Doll's House, and Long Day's Journey into Night, along with nearly sixty films and countless television roles, during a career spanning over six decades. She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2013 Queen's birthday honors for services to drama. Stefan Rudnicki is a Grammy-winning audiobook producer and a multiaward-winning narrator, named one of AudioFile's Golden Voices.

Review :
"[A] fascinating, engrossing, often dark history of drug use in the Third Reich." -- "Washington Post" "A compelling piece of serious scholarship...that professional historians seem to have missed." -- "Military.com" "A fascinating, most extraordinary revelation." -- "BBC World News" "An intense chronicle of 'systematic drug abuse' in Nazi Germany...Written with dramatic flair...this book adds significantly to our understanding of the Third Reich." -- "Kirkus Reviews (starred review)" "Despite the Nazis' all-out war on drug use, virtually everyone, from housewives to the Führer, was drugged up...Ohler's account is full of rich character studies." -- "New York Times" "Explosive...Ohler describes the chemical ignition of the first assault on the Western front with a novelist's flair." -- "Rolling Stone" "I had thought nothing could make [Nazis] more horrifying, but that was before I encountered Blitzed." -- "Esquire" "Makes readers look at this well-trodden period in a new way and does it in a readable, inviting format." -- "Newsweek" "Ohler's astonishing account...looks set to reframe the way certain aspects of the Third Reich will be viewed in the future." -- "Guardian (London)" "Tells a deliriously druggy tale of the Third Reich." -- "Paris Reviews" "The book is an impressive work of scholarship, with more than two dozen pages of footnotes and the blessing of esteemed World War Two historians...Ohler offers a compelling explanation for Hitler's erratic behavior in the final years of the war, and how the biomedical landscape of the time affected the way history unfolded." -- "New Republic" "The picture [Ohler] paints is both a powerful and an extreme one...Gripping reading." -- "Times Literary Supplement (London)"