Norman Ohler: Hitler, Nazis, Drugs, WW2, Blitzkrieg, LSD, MKUltra & CIA | Lex Fridman Podcast #481

Hitler invited three young tank generals to his office, and they had a plan, which was the plan to go through the Ardenne Mountains. That was the victorious idea. So it's not the drugs, actually that idea to go through the Ardenne Mountain. If you, if you think monocausal, you would say that's the reason. That idea was genius, and Hitler immediately understood it, because before, the plan was to attack in the north of Belgium, which is the same as World War I. You... It, it becomes a stalemate, and they fight for months, and no one really moves, and it's bloody, and it's... Nothing's happening. It's bad. But that was the only plan that they had. That's why the high command said, "No, we're not going to do it. It's stupid." But these three tank generals, they said, "Look, if we go with the whole army through the Ardenne Mountains..." And then Hitler, "Eh, this is not possible. This is like a mountain range. How can the whole German army fit through this eye of a needle basically?" And they said, "No, we can do it, because everyone misunderstands what tanks can do. Tanks are not slow machines in the back that wait for the action to happen and then support this somehow. We're going to use tanks in the front as race cars, basically. We're going to overpower the enemy. We're going to be in France... Before they know it, we are already behind them." But it would only work if you would reach Sedan, the border city of France within three days and three nights, and that was only possible if you don't stop. Suddenly, Ranke realized that his moment had come, because he had the recipe how people could stay awake for three days and three nights. Before that, he was kind of an outsider, like the freak with the drug idea. Suddenly, he became like-

Mm-hmm.

... "Okay, tell us, how does it work?" And he gave, like, lectures in front of the officers, and he wrote a stimulant decree where, like, a whole army is prescribed a drug, in this case methamphetamine, how much should be taken, at what intervals. This became a very big thing, and then Temmler had to deliver 35 million dosages to the front lines, and then on May 10th, they took their methamphetamine, and they started the surprise attack through the Ardenne Mountains.

The following is a conversation with Norman Ohler, author of Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich, a book that investigates what role psychoactive drugs, particularly stimulants such as methamphetamine, played in the military history of World War II. It is a book that two legendary historians, Ian Kershaw and Antony Beevor, give very high praise to. Ian Kershaw describes it as very well researched, serious piece of scholarship, and Antony Beevor describes it as remarkable work of research, and it is indeed a remarkable work of research. Norman went deep into the archives, using primary sources to uncover perspective on Hitler and the Third Reich that has before this been mostly ignored by historians. He also wrote Tripped: Nazi Germany, the CIA, and the Dawn of the Psychedelic Age, and he's now working on a new book with the possible title of Stoned Sapients, great title, looking at the history of human civilization through the lens of drugs. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description and consider subscribing to this channel, and now, dear friends, here's Norman Ohler. Tell me the origin story of meth, methamphetamine, and Pervitin, its brand name drug version, in the context of Nazi Germany in the late 1930s. Let's start there.