Blitzed

Ohler's subject is drugs in the Third Reich: how methamphetamine, which the Berlin firm Temmler marketed as Pervitin, spread through German society and then the Wehrmacht, where Ohler argues it helped soldiers fight for days without sleep during the 1940 invasion of France, and how Hitler, recorded as Patient A by his physician Theodor Morell, came to depend on an escalating cocktail of injections.

Ohler is an award-winning German novelist, screenwriter and journalist. He did his research in German and American archives and leans heavily on Morell's own records. The book first appeared in German as Der totale Rausch in 2015; the English translation is by Shaun Whiteside.

Reception split sharply. Antony Beevor, Ian Kershaw and Hans Mommsen praised the research. Richard J. Evans called it crass and dangerously inaccurate and warned that it risked implying Hitler was not responsible for his actions, a reading Ohler rejected. Nikolaus Wachsmann faulted its blending of fact with puns and pop-culture embellishment, and Dagmar Herzog said its analysis does not withstand close scrutiny.

Read it as a provocative, readable history, not the last word. Finance readers will find a vivid case study of how a state and its pharmaceutical suppliers created mass demand.

1. Industry and state can manufacture demand. Temmler, Merck and Bayer found a willing customer in a regime that wanted productivity and endurance. Government purchasing can create markets and dependencies of its own.
2. Performance enhancers borrow from the future. Pervitin let soldiers go days without sleep, followed by collapse and addiction. Short-term gains bought with unsustainable inputs show up as later losses.
3. Key-person risk includes health. The book's account of Hitler's dependence on one doctor is an extreme case of what happens when a centralized organization depends on one leader whose judgment can quietly degrade.
4. A great story is not settled history. Leading historians challenged Ohler's evidence and emphasis. Readers should separate documented facts, such as production orders and Morell's records, from interpretive leaps.
5. Ideology hides behavior. A regime that preached purity ran on stimulants and opioids, a reminder to check what institutions actually do against what they say.

The book has four chronological parts, each dated to a phase of the regime.

1. Methamphetamine, the Volksdroge (1933-1938). Ohler traces Germany's pharmaceutical strength back to the nineteenth century, then follows Temmler's launch of Pervitin and its spread through civilian life as a pick-me-up sold over the counter.
2. Sieg high (1939-1941). Military doctors test the drug on soldiers, and the Wehrmacht orders millions of tablets. Ohler argues that methamphetamine helped make the speed of the 1940 Blitzkrieg through the Ardennes possible, before officials began to worry about addiction.
3. High Hitler: Patient A and his personal physician (1941-1944). Using Morell's records, Ohler follows the growing range of injections Hitler received, including the opioid Eukodal and cocaine, and how dependence may have shaped his behavior as the war turned.
4. The wonder drug (1944-1945). In the last phase, the military tests new drug combinations for midget-submarine crews and other desperate missions, including trials on prisoners at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. As Allied bombing cuts off the supply of his favored drugs, Hitler goes into withdrawal while the Reich collapses.

The sensational German bestseller on the overwhelming role of drug-taking in the Third Reich, from Hitler to housewives. 'Bursting with interesting facts' Vice 'Extremely interesting ... a serious piece of scholarship, very well researched' Ian Kershaw The Nazis presented themselves as warriors against moral degeneracy. Yet, as Norman Ohler's gripping bestseller reveals, the entire Third Reich was permeated with drugs: cocaine, heroin, morphine and, most of all, methamphetamines, or crystal meth, used by everyone from factory workers to housewives, and crucial to troops' resilience - even partly explaining German victory in 1940. The promiscuous use of drugs at the very highest levels also impaired and confused decision-making, with Hitler and his entourage taking refuge in potentially lethal cocktails of stimulants administered by the physician Dr Morell as the war turned against Germany. While drugs cannot on their own explain the events of the Second World War or its outcome, Ohler shows, they change our understanding of it. Blitzed forms a crucial missing piece of the story.