“The Darkest Side of Nazis on  Meth *Warning HARD TO STOMACH”   In the late 1930s in Germany, just before World  War II started, a pharmaceutical company named   Temmler Werke was working on a new drug. In 1937,  they released a little white pill called Pervitin.   It looked harmless, just a small tablet you could  buy at the pharmacy without a prescription.

 

 

But   inside that pill was something really powerful.  It was methamphetamine hydrochloride. Basically,   it was crystal meth, but legal. Methamphetamine wasn’t new. It was   first made in Japan in 1893 and later turned  into a tablet form by the 1910s. But Temmler’s   version was the one that really took off.

They  started selling Pervitin as a kind of everyday   “pep pill” in Germany. The ads promised  energy, confidence, alertness, and even   weight loss. People used it to stay awake at work,  concentrate in school, or just feel better.   It became super popular, especially among  housewives, students, and factory workers.   You could walk into any German pharmacy and buy a  pack. But then the Nazi military noticed it.

They   saw how Pervitin made people feel less tired, more  focused, and totally fearless. And they thought,   what if our soldiers took this in battle? They started testing it. Soldiers who took   Pervitin didn’t need sleep. They didn’t feel  hungry. They could march for miles and fight   harder than before. They didn’t hesitate or break  down under stress.

It was like flipping a switch,   suddenly, men were like machines.  The German military was so impressed,   they made it official. By 1939, the Nazi high command   began mass-producing Pervitin for the army.  Temmler was instructed to scale up production,   and soon the pill was being handed out  during training and combat missions.   Doctors in the military thought it was the  ultimate performance booster.

There were even   medical papers published in Nazi journals praising  Pervitin for increasing a soldier’s “fighting   spirit” and “willingness to take risks.” By April 1940, when Germany was preparing to   invade France, Pervitin was fully part of  the war plan. Military pharmacists handed   out 35 million tablets to soldiers  just for that campaign alone.

Soldiers would pop 2 or 3 pills and go  without sleep for two or three days.   Some marched over 50 kilometers without rest.  Others drove tanks all night long with perfect   focus. Pilots flew missions while totally  wired. It gave the Nazis a temporary edge.   There’s even a famous quote from  a German army doctor who said,   “Our secret weapon isn’t  a tank. It’s a pill.

”   The pill was cheap, easy to carry, and it worked  fast. Pervitin became known as “Stuka-Tabletten”,   named after the Stuka dive bombers, and  also “Go-Pills.” Soldiers nicknamed it   “Panzer-Schokolade,” which means “tank chocolate,”  because sometimes it was mixed into candy or   chocolate to make it easier to take.

The Nazis had a battle plan that shocked the   world. It was called Blitzkrieg, which means  “lightning war” in German. The idea was simple:   hit fast, hit hard, and don’t give the enemy time  to breathe. They would use tanks, planes, and foot   soldiers to smash through borders before the enemy  could even figure out what was happening.   But this kind of war wasn’t normal.

It  needed a special kind of soldier — someone   who could go for days without sleep, push  through pain, and move like a machine. And   that’s where Pervitin came in. Tank crews would take a few tablets   and stay awake for 3 to 4 days straight. The same thing happened in the air. Luftwaffe   pilots, especially bomber crews, were flying  long missions across Europe while high on meth.

Some flew for 8 to 10 hours, dropped bombs,  then turned around and flew right back.    On the ground, it was just as intense. Infantry  troops marched for 36 hours or more without rest,   carrying heavy gear, moving through forests, snow,  or mud, and still had the energy to fight. Some   covered over 80 kilometers in two days. A lot of  that happened during the invasion of France.

One of the most famous examples happened  in May 1940, during the push through the   Ardennes Forest. This area was supposed to be  impossible to cross with tanks. The French didn’t   expect the Germans to come through there, they  thought it was too difficult. But the Nazis did   the impossible. And they did it fast.

German forces broke through the Ardennes   in record time, completely surprising British and  French troops. Most of those Nazi soldiers hadn’t   slept for days. They were kept going by a steady  supply of meth. In fact, some commanders were   instructed to give troops two Pervitin tablets  per day, and more if needed during combat.   The drug had a dark side. After  the high came the crash.

Once Pervitin wore off, the effects were brutal.  Soldiers would suddenly feel dizzy, paranoid,   and weak. Some collapsed in the middle of  the battle, unable to move. Others became   aggressive and confused. A few even experienced  hallucinations, thinking they were being hunted   or surrounded when nothing was there.

In some cases, entire squads had to be pulled out   of the battlefield just because the crash hit all  at once. There were even early reports of soldiers   going insane, screaming, shaking, or refusing  to follow orders because they thought they   were being attacked by invisible enemies. By the end of 1940, some military doctors started   noticing the side effects.

They reported cases  of addiction, psychosis, and extreme emotional   breakdowns. But even then, the army kept using it,  because it worked in the short term.   Meth didn’t just make Nazi soldiers faster or  stronger. It may have made them more violent,   more heartless, and even more evil. Especially  inside the SS, the Nazi group responsible   for the worst crimes of the war.

The Schutzstaffel, or SS, wasn’t just a   regular military group. They were deeply loyal  to Hitler, trained to obey without question,   and were in charge of things like the  death squads and the concentration camps,   including Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Majdanek. There’s strong evidence that many SS members were   addicted to meth, and not just meth,  but also morphine and other opioids.

This mix created a deadly cocktail. Meth  made them alert and aggressive. Morphine   made them numb and emotionless. Together,  these drugs may have helped them carry out   the most inhuman acts, without hesitation. Some Nazi doctors believed these drugs were useful   for keeping the troops “cold-blooded.

” Others  just didn’t care what the drugs did to people,   they were more focused on results. Inside the camps, doctors like Dr. Carl   Clauberg and Dr. Eduard Wirths used  prisoners as lab rats. At Auschwitz,   Dachau, and Sachsenhausen, victims were injected  with meth to test how long a human could survive   without sleep or food. Some were pushed until  their hearts literally stopped beating.

One experiment in Dachau involved freezing  prisoners to see how long they could survive.   They were given meth to try and extend their  endurance. Others were starved while high   to see if the drug could keep them alive  longer. Most of them died in agony.   The SS officers themselves were  often so deep into their own drug   use that they lost all touch with reality.

There were cases where SS guards hallucinated,   screaming at shadows or imagining  that prisoners were planning attacks.   One SS guard at Majdanek reportedly shot  multiple prisoners because he thought they   were “whispering in his head.” But they weren’t  saying anything. It was the meth talking.   Another officer was seen shaking violently, unable  to stand, and then suddenly went into a rage,   beating a prisoner to death with his bare hands.

Witnesses said he was “foaming at the mouth”,   likely having a drug-induced breakdown. By 1943, the drug abuse in the SS had gotten   so bad that Nazi leadership started to  notice. Internal reports said officers   were “unstable,” “unpredictable,” and in some  cases, “completely insane.” They weren’t just   following orders anymore, they were acting  out in wild, personal acts of violence.

But by then, it was too late. The Nazi high command tried to slow down   the use of Pervitin, especially in the SS, but  the damage had already been done. These men were   addicted. And their minds were falling apart. It’s easy to think that only ideology made the   Nazis so cruel. But drugs may have played  a big part.

Meth didn’t cause the hate,   but it likely removed whatever thin line was left  between orders and total savagery. It gave them   the energy, the focus, and the rage to carry out  things no normal person could do for that long,   or with that level of brutality. Now let’s talk about Adolf Hitler himself.   What most people don’t know is that Hitler  wasn’t just giving drugs to his army.

He   was taking a lot of drugs himself. And not just  sometimes. This was a regular, daily thing.   He had a personal doctor named Theodor Morell.  Morell acted more like a personal drug supplier   in a white coat. While some people in Hitler’s  circle saw him as a joke or even dangerous,   Hitler trusted him completely.

If Hitler had a  headache, stomach cramps, or just felt tired,   Morell would give him something. And Hitler  always wanted something. He believed the   injections made him stronger. Between 1941 and 1945, Morell gave   Hitler over eighty different kinds of drugs. Some  of them were basic vitamins. But most were heavy   stuff — strong, mind-altering drugs.

One of the  most shocking facts we know now is that Hitler was   regularly being injected with drug cocktails  that included methamphetamine. These weren’t   small doses either. He was getting powerful  mixtures, sometimes several times a day.   Morell’s injections included things  like Eukodal, which was an opioid   drug similar to today’s oxycodone. Hitler  was also given Pervitin.

On top of that,   he was using cocaine-based treatments for his  throat and sinus problems. Morell also gave him   caffeine and glucose shots to keep him energized  during the day, and barbiturates to try and calm   him down at night. Hitler was even given things  like bull semen extract, because Morell thought   it might help his stamina and energy levels.  It sounds unbelievable, but it’s true.

By the time 1944 rolled around, Hitler’s body was  clearly falling apart. In footage from that time,   you can actually see him shaking, especially his  left hand. In one famous clip, he’s trying to hide   his trembling hand behind his back.

His posture  was weak, and his facial expressions looked tense   and frozen. These were all signs of serious  drug side effects, or maybe even withdrawal.   His speech patterns changed too. Sometimes he  would talk too fast or too slow. His moods were   completely unstable. He would go from being overly  confident and excited to shouting at people,   accusing everyone around him of betrayal.

Many people close to him believed his thinking   had changed. He wasn’t as sharp as before. He  ignored his generals and stopped trusting anyone.   He believed Germany could still win the war,  even when it was obvious they were losing badly.   He started talking about secret weapons and  miracle solutions. A lot of historians now   believe this kind of thinking may have been  influenced by the drugs he was taking.

Through all of this, Morell kept giving Hitler  more injections, every single day, sometimes more   than once. By early 1945, Hitler was probably  completely dependent on these drugs. His health   had totally collapsed. His teeth were rotting. His  skin was pale and sweaty. He had stomach problems,   trouble sleeping, and constant tremors.

He spent  most of his time hiding in the Führerbunker under   Berlin, giving orders that didn’t make sense,  while the world above him was crumbling.   By the end, Hitler was barely  functioning. He was paranoid,   shaking, and constantly afraid that people were  plotting against him. He trusted almost no one.   He didn’t even attend military meetings anymore.

He just stayed locked in his underground bunker,   surrounded by yes-men and still getting his  daily injections from Morell. When Hitler finally   took his own life on April 30, 1945, he was  physically and mentally destroyed.   By the final years of World War II, everything  in Nazi Germany was falling apart. The mighty   war machine that had once seemed unstoppable  was now broken.

Cities were being destroyed,   soldiers were dying by the thousands, and supplies  were running out fast. But instead of facing   the truth, the Nazi leadership locked themselves  into a bubble of lies, delusions, and drugs.   By late 1944, Germany was losing badly. The  Allied forces had landed in France and were   pushing from the west. The Soviet Red Army  was crushing German troops in the east.

Berlin   was getting bombed almost every night. German  civilians were starving, freezing, and terrified.   But inside Hitler’s underground bunker, deep  beneath the Reich Chancellery, the Nazi leaders   were pretending like they still had a chance.  And part of the reason they could believe that   lie was because many of them were high. Other top Nazi leaders were in the same spiral.

Joseph Goebbels, the propaganda minister, was  taking sleeping pills every night. He had six   children, and by 1945, he knew their lives were  doomed too. He spent his last days praising   Hitler in the bunker while secretly preparing  to kill his whole family. Heinrich Himmler,   head of the SS, was popping stimulants to  stay alert and manage his many collapsing   departments. But even he started looking for ways  to escape or make deals with the Allies.

The entire leadership was falling into total  chaos. People were arguing constantly. Some   were sneaking out of Berlin, hoping to  survive. Others stayed, but only out   of fear or blind loyalty. The core of Nazi evil didn’t come from   drugs.

It came from their ideology, a system  built on racism, anti-Semitism, and a belief in   total control and domination. The decisions to  invade countries, wipe out entire populations,   and build death camps were made by people who  believed in that ideology. The drugs didn’t create   the hatred. But they did make it worse. Methamphetamine didn’t cause World War II. But   it made the Nazi war machine faster,  more aggressive, and harder to stop.

In the hands of a regime already committed to  violence, meth acted like fuel on a fire.   After the war, the world slowly began to  uncover just how widespread drug use had   been in the Nazi ranks. Millions of tablets had  been produced. Medical records, testimonies,   and official military documents confirmed what had  once sounded like rumor: large parts of the Nazi   military, from ordinary soldiers to high-ranking  officials, were using drugs regularly.

But the story of Nazi meth  doesn’t end in 1945.   Pervitin didn’t disappear after Germany fell.  In fact, it was repackaged under new names.   In the 1950s and 1960s, it was sold in the United  States under the name Obetrol, originally as a   weight-loss and energy pill.

Later, Obetrol’s  formula changed slightly and became known by   a name many people recognize today: Adderall, a  drug now widely used to treat ADHD. The chemical   structure is not identical to wartime Pervitin,  but the roots trace back to the same compound:   amphetamine-based stimulants designed  to keep people alert and focused.   It’s also worth noting that some of the  scientists involved in Nazi drug experiments   didn’t face punishment.

Instead, some were  quietly recruited by both the United States   and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.  Through programs like Operation Paperclip,   Nazi doctors and researchers were brought to work  on aerospace, weapons, and even military medical   research. Their knowledge of drugs played a part  in developing later military drug programs.   So, what does all this mean today? Drugs by themselves aren’t good or evil.

It’s how they’re used and who is using them  that makes the difference. In Nazi Germany,   drugs were used not for healing or health, but to  make people more efficient at killing. They helped   carry out an agenda of violence and genocide, more  quickly and without pause. When you combine an   extreme ideology with substances that remove fear,  pain, or emotion, the result can be horrifying.