If one were to wonder what motivated Hitler’s notoriously stone-hearted, goose-stepping Nazi soldiers, such obvious options as hate and bigotry might come to mind.
But in truth, Nazi soldiers were fueled, in the most traditional sense of the word, by methamphetamines.
While Nazi ideology was firmly antidrug, according to TIME (in an excerpt adapted from “Killer High: A History of War in Six Drugs” by Peter Andreas), an exception was made for speed. Other drugs, like opium, were associated with being weak — something Hitler and his followers abhorred.
“We don’t need weak people,” Hitler declared. “Only the strong.”
RECOMMENDED FOR YOU
THE U.S. ARMY CHOCOLATE BAR THAT GIS DUBBED “HITLER’S SECRET WEAPON”
WHAT IF HITLER HAD NOT KILLED HIMSELF?
WERE JAPANESE KAMIKAZE PILOTS GIVEN DRUGS?
DRUGS FOR THE NAZI HOME
Unlike drugs taken for escapist purposes, methamphetamines made their users feel more alive — faster, stronger versions of themselves.
It wasn’t just the Germans who were relying on amphetamines during the war. In fact, it was America’s success with a similar drug, Benzedrine, in the 1936 Olympic games that inspired German chemist Fritz Hauschild to attempt to develop his own version. A year later, the first German methylamphetamine, Pervitin, was patented, according to The Guardian.
