Methamphetamine use during world war 2

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Nazi soldiers took crystal meth to fight longer, harder: Study - Indian Express

Even though Adolf Hitler's Nazi party rules stressed the importance of keeping fit by abstaining from drink and tobacco to keep the Aryan race strong and pure, it has emerged that his soldiers were taking addictive and damaging chemicals to fight longer and harder.

A study on the medicines used by the Third Reich revealed how Nazi doctors and officers issued recruits with pills to help them fight without rest.

The German army's drug of choice, as it overran Poland, Holland, Belgium and France, was Pervitin, pills made from methamphetamine, commonly known today as crystal meth.

Hundreds of thousands soldiers were addicted to the pills by the time the invasion of the Soviet Union was launched in 1941, and records of the Wehrmacht, the German army, show that some 200 million Pervitin pills were doled out to the troops between 1939 and 1945.

Research by the German Doctors' Association also showed the Nazis developed a cocaine-based stimulant for its front-line fighters that was tested on concentration camp inmates.

"It was Hitler's last secret weapon to win a war he had already lost long ago," the Daily Mail quoted criminologist Wolf Kemper, author of a German language book on the Third Reich's use of drugs called Nazis On Speed, as saying.

The drug, codenamed D-IX, was tested at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp north of Berlin, where prisoners loaded with 45lb packs were reported to have marched 70 miles without rest.

The plan was to give all soldiers in the crumbling Reich the wonder drug - but the invasion of Normandy in June 1944, coupled with crippling Allied bombing, scotched the scheme.

"The Blitzkrieg was fuelled by speed. The idea was to turn ordinary soldiers, sailors and airmen into automatons capable of superhuman performance," a pharmacologist said.

Medical authorities say the downside of the plan was that many soldiers became helplessly addicted to drugs and were of no use in any theatre of war.

Otto Ranke, a military doctor and director of the Institute for General and Defence Physiology at Berlin's Academy of Military Medicine, was behind the Pervitin scheme.
 

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The Nazi Death Machine: Hitler's Drugged Soldiers - SPIEGEL ONLINE

The Nazi Death Machine Hitler's Drugged Soldiers

By Andreas Ulrich

The Nazis preached abstinence in the name of promoting national health. But when it came to fighting their Blitzkrieg, they had no qualms about pumping their soldiers full of drugs and alcohol. Speed was the drug of choice, but many others became addicted to morphine and alcohol.

The stimulant Pervitin was delivered to the soldiers at the front.
In a letter dated November 9, 1939, to his "dear parents and siblings" back home in Cologne, a young soldier stationed in occupied Poland wrote: "It's tough out here, and I hope you'll understand if I'm only able to write to you once every two to four days soon. Today I'm writing you mainly to ask for some Pervitin ...; Love, Hein."

Pervitin, a stimulant commonly known as speed today, was the German army's -- the Wehrmacht's -- wonder drug.

On May 20, 1940, the 22-year-old soldier wrote to his family again: "Perhaps you could get me some more Pervitin so that I can have a backup supply?" And, in a letter sent from Bromberg on July 19, 1940, he wrote: "If at all possible, please send me some more Pervitin." The man who wrote these letters became a famous writer later in life. He was Heinrich Boell, and in 1972 he was the first German to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in the post-war period.

Many of the Wehrmacht's soldiers were high on Pervitin when they went into battle, especially against Poland and France -- in a Blitzkrieg fueled by speed. The German military was supplied with millions of methamphetamine tablets during the first half of 1940. The drugs were part of a plan to help pilots, sailors and infantry troops become capable of superhuman performance. The military leadership liberally dispensed such stimulants, but also alcohol and opiates, as long as it believed drugging and intoxicating troops could help it achieve victory over the Allies. But the Nazis were less than diligent in monitoring side-effects like drug addiction and a decline in moral standards.

After it was first introduced into the market in 1938, Pervitin, a methamphetamine drug newly developed by the Berlin-based Temmler pharmaceutical company, quickly became a top seller among the German civilian population. According to a report in the Klinische Wochenschrift ("Clinical Weekly"), the supposed wonder drug was brought to the attention of Otto Ranke, a military doctor and director of the Institute for General and Defense Physiology at Berlin's Academy of Military Medicine. The effects of amphetamines are similar to those of the adrenaline produced by the body, triggering a heightened state of alert. In most people, the substance increases self-confidence, concentration and the willingness to take risks, while at the same time reducing sensitivity to pain, hunger and thirst, as well as reducing the need for sleep. In September 1939, Ranke tested the drug on 90 university students, and concluded that Pervitin could help the Wehrmacht win the war. At first Pervitin was tested on military drivers who participated in the invasion of Poland. Then, according to criminologist Wolf Kemper, it was "unscrupulously distributed to troops fighting at the front."

Thirty-five million tablets

During the short period between April and July of 1940, more than 35 million tablets of Pervitin and Isophan (a slightly modified version produced by the Knoll pharmaceutical company) were shipped to the German army and air force. Some of the tablets, each containing three milligrams of active substance, were sent to the Wehrmacht's medical divisions under the code name OBM, and then distributed directly to the troops. A rush order could even be placed by telephone if a shipment was urgently needed. The packages were labeled "Stimulant," and the instructions recommended a dose of one to two tablets "only as needed, to maintain sleeplessness."

Even then, doctors were concerned about the fact that the regeneration phase after taking the drug was becoming increasingly long, and that the effect was gradually decreasing among frequent users. In isolated cases, users experienced health problems like excessive perspiration and circulatory disorders, and there were even a few deaths. Leonardo Conti, the German Reich's minister of health and an adherent of Adolf Hitler's belief in asceticism, attempted to restrict the use of the pill, but was only moderately successful, at least when it came to the Wehrmacht. Although Pervitin was classified as a restricted substance on July 1, 1941, under the Opium Law, ten million tablets were shipped to troops that same year.

Pervitin was generally viewed as a proven drug to be used when soldiers were likely to be subjected to extreme stress. A memorandum for navy medical officers stated the following: "Every medical officer must be aware that Pervitin is a highly differentiated and powerful stimulant, a tool that enables him, at any time, to actively and effectively help certain individuals within his range of influence achieve above-average performance."

"Their spirits suddenly improved"

The effects were seductive. In January 1942, a group of 500 German soldiers stationed on the eastern front and surrounded by the Red Army were attempting to escape. The temperature was minus 30 degrees Celsius. A military doctor assigned to the unit wrote in his report that at around midnight, six hours into their escape through snow that was waist-deep in places, "more and more soldiers were so exhausted that they were beginning to simply lie down in the snow." The group's commanding officers decided to give Pervitin to their troops. "After half an hour," the doctor wrote, "the men began spontaneously reporting that they felt better. They began marching in orderly fashion again, their spirits improved, and they became more alert."

Towards the end of the war, Germany used younger and younger soldiers. More and more of them relied on drugs or alcohol for courage and endurance.
It took almost six months for the report to reach the military's senior medical command. But its response was merely to issue new guidelines and instructions for using Pervitin, including information about risks that barely differed from earlier instructions. The "Guidelines for Detecting and Combating Fatigue," issued June 18, 1942, were the same as they had always been: "Two tablets taken once eliminate the need to sleep for three to eight hours, and two doses of two tablets each are normally effective for 24 hours."
Toward the end of the war, the Nazis were even working on a miracle pill for their troops. In the northern German seaport of Kiel, on March 16, 1944, then Vice-Admiral Hellmuth Heye, who later became a member of parliament with the conservative Christian Democratic party and head of the German parliament's defense committee, requested a drug "that can keep soldiers ready for battle when they are asked to continue fighting beyond a period considered normal, while at the same time boosting their self-esteem."

A short time later, Kiel pharmacologist Gerhard Orzechowski presented Heye with a pill code-named D-IX. It contained five milligrams of cocaine, three milligrams of Pervitin and five milligrams of Eukodal (a morphine-based painkiller). Nowadays, a drug dealer caught with this potent a drug would be sent to prison. At the time, however, the drug was tested on crew members working on the navy's smallest submarines, known as the "Seal" and the "Beaver."

Alcohol consumption was encouraged

Alcohol, the people's drug, was also popular in the Wehrmacht. Referring to alcohol, Walter Kittel, a general in the medical corps, wrote that "only a fanatic would refuse to give a soldier something that can help him relax and enjoy life after he has faced the horrors of battle, or would reprimand him for enjoying a friendly drink or two with his comrades." Officers would distribute alcohol to their troops as a reward, and schnapps was routinely sold in military commissaries, a policy that also had the happy side effect of returning soldiers' pay to the military.

"The military command turned a blind eye to alcohol consumption, as long as it didn't lead to public drunkenness among the troops," says Freiburg historian Peter Steinkamp, an expert on drug abuse in the Wehrmacht.

But in July 1940, after France was defeated, Hitler issued the following order: "I expect that members of the Wehrmacht who allow themselves to be tempted to engage in criminal acts as a result of alcohol abuse will be severely punished." Serious offenders could even expect "a humiliating death."

Drugs were also a problem on the home front, but the Nazis tried harder to control their abuse.
But the temptations of liquor were apparently more powerful that the Fuehrer's threats. Only a year later, the commander-in-chief of the German military, General Walther von Brauchitsch, concluded that his troops were committing "the most serious infractions" of morality and discipline, and that the culprit was "alcohol abuse." Among the adverse effects of alcohol abuse he cited were fights, accidents, mistreatment of subordinates, violence against superior officers and "crimes involving unnatural sexual acts." The general believed that alcohol was jeopardizing "discipline within the military."
According to an internal statistic compiled by the chief of the medical corps, 705 military deaths between September 1939 and April 1944 could be linked directly to alcohol. The unofficial figure was probably much higher, because traffic accidents, accidents involving weapons and suicides were frequently caused by alcohol use. Medical officers were instructed to admit alcoholics and drug addicts to treatment facilities. According to an order issued by the medical service, this solution had "the advantage that it could be extended indefinitely." Once incarcerated in these facilities, addicts were evaluated under the provisions of the "Law for Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases," and could even be subjected to forced sterilization and euthanasia.

Executing a bootlegger

The number of cases in which soldiers became blind or even died after consuming methyl alcohol began to increase. From 1939 on, the University of Berlin's Institute of Forensic Medicine consistently listed methyl alcohol as the leading factor in deaths resulting from the inadvertent ingestion of poisons.

The execution of a 36-year-old officer in Norway in the fall of 1942 was intended to set an example. The officer, who was a driver, had sold five liters of methyl alcohol, which he claimed was 98 percent alcohol and could be used to produce liquor, to an infantry regiment's anti-tank defense unit. Several soldiers fell ill, and two died. The man, deemed an "enemy of the people," was executed by a firing squad. According to the daily order issued on October 2, 1942, "the punishment shall be announced to the troops and auxiliary units, and it shall be used as a tool for repeated and insistent admonishment."

But soldiers apparently felt that anything that could help them escape the horrors of war was justifiable. Despite general knowledge of the risks involved, morphine addiction became widespread among the wounded and medical personnel during the course of the war. Four times as many military doctors were addicted to morphine by 1945 than at the beginning of the war.

Franz Wertheim, a medical officer who was sent to a small village near the Western Wall on May 10, 1940, wrote the following account: "To help pass the time, we doctors experimented on ourselves. We would begin the day by drinking a water glass of cognac and taking two injections of morphine. We found cocaine to be useful at midday, and in the evening we would occasionally take Hyoskin," an alkaloid derived from some varieties of the nightshade plant that is used as a medication. Wertheim adds: "As a result, we were not always fully in command of our senses."

German doctors experimented on themselves

To prevent an "outbreak of morphinism, as occurred after the last war," Professor Otto Wuth, a master sergeant and consulting psychiatrist to the military's senior medical command, wrote a "Proposal to Combat Morphinism" in February 1941. Under Wuth's proposal, all wounded who became addicted as a result of treatment were to be centrally recorded and reported to the "District Medical Board," where they would be either legally provided with morphine or routinely examined and sent to drug rehabilitation treatment centers. "In this manner," Wuth concluded, "morphine addicts will be recorded and monitored, and the entire group will be prevented from becoming criminal."

The Nazi leadership was more lenient with those who became drug-addicted as a result of the war than with alcoholics, probably because the Wehrmacht was concerned that it could be sued for damages, because it was in fact responsible for dispensing the drugs in the first place.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
 

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The Daily Mail— Nazi soldiers given highly addictive crystal meth to help them fight harder & longer � CCHR International

200 million pills were given to soldiers during the War

Hitler's propaganda stressed the importance of keeping fit and abstaining from drink and tobacco to keep the Aryan race strong and pure.

But in reality his soldiers were taking addictive and damaging chemicals to make them fight longer and more fiercely.

A study of medicines used by the Third Reich exposes how Nazi doctors and officers issued recruits with pills to help them fight longer and without rest.

The German army's drug of choice as it overran Poland, Holland, Belgium and France was Pervitin – pills made from methamphetamine, commonly known today as crystal meth.

By the time the invasion of the Soviet Union was launched in 1941, hundreds of thousands of soldiers were doped up on it. Records of the Wehrmacht, the German army, show that some 200 million Pervitin pills were doled out to the troops between 1939 and 1945.

Research by the German Doctors' Association also showed the Nazis developed a cocaine-based stimulant for its front-line fighters that was tested on concentration camp inmates.

'It was Hitler's last secret weapon to win a war he had already lost long ago,' said criminologist Wolf Kemper, author of a German language book on the Third Reich's use of drugs called Nazis On Speed.

Experiments: Inmates at the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, where 100,000 people died, suffered chemical burns as Nazi doctors tested the impact of phosphorous shells

The drug, codenamed D-IX, was tested at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp north of Berlin, where prisoners loaded with 45lb packs were reported to have marched 70 miles without rest.

The plan was to give all soldiers in the crumbling Reich the wonder drug – but the invasion of Normandy in June 1944, coupled with crippling Allied bombing, scotched the scheme.

'The Blitzkrieg was fuelled by speed,' said a pharmacologist. 'The idea was to turn ordinary soldiers, sailors and airmen into automatons capable of superhuman performance.'

Medical authorities say the downside of the plan was that many soldiers became helplessly addicted to drugs and were of no use in any theatre of war.

Otto Ranke, a military doctor and director of the Institute for General and Defence Physiology at Berlin's Academy of Military Medicine, was behind the Pervitin scheme.

He found that the drug gave users heightened self-confidence and self-awareness.

On the eastern front, where the fighting was the most savage of the war, soldiers used it in massive quantities against an enemy that showed no mercy.

In January 1942, one group of 500 troops surrounded by the Red Army were attempting to escape in temperatures of minus 30 Degrees C.

'I decided to give them Pervitin as they began to lie down in the snow wanting to die,' wrote the medical officer for the unit.

'After half an hour the men began spontaneously reporting that they felt better.

'They began marching in orderly fashion again, their spirits improved, and they became more alert.'

Concentration camp prisoners were also the victims of terrible experiments overseen by German doctors aimed at making the war less risky for their own troops.

At Dachau hundreds died in vats of ice water as physicians sought to find a way to better insulate the flying suits of Luftwaffe pilots brought down in the sea.

And at Mauthausen in Austria inmates suffered horrific chemical burns as the doctors sought cures for phosphorous shell injuries.

Physician's group president Jörg-Dietrich Hoppe said: 'I will be the last president of this group who lived through this time.

'It is intolerable to think that so many physicians were silent or complicit in what was done in the name of medicine at this time.'

Read article here: Nazis fed speed to infantrymen and tested cocaine-like stimulant in concentration camps | Mail Online
 

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It must be experimental at best.

Rest is all propaganda to demonize the "enemy".
 

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How the "Nazi Cold Cook Method" Changed the World of Methamphetamine Production - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com

How the "Nazi Cold Cook Method" Changed the World of Methamphetamine Production

So what is the connection between methamphetamine and the Nazi's? While conspiracy theorists love to say that Hitler invented methamphetamine, it was first synthesized in Japan in 1919 although there were earlier tests and studies done as early as 1892. The United States was not far behind; Abbott Laboratories (credited as the first company to create an HIV screening kit) applied for fair-usage of the drug to treat narcolepsy, tremors, episodes of manic depression and delusions. In Germany, Pervitin and Isophan were two of the name brand methamphetamine containing products that were shipped to the front line; when supplies were thin the 'cold cook' method was used to create large batches.

Why was meth so popular? It gave those taking it a feeling of euphoria but the truth behind the distribution was ten-fold. It gave soldiers the feeling of being immortal so they could fight longer and harder while avoiding fatigue, depression and the moral decay that surrounded them. It was also something used in the concentration camps to keep guards from developing any type of sympathy for their captives. If anyone dared to question the validity of 'extensive' testing they were ordered to be silent on the matter or simply reassigned. I think everyone knows what that means.
 

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Nazi Soldiers Given Highly Addictive Crystal Meth During WWII | USAHM Conspiracy News

Nazi Soldiers Given Highly Addictive Crystal Meth During WWII


Hitler's propaganda stressed the relevance of maintaining fit and abstaining from drink and tobacco to maintain the Aryan race strong and pure.
But in reality his soldiers had been taking addictive and damaging chemical compounds to make them battle longer and much more fiercely.

A study of medicines used by the 3rd Reich exposes how Nazi doctors and officers issued recruits with tablets to help them battle longer and with no rest.

The German army's drug of decision as it overran Poland, Holland, Belgium and France was Pervitin – pills made from methamphetamine, frequently recognized today as crystal meth.

By the time the invasion of the Soviet Union was launched in 1941, hundreds of 1000"²s of soldiers were doped up on it. Records of the Wehrmacht, the German army, show that some 200 million Pervitin capsules had been doled out to the troops among 1939 and 1945.

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Research by the German Doctors' Association also showed the Nazis created a cocaine-primarily based stimulant for its front-line fighters that was examined on concentration camp inmates.

'It was Hitler's last secret weapon to win a war he had currently lost prolonged ago,' stated criminologist Wolf Kemper, author of a German language book on the Third Reich's use of medicines known as Nazis On Speed.

Experiments: Inmates at the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, wherever 100,000 men and women died, suffered chemical burns as Nazi medical professionals tested the effect of phosphorous shells

The drug, codenamed D-IX, was examined at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp north of Berlin, where prisoners loaded with 45lb packs have been reported to have marched 70 miles with out rest.

Globe armies are still making use of psychotropic drugs to make fearless machines of their soldiers.
 

LETHALFORCE

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Google

crystal meth drove WWII and the kamikaze pilots

Crystal meth was actually invented in Japan"¦..and it still continues to be wildly popular here.
It is illegal to be sure"¦.but it is also the most widely used illegal drug"¦(im assuming that means it tops marijuana too). All levels of society include frequent users. There are young girls who want to stay thin, students who want to study, people with long hours at work, and people who just want to get high.
So why is meth so wildly popular?
It may surprise you, but meth use was very common during WWII. Japanese soldiers used it widely. A compound very similar to meth was given to soldiers in the USA and England. This compound was also used in a variety of ways to treat different illnesses or lack of energy (called Benzedrine in the west). Meth and sister drugs were used to the max to drive the man power behind WWII.

Meth was given to kamikaze pilots to help them stay awake on long flights and to ease their fears of crashing the planes and ending their lives. They were often awake for days and had a less than normal kind of consciousness when they performed their life-ending missions. Staying awake for days will make your brain act really screwy.

It was given to the people who were building the war equipment and arms.
When the war ended, there was a HUGE supply of the stuff left over in Japan. It was (and still is) called *hirapon*, which was actually the brand name from back then I believe.
You could buy the stuff easily. Taxi drivers and other workers from jobs demanding alertness were frequent buyers. It also no doubt helped stave off the hunger pains during a time of little food and the emotional pain left over by the whirlwind of destruction and loss.
It:s little wonder why hirapon is so widespread still.
Of course, today it is illegal and frowned upon by the general public"¦..but still its use is very widespread. Cocaine and other stimulants pale in comparison to meth usage in japan.
After reading about that, I don't feel so bad when these SUPER skinny girls walk by. They might have a very good reason for their superb appetite control after all"¦.
 

LETHALFORCE

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Methamphetamine: History - DoctorsHangout.com

Military use
One of the earliest uses of methamphetamine was during World War II, when it was used by both Axis and Allied forces. It was also dubbed "Pilot's chocolate" or "Pilot's salt". It was widely distributed across rank and division, from elite forces to tank crews and aircraft personnel, with many millions of tablets being distributed throughout the war. More than 35 million three-milligram doses of Pervitin and the closely related Isophan were manufactured for the German army and air force between April and July 1940.
From 1942 until his death in 1945, Adolf Hitler may have been given intravenous injections of methamphetamine by his personal physician Theodor Morell..
As with the rest of the world at the time, the side effects of methamphetamine were not well studied, and regulation was not seen as necessary. In the 1940s and 1950s the drug was widely administered to Japanese industrial workers to increase their productivity.
Methamphetamine and amphetamine were given to Allied bomber pilots to sustain them by fighting off fatigue and enhancing focus during long flights. The experiment failed because soldiers became agitated, could not channel their aggression and showed impaired judgment. Rather, Dextroamphetamine) became the drug of choice for American bomber pilots, being used on a voluntary basis by roughly half of the US Airforce pilots during the 1991 Gulf war, a practice which came under some media scrutiny in 2003 after a mistaken attack on Canadian troops.
 

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Methamphetamine use in Japan after the Second World War: transformation of narratives. | HighBeam Business: Arrive Prepared

Methamphetamine use in Japan after the Second World War

Pervitin was the name given to methamphetamine in Germany. Other researchers, Taro Horimi of Osaka University and Noboru Ariyama of Niigata Medical College, also referred to the useful features of methamphetamine and amphetamine, (2) as described in medical and pharmaceutical journals in Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States, where amphetamine was already commercialized by the 1930s. The reason why methamphetamine was re-evaluated and reintroduced in Japan was because of these Western precedents.

Methamphetamine and amphetamine were then made available for commercial use in Japan; they were initially used in hospitals and by students for night-time study. However, as the phrase "it is suitable at this time" in the Miura quotation cited above suggests, methamphetamine was soon used in military and related organizations after the start of the Pacific War in December 1941. Following Japan's defeat, methamphetamine (and amphetamine as well) began to be used throughout Japan, especially in the urban areas, the users including novelists, dancers, and night-club comedians as well as ordinary office workers. However, it was soon demonized as a drug that was thought to produce addiction and psychosis.
 

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