Norman Ohler

If you are a good writer, and I trained as a novelist, for me, it was also very unusual to write a nonfiction book.

I wanted to write a novel about Nazis and drugs.

My publisher said, no, he looked at the facts.

He said, someone has to write the facts.

So I said, but nonfiction books are boring.

He said, not necessarily.

Maybe you can find a way to write it with your novelistic style, but

based 100% on the facts.

And that is like, in German we say Spagat.

How do you say that?

Split?

Like when you do with your legs?

It's hard, you know?

Because with a very fluent, sophisticated language, you can easily overpower the reader.

If I describe how the German guys, 19-year-old guys, took the meth and went into the tank...

and the math started kicking in, five guys on math after like one hour of ride into France.

You can write that in a powerful way that if you are the reader, you would think, yeah, I mean, the Blitzkrieg without math is unthinkable.

I used a totally different technique.

Um,

And I have an apparatus, so it really feels like it could be an academic work.