Norman Ohler

And you kind of diminish their capability by saying they were only so good because they took methamphetamine.

I thought that was kind of funny because the Wehrmacht doesn't exist anymore.

The current German army is called the Bundeswehr.

Historically, they're not supposed to be connected.

There was a clear cut, but he still felt that I was kind of hurting the pride of the Wehrmacht.

I think it's amazing what the Russian soldiers actually did because they beat the Wehrmacht.

It was really the Red Army on the ground that did the job, you know.

And did they love communism and their system?

I don't think so.

And I think they were, I mean, of course, some people, but basically they were defending their country.

And I'm also very grateful to them.

I mean, for me to research the Western campaign was very interesting because I didn't really know anything about it except that Germany won very quickly.

So to actually look at the details is very interesting.

Well, there is letters, for example, by Heinrich Böll, who won the Nobel Prize later in literature.

He writes to his parents describing in detail what Pervitin did to him, how it kept his mood up and that without Pervitin, he wouldn't have been able to do the job.

But also military documents are found very interesting.

For example, I could see exactly how the methamphetamine was distributed by

because it was not distributed equally.

It was done in a way that the tank troops who were leading the advance received the most meth and they also needed it.

I could like see how many pills on which date were delivered to Rommel's troops and Rommel became, I call him the crystal fox in my book for obvious reasons, like his division was using a lot of meth.