Danny Jones Podcast
#290 - Hitler’s Favorite Way to Get High: Drugs in the Third Reich | Norman Ohler
Tue, 18 Mar 2025
Get every episode ad-free & uncensored on Patreon: https://patreon.com/dannyjones Norman Ohler is an author and screenwriter whose non-fiction books include "Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany," and "Tripped: Nazi Germany, The CIA and the Dawn of the Psychedelic Age." SPONSORS https://hims.com/danny - Start your FREE online visit today. https://www.ridge.com/dannyjones - Take advantage of Ridge’s once a year anniversary sale & get up to 40% off. https://truewerk.com/danny - Get 15% off your first order. https://whiterabbitenergy.com/?ref=DJP - Use code DJP for 20% off. GUEST LINKS https://www.instagram.com/normanohler https://www.normanohler.de FOLLOW DANNY JONES https://www.instagram.com/dannyjones https://twitter.com/jonesdanny OUTLINE 00:00 - Hitler's favorite drug 07:53 - Eating 85 year old Nazi meth pills 22:39 - Meth being used by Russian soldiers in Ukraine war 28:06 - Researching Nazi archives 40:09 - Scientific studies on Hitler's poop 47:12 - The Nazi 'stimulant decree' 57:45 - Nazi History in German schools 01:07:53 - LSD came from the Nazis 01:25:16 - Carl Ruck and ancient drugs 01:36:17 - Ergot 01:42:21 - JFK doing LSD 01:48:47 - Patreon questions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What drugs did Hitler use?
You have to deal with anxiety. You want to improve your performance. It's a very complex situation to be in a combat situation.
yeah also it's risky to take a drug you know you might go wrong you know but drugs are a big topic for for the soldier and um the in in the fur in world war one cocaine played like a small role for pilots like because they're the coolest anyhow so they take cocaine they fly better and yeah but it wasn't it makes perfect sense
it's a, it's a pilot's drug maybe, but it's not a, it's not a mass drug really because it's too expensive. So that you kind of really give it to like 3 million men, like, like it doesn't make sense, but methamphetamine was quite cheap to manufacture. And, um, That's why it became meth and not cocaine, while the French, for example, still banked on their red wine.
So every French soldier, when Germany attacked them, drank three quarters of a liter of red wine, while each German soldier was using up to like 20 milligrams of methamphetamine. So they're running circles around these French guys. I mean, the French guys didn't really stand a chance.
Right. They're running around drunk and these fucking Germans are in their tanks.
I mean, yeah. I mean, just imagine the situation in the tank, you know. Because the tanks received the most pervitin because they were used differently than before. I don't know how many are in the tank. Three guys or four? I don't know. So let's say four guys. I always think of four guys. So they're in the tank. Oh yeah, and the tanks were used as the avant-garde of the military movement.
Usually before that tanks, in the old thinking, tanks are like the backup. So you run, you know, and then you have the tanks and the big machinery from the back. Behind you, yeah.
so three tank generals had the idea to kind of reverse it and put the tanks in the front and race with the tanks through the aden mountains and that kind of paved the way for like the others to kind of run run after them and these tank divisions also received most of the methamphetamine because they had to reach the french border city of sedan within three days and three nights being that fast
They would cut off the British and French who were north of them in Belgium because they thought the Germans would attack up there. So the Germans kind of ran through the mountains on tanks and that was only possible because of the methamphetamine. That was used especially by people in the tanks. So that's why I always think of the tank with the four guys.
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Chapter 2: How did Nazi soldiers use methamphetamine?
It does something to the brain, right? Like it does like... The first time I micro dosed mushrooms, like I didn't feel... I didn't feel high at all, but I felt just like smiley and happy and like was just... I thought everything was funny.
Chapter 3: What is the Stimulant Decree?
I mean... So what Vollenweider found out is that certain areas of the brain receive less energy when you are on a psychedelic and the area that receives less is kind of a command center. Some neuroscientists call it the default mode networks.
oh yes and that is what kind of tells you right now that you're doing a podcast with me and that it's like associated with like the ego right like me i'm here doing this now yeah and if this receives less energy then you're more open to um
to perceiving something not being separate because you you don't the ego like immediately judges this as it can you know but if that judgment wouldn't be there you look at it and you kind of maybe see like it's how beautiful it is maybe as an opt I don't know you would see something else So that is what he could see actually in energy flows.
Also he could detect that on psilocybin unpleasant memories are less often recalled than not on psilocybin. And that makes the antidepressant effect Really? Yeah.
Huh.
Because we all have negative things inside of us, obviously. Yeah. Some more severe than others, but we all have them. Yes. It's just a question, do you access them the whole time? Do you get into loops and repeat them the whole time?
Right.
And psychedelics disrupt that. Interesting. Yeah. So you think about something else and then it immediately becomes a little less relevant to you if you can get out.
Isn't that so, so wild about psychedelics? Because with marijuana, for me... when i smoke a lot of marijuana or if i do like a marijuana gummy which can be like 10 times more potent psychoactive all of the dark creeps in like for me like if i take too much if i get too stoned i will be like in the fetal position in the corner with my world caving in on me
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Chapter 4: How did drugs affect the outcome of WWII?
He wrote that book with Gordon Wasson and Albert Hoffman. Yeah, I spoke with him. Oh, did you really? Yeah. When you were researching your book?
Yeah, I wanted to know if he still thinks that it's a valid case. And he was totally convinced. In the book, The Road to Eleusis, they try to prove that a hallucinogenic potion was used at the ritual there.
For the Kukion mix that they would take.
Right. Which is... Ergot.
Ergot.
That's what they think. So they went there and Hoffman, being the chemist who had found LSD, his drive was to show to the world that this freak that he found, LSD, was actually a compound that has helped us evolve as a culture, especially as the Western culture, Western civilization. The most important ritual, Eleusis for Athens, a secret ritual. had a psychoactive drink called Kykeon.
That was the thesis. But the problem is so far it has not been proven. Right. And it has not been proven because technology only recently is able to examine residue in pots.
Yes. so when they were trying when they were writing the book the road to elosis this was like i would say in the 80s i know it was in the 60s i think yeah i think it might have been i think well ruck was at i think he was at harvard in the 60s as early as the 60s and maybe it was the se find out when road the road tweet loses first came out
but he was blacklisted from academia he came out with that it's crazy yeah now you're like the hottest if you're doing psychedelic research back then you were blacklisted yeah steve so i'm sorry but you're gonna have to go back to chrome man there's just some stuff so okay 78 published in 78. Interesting.
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Chapter 5: What is the history of cocaine and its use in Germany?
Well, Temla, the company that made Pavitin, made it very clear from the beginning when they advertised the medicine to doctors and then later to the military that the ingredients for methamphetamine are very easy to come by. It's nothing that's like scarce or couldn't be found anymore during the war. And so it was just like basic chemicals that a company just has, you know.
So they were able to make still millions of dosages of methamphetamine in 1945 when...
you know there was not much being produced anymore in germany because of the bombing campaigns but temla kept producing they relocated their production facilities to a brewery in in west germany so in this brewery they made beer and methamphetamine at the same time oh wow in 1945 uh was there any connection to i can't see it steve uh was there any indications that uh of hallucinogenic drugs used by the nazis in regards to their occult worship
I didn't find anything. Also, the whole occult thing, I think it played a role. And I think Himmler was really into it. But I don't think Hitler was really into it. And so it's not so, I mean, people might disagree, but I don't think it's so important, this occult part of the Nazi movement.
Were the Allies on drugs?
And they noticed in the fall of 1941 that the German pilots had been using methamphetamine. And then Churchill ordered a drug program also for the Royal Air Force. And they examined different types of amphetamines and methamphetamine. And they decided then to use amphetamines. And they started then an amphetamine program. But they thought methamphetamine is too strong for them. Oh, okay.
But amphetamine is actually a better choice. I mean, the Nazis would say so.
Right, right. Do you see any correlation with the current day big pharma medical industrial complex and the massive amounts of vaccines and drugs given to people? Is there a way to control, dumb down, or make people sick? Wow. This guy thinks you got all the answers.
yeah i think uh i think the pharmaceutical industry is not really helping people to get more healthy yeah i think it really needs the the legalization of psychedelics i think that will be a game changer because then it's like the truth is there you know sure then yeah they have to compete with that yeah right now they have like they have like a protected playing field because you know the right stuff that can really help is not allowed right right that really needs to change
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Chapter 7: What is the German perspective on Nazi history?
That could lead to like mass psychosis and people freaking out. But Paracelsus said it's always the dosage that makes the poison. So that was the idea of Sanders who created later LSD to extract the potent alkaloids from ergot and turn that into medicines. So their first medicine in the 20s was a migraine, anti-migraine medicine, headache, anti-headache medicine. Yeah.
Because ergot basically makes you contract your vessels, like your blood vessels. Oh, really? So they're also made in a successful medication that is, I think, still given during birth. After the birth, it contracts the blood vessels, so the bleeding stops.
That's how a lot of women died in antiquity, from bleeding out after birth.
So Sandoz developed a medicine against that. That was one of the big early hits. So LSD for them was just a freak medicine. They didn't want to develop LSD. It just happened. They just didn't know really what it is. Right. How to... They weren't very good in bringing it to the market because they basically sold it to Richard Kuhn, a Nazi scientist who was looking for a truth drug.
So that was the big mistake the CEO did. And that's why LSD is not legal at this moment. Right.
I wonder, I always wonder like what kind of version of MKUltra are they working on right now that we'll find out about in 10 years, you know? Who knows? Who knows if they're even still interested in drugs that much, you know, other than like that guy who I mentioned earlier who's doing the DARPA-funded research on soldiers, trying to make better soldiers with psychedelics.
I think it can improve soldiers with psychedelics. Not for the actual battle situation.
Yeah, because if you're giving them psychedelics, they're like, why are we here? Like, we shouldn't be here. We all need to give each other hugs. Yeah.
But I mean, if you try to create a powerful army, you need a powerful narrative. And so a truthful narrative would be better than like a fictional ideology. So it would make sense actually to make your people aware of who they are and their surroundings. Maybe then they wouldn't want to be soldiers anymore. Right, that's what I'm saying.
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