Adolf Hitler was a ‘super-junkie’ whose veins ‘crunched’ under strain of thousands of cocaine, meth and opiate injections, author claims
German writer Norman Ohler has penned a book recounting how the Nazi leader developed a drug addiction in 1944
ADOLF Hitler was a “super-junkie” who was routinely injected with cocaine, methamphetamine and a heroin-like opiate called Eukodol, an author has claimed.
German writer Norman Ohler has penned a book called ‘Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich’ that recounts how the Nazi leader developed a drug addiction in the final year of the Second World War.
In one harrowing extract seen by the , Ohler describes how “Hitler’s veins were so wrecked” by late 1944 that even his personal physician, Dr Theo Morell, “could hardly penetrate them”.
When he finally did manage to break the skin, “it actually made a crunching noise.”
An extract from Dr Morell’s journal reads: “I cancelled injections today, to give the previous puncture holes a chance to heal.
“Left inside elbow good, right still has red dots (but not pustules), where injections were given.”
Ohler writes how Dr Morrell was a peculiar man who wore a “fantasy uniform based on his own designs,” blinked in the wrong directions (his eyelids closed from the bottom up) and was willing to inject just about anything into Hitler’s veins if it got the Fuhrer to smile.
Dr Morell slowly started adding ingredients to his daily injections — Hitler got his first taste of oxycodone before a big meeting with Benito Mussolini.
Hitler eventually began to depend on the “heightened feeling(s) that corresponded so perfectly to his own image of greatness — and that reality no longer supplied,” Ohler writes.
Hitler’s body was ravaged by his substance abuse and it is claimed he struggled to attend military meetings unless he was high.
But Hitler was far from the only Nazi drug addict.
According to Ohler, who studied hundreds of German federal archives, much of Nazi Germany — both soldiers and civilians — were high on Pervitin, a pill form of meth that promised to “integrate shirkers, malingerers, defeatists and whiners.”
First patented in 1937 by a Berlin pharmaceuticals factory, it quickly caught on with the public at large.
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It became, Ohler writes, “as much of a fixture as a cup of coffee.”
The drug soon got noticed by the German military, who ordered 35 million doses of Pervitin for soldiers advancing on France in 1940.
Discussing the book, Ohler told the Today programme: “The massive abuses of methamphetamine, which we today call crystal meth, by the German army shows that the enemy number one were not the British or the French or the Russians, but fatigue.
“The German army was trying to win the battle against sleep. That’s why they used it and in the beginning it worked wonders in the attack on Poland and in the so-called Blitzkrieg.”
With effects like strong feelings of invincibility and power, it helped inspire the “indomitable Aryan fighting spirit” that Hitler liked to brag about.
Those effects are the same reason Hitler was personally drawn to Pervitin, among other drugs, but his drug dependencies didn’t happen overnight.
It began in 1941 with injections of steroids and animal hormones to help with his dwindling energy and digestive problems.
But as the war became more stressful and victory less certain, he needed a bigger kick, and moved on to harder drugs.
‘Blitzed’ also recounts how Hitler's wife Eva Braun insisted on following him drug for drug, to be “on the same wavelength as her lover,” which apparently led to some unhinged intimacy.
After returning from “date nights” at Obersalzberg, Hitler declined physical exams by his doctor so he wouldn’t see the “wounds on his body from Eva’s aggressive sexual behaviour,” Ohler writes.
As the years wore on, Hitler descended more into himself and his addiction, the book says.
“In his isolation, all pleasure and energy previously received from the attention of a cheering crowd had to be replaced by chemicals,” Ohler writes.
“Between the autumn of 1941, when he started being given hormone and steroid injections, and the second half of 1944, Hitler hardly enjoyed a sober day.”
Although it’s widely believed that Hitler suffered from Parkinson’s disease during the final days of his life, Ohler speculates that he was actually suffering from the symptoms of withdrawal.
Medication was increasingly difficult to come by “because the factories [had] been bombed out.”
Without the drugs to prop him up, “all that was left behind was a shell of a man whose uniform was spattered with rice gruel.”
Earlier this week, we reported that real-life Nazi blueprints that inspired SS-GB revealed how Hitler planned to round-up and kill famous Brits and turn Blackpool into an SS playground.
Chilling images from SS officer’s photo album reveal the Nazis’ rapid rise to power as Hitler basks in the adulation of his fanatical supporters.