If it were 1340 injections in 800 days, it would better fit and possibly support the story, especially the begin:
"At the end, when he was already hiding in his wet and dark Fuhrerbunker and his beloved Eukodal was no longer available, the dictator was in a frail state."
But the statement "the first in 1943, when the Americans landed in Sicilia" gives us the begin date: 10th of July 1943, only 660 days before the famous suicide.
Oxycodone aka Eukodal is not a "preform" of heroin, period. Hydrocodone, aka Vicodin, has nothing to do with heroin either. This is seriously bad drug information. they're just opiates.
If you don't know, now you know. Nothing I dislike more than bad drug information being passed off as researched fact.
Press seems to love screwing this up. Look at mainstream sites and how they love to say "Synthetic Heroin" when referring to other opiates. Purely for the scare value against the ignorant. "OMG it's like Heroin...BUT WORSE". Not to mention, we should actually want more powerful opiates, as less would be required. It's like those idiots that say "hey the pot today, it's not like when I was a kid, it's got MORE THC". Uh, doesn't that just mean you need to smoke less, making it better for your lungs?
(The only real issue with "synthetic heroin" is when people cut heroin or other drugs with more powerful ones, like fentanyl, leading to overdoses. Once again, the illegality introduces these dangers.)
Same people probably don't know that Methamphetamine (the evil devil drug) is Schedule II and legally available to be prescribed in the US. And that speed is amphetamines, very similar to meth, and prescribed to 6 yr olds. Or that when your 7-yr-old gets a small surgery, they likely hit her with fentanyl (much, much, stronger than Heroin).
It's just throwing around words to scare and promote ignorance and fear of actual science/medicine.
Yes, that's correct. Only codeine can be considered a preform (of morphine), because it is metabolized in human livers into morphine. Having said that it's worth to remember that opiates are really very similar one to each other.
The author probably based it on the fact that oxycodone is a (semi-?) synthetic opiate produced from one opioid found in poppy, just like heroin is. They are of course not the same.
But heroin was synthesized in 19th century in England and oxycodone in 20th century in Germany, therefore it can't be considered "pre-" heroin, at least not globally. But maybe heroin wasn't common in Germany and therefore oxycodone was pre- in Germany?
> But maybe heroin wasn't common in Germany and therefore oxycodone was pre- in Germany?
Heroin was first marketed by Bayer, a German pharmaceutical company in 1898. That's where the name 'heroin' comes from so oxycodone was definitely not pre- in Germany.
Now, in nazi Germany, opium and products derived from it might have been harder to come by because of import sanctions (that's why methadone, a fully synthetic opioid, was developed in Germany in 1937). But that would apply to oxycodone just as much as heroin.
So no, the author is just full of shit and trying to impress his uninformed readers.
Because it's not morphine. Where hydrocodone is a synthetic equivalent to the natural opiate codeine, oxycodone is a synthetic opiate roughly as strong as the natural opiate morphine. There are many different synthetic opiates of various strengths but oxycodone is not "heroin" or "morphine."
What is Enkodal? Google only turned up a few German pages that didn't seem to translate well.
From the article:
“After World War II, the Americans who captured Morell translated the word ‘Eukodal’ as ‘Enkodal.’ They thought it was a legitimate medical treatment and dosage.”
Eukodal was apparently a trade name for oxycodone. I guess someone misread a handwritten u as an n when transcribing Morells records?
Googling "enkodal" finds a bunch of OCR misses from Google Books, where "eukodal" is mistranscribed with an n, and also an article[0] about how Hermann Göring was admitted to a hospital in 1924 to treat his opioid addiction. The article states that he was addicted to Eukodal, and among other things quotes a medical journal where it is mispelled as "Enkodal".
Is this a legitimate article? There are few factual errors mentioned here in other comments[1][2] that have my internet bullshit detector primed, and then I see this quote from Ohler highlighted in the article:
“I have a good friend, a Berlin underground DJ, who told me once that the Nazis took loads of drugs. I couldn’t believe it.”
That seems like a very spurious source of knowledge about Nazi drug use.
The fact that Hitler was a serious addict is true. He was also bipolar, and it is quite likely that the combination has contributed a lot to the beginning of the end of Operation Barbarossa in 1943 (through his faulty decision about not attacking Moscow in 1941, before winter, and before Stalin realized what is really happening). The thing to remember is that amphetamines were way more acceptable in the early 1940s (because the bad side effects were not yet that obvious), for example Wehrmacht soldiers had "superpower chocolate bars" beefed up with amphetamine. They were allowed to consume it in a dire situation. There is a lot of unnecessary buzzing happening in the article though.
I think you're on the right track... From what I've heard as well was that in the later stages of the war, the army largely marched on a stomach full of meth (so to speak). Facts like those could bolster the rumor mill in propping up semi-gossip style information.
I did also have a history professor say that Hitler actually went blind for a couple of days when he heard that the Americans landed on European shores.
It's pretty common knowledge. My grandfather, a German conscript in WWII, used to boast about how fucked up they got on amphetamines (stolen, prescribed) leading to psychosis to the point they were discharged and ordered to drive food supply trucks around instead. Lucky for him as he was in Italy and was a civilian when they surrendered.
It wasn't just the Nazis. Amphetamines were used by many different militaries to varying effects, including the US. Hitler's drug use is also well documented. (As is JFK's.)
It's really not hard to believe. The current form of drug treaties and opinions is a distinctly post WWII phenomenon.
I believe the US military still offers drugs to its soldiers, but they are very strictly regulated and presumably are more rationally provisioned. War can be very mentally and physically stressful, and drugs tend to be the best short term option to ameliorate this stress and keep the machine running.
Nothing like meth or speed, though. Terrible for soldiers. I believe there is a high association between meth use and vulnerability to mental trauma.
The third reich seems to have developed a relationship with Ephedra and Poppy (plus tobacco of course).
And we saw the consequences of that.
I've always been fascinated by the impact of various drug-containing plants on humanity and it's history.
Plants, because most drugs are extracted or synthesised from them.
Shamans say that it is the 'essence' or 'spirit' of the plant that is psychoactive - you're 'inviting' another 'being' into your consciousness.
Those who smoked pot have probably noticed the alternative or alien 'voice' which appears in your head and makes you think and say funny things or think paranoid thoughts.
This happens with all drugs - the drug (or, in shamanic terms - the spirit of the plant) becomes one's invisible councillor - an interlocutor in the user's internal dialogue.
Take tobacco - the act of smoking a cigarette is an act of 'conversing' with the plant, an act of thinking and taking decisions.
Notice the impact that tobacco has had on the development of the human race - it's impossible to claim that it was responsible for all our progress, but somehow it was present in the pipes of Einstein and Oppenheimer and in the cigars smoked after a successful space mission.
It was also present in the trenches of wars.
Today our world is more drugged than it has ever been. Besides all the classes of illegal drugs, we also have people eating tens of thousands of various synthetic chemicals - prescription drugs - and of course making all sorts of combinations between them.
What will the consequence of this chemical experimentation end up being ?
Time will tell. Clearly we're doing some radical changes to how our minds and bodies work and this has a direct impact on how our society looks and behaves and what decisions are being made.
>Those who smoked pot have probably noticed the alternative or alien 'voice' which appears in your head and makes you think and say funny things or think paranoid thoughts.
I have never experienced this. Marijuana can exacerbate existing schizophrenia or expose it. If you hear voices after consuming it, I would talk to a doctor. It can be a quite strong drug, but it does not typically cause clear, audial hallucinations. (I would more describe it as distorting and/or decomposing the audio perception, kind of like the visuals you get from lsd. Pretty, but certainly not meaningful by itself.)
But, I've watched someone go through a psychotic breakdown when smoking weed the first time. They were not aware of their family history of schizophrenia until after that happened and they asked around. Be careful. :)
It's not necessarily 'that' kind of voice.
We all have a little voice in our heads. If you haven't noticed it, it's the voice that said 'what voice?' right now.
It's the voice we're in a perpetual dialog with all the time.
Somehow 'that' voice is not you - it's something you're talking to, it examines and comments everything you do, it gives you advice, but you are not it.
When you use a drug, 'you' stay the same, it's 'that' voice which is affected by it.
Uh-oh.
If recent legalization expands, and results in Bill O'Reilly's nightmare nation of "stoned slackers", will America be psychologically prepared to deal with Putin? Or Xi?
We are doomed!
Also, I don't hear any (new) voices when I smoke, but I would agree that psylocybin is very much like communication with an alien "other" consciousness. Or maybe I've just read too much Terrance McKenna.
If the sources have basis in truth, even if not to the extremity put forward, it's worth keeping in mind in the context of the person's worldly outlook. That noted, when talking about the effects of drug addiction on the mind, I find it relevant to point out Ayn Rand was an amphetamine addict for 30 years[1]. As a writer myself with an alphabet of substances consumed over the years, I can attest to different drugs having different influences on what gets put to paper...the most common in the field being alcohol. There's a long tradition of people saying things they wouldn't otherwise when their inhibitions are lowered, and that seems to hold true with the written word as well in many cases.
"There is no doubt about Hitler’s guilt; he planned the mass murder of six million people well before he began using drugs. The “total rush,” the loss of reality and megalomania have always been his state of mind"
JFK's drug history is fascinating. The amount of drugs he was on during the Bay of Pigs alone is alarming.
The world was so close to nuclear annihilation, and JFK was on a half dozen drugs, including steroids, antipsychotics, and amphetamines, from the doctor the secret service called "Dr. Feelgood."
It's fascinating what presidents could get away with pre-Lewinsky.
>> It's fascinating what presidents could get away with pre-Lewinsky.
I've seen several documentaries that comment if people thought JFK was bad, LBJ was much, much worse when it came to women. There's a famous rumor about him getting caught in the oval office having sex with his secretary and afterwards, installing a buzzer so the secret service could warn him if he was wife was on her way to his office.
I can only imagine how the tabloid journalists would have a heyday with this nowadays.
When LBJ heard people talking about JFK's affairs, he "would bang the table and declare that he had more women by accident than Kennedy ever had on purpose."[1] It got worse:
At his Senate office, his female workers were fondled, ogled and overworked. Though his own figure was flabby, he was quick to berate any of his "girls" who put on weight. He wanted to make sure the view was good when they walked away from his desk. "I don't want to look at an Aunt Minnie. I want to look at a good, trim back end." He boasted of his sexual prowess and had long affairs with at least two women, as well as casual flings with members of his staff. Robert Caro, who is a dogged researcher, has uncovered the story of LBJ's previously secret relationship with Helen Gahagan Douglas, one of the few congresswomen in Washington during the 1940s. A former actress, she was an attractive blonde whose political career came to an abrupt halt after she failed to join her lover as a member of the Senate. In a dirty campaign for an open seat in California, she was defeated by a Republican newcomer who spread rumours that she was a Communist sympathiser. His name was Richard Nixon.[2]
JFK had Addison's disease. He had to take certain "drugs", such as testosterone, for actual medical reasons. Not that I negate his usage of less medicine-approved compounds.
This brings into question how bad the drugs actually are. Hermann Göring, lauded fighter ace, rose high up in the Nazi command. He was addicted to morphine. He didn't perform well enough in the war, but apart from the whole being-a-Nazi thing, one would say he had a rather successful career. So it really kills the whole "injected opiates will ruin your life" line. Same for Paul Erdős and amphetamines. Though amphetamines might have more long-term damaging issues (psychosis or heart issues) whereas opiates are relatively benign.
This should just re-enforce the truth that the real problem with many drugs is simply legality (which causes high prices which leads non-wealth users into a spiral). With an open market, anyone with a minimum wage job could afford to be on opiates.
And in a military? Seems like a given. If you have soldiers that are feeling bad or otherwise having a crisis of confidence, opiates are a fairly good way to assuage that. To make them feel everything will turn out OK. Along with speed to give them lots of energy, and an environment conducive to actually doing stuff, it seems like a good military strategy (ignoring long-term effects on soldiers).
The only real question is if they made large strategic mistakes due to the opiates and thinking things will be alright no matter what. Though this article indicates a late date for Hitler's use, and it was much earlier he decided to attack the Soviet Union, so...
The article makes it seem like there's a lot of news, when in fact most of what we can learn from the article about drugs in the Third Reich has already been published in the 2002 title "Nazis On Speed. Drogen im Dritten Reich." -- two volumes with a wealth of information, of which she makes zero mentions in the article.
I distantly remember attending a book reading and discussion about above book in 2003 with Werner Pieper, Friedrich Kittler and others providing a good overview, a lot of serious points and some fun facts.
For instance, at some point, in Paris under German occupation, Pervitin pills were a legitimate currency in Paris brothels.
It can also be shown that there was an unusually high amount of animal studies performed all over the country, testing the effects of Pervitin on all kinds of species and sub-species, that don't seem to make much sense academically, but did provide steady Pervitin supplies for the research team.
What is the lesson to be learned? Is drug use correlated with high-performance?
"People felt like they always wanted to: splendid, completely calm, clearheaded; it was a golden feeling." That sounds good! I'd like that...
All I've seen in drug users is wreckage and death. Maybe I haven't seen the whole picture. Is there an upside to drug use? If there was a safe performance pill maybe I would try it.
Very simply, drugs make you feel awesome. That's about all there is to it.
The problem comes in when you want to maintain the level of awesome ... and can't. That's when the detrimental side effects hit.
You can be quite a high functioning, normal member of society with a drug habit. As long as you can pay for it, and as long as it doesn't interfere in the aspects of your life you don't want it to, one can make a rational case for continuing drug use.
Think about coffee. It's great. It makes you feel great. It's socially acceptable. It's also highly addictive, and the withdrawal symptoms can be nightmarish for some people. But it's not viewed as a bad drug.
> All I've seen in drug users is wreckage and death.
Drug use is illegal and is taboo. Many people who take drugs are not going to talk to you about it.
You won't have seen a lot of drug use. You'll only have seen the worse end of drug use.
You have seen plenty of people who can have a few alcoholic drinks a week? That's drug use that doesn't end in wreckage and death, even though alcohol is very harmful and very addictive. (And physically addictive, not just psychologically addictive.)
> Drug use is illegal and is taboo. Many people who take drugs are not going to talk to you about it.
Indeed. As has been well known in the addiction literature for a long time now, the overwhelming majority of addicts just sort of... get over it. The addicts that show up more prominently are a very selected subgroup. To give an example that will doubtless be familiar to many HN commenters personally, modafinil is used more widespreadly than it is acknowledged; in the survey I'm running now, most respondents just use it practically with no drama or mess.
You don't notice the drug users who are well functioning. There are a lot of factors that feed into addiction and even more into how it affects your life.
Drugs definitely have their role in the world. People are prescribed amphetamines daily to function better. However, as with anything that changes how you perceive the world, there are always new chances to hurt yourself. My best advice is not to view drugs as an end themselves, but a means to reach a mental state.
The "safe performance pill" is called adderall. I would not call it very relaxing, though, or calming; it merely makes reward feedback much, much stronger.
Alternatively, there is acid, which is its own thing. Do your research heavily with that, but I experience it as very relaxing and clarifying. It is also extremely hard to abuse in a way that would cause "wreckage and death".
I believe that the lesson to be learned isn't that drug use makes you better or worse. It's that people of all walks of life abuse drugs. Even people who are very successful. Despite the immense power of drugs. It is still the person, not the drug that determiness a person's life. Aaron Sorkin is a crack head. He's starring in that new Steve Jobs film, but has also worked on such successes as West Wing and The Social Network. Does crack make you successful? No.
2. All I've seen in drug users is wreckage and death. Maybe I haven't seen the whole picture.
Drug use is rampant in the United States. It's just hidden or is not considered drug use because a prescription is involved. Remember how out in the open alcoholism used to be? (Think Mad Men. Or talk to a grandparent about how things used to be.) Alcoholism didn't just go away. People just started keeping it to themselves.
3. Is there an upside to drug use? If there was a safe performance pill maybe I would try it.
Amephatimes, Speed, Aderall. All the same drug. All abused across the country by college kids. I really don't know what the long term dangers of amphetamines are. Not only college kids are abusing them, that's just where it's most obvious. People use them as smart pills. They apparently allow you to focus on working and studying for hours.
In closing, I think being smart and talented can also come with sadness and other mental issues. Sometimes drug use is a way for talented people to self-medicate. The talent and potential is still there. It's comes down to the individual whether drug use will inhibit them from their goals.
I will suggest you are suffering from some kind of prejudice or bias. Doctors prescribe drugs all the time for beneficial purposes. Caffeine, found in chocolate, coffee, and sodas, is also a drug. Mos spices have medicibal uses. Etc.
Many drugs have an impact on your mental state.
I personally suspect that if someone has an addiction they cannot break, there is probably some underlying problem fueling it, possibly a physical health issue. So saying drug use is associated with wreckage and death....cancer leads to drug use and wreckage and death. But sometimes, cancer leads to drug use that averts death, though at a cost.
What it really gets down to is the individual's compsition in a variety of factors (physiology). Each drug has a 'profile' of how it acts, or at least we categorize them for understanding. Thus, no two people will react the same way to the same drug, and no two drugs will react the same way in the same person, in my experience.
Thus, you get somebody like Willie Nelson who is essentially a life-long pot head where his drug use/abuse didn't get in the way of his work; Willie has also noted that Waylon Jennings was fond of speed, but that Willie didn't like the stuff. Going down the list of accomplished writers yields a treasure trove of alcoholics not frequently remembered for the wreckage they made of their lives (F. Scott Fitzgerald, O. Henry, Hemmingway).
As a society in the US, the unfortunate moralistic approach to addiction as a personal failure rather than a physiological concern holds back those who could likely benefit from certain substances but never come into contact with them. Also of note, it would seem a certain percentage of the US population simply has an addictive compsition:
The undertone I hear a lot is that drug use is beneficial, and would have positive effects on the population at large were it not for the outdated taboos of a backwards culture. If society was more rational and embraced drug use, then people could lead happier lives. The secret that people won't tell you (because of the taboos) is that drugs make you more successful in work and family life. If coffee is good then by extension amphetamines ought to be double-plus good.
Heavily paraphrasing here - I guess this is mostly a personal observation. I am curious to understand if I should explore drug use - if so many high-performers are drug users then maybe I should give it a try.
Its an interesting point - well known high performers in many walks of life are documented drug users. To add to the list above, here are two more that im familiar with:
Stephen King has trouble recalling writing a number of his books during the eighties due to alcohol and cocaine abuse. [1]
Sigmund Freud was a cocaine abuser up until the point he started to become a more noted researcher [2]
Those undertones you hear are only giving you half the story: look at what happens to users. Cocaine was legal and used by the intelligentsia initially. Coca-Cola had cocaine; Sherlock Holmes took it to eliminate boredom. Prohibition in the U.S. was completely a moral-issue law, and was repealed a couple decades later. Cocaine is still illegal 100 years later. Why? Because society discovered that it doesn't turn out so well.
These "high-performers" mentioned by the parent post, do you want to live the lives they did? O. Henry died when he was 47, in part due to liver cirrhosis. [1] F. Scott Fitzgerald died when he was 44, in large part because of his drinking. [2] Frankly "The Great Gatsby" feels kind of dingy and depressing, and I, personally, do not want to have the kind of experiences in my life that would enable me to write such a book. Hemingway had four marriages and ended up committing suicide. [3] All the people I know that have been through a divorce describe it as extremely painful; to do it three times must leave a huge emotional scar. Is that the kind of "happier lives" you want to lead? Is it really high-performing to die at 44? How much greater could they have been if they weren't depressed, addicted, and/or lived twice as long? Have you read about the kind of lives alcoholics and their families have, let alone addicts of heavier drugs? Do you like being out of control (because when you are addicted, the addiction controls you, not the other way around)?
Be wise. Don't believe the lie that you would be free if only those taboos weren't holding you back. What if there is a very good reason those taboos are there?
You do know that cocaine in the US is still considered a Schedule II drug, meaning research is currently being conducted on its use in medical scenarios, whereas marijuana is a Schedule I and forbidden from authorized study? Ketamine may be known as a party drug, but it's also being tested in the treatment of PTSD. Research isn't always conducted in a lab, and some people are willing to be guinea pigs for a variety of personal reasons.
I didn't mention alcohol and those authors to make light of addiction, but to elaborate that even socially acceptable drugs can carry with them negative long-term outcomes. If you think for a minute that you'll achieve in your entire lifetime what O. Henry and F. Scott Fitzgerald did in <45 years - during the early 20th century when dietary input care standards were extremely lacking ("The Jungle") and medical science was barely out of primitive conditions (e.g. soap) - then by all means, lets see how much of an impact you've had on society at large. These were high performers who achieved heights that you can not begin to conceptualize with the outlook you've constructed.
It's like you totally ignored my caveats that every individual has individual tolerances, personality traits, or genetic factors which render drugs a risk-bearing proposition! You've made the very, very common mistake of assuming that without alcohol those writers would have been as uninhibited or determined to perform their art. It's like the "deal with the devil" that artists understand and fear - if doing something results in success, then along with it comes a lot of baggage to continue down that path.
You've done nothing but try and re-inforce that drugs such as alcohol lead to inevitable ruin, and completely glossed over the achievements those individuals did. Do you honestly think that O. Henry went to the bottle because it was his muse, or can you fathom the concept that the bottle was the way he coped with his insecurities as a pathway to actually doing something constructive with his life?
Wise up. Don't believe that you can cite Wikipedia and some friends who got divorced and use that to go toe-to-toe with somebody who has seen both the bright skies and pits of hell that is called life. What if you're part of the problem holding back our species?
I was curious if a HN reader could make an anti-drug argument, and you have written a nice one.
I've lost a lot of friends and family to drugs and alcohol - unfathomable damage. My best friend is using a lot of speed right now - I worry that he will be next. But damn he works like a tornado.
I've worked with tons of people who use drugs of some sort or another. My experience is that they perform fine until they don't. When they crack the bottom falls out and they're tossed into the rubbish pile without a second thought - disposable.
I can see the possibility that drugs could enhance your work performance. But can't see how drugs would help when trying to maintain relationships/kids/family.
Have you ever noticed that society tends to focus on the criminals who get caught, and rarely the ones who got away? A lifetime relationship with illicit substances is the same. Because of the taboo, nobody in their right mind who is successful, maintains life and family, and appears normal to the world would ever disclose what they do in their personal life and subject themselves to moralistic judgment. As in journalism, there are significant reasons to keep your confidential sources private.
Thanks for the compliment! I think you would be in a position to write an even more compelling argument. I think the best argument is stories about what actually happens. The promise of drugs is "more, now, for free." That might be more happiness, more productivity, whatever. The promise seems compelling, but it's important to know what the cost is. "More, now" is not as compelling when the price is "misery and destruction, later."
I encourage you to share your stories, if it isn't too painful. I think if you distill your observations, like your third paragraph, and illustrate them with some of your stories, it would be a compelling article.
HN wants people to toe the pro-drug line pretty closely. Hence your down votes.
I've had lots of friends and family killed by drugs and alcohol - I've got stories! But if you never had a negative experience, cautionary tales won't resonate.
I suppose evolution will sort things out in the long run, one way or another.
I thought it had a huge slant as well. I get it, the Nazi's did cruel things, but I'm a little leery of articles like this that are so demonizing. Can't we just talk about them as a facet of history?
> I'm a little leery of articles like this that are so demonizing
Particularly when the article avoids comparison to either modern military drug usage, or allied military drug disbursement at the time. "British troops used 72 million amphetamine tablets in the second world war and the RAF used so many that "Methedrine won the Battle of Britain" according to one report."
It is a facet of history. It's a new fact about one of the most reviled and studied individuals in human history and it places his words and deeds in a new light. It is new information about not only Hitler but the entire Third Reich including everyone from the top down to the troops and as such means that historians might need to reframe everything that's been written about the time period up to this point.
Also yes, articles about Nazis tend to have a demonizing slant, for as yet unknown reasons.
> The problem with demonizing Nazis is that it makes them seem uniquely evil.
"In the air strike, witnesses said patients were burned alive in the crowded hospital of medecins sans frontieres. Among the dead were three children being treated".
War crime, last week. Almost 200 patients and employees in the hospital.
To talk about how crazy was Hitler this week seems really convenient. Very pleasant and distracting exercise of history.
There was an interesting question posed to the straight dope, "before World War II, who occupied the rhetorical role that Hitler occupies today?" (that is, the embodiment of evil on earth).
Asking this question is pretty insightful; it becomes clear that Hitler fills the role now more because we need to have somebody in there than because his life was so shocking that everyone's perspective was changed forever after it happened.
The answer to the question is also interesting, but a little less so -- at least for the US, it was a biblical reference, "Pharaoh".
Not possible; Hitler committed suicide about 850 days after Jan 1 1943. There are some issues in this article.