I can always tell when it’s autumn. Aside from the obvious of the kids back in school, the leaves changing colours and the weather having more of a chilly bite, for some reason at this time of year I always have a craving for Second World War documentaries.
I was fairly overdue for another historical commentary, and after recently watching a doc specifically highlighting the infamous German blitzkrieg (‘lightning war’) against Poland and France in 1939-40, one particular nugget of information sparked my interest. I had heard of it in the past but never really delved into the subject. How was Nazi Germany’s Wehrmacht (the combined military branches of the army, navy and air force) able to advance so quickly and devastatingly efficient through opposing armies’ lines, seemingly without any rest for days on end?
Well as it would turn out, one of the crucial contributing factors to their success were drugs. Methamphetamine, specifically.
Under the National Socialist Party’s ideology of the 1930s leading up to the war, the social use of drugs was generally frowned upon. Alcoholism or the use of opiates was considered a sign of personal weakness, but the emergence of amphetamines changed that perspective simply based on the effects it produced. Amphetamines significantly heightened the senses and reduced fatigue and appetite, while also giving the user an increase of enthusiasm and morale. The Nazis immediately recognized its benefits, and literally ran with its accelerated usage across all aspects of the emerging war effort.
But perhaps most importantly for the soldiers waging war, the drug also drastically reduced a sense of empathy towards those they were fighting against. A distinct advantage over those who would be forever changed by what they witnessed on the battlefields of Europe.
By 1937, Berlin-based pharmaceutical company Temmler-Werke began mass producing methamphetamine under the brand name of Pervitin. Once Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich began flexing its military muscle across the continent as early as the following year when they occupied portions of Czechoslovakia, Pervitin became a regular part of the German military’s ‘diet.’
When the Nazi blitzkrieg stormed across Poland and France during the first two years of the war, it was no doubt a terrifying sight for the Allied lines to witness. German soldiers were able to fight effectively and mercilessly without rest for days on end thanks to the drug – which was distributed in tablet form and even within bars of chocolate to give them the decisive advantage they sought.
Medical historian Peter Steinkamp, cited by Time magazine on the subject, very succinctly summed up the usage: “Blitzkrieg was guided by methamphetamine. If not to say that blitzkrieg was founded on methamphetamine.”
The withdrawal symptoms – a whole host of side effects including nausea, anxiety, depression and even psychosis – would have been difficult to manage on such a large scale, but commanders were no doubt focused on the task at hand and were content to deal with those problems for their troops (and themselves) later. Their meth-enhanced super soldiers were getting the job done and done well; those were simply problems for another day after the war was won.
Through those first few years of the Second World War’s European campaign, it looked as though the Nazis were going to achieve that objective rather quickly and decisively. After blitzkrieg ripped through Poland in 1939 to officially force the Allies to declare war on Germany, the Nazis then turned their attention on their old nemesis France, and a golden opportunity to avenge the devastating social, economic and military restrictions placed upon Germany by the 1919 Treaty of Versailles that effectively ended the First World War only two decades prior.
The French, well aware of Germany’s military build up and aggressive posturing leading up to September 1939, had arranged its array of eastern defences in accordance with the type of fighting that had taken place in the First World War – essentially a daunting series of fortifications, trenches and weapons installations meant to bog down attacking armies. It was known as the Maginot Line. After the Wehrmacht invaded Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands in May 1940, the blitzkrieg launched from the Ardennes outflanked the Maginot Line and swept across France and into Paris in just over a month, a shocking display of military dominance that essentially knocked the French out of the fighting for the next couple of years.
While Pervitin became regularly distributed to arms of the military for the rest of the war (if supply could be maintained), Hitler and the Nazis were unable to repeat their blitzkrieg success after the French invasion campaign. After scrapping a non-aggression pact signed with the Soviet Union in 1939, less than two years later the German war machine began to roll across Russia, taking leader Joseph Stalin and the Red Army completely by surprise.
But a combination of supply issues, the volatile Russian weather and a host of other logistical problems brought the advance to a halt, and ultimately turned it back after the decisive Battle of Stalingrad in 1942-43. No amount of methamphetamine-induced advantage could turn the tide after the Soviet military finally organized and mobilized. The prolonged fighting at Stalingrad alone inflicted close to half a million German casualties.
Methamphetamine usage likely played a role in the ill-advised decision to open a second front in the first place. As the war progressed, Hitler himself became increasingly erratic in his decision making, no doubt influenced by the vast myriad of drugs he was ‘prescribed’ by his quack physician, Theodor Morell. One of those substances was, you guessed it, methamphetamine.
Morell kept a detailed journal of what he administered to the Fuhrer, who sometimes received up to 20 injections (along with a variety of pills) of this and that over the course of one day. Understandably, it is this blitzkrieg of medication that many historians believe contributed to Hitler’s diminishing physical and mental health. The dictator was without question a genocidal madman to begin with, and regular meth usage only quickened his descent.
So in the end, the drug that was very much instrumental in giving the Wehrmacht such a high degree of success and advantage in the early days of the Second World War was a contributing factor in Nazi Germany’s downfall. The Third Reich was flying high for a while, but it was only a matter of time before everything came crashing down.
Thanks for reading and I’ll see you back here in a fortnight.
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This is a bi-weekly opinion piece; for question or comment contact Dan McNee at dmcnee@midwesternnewspapers.com.
