Point of fact, methamphetamine, under the trade name Pervitin, was widely distributed throughout the German military during WWII.
I thought this was common knowledge
Japanese military then used it too, after getting the recipes from Germany.
I think there are even some methods of field synthesis using a troop helmet as the reactor, but I am not sure if it is not an apocryphal story.
Also, amphetamine is commonly used in militaries; the ship doctor disposes the pills to officers that have to stay awake/alert during emergencies that take a bit too long (fire on a ship, submarine chase…). And then there is the issue of “go pills” used in the US military and said to be behind many of those friendly fire and collateral-damage fire (weddings, anyone?) incidents in Afghanistan…
#notallmethheads
My grandfather was one of the WPA crew in the 30s building the Grand Coulie Dam, workers were issued speed, probably Benzedrine, in the 60s USAF my father was issued Dexedrine another amphetamine as go-pills. Amphetamines make people just simply more useful, I am surprised that they are as regulated as they are in the west, though if taken for ADD or ADHD they can do significant good in some individuals.
Drug abuse or self medication was a famous part of the broken-inside bums, a literal gang who took Germany and used it and other willing Europeans to murder using industrial work to slaughter camps 30-40% of the well dispersed and completely uninvolved Jews of the world and who as of now have yet to recover as well as causing a world war as terrible as the first.
I have never felt sorry for Benito until now. That poor bastard.
“…I’LL TELL YOU WHAT KEEPS TRAINS ON TIME, IT’S SPEED AND STEAM ENGINES AND SPEAKING OF STEAM ENGINES THIS ONE TIME I HAD TO CARRY COAL FROM MY BASEMENT UPSTAIRS TO THROW IT AT CAROLERS IT WAS TERRIBLE WE SHOULD GET RID OF ALL OF THE CHRISTMAS SONGS…”
Use of amphetamines for flight operations was discontinued starting in the 80s with a hard stop after the 1991 gulf war, it was reinstituted not in the Vietnam pilot’s candy bowl but only by commander’s and flight surgeon’s orders during the new Iraq and Afghanistan wars until present. It was shown to increase safety during extended and night flight ops but there is a point where even speed gives diminishing returns and the added safety bleeds away. The US Navy study in particular is available online.
I’m curious if the bull seman was administered orally or as a suppository.
Hitler, of course, thanks to the advanced technology of Germany, was among the first human beings to turn their brains to cobwebs with amphetamine. He actually chewed on carpets, they say. Yum yum.
–Kurt Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus, published 1990.
As the saying goes, you take it where you can get it.
So many stories have popped up in the media of late about poor Hitler, I’ve wondered if this isn’t a bit of sneaking revisionism at work. As if to say, ’ This was a perfectly level-headed young man before events and circumstances began to pile on… except for some tendency toward hypochondria… and narcissism… and really terrible anger issues, but you know his father beat him or some such … but other than that what really drove him stark raving bonkers was the war. Even Mein Fuhrer had a conscience. It was the war that unhinged him.’ And after a while you just start to feel sorry for him (Hitler was a victim too!) and all the monstrous monsters that systematically put 17 million people to death for being “undesirables”. And why, for fuck’s sake, would we want to do that?
That helps explain some of Walter White’s associates.
I’ve seen a lot of the modern media portraying him as more of a man than a monster. Mostly because it lets me see that if we leave people unchecked we can still get a Hitler. That he’s not that rare.
Like @SteampunkBanana said, it’s not about feeling bad for Hitler. It’s about recognizing how a “normal” (or normal-seeming) human being can lead a whole nation to commit monstrous acts. The average German during the rise of the Third Reich wasn’t that different from the average citizen of any other country, and that’s where the real risk lies. If we fool ourselves into thinking that the next Hitler will come in the guise of a puppy-stomping, baby-eating, fire-breathing demon then we may not recognize them for what they are until it’s too late.
Reminds me of the The Illuminatus! Trilogy:
He was, in fact, characteristic of the best type of dominant male in the world at this time. He was fifty-five years old, tough, shrewd, unburdened by the complicated ethical ambiguities which puzzle intellectuals, and had long ago decided that the world was a mean son-of-a-bitch in which only the most cunning and ruthless can survive. He was also as kind as was possible for one holding that ultra-Darwinian philosophy; and he genuinely loved children and dogs, unless they were on the site of something that had to be bombed in the National Interest. He still retained some sense of humor, despite the burdens of his almost godly office, and, although he had been impotent with his wife for nearly ten years now, he generally achieved orgasm in the mouth of a skilled prostitute within 1.5 minutes. He took amphetamine pep pills to keep going on his grueling twenty-hour day, with the result that his vision of the world was somewhat skewed in a paranoid direction, and he took tranquilizers to keep from worrying too much, with the result that his detachment sometimes bordered on the schizophrenic; but most of the time his innate shrewdness gave him a fingernail grip on reality. In short, he was much like the rulers of China and Russia." — A note on the President of the US
I bet it made him really good at household chores at 3AM.
As a matter of fact, he claimed that was when he “worked best” and “it’s all so clear then, you know?”
For the same reason they keep trying so hard to rehabilitate Joseph McCarthy and demonize Abraham Lincoln, I suppose. It worked on Reagan, dinnit? That traitorous bastard is a national hero now.
Look man, those Contras needed guns to fight the bad mans. And it was rogue splinter groups! We all know we don’t negotiate with terrorists, like Iran.
