I believe this may be the reason that his vegetarianism is cogent to his dependency on drugs.
Although I gather that many vegetarians don’t eat meat for dietary, rather than moral reasons and couldn’t give a crap how many animal products they use, so long as they aren’t ingesting them.
Which makes me wonder what those percentages are. And how far it is possible to even run with that idea in the modern world? Does the animal have to die, or be uncomfortable, how do you sanely draw the line between a product or even environment which has not been brought about by some animal suffering? Do humans count? Or would you have to be a vegan cannibal for that to work?
It is sometimes debated whether he counts because he avoided meat for personal health reasons and was not strict. He was perceived as vegetarian at the time and it was sold as an ascetic thing.
I think there was also a certain shift in terminology. At the time the very idea of specifically avoiding meat flew in the face of mainstream preferences and was noteworthy even if you didn’t turn it into a “vow” that you followed consistently.
Ten million. He mass murdered about ten million people, six million of whom were of at least partial Jewish descent. People often focus on the specifically Jewish deaths for excellent reasons, but I’m always disturbed when the four million homosexuals, dissidents, Romani, disabled people, and others are just left off when mentioning the death camps in general. It seems to be happening more often nowadays.
That’s it: he wasn’t. He claimed that he was, but there would often be some sort of animal product in his food. Soup made from meat stock, for example. It’s like the teenagers who suddenly announce they’re vegan, but it’s really just about being able to control food intake… either for the sense of control in general, or due to eating disorders.
As much as I hate hate hate the vile “six million” cliche, I think in this case it is possible that it was supposed to be an example of a single plan instead of a total.
When I lived in Prague in the 90s, Pervitin was the speed we all took…strong & scary. We all knew it as Nazi speed.
If Hitler was a strung out meth head, maybe that explains (a little) some of the bad decisions the German high command made towards the end; not that it would have mattered.
From the sounds of it, pretty much most of the evil was planned with sound mind, and the drugs came later to help him deal with the realization that those same plans had destroyed Germany. A coward to the end.
