Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 69 - Do a Little Meth, Make a Little War

Episode Date: September 23, 2019

On episode 69 (nice)Joe and Rich dive into the history of Meth in warfare. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/notifications Buy a shirt: https://teespring.com/stores/lions-led-by-donkeys-store Follow us on twitter: @lions_by sources: https://time.com/5752114/nazi-military-drugs/ https://newrepublic.com/article/141125/third-reich-addicted-drugs https://thesecuritydistillery.org/all-articles/pervitin-how-drugs-transformed-warfare-in-1939-45

Is there anyone out there who still isn't clear about what doing drugs does? Okay, last time. This is your brain. This is drugs. This is your brain on drugs. Hello. Any questions? And welcome to yet another episode of the Lines Led by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe, and with me today is Rich. Hello.

So, we changed our podcast studio, and this is officially the first episode that we've ever recorded outside of our normal studio. Outside of the dirty, messy room on top of the beer pong table. Oh, no. Yeah, it's a tradition, all right? It's history. Never forget.

Never forget beer pong? I don't. It's a great game. I feel like you're focusing on the wrong thing. What am I supposed to focus on? We had a whole we had a whole year and a half of history recording in that room oh yeah yeah i know it means nothing to you you ass good time just throw it all away throw it all away i mean you're still recording like

it's not like that's changed for now for now we'll see, people say that women are the sentimental ones. To my gross room, yes. I was very sentimental. Is it because that's the only room that your wife let you keep discussing without nagging too much? Yeah. And now I'm a rather large person at six foot three. And I'm recording on a very small table now that requires me to be doubled over. It's about comfort, Rich.

Can't you raise up that microphone? Not unless it falls over. It's very top-heavy. It's all bad. This is what happens when a completely uneducated idiot slaps together a recording. This all seems like equipment problems, not recording room

problems. We understand where your stance is on the room. I'm saying you're wrong. So today's episode is a little different. I know I've probably said that about a dozen times now. We're going to talk about something we've never talked about before. That's meth. I feel like we talk about meth often. I don't think we do

no maybe when I'm on meth I talk about meth a lot I feel like we should talk about meth more often it's not really the topic of this podcast except today I'm on the wrong show I gotta go you actually have to go to the meth cast

it's headquartered I believe in Montana but I think you have too many teeth to be on the show no what was it New Mexico that's where all the all the billboards the meth billboards are that's Montana no because I've never been to Montana

well like I think it was either Montana or Wyoming where they came out with like the meth project where like they made the most nasty menagerie of fucked up teeth pictures on earth as a don't do drugs PSA. And they just kind of spread everywhere else

because it's gross. Maybe it was Utah. Maybe. I don't know. I feel like that's just Mormon mouth. Now, the reason why we're talking about math is that we did not just magically become a drug awareness podcast and in fact we still aren't dare to be drug free you know i vividly remember buying drugs wearing my dare shirt so it did not work see that's what happens when you're

a female you don't ever have to buy drugs you just bum them off of other guys yeah i i remember saving up because like i got like two or three dollars a day for lunch and i'd pool it uh over a week and then buy a dime bag wait you missed meals yeah i would just not eat lunch and then i would eat at home because we had open campus so i could just leave i can't picture weed was more important sacrifices had to be made now there's a long and storied reason of why we talk about drugs and alcohol pretty regularly on this show whether it be um officers getting hammered while at the battlefield soldiers showing up high or drunk. It is kind of a constant throughout human history where people get fucked up before they go into battle.

It's a culture, the military. It even goes back for organized militaries. Most people are aware of the concept of berserkers from the Vikings. They think that is now mostly because they were very, very drunk or on mushrooms.

Either or. So it's pretty great. I've always wanted to try mushrooms. They taste awful. It's not about the taste. It's about what happens after the taste. It tastes like shit though. I mean like actual literal shit.

Well, that's how they're grown. So it makes sense. I mean, I have no. Well, that's how they're grown. So it makes sense. I mean, I have no qualms of where it grew, but getting high on them is pretty great. But they taste like poop. I think Colorado is attempting to legalize them or decriminalize them. I can't remember which. I mean, can you even test for them? What's the point of keeping them illegal?

Because Puritans don't like having fun. Fuck Puritans. Fuck all of you. I mean, that's. I mean, not like all of you listening them illegal uh because puritans don't like having fun fuck puritans fuck all of you i mean that's i mean not like all of you listening but like i have a feeling we don't have many puritans listening to us i don't feel like that's a market we've quite yet cracked um now hang it uh we're going to fast forward a bit in history all the way to world war ii uh and we're going to talk about meth. Now, if you look at some historical accounts of World War II, and I'm sure you ran into them in school,

and I know I have as well, you tend to just think to yourself, well, how did these guys pull off all these inhuman feats of strength, endurance, and bravery? Now, the shitty boomer crowd will tell you it's because they are simply the greatest generation. Or in many cases, these are desperate people fighting for their lives against oppression, tyranny, fascism, or Labenstrom or some shit. Whatever side

you happen to be on. Obviously, we do not stand for fighting for Labenstrom. Now, some of those things are right. Put people in incredible situations and they tend to pull off incredible feats. If anyone remembers back to our Pavlov's House episode, which was way, way back before we had a producer

so don't punish your ears by listening to it is a great example of what human beings can do when their backs are against the wall but what if I told you it was not just the indomitable human spirit grit and freedom that soldiers rely on during the times of

need what if I told you it was actually just a bunch of fucking drugs? Like that the soldiers were? Oh, yeah. Like American soldiers? Oh, yeah. Sweet. So before we get there, I have to talk about my sources

because they are slightly problematic this time around. Is it Breitbart? You picked Breitbart. Yeah, they're a pretty solid source. They have great journalistic integrity. No. One is a book called Blitzed by a guy named

Norman Oler. This is a really, really good example of how a historian can do a lot of things very, very right and come to a terribly wrong conclusion. Oler does a lot of things very, very right and come to a terribly wrong conclusion. Oler does a lot of good footwork and then comes to the conclusion

is because there were so many drugs in the Nazi government in Wehrmacht and SS, that was the reason why they did so many fucked up things. What? That is not correct. Now, the problem being is it is like a good read until then it's like having a conversation

about healthcare with my mother she like will talk about all the same things that we talk about and then right as you're about to like fuck yeah mom's awesome she'll blame it on those colored folks it's like ooh you were close you were so close

yeah and no I'm not being racist that is a direct quote she's being racist it's Olar does he's so close to having a good point but he fucks it up in the end I hate when people do that

but the book itself still okay as long as you have a critical eye going into it. Another one is a documentary called awesomely World War Speed. Now that is a book who it's a documentary that also references

Oler's book but in the middle of it they also go into some weird dumb shit where they dress up like British soldiers and go for a ruck march and say, see, we didn't need drugs. It's exactly as dumb as I just described it. How old is this documentary? It's pretty new. Last two years, I believe.

It was on PBS. It's a good documentary. And then they like, I think at one point, like, fuck, we need to fill 15 more minutes. And that's what happened. But sure sure that happens all the time on this show it was like i need five more minutes i guess i'm just gonna make nick upset let's do some speed yeah let's just do some speed uh now before we get into just how nazi germany really did become massively addicted to meth uh we need to talk about drugs in Nazi Germany. That's fun, right? German

drug policy. If you were to think of what Nazi drug policy would be, pretty repressive, maybe? All of the drugs, all of the time. That's what I would think. Not so much, though it did eventually turn into that for specifically one person.

It should come as surprise to absolutely nobody that Adolf Hitler was a fucking buzzkill. The man was a teetotaler, also known as a ye olde straight edge kid. Now, he never touched drinks, drugs, or even smoked. He quit smoking when World War I was over. He didn't even drink coffee. Huge buzzkill.

I feel like, is that similar to the new straight edge movement? Well, I mean, straight edge kids aren't new. I remember seeing them back in the punk scene when I was a little fucking asshole. I mean new relatively to the rest of the world. You're still new-ish. The new age straight edge is just old straight edge coming back in full circle. Because time is a flat circle.

So it's just punk. It's not like white supremacy or anything like that no it's just like a lot of people don't understand understand that skinheads weren't originally nazis and they still aren't um there's actually a rich uh history of anti-racism anti-fascism within the skinhead community um it was co-opted in england um by i believe it was called the National Front or something like that around the 80s. There's someone who

has been on Hell of a Way, who is a bit of a punk and a lawyer, actually, a Coast Guard veteran who is a virulent anti-fascist and a union lawyer. He's actually a great person to have on and talk about that. There's nothing new here.

Straight edge or the teetotaler, because this is the 40s and the 30s and shit like that. It goes back in time all the way back to when people first figured out that if you ate the wrong kind of bean, you'd get fucked up. There's always been some kind of social group.

Like Puritan style. Or the prohibitionist shit like that or the temperance movement like there's always been some kind of social group. Like Puritan style. Right. Or, you know, the prohibitionists, shit like that, or the temperance movement who would equate it to something and it's some kind of societal ill and you just can't do it. You know what? Existence is pain. Let's get drunk.

Yeah. Let me do what I do. If you don't want to fucking do it, who cares? Yeah. Now, it shouldn't surprise anybody. He fucking hated drugs. He considered them one of the tools of the Jews to use to control people. And he wrote about it in Mein Kampf. Are Jews notorious drug users? Because I don't see that.

Jews are whatever you need them to be. Do you need them to control the media? They do that. Do they need to control the banking sector? You got it. Do you want them to be your drug peddler nailed it i feel like they've never done anything to anybody and everybody just keeps shitting on them and making them they're fucking out you need to blame the other and um you know there's there time and time again throughout every history right now the other in american uh society are mexicans brown people yeah anybody that's not white. And still Jews. And still Jews. Back in the day, it was Irish, it was Germans, it was French, it was Armenians. America is so racist and has so many others that everyone's called the others or other white people. And Germany was no different.

They had to blame something on somebody. And Hitler decided to blame the loss of World War I and the collapse of the German Empire, the collapse of the Kaiser on the Jews. Even though hundreds of thousands of Jews fought for the German Empire in World War I. Now, he hated drug addicts more than drugs. When he came to power, Germany had one hell of a fucking drug problem. It actually manufactured about 40% of the world's morphine. It goes without a doubt that there's a lot of fucking morphine addicts in Germany at the time. Not to mention that you could just buy it. It's a good thing they regulated that.

I mean, remember, this is the days of like cocaine cough syrup and shit. Oh, yeah, the good shit. Yeah. And when Coke was in Coca-Cola? I don't, I think that was over before the 40s. Really? I don't know. I thought that was around the same time.

Maybe a little bit before that because it was back when it was like considered medicine. that because it's back when it was like considered medicine um it's actually one of the first laws that the reichstag passed in 1933 was the imprisonment of drug addicts for up to two years uh able to be extended for as long as the court wanted uh now if you're worried worrying about hippa and things like that or which is you know health care privacy you didn't have that either because if you went uh if you're on a prescription for more than three weeks, the doctors had to report you to the government. Many of these people end up dying in concentration camps. It's my

turn for a cringy parent story. Oh, shoot. Where my parents absolutely believe that drug addicts should be imprisoned even though it's a fucking illness. Go mom and dad. I'm a firm believer that we need to criminalize cancer. They're a leech on society.

Yeah, definitely. It's a choice. I can quit whenever I want. I mean, I know people that got rid of cancer. Why can't you? I mean, there's definitely no medical or scientific data backing the fact that it's a serious disease. No, no, no. Zero.

No. Zero. Now, all this changed when Hitler met a doctor named theodore morell who was jewish uh morell went to great lengths to hide that see hitler had a stomach problem that had been bothering him for years um like it went back like the beer hall push of the fucking 20s it had been bothering him for at this point like a decade. Morel jumped at the chance to treat the leader of Nazi Germany. He not only cured

his stomach problems which strangely enough inflicted him with an uncontrollable bout of flatulence which caused Hitler to fart constantly. Fun facts about Hitler, guys.

Yeah, if you ever want to like look at that little motherfucker just know any room that he is in, he's crop dusting. So like all the people that, uh,

like the fucking, any neo-Nazi, like you just deal with a guy who any asshole who's ever walked past you and just let rip like a noxious gut fart, uh, and just quickly sped away. Hitler did that all the time. There's not a single time that Hitler fucked

without farting all the time. Just make him ridiculous. It's great. Now, he did cure it, though, his stomach problem, by replacing it with swamp ass. He became the Fuhrer's personal doctor. He then began giving him drugs

to deal with extreme overwork, which led to extreme fatigue, because Hitler was, of everything, a workaholic. The dude worked constantly and slept as little as two to four hours a day. Now, the list of drugs that morale give him grew and grew to eventually include things like cocaine, morphine, and most importantly, methamphetamine. and most importantly, methamphetamine. Actually, when Mussolini wanted to leave the Axis, Hitler felt pretty fatigued and unsure about the meeting. So Morell gave him what was effectively a yield speedball,

injected him, and then he went into the meeting feeling great. Nice. Most people are aware of what meth is. Most people are not aware of how it's had a long and storied history before it ended up tearing through whatever small town you happen to live in. And whatever guy you talk to from your hometown insists that you're the meth capital of whatever state that you live in. Meth was originally synthesized from a Fedra. That stuff that Americans used to take to lose weight until their hearts

started exploding. And it's not legal again, actually. Really? Yes, it sure is. And I ate a ton of it when I was in Afghanistan the first time. Fun. How I'm still alive shocks me.

I bought it over the counter. It's not like it was a drug. I ask myself that every day. It was discovered, so a Fed was discovered in 1893 by a Japanese chemist named Nagai Nagayoshi, and then methamphetamine hydrochloride in 1919. These things are important because they eventually turned into what is now largely known as crystal methamphetamine. Now, meth is just another compound in a lab somewhere until a Berlin-based drug manufacturer named Temmler-Werk launched a new drug called Pervitin onto an unsuspecting public in 1938. Now, when I say drug manufacturer and new drug, you're probably thinking of what you

now know as a prescription drug, something you see in commercials if you live in the United States because we're weird like that, or something you get from your doctor if you live elsewhere. That is not what Pervitin was. You could buy it over the counter. Like aspirin. Yes. Pervitin was the first ever mass-produced crystal meth. Temmler launched an all-encompassing PR drive

to sell their newest drug. Their marketing plan was inspired by who else but Coca-Cola. They hung posters everywhere and even sent samples to every single doctor in Berlin, which had to be thousands. All they gotta do is add the chili pea. Yeah, God, my special ingredient.

The drug became, well, exactly as popular as you would imagine a highly addictive upper would become if you sold it over the counter. Yeah, I've heard that when you first start meth before you become insanely addicted and can't think about anything else, it actually makes you super productive. Right. And the law of diminishing returns quickly comes into effect.

Yeah. It's a lot like doing anything. Now, I am a crippling caffeine addict. I drink half a pot of coffee. I'll drink a bang and pre-workout on the same day. But it's not because i need to be awake it's because i'm addicted to caffeine and then i go through withdrawal if i don't have it yeah like you start getting really grouchy and snappy even and you don't know fucking why like somebody just like says good morning to you and you're like fuck off

it's like that except withdrawals from meth are incredibly painful. Yeah, I was just talking about the caffeine ones. Those are the only ones I know about. So you can imagine what it's like to, like, we're like, oh, man, I need to have a cup of coffee or I'm going to get the shakes. It's like that, but, you know, you die. Now, the drug came in a small tube with a few small pills inside, each one being about 10 milligrams. The package simply read, quote, alertness aid and to maintain wakefulness. The only warning that had on it was, quote, only take from time to time, followed by a large red exclamation point.

What does it mean by time to time? Like, that's so subjective. Totally up to you. Time to time, man. Time to time, like that could be fucking now and four hours from now. It was marketed as a recreational pick-me-up. Imagine a time before Monster was there to just mainline energy drinks with as much disregard for safety. Like when they put out the 32-ounce fucking Monster?

Yes. The big fucking can? A huge disregard to safety. It was the BFC. Yeah. I was on a CQ, which I would go and explain, but it's literally just sitting behind a desk for 24 hours for no reason. And myself and the soldier I was with decided to have a monster drinking competition where we tried to drink as many big fucking cans as humanly possible. I drank two and became violently ill.

I bet. Now, this new drug became incredibly popular amongst German workers. Germany was suffering from a pretty bad labor shortage around the same time the drug came out. The leadership of the Third Reich attempted to get around this by forcing workers to work more days

in a row for longer shifts than they currently were used to. Now, not going to the forced shifts was obviously not an option. You live in Nazi Germany. So many of the workers soon turned towards meth. Because, you know, one of the wonderful things about national socialism is it's not socialism. So they tried to work them to death.

Almost immediately, the German military saw what an amazing drug this could be for their army. And soon, Army doctor Otto Frank seized on it. He saw a miracle drug that would keep pilots awake for hours, keep his army in high spirits during long operations. In short, he saw the perfect drug for war, which Germany was just goose-stepping closer to every single day. He began to test the drug on a small group of college students who, surprise, surprise, immediately saw a surge in their productivity. As you can imagine, very little to no study was done on the incredible amount of downsides that came with hardcore meth use. Sounds like most army testing of things.

You can slap swastika on somebody or an eagle. Soldiers are soldiers. Yeah. Because who needs pesky side effects like crippling meth addiction to pop up and ruin your attempt to create a super soldier with meth? Otto's experiments would later be expanded upon in concentration camp systems of Nazi Germany.

Victims, including men, women, and children, would be injected full of meth and cocaine, be given full bags of rocks, strapped to their back, and then forced to march around in circles until they dropped dead. What? That's their testing? They would see how much further you could march around in circles as compared to the

control study where people without meth would be forced to walk to death. Yeah. Doses would be increased to just see how far they could push people until they died from exhaustion or overdose, whichever happened first. These include dosage up to 500 milligrams of pure crystal meth.

At least it's pure? That seems like a really inefficient way to test something. Like you're killing off all your fucking test subjects. Well, there's, if the Nazi experimental system was anything, it was completely fucking pointless. They almost learned

nothing through medical experimentation. The cruelty was the point. They learned a lot about twins. They didn't though. They learned nothing new. They exist and they will happen at times. They were all very bad scientists. The cruelty was the point, not the experiments.

Soon, Pervitin began to be issued out to millions. So millions of tablets were sent to every single branch of the German armed forces. Between just April and July of 1940, 35 million doses of the drug were shipped. The soldiers and airmen were hardly given any instructions whatsoever on what this new drug even was. The instructions they received simply said it was a stimulant they should take to ward off sleep. Which I guess technically is not wrong. No. That is accurate.

Meth will keep you awake. Yeah. This meant during the opening phases of the war, the invasion of Poland and France, there's a very good chance that the Wehrmacht were simply methed out to berserker mode, simply ripped out their fucking minds the whole time. And it should be important to note that nobody thought they were taking a drug.

What did they think that was happening? They assumed it was like a super cup of coffee or a caffeine pill which they've also been given before uh because remember the steep punishments they were leveling leveling and drug addicts why would they assume their government was giving them a drug so they unconsensually got their citizens they had no idea what they were taking. I mean, like... Good, good, good. The army these days is not any different. I mean, you're given something by the government. You assume

it's probably not good for you, but it's not going to kill you. When you're told to take it and you're made to follow orders. Right. And this same thing happened there. They'd pass out Pervitin almost specifically right before a major operation. So they'd be like yep go ahead and take your pills we're gonna be awake for the next 10 days or whatever yeah so yeah they didn't know what they were

taking now you're probably assuming that this was a grunt thing like this was something that like oh just the just the soldiers are taking it know, just the frontline combat units. Soldiers and commanders alike absolutely love the new drug. Now, according to the book Blitz, commanders who had been present during the invasion of Poland wrote back in dispatches, giving glowing reviews of the drug's effects on the war. One commander wrote, quote, everyone is fresh and cheerful, excellent discipline, slight euphoria, and increased thirst for action. Mental encouragement, very stimulated. No accents, long-lasting effects.

After taking four tablets, double vision and seeing colors. Sign me the fuck up. Another wrote, quote, The feeling of hunger subsides. One particular beneficial aspect is the appearance of vigorous urge to work. The effect is so clear it cannot be based on imagination. I mean, you don't have to imagine anything. You're really really high. I mean, can I

give this to my soldiers? You can, but it's I believe in the state of Washington. It's a Class C felony. Now, as insane as it does sound, and it is crazy, it did work. Mass permanent use was a great drug for the German military. More specifically, it worked wonders for the Luftwaffe.

They became known as Stuka pills, Stuka being a type of dive bomber. It allowed them to fly for days at a time, only stopping to refuel or rearm. It worked almost as well on the ground for the German Panzer Corps. Tank drivers took so much of the meth that the pills ended up being called Panzer chocolate. I feel like this is going to get real dangerous real quick. Oh boy, does it? I mean, you've been sleep deprived. Yes.

I have been sleep deprived. I know the dumb shit I do when I'm sleeping. It's like being drunk. Yes. And the Nazis quickly learned the law of diminishing returns. Now, leadership of the Nazi military did not know a lot about the drugs that they were giving out. But they did know too much it would probably be bad. Hence why each soldier was issued a certain amount of meth rather than say just, hey, you want some meth?

Like the guy on the street corner. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I never understood that. I've never been offered drugs before in my life i've had to go find drugs because there's no such thing as a drug salesman nobody's sitting around like what am i gonna do with all this meth they're not vacuum cleaners i think that was a chris rock joke that guy that came to the door

earlier it was not for vacuums no No, that was my meth guy. Yeah. Now, what do you think happened next to the millions of German soldiers who were getting gacked out of their mind on meth for weeks at a time? They wanted more meth? Soon they began to feel the effects of addiction withdrawal as the army began to run out of the meth. For people who are unaware, the meth withdrawal process is incredibly painful and debilitating. It's like the flu times 10. Not quite. So it involves dizziness, depression, and when you sweat, it just smells like corpses.

Hallucinations and incontinence. Now, the hallucinations can be incredibly vivid depending on your addiction level. So you'll be seeing whatever it is that you're seeing and shitting on yourself constantly. And it'll last for two to three weeks depending on how much you're addicted. And the level of addiction that we're talking about is quite impressive

because when we in the year of 2019 are talking about meth addicts, we are talking about people who have probably never touched pure methamphetamine, ever. They might be buying 10 grams from somebody, but they're actually getting two or three. The world has really gone downhill since they started cutting that shit. Yeah, it's criminal. These guys are taking pharmaceutical grade meth

with no impurity. So it is probably significantly more powerful than what anybody's ever done. So, like I talked about before in the law of diminishing returns, soon the leadership

were finding out that getting soldiers high as fuck and stay awake for days at a time followed by a short amount of rest on the back end, simply did not work. The normal limited amount of sleep that a soldier gets on a campaign already does not cut it for normal human functions. Now, there's an ongoing joke in the United States Army that you're only authorized four hours of sleep, and they do not have to be consecutive. That's not a joke.

That's legitimate regulation. Right. And it doesn't work. People don't work off that. And that is a 21st century campaign. And if you're on extra duty, you're not authorized any sleep. Fuck you. Sure.

And we're talking about the 21st century campaign where the most foot patrols I did was 10 hours ish at a time, which covered however many miles. When soldiers are doing that now, you're not walking however many miles they're walking during a normal campaign with large amounts of weights on them carrying all their food, all their water, all their ammunition with probably not getting resupplied they're not you can't compare the two and they would do that for you know i 10 days i think is the longest um is the longest thing that i saw where they would be yeah we're just gonna do a whole bunch of meth and then just operate for 10 days um and then at the end they would just be like all right right, we're going to crash out

for a day. Like it just doesn't work. Um, you know, uh, when people do a ton of drugs, they generally need a long amount of time to recover from them. Sleep, sleep is not something that you can like stockpile either. Like you can't just be like, I'm going to be awake for three days and then I'll sleep enough to like recover from that. Like it doesn't work like that. Right. And I can speak about that as like an EMT where you'd work 24 hours on and

have 48 hours off. And every once in a while you would really be awake for 24 hours and then be like, well, you have two days off. Like, but I fucking don't because it's like coming off of a bender. You will sleep the entire first day and still feel like shit the second. And that's without meth. And now remember, the whole time this is happening, they're either incredibly high or they're withdrawing. So the whole time these guys are armed to the teeth, they're hallucinating

and they're probably shit in their pants. They're eventually going to hit a wall. And the wall is pretty dangerous here. I mean, imagine being this sleep deprived and being armed with, I don't know, a wall is pretty dangerous here. I mean, imagine being this sleep-deprived and being armed with, I don't know, a plane or a machine gun. It's not good.

Soldiers began to grow desperate for more drugs and began to write home, begging their families to send them more. One of these soldiers was a man named Heinrich Boll, who was only 22 at the time, but he would eventually end up surviving the war and winning the Nobel Prize of Literature in 1972. In a letter dated

May 20th, 1940, he wrote his family asking for a quote, perhaps you could send me some more Pervitin for my supplies. He knew this because they could still go and buy it. He went on to write that the drug was magnificent because it was as effective as helping him keep awake his liters of coffee,

and when he took the drug, he no longer worried about anything. And it was the only thing that made him feel happy. Yeah, he's a drug addict. Yeah. The young man is addicted and badly. And so are millions of others. According to a Der Spiegel article titled The German Granddaddy of Crystal Meth,

the bull's meth usage ended up continuing for the rest of his life and eventually contributed to his death in 2011. It did not take long for the soldiers to start dropping dead from heart failure, overdoses, or simply shooting themselves to escape the pain of addiction and withdrawal. German casualties began to mount fast than anybody could have thought due to the actions while being sleep-deprived or uh see one of the problems with giving someone a drug that makes your soldiers fearless is fear is a self-preservation tool yeah it's necessary it stops you from doing dumb shit and getting yourself killed an untold number of soldiers died in military mistakes brought on by being fearless or simply mental fatigue because

they hadn't slept in weeks so being fearless fearless and not having the conscious decision-making skills to say, this is not just like bold heroism, this is stupid. Right, right. And it is difficult to tell how much was like legit balls of steel heroism and how much is like, I did steel heroism and how much is like, I did 80 milligrams of meth today. Heroism. Yeah. Like a lot of things probably could have been like calculated moves where

they would have lived through them. But instead of doing that, they just like balls to the wall. It's fucking right. And even if they are doing something that is pretty important to a military operation, they're going to lack the sharpened edges of a mind that isn't ripped up by meth.

Yeah. And this addiction problem, like I said before, was not a grunt thing. It affected everyone. Everyone from generals on down have been taking the drug in large amounts in order to keep up with the wartime demand and the ever-changing theaters of war.

The famed Desert Fox himself, Erwin Rommel, took Pervitin every single day. And he is held up as like the one good Nazi leader. He wasn't. The good one? He wasn't. Well, it's because people thought he was just a guy following orders and then when someone attempted to kill Hitler,

Hitler thought that he was in on it and forced him to kill himself. He was a Hitler loyalist from day one and Hitler made his career. Yeah, fuck that shit. None of them are good ones. No. A lieutenant colonel wrote that he had been taking the drug constantly

twice a day for four weeks. Oof. Some soldiers reported taking as much as 100 milligrams of meth at a time. Like I said before, a normal dose is 10 milligrams. Now, it should be noted, this is an insane amount of meth to be abusing.

Now, obviously, this is incredibly subjective because modern drug usage varies wildly based on purity and where it was cooked and what it was made with, but a modern addict with a decently crippling meth addiction would use around 25 milligrams, with some reporting temporary blindness if they fucked around with a bit too crippling meth addiction would use around 25 milligrams, with some reporting temporary blindness if they fucked around with the bit too much more than 75.

I found this on a form of recovering meth addicts, so I consider it decently accurate. They know their drugs better than I do. I can totally see temporary blindness being a side effect. Yeah, yeah, sure. And that's 75 when people are taking excess of 100 or more, you know. There was a problem, though. Like I said before, Germany was running out of meth.

Between shipping out tens of millions of doses a month to the military, other untold amounts of meth are being consumed by the German workforce, who is trying in vain to keep up with the German war machine functioning. Finally, they decided, or the Nazi government decided, they're going to have to do something about having an entire country of junkies. Bring in Heisenberg!

Yeah. By 1941, the Nazi health minister, again, named Leo Conti, which is a very non-German name. I don't know what I was expecting. Looked around and noticed quite literally that he had created an entire country of meth heads um he wrote in a letter quote anybody who seeks to eliminate fatigue with pervin can be sure that it will lead to crippling

depletion of physical and psychological performance reserves and and finally, to complete breakdown. Conti was eventually able to convince the government to outlaw the drug, but it did little to nothing to stem the flow. They're already fucking addicted! Civilians and the entire Nazi government had become dependent on a drug to function.

The drug use was actually increased in the German military after the ban. A good reason for that is they were soon to invade the Soviet Union. But another good reason for that is Temmler never even stopped manufacturing the drug. It simply became illegal to purchase over-the-counter, quote-unquote.

You could still buy it over-the-counter. I mean, they just showed how little fucks anybody cared about the ban. Now, before we talk a little about Allied drug use, of which there was plenty, it should be known that Timelord did not stop manufacturing this stuff at the end of the war. If you were to guess when they did stop, what would you guess? 2019. 1988.

Oh. That was the year I was born. Yeah. You're actually meth. Congratulations. Yes. No, they stopped producing it. Yeah, because they made you, then they stopped.

Oh, because they made perfection. Right. Got it. You are perfectly meth. I'll take it. At least I'm perfectly something. Yeah. I have low self-esteem.

It's actually really interesting because, obviously, at the end of or during the Cold War, Germany was split in half between East and West. Temmler manufactured Pervitin for both sides. And both sides' militaries were facing each other over the Folda Gap and across the Berlin Divide were both high on drugs. I mean, it's like

taking something and like, okay, this war has been fun and all, but it's getting kind of boring, getting kind of old. How can we make this more fun? Now, when I tell you that the Nazis did meth, you're probably like, yeah, they're Nazis. They probably did meth. Now we're going to talk about our grandparents. I'm saying, though.

I'm saying, though. Okay, so say you've got a fucking wrestling match. And, you know, you've seen these two guys wrestle over and over and over again. Then it gets boring. So what do you do next? You give them fucking steroids and make it more interesting.

That's exactly why I totally support doping in sports. Yeah, so same thing. Now let's give both sides meth and see what fucking happens. You know, the meth never made anything better. I think that's something that the Allies figured out

way faster than the Germans did. Well, that's never made anything better. I think that's something that the Allies figured out way faster than the Germans did. Well, that's good. Go us. Now, we'll talk about the Battle of Britain. British intelligence kept finding bottles of Pervitin in downed German planes. German meth use had been known by the Allies as far back as the Dunkirk evacuation, and the British newspapers had talked about drug-fueled Nazi super soldiers. Kirk evacuation and the British newspapers had talked about drug-fueled Nazi super soldiers.

One called German paratroopers quote, heavily drugged, fearless, and berserk. Now this is when the Allies decided if it was good enough for the Nazis, maybe we should try it ourselves. Which is like, not something you said. The only thing to stop

a bad meth head is a good meth head. That's what the NRA would say if they stopped meth. That's the exact... I mean, it's all coming together full circle because the NRA are Nazis. Now, the Allies had a little bit more class. They didn't settle for just plain old crystal meth. They instead used Benzedrine, which is both a pill and an inhalant.

Yeah. Now, in 1941, it was sanctioned for use by Britain's Royal Air Force, but it had to be taken out by the squadron medical officer. The American Armed Forces were quick to adopt the drug as well, also using Benzedrine. When American soldiers hit the beach of North America

in 1942, they brought with them nearly half a million tabs of uppers. They were supplied to the soldiers hit the beach of North America in 1942, they brought with them nearly half a million tabs of uppers. They were supplied to the soldiers on the orders of general and future president, Dwight D. Eisenhower. So if you're an American listening to this and your grandpa fought in World War II, there's a very good chance he dabbled in benzadrine use, like a lot. British soldiers brought the drug to Africa as well. In 1942, a British

officer commented that soldiers of the 24th Armored Brigade got 20 milligrams of the drug every single day while fighting in Egypt. By comparison, that is double the amount the Royal Air Force pilots were authorized. And credit where credit is due, the RAF seemed to be the only branch of any military who really warned

their people not to fuck around with this shit too much they strictly limited them to one dose every six hours which is still a lot and it could only be issued out by an officer like they weren't just carrying cargo pockets full of meth around

officers don't have like medical training and shit they were medical officers okay and that actually came with a giant warning label I mean as far Officers don't have medical training and shit. They were medical officers. Oh, okay. And that actually came with a giant warning label. I mean, as far as the 1940s were. The officer or the medicine? The medicine. I feel like they should both.

All officers should come with a warning label. Caution, we'll get you killed. Kind of like meth. At least when an officer gets you killed, it's fast, though. Now, it did not stop in Africa. Allied armies stormed across Europe. Their uppers went with them. Famed British commander Bernard Montgomery loved them so much,

he made sure his soldiers got them, saying, quote, conscious altering properties of the drug made men fight harder, and they liked it. That's just being a servant leader. That's just called, like, my soldiers are all addicted to drugs. I'm going to give it to them. That's called, I'm going to take care of you guys. Make sure you get the good shit.

I'm going to take care of you by making sure you get more drugs. Yeah. Yeah. It's a solid relationship to have with your abused spouse or whatever. Like every NCO is. Now, like, Bernard Montgomery did more than, like, just make sure that his soldiers were properly supplied with their meth that they needed for the upcoming battle because that's what this is supposed to be for. Whenever there seemed to be, like, an incidence of, like,

bad morale, like, lowering morale from a defeat, he'd mysteriously order more Benzedrine. Yeah, that's just great leadership. He's just understanding that everybody's addicted to drugs. You know what makes everybody happy? More drugs. Now, this meant during the Western Front of World War II, there's actually a very

good chance that two units clash who are both cripplingly addicted to uppers while seeing wild hallucinations, all while violently shitting themselves and also trying to get more drugs to fight the same enemy with. It's fun to think of the Battle of Bulge that way. I know that war is hell and it's generally a dirty and

nasty thing, but that just sounds fucking awful. And the soldiers became addicted to the stuff for other reasons as well. They found like Bull wrote about when he took Pervitin, he slept better. He wasn't so worried about dying. He didn't think so much about all the

friends that he lost. They effectively self-medicated for their PTSD, which is the most on-brand thing that I think we've ever talked about. What I say is we are both drinking our fourth beer. Now, what if I told you that the government's issuing of uppers to members of its armed forces

to be used in war did not end with the fall of the Third Reich or World War II? What if I told you it continued to this day? What? Small orange amphetamine pills known as Go pills

have been issued to pilots of the United States Air Force and Navy virtually ever since the 1950s now as you can imagine pumping a overworked person who is in effect flying a armed supercomputer through the air at mock speeds has led to disastrous consequences dozens of pilots have been killed due to flying under extreme fatigue and crashing into mountainsides or the ocean, along with hundreds, if not thousands, of civilians who have fallen victim to American airstrikes by pilots who targeted the wrong areas while their heads swam with the euphoric effect of sweet, sweet amphetamines. Now, civilian casualties never really seem to make the news in any impactful way because the world is grim and a horrifying place. One thing that did happen to make news

and bring the light of go pills to the world happened in 2002. It was known as the Tarnak Farm Incident. Two American F-16s piloted by officers of the Air National Guard were returning from one of their many 10-hour-long air patrols in the skies above Kandahar, Afghanistan.

They saw what looked like to them as a group of enemy fighters in the open in the middle of the street, and they were shooting at them. Now, if that just sounds ridiculous, you're right. Also, you are probably mostly sober and have slept in the last three days. They had not. Major Henry Schmidt radioed, quote, I'm rolling in in self-defense and opened fire. What do you think he shot at? Civilian.

Not quite. Livestock? That wouldn't be that tragic. What lay below them were, in fact, not enemy fighters, but soldiers of the Canadian Armed Forces' Princess Patricia's Light Infantry. The attack killed Major... I'm sorry. I don't mean to make light of this, but Princess Patricia's light infantry? Yeah, it's

actually a very storied unit of the Canadian Armed Forces. The longest sniper shot in human history was done by two of their snipers. One broke the other one's record. One while we were there. Now, the attack killed Sergeant Mark Ledger, Corporal Ainsworth Dyer, Private

Richard Green, and Private Nathan Lloyd in a matter of seconds. They were the first Canadian soldiers to die while fighting in Afghanistan. And it was by friendly fire. Yes. What the fuck? Major Schmidt and Major Umbach, the two pilots

who fired the shots, were eventually charged with negligent homicide and dodged any criminal punishment. Their defense resting heavily on the fact that their superiors had ordered them to take go pills. Holy shit. Yep. And actually, the military knows that heavy usage of these go pills

is bad because they also have no go pills that you're supposed to take afterwards so you can sleep. That was like a legit twist ending. I didn't see it coming. M. Night Shovel on that ass. Whoa, like no shit. I'm blown away right now. Yeah, I became familiar with the Tarnac Farms

which would be an episode unto itself if it was literally any longer than what I just said a couple years ago, because it did not happen that far away from where we lived in Kandahar, which brings us to our new segment, because we have segments now.

New segment, doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-doo. So I called it Questions from the Legion, because I am incredibly fucking lame. Now, if you want to ask us a question, we have done numerous Q&A episodes, and I still plan on doing those in the future, but there's a lot of smaller questions that people ask us all the time that I really wish I could answer because they're kind of funny, that I'll answer at the end of the episodes, or you'll answer at the end of the episodes, whichever.

And in order to ask us a question, simply donate $1 to our Patreon, and you can ask us something. Now, the first one is by a supporter I will just simply name Joel. And the reason why I picked this one is because you're sitting here with me. Question is,

was Rich one of the soldiers in the hooligans of Kandahar? Joel and rich have mentioned deploying uh to afghanistan together in passing and it got me wondering because i read hooligans before and i don't remember seeing her name there's a good reason for that uh yes she was there uh but we did not really know each other also rich is a pseud, so it wouldn't be in the book. Also, we did not get along very well at that time, nor did I get along with any of the hooligans of Kandahar at that time. There was a long-standing, year-long,

as in the deployment to Kandahar, feud between myself and my team and the hooligans who like to just basically be assholes all the time. I mean, I literally read a whole book about it. Yeah, no, I love them all dearly now for the most part, for the most part. But no, I'm not like Kitty or who are the other females in the book? Kitty was the only one, wasn't she? Oh, Pippi.

Oh, Pippi, duh. Oh, yeah, love Pippi. One of my very, very close friends. I actually lived with her for a little while. But no, definitely not any of those. And I wasn't mentioned because you fucking hated me, I guess. I hated the idea of you. No, I'm kidding.

We didn't know each other, really. No. And you are mentioned uh now obviously not under the name rich or by any name really knew each other about as well enough to have a rumor that we slept together before we had ever met i mean that's the doom of every woman in the yeah that was literally the most army way of knowing each other before actually knowing each other yeah Yeah. I heard I was terrible. I didn't hear

whether you were good or bad. She has mentioned the book as the army cook who had traditional French cooking experience but still struggled making army food taste good because it's army food. Because it's boil in a bag. What do you want me to do? Like we don't even

have seasonings really. Throw some dust in a bag. What do you want me to do? Like, we don't even have seasonings, really. Throw some dust in that shit. I made you guys fucking chicken pot pie from scratch and y'all fucking still were assholes. So fuck off. I don't remember that. It's alright. Never happened if I don't remember that. One of the nicest parts about

a TBI is a lot of my past is just not there anymore. So I don't remember that. Now, if you, if you want to ask us a dumb question, we can answer on air. You can sign to my DMS or hit us up on Patreon.

Speaking of Patreon, thank you for supporting the show. If you think what we do is worth a dollar, you can throw it to us there for $1 a month. You get one extra bonus episode access to our discord and a question maybe a question also other episodes come out early and you'll have access to them for five dollars and above you get two bonus episodes um a month and you get x you get a free free digital copy of the Hooligans of Kandahar. $10 you get all of that plus a sticker of your choice.

So yeah. I mean if not, the show will always be free anyway. So just maybe tell your friends and vote for us on iTunes. That'd be cool. To anybody else, thank you for listening to us. Rich, thank you for stopping by in this

creepy new room that i'm unfamiliar with anytime you offer me pizza i'll be here yeah that you know it's nice that we have like an arrangement where it's like fine whatever yell history at me just fucking feed me first yeah pizza and beer man it's life oh hey at least it's not meth you know at the end of the day we can all look at each other maybe this is an audio medium so we can't look at each other but you can look you can look longingly at your car radio and be like at least i'm not addicted to meth yeah and you know what if you are like get help yeah please do we all hope that you get better, uh, until next time. That's a horrible ending.

I'm going to end it. I'm going to end it before I, I dig any deeper holes. Hey everybody, it's Joe again. Um, I had to include this outro because I'm a hack and a fraud and I forgot to plug my own book signing.

Uh, so if you're in the Pacific Northwest and you're a fan of military sci-fi, come on down to Seattle on September 29th at 4 p.m. The Barnes & Noble is located on Pine Street. I'll be signing copies of Citizen of Earth, which will also be there for purchase. I can sign copies of The Hooligans of Kandahar you bring in, but there will be none there for purchase because of stupid publishing rules that I don't entirely understand. But you bring it in, I can sign it, which is kind of cool. Also, if you are a fan of the podcast and you purchase a copy of Citizen of Earth, I have a limited amount of stickers that I will

give out to you for free with your purchase. So I hope to see you there. And if not, thanks for listening to the show.