Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich
Norman Ohler
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich
Norman Ohler
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
The hipster-as-historian persona occasionally feels forced—Ohler characterizes Hitler as a junkie and his doctors as dealers a few too many times—but the book is an impressive work of scholarship, with more than two dozen pages of footnotes and the blessing of esteemed World War Two historians.
There is no other way to put this: Norman Ohler has written a book that is sympathetic to the Nazis.
The strengths of Ohler’s account lie not only in the rich array of rare documents he mines and the archival images he reproduces to accompany the text, but also in his character studies.
Although Ohler’s book does not fundamentally change the history of the Third Reich, it is an account that makes us look at this densely studied period rather differently.
...a revelatory work...that rare sort of book whose remarkable insight focuses on a subject that’s been overlooked, even disregarded by historians.
Ohler goes much further than claiming that methamphetamine was central to the German military effort, however. He claims that its use was universal among the civilian population of Germany, too...This sweeping generalisation about a nation of 66 to 70 million people has no basis in fact.
Ohler has a habit of pushing things too far, eschewing nuance for headlines. He proclaims Pervitin the 'favourite drug' of Germans, when it was only briefly available over the counter. He proclaims Germany a 'land of drugs,' when hard drugs were endemic elsewhere, too.
Even in translation, Ohler is an unfailingly engaging guide to all this sordid material, sketching the long history of his subject and the surprisingly widespread infiltration of all kinds of powerful stimulants into German civilian society.