Norman Ohler: Hitler, Nazis, Drugs, WW2, Blitzkrieg, LSD, MKUltra & CIA | Lex Fridman Podcast #481

- Hitler invited three young tank generals to his office, and they had a plan, which was the plan to go through the Ardennes Mountains. That was the victorious idea. So it's not the drugs, actually, that idea to go through the Ardennes Mountains. If you, if you think monocausal, you would say that's the reason. That idea was genius, and Hitler immediately understood it, because before, the plan was to attack in the north of Belgium, which is the same as World War I. It becomes a stalemate, and they fight for months, and no one really moves, and it's bloody, and nothing's happening. It's bad. But that was the only plan that they had. That's why the high command said, "No, we're not going to do it. It's stupid. " But these three tank generals, they said, "Look, if we go with the whole army through the Ardennes Mountains," and like Hitler, "Eh, this is not possible. This is like a mountain range. How can the whole German army fit through this eye of a needle," basically. And they said, "No, we can do it because everyone misunderstands what tanks can do. Tanks are not slow machines in the back that wait for the action to happen, and then support this somehow. We're going to use tanks in the front as race cars, basically. We're going to overpower the enemy. We're going to be in France before they know it. We are already behind them, but it would only work if you would reach Sedan, the border city of France, within three days and three nights, and that was only possible if you don't stop. " Suddenly, Ranke realized that his moment had come because he had the recipe how people could stay awake for three days and three nights. Before that, he was kind of an outsider, like the freak with the drug idea. Suddenly, he became... like-... "Okay, tell us, how does it work? " And he gave lectures in front of the officers, and he wrote a stimulant decree where a whole army is prescribed a drug, in this case methamphetamine, how much should be taken, and at what intervals. This became a very big thing. And then Temmler had to deliver 35 million dosages to the front lines. And then on May 10th, they took their methamphetamine and they started the surprise attack through the Ardennes Mountains.

- The following is a conversation with Norman Ohler, author of Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich. A book that investigates what role psychoactive drugs, particularly stimulants such as methamphetamine, played in the military history of World War II. It is a book that two legendary historians, Ian Kershaw and Antony Beevor, give very high praise to. Ian Kershaw describes it as, "Very well researched, serious piece of scholarship. " And Antony Beevor describes it as, "Remarkable work of research. " And it is indeed a remarkable work of research. Norman went deep into the archives using primary sources to uncover a perspective on Hitler and the Third Reich that has before this been mostly ignored by historians. He also wrote Tripped: Nazi Germany, the CIA, and the Dawn of the Psychedelic Age. And he's now working on a new book with the possible title of Stoned Sapiens, great title, looking at the history of human civilization through the lens of drugs. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description and consider subscribing to this channel. And now, dear friends, here's Norman Ohler.

Tell me the origin story of meth, methamphetamine, and Pervitin, its brand name drug version, in the context of Nazi Germany in the late 1930s. Let's start there. - I think you're right to ask about the context because without the context, it's not really understandable. So what was the situation? In the 20s, the Nazi movement basically started, and it started in Bavarian beer halls. So alcohol was the drug of choice of the early Nazi movement. The only guy that didn't drink was Hitler. He was a teetotaler, I guess you say. So that was happening in Munich. So alcohol and National Socialism are very closely connected. At the same time, in the 20s, in Berlin, there was a completely different thing going on. People were taking all kinds of drugs. This had to do, actually, with the defeat of Germany in the First World War. I mean, the context is a big context. The Versailles Treaty had the effect that the German economy was not really able to recover after the end of World War I. The Versailles Treaty was written basically by the Western victorious powers. Germany had no say in the negotiations. And I'm certainly not a German nationalist, not even a German patriot, but even I would say that the Versailles Treaty treated Germany somewhat unfairly. I mean, it laid all the blame on Germany. And, I mean, a war is a very complex thing, and the First World War to examine how it actually started is a very complex, you know, story, and there's many factors to it. But the Versailles Treaty just said it was Germany's fault, and then Germany had to do all these payments to the allies. It couldn't create a new economy. It couldn't have a new army. So it was — the economy really went down. Everything in Berlin was cheap, and the people were also using substances that were very cheap in huge quantities. So while in Bavaria, they were drinking alcohol, and alcohol in the brain, stimulates behavior, group behavior: us against them. You can actually examine this. A neuroscientist would know exactly how this works. While in Berlin, the drugs that were used were morphine. There was cocaine, there was mescaline, there was ether. So people were experimenting. Everyone developed a different mindset. It was all... you know, you didn't behave in a way that some kind of authority would like you to behave in, because the authority had just lost the First World War and there was no real authority in Berlin. People were doing whatever they wanted to do, and they were intoxicating themselves in the way they wanted to do it. So the population, in a way, if you just look at Munich and Berlin, was growing apart. Like, there were the alcohol people in Munich, the Nazis, and then there were these weird, diverse, LGBTQ, whatever kind of scene in Berlin. Like, actresses sniffing ether in the morning and then making crazy moves. - Could you speak to the nature of the motivation of the drug use in Berlin at the time? Was it rebellion? Was it a way to deal with the difficult economic depression? Was it just the natural thing that young people do to explore themselves, to understand the world, to develop their culture? Like, what do we understand about drug use there? - All of these factors come together. But it was the first time in modern history, in Germany at least, that there was no emperor. Like, before that, Kaiser Wilhelm, everything was very strict, you know? You had to... you couldn't go crazy, you know, as a young person. You couldn't be a young person. But now in the Weimar Republic in the '20s, you could. No one stopped you, so people went crazy. That's what made Berlin into the city that it still somehow is. And maybe later we talk about contemporary Berlin. It kind of... it's still has that vibe, you know? That's why people still come to Berlin. Drugs are cheap, you can move however you want, there's no authority. So that created a rift between the Nazis in Munich, and they always hated Berlin and what was going on in Berlin. So, for example, Goebbels, the later propaganda minister, he called the situation in Berlin the hated asphalt reality of Berlin. He hated that. And when the Nazis then were able to take power in 1933, one of the first things they did was to really prosecute people who were taking drugs, because they wanted to, you know, bring everyone back into the fold. And I think that's... You asked what was the reason for people taking so many drugs. They were accessible, they were cheap, but I think the most important thing is that they let you find yourself maybe, or lose yourself, you know? Also possible, you know? - Can we also talk about that here, because you have a connection to this place, Berlin, and this part of the world. Can you just briefly speak to that so we can contextualize even deeper the personal aspect of this? Because you understand the music of the people, the land, its history. There's something you can only really understand if you've been there and you have taken it in. And we'll return to this topic in multiple contexts, but in this particular way, as one human being who writes about this place, what's your own story? - I grew up in West Germany, and this was during the World War. And Berlin, the walled-in city, was always like a big fascination. There was a wall, there was actually a wall in the city preventing people to move into another part. And I was from the West, fortunate enough to be from the free West, so I could travel to Berlin and I could leave. I could look at it, and I always loved Berlin. I thought it was a very vibey place. And then when the wall came down, I was still in school but I immediately got into the car of my parents and drove there. I wanted to see how it came down. And then Berlin really, in the '90s, became a place that was very attractive to me and I moved there then in the '90s. I was first living in New York. I wrote my first novel in New York, and I loved New York before Giuliani became mayor. It was... He ruined the city. Before that, it was not gentrified. Or let's say he introduced gentrification, and gentrification is a big topic. I still lived in the ungentrified New York City for like 300 bucks a month rent, and everyone I knew was an artist. - You loved the diversity of it? - Yeah, I loved it. I wrote my first novel there. I took LSD for the first time in Downtown Manhattan on a Saturday night. - So you're kind of like a German Kerouac type character, but moved a few decades forward. - I wouldn't compare myself to another writer, but I think Kerouac is pretty cool. But he's an amphetamine writer. "On the Road" was apparently written in two weeks on amphetamines. And, but it's good. Amphetamines are not bad per se. We can also talk about these so-called bad drugs, you know, because basically they're neutral. But let's not lose the thread. - Yes. New York, Berlin- - Even though New York was- - Yes. - Oh, yeah. And then I was in New York. I was in a health food store, one of the first. Like, there weren't health food stores back then a lot, but there was one on First Avenue. And suddenly there was an announcement, which was unusual in the health food store. I think it was called Prana, Prana Foods. And the announcement was that Kurt Cobain had just shot himself. It was like... and I had been actually, and still am, a Nirvana fan. I've seen one of the last concerts of Nirvana in New York City, and it was amazing. But he killed himself. And the next day, I received a music cassette from a friend of mine from Berlin with electronic music, and I realized that there had been a paradigm shift, obviously. Rock music with the hero on stage was dead. Now it was, you know, dance, electronic music, which a lot of people today think it's kind of simplistic music form, but it's actually a very highly intelligent music form. At least it was in the '90s. People were really experimenting with that music. That was the new music. That was actually the reason I moved to Berlin. I really decided I'd leave New York City. I'm going to move to Berlin. And then in Berlin, to answer your question, I fell in love with something that probably reminded me of the '20s, even though I wasn't there in the '20s. That really... The city was very open. The wall had just... was still, you know... I mean, it's a few years later, but still, the wall, it felt like it just came down. There was... Germany was... Berlin was not yet the capital of Germany. That was still in Bonn. So Berlin was a very cheap, and cultural, and crazy city, probably a bit like in the '20s, actually. And that's how I fell in love with it, became interested in this electronic scene. I mean, I visited many dance venues then, so-called clubs. - Yeah, it's one of the hubs in the world of electronic music. - They claim that techno was kind of invented in Berlin, but it also comes from Detroit. So Detroit and Berlin are like the techno hubs, I would say. - Yeah, electronic music is a soundtrack for some of the most interesting experiences this earth has ever created, right? Just it gets people together in some interesting ways. So it's not just the music itself, it's the experiences that the music enables. - Well, in Germany, we had a situation that the wall actually kept people apart. People didn't know each other. But because the wall came down, people suddenly met in abandoned buildings in the center of Berlin, which had been owned by the socialist state of East Germany. The most famous club, Tresor... Tresor means, like, vault. It was the big vault with the big doors, so that's where Tresor was, the club.

- It's so funny that the echo 100 years later, Berlin had all these left-wing partiers, young people using drugs, and then Munich with the beer, and then that's where Hitler came out. So is that what we're supposed to imagine in the early days of the Nazi party when Hitler's giving the speeches to just a handful of folks, they're all drunk? - Well, it is a fact that the movement came out of the Bürgerbräukeller. It's a certain restaurant pub in Munich, and that was not only a beer hall, that was also a political venue. And it was a right-wing venue. It was for right-wing populists. People like communists wouldn't use it, even though communists are in many ways quite similar to the right wing, especially back then. But it was used by right-wingers, and Hitler didn't mind because people who are drunk are more susceptible to right-wing populism, I would claim now here, and Hitler would agree. So he did not think it was bad that these people were a bit drunk, or maybe even very drunk, because if you're drunk you also get aggressive against others. He could play with that, you know? - So drunk, aggressive towards others, but drunk in a group. - It constitutes the group also... if everyone is on the same alcohol level. You can just go to Oktoberfest in Munich, which is not a political thing, but everyone, you know, you can kind of sense how it originated. And actually, the first time the Nazis tried to grab power was the so-called Beer Hall Putsch. I mean, that's a historical event. It took place in 1923, and it was after a drunk night where they suddenly decided, "Now we're going to do it. " So they came out of the Bürgerbräukeller, and they were all drunk except Hitler, and they just tried to overtake the Munich government, and they miserably failed because it was just a stupid drunk idea. They were like, "Yeah, let's just do it. " And the Bavaria police, quite sober that day, they just, you know, shot them to the ground. Hitler was almost killed. He just jumped behind his bodyguard. Göring, during the Beer Hall Putsch was wounded in his stomach with a, I think, a gunshot. That's why he became a morphine addict. So this Beer Hall Putsch in '23 had severe effects. Also, they were sentenced to prison, and Hitler wrote Mein Kampf in prison. - All these little events come together. It's so interesting that for them it was just life, but now we look back at these critical moments in history that turned the tides of human civilization, right? So Hitler could have died there, and these characters, Göring, that became larger than life— that influenced the lives and the deaths and the suffering of millions, all... First of all, it could have been stopped then, and whatever that means when you look back at history. But all those are just human beings developing their ideas, growing, developing groups, developing ideologies, and using drugs or drinking. - I mean, that's why I thought it's interesting, for example, to examine Hitler's drug use. When I announced that to a historian while I was doing research, he helped me a lot with methamphetamine and the army, a proper medicine historian from the University of Ulm. And then I said, "Now I'm interested in Hitler. " He said, "No, don't. This is not interesting. This is not serious... His, his... "This is not serious history. " But it's... You know, even Hitler was a person, you know? And if you understand, for example, the substance abuse of a person, of course you understand more about that person. And historians never had that idea before. Kershaw, for example, who is really a great... He's very knowledgeable about National Socialism. Like many British historians, they always know more about German history than the German historians, but Kershaw really does. I think he's, he's really good. But in his biography of Hitler, he just writes one sentence like, "And then he had a crazy doctor called Morell who gave him dubious medications and drugs," and he stops there, and then he goes on to describe whatever. - Yeah, we should say that Ian Kershaw is widely considered to be probably one of the greatest biographers of Hitler. - I think he wrote the best biography of Hitler. - Which is so important. Your work is really important because it opens a whole new perspective on the lives of the individuals and the machinery of the

Nazi military that historians haven't looked at. It's so interesting that you can unlock those perspectives. And that's the underlying really, the foundation of our conversation today and of your work, is there are layers to this thing. You can look at the tactics of war and the strategic level of war, the operational level of war. You could look at the human suffering of war, the love stories. You could look at the hate, the psychology of propaganda, or you could look at the individual things, substances consumed by the individuals that make up the Nazi Party leadership and the soldiers. And all those are critically important to understand the war, right? And this piece of drug use and supplement use have been ignored by historians. - That was very surprising to me, you know. I didn't know this myself. I never planned to write this book. It kind of happened to me. And I decided to team up with the leading German historian on National Socialism, Hans Mommsen, who has passed away by now. He was quite old, but quite ready to be my mentor for this book, "Blitzed. " And he was maybe even shocked when I came back from the military archive of Germany with a lot of copies, all relating to the systematic drug use of the German army, including an experiment done by the Navy, who had always pretended to be the clean, in German we say Waffengattung, weapon. Like you have the Army, you have the Air Force, you have the Navy, you have... And in Germany they had the SS. And the Navy always pretended to be like, "We weren't really Nazis. We were like," you know, the German Navy. We had our ethics code. " But I found in the archive that the Navy did human experiments in the concentration camp of Sachsenhausen, trying to find a new wonder drug, because they had new, what they called "wonder weapons" or what Hitler called "wonder weapons. " He always talked about these wonder weapons. Wonder weapons were basically mini submarines. One or two people would go in, staying underwater for up to a week and torpedoing, you know, Allied ships. So the Navy was trying to develop a drug that would keep you awake and combat-ready for seven days and seven nights without sleep and without, you know, burning out. Very difficult to find. So they hired a penalty unit in the concentration camp. They hired... The SS had a so-called "shoe-walking unit. " It was a penalty unit within the concentration camp, testing shoe soles for the German shoe industry, walking for days. And then they would measure how the soles, you know, kept up in the stress. And they had different layers in the concentration camp, like all the surfaces the German soldiers would touch when they conquered Europe. So this is a very elaborate thing. If you go to the concentration camp today, it's a museum. You can still see that running track of the shoe runners unit. So the Navy hired the shoe runners unit from the SS, paid them money, and then gave them different kinds of drug combinations, methamphetamine combined with cocaine and, you know, chewing gum and all kinds of things. So this is a big thing. And there's documents to it. And Mommsen, who knew everything about National Socialism, the old, you know, authority. And I'm like the young... I didn't study history. I just, you know, I just try to make sense, you know. But I present him all these documents. He's reading like from this Pill Patrol and he said, "Wow. " He said, "We historians, we never do drugs. We don't understand drugs. This, we missed this. " So he was very clear that we missed this. And he said this is actually the missing link that historians did not have, especially to explain Hitler's degeneration as a leader. He made very good decisions, good in meaning militarily effective decisions in the beginning of the war, and very bad decisions for the German war effort towards the end. And you can link that to drugs. You can explain a lot of Hitler through the drugs, but you can also look at this point that historians so far had not been able to figure out basically. What happened to Hitler? Why did he get crazy? He was crazy, but so bad as a leader? Because he was very effective for a long time, and then there's this moment where it turns. - Yeah, the degeneration of decision-making. Psychology, behavior, all of that. You cannot understand that fully without understanding his drug use. And we should also say that some of the historians you mentioned, Ian Kershaw and Anthony Beevor, these legends of history, they all gave you compliments. So, Kershaw said that, "Your work is very good, extremely interesting, and a serious piece of well-researched history. " Anthony Beevor said that it's a remarkable work of research. So, props to them. You have received a bunch of criticism from historians, but you've also received, obviously, a lot of props. I mean, Kershaw's, the legendary historian of Hitler, complimenting how deep your work is. That must feel good.

Maybe this is a good moment to also, since we're talking about historians, to address some of the criticism. So, Richard Evans was also a great historian, has been one of the bigger critics. He said that your work is crass and dangerously inaccurate, and is morally and politically dangerous. I think that's grounded in the idea that if you say that, "Well, all the Nazi forces and Hitler were on drugs, so therefore their evil can be... They're not really evil. It's just accountability can be removed because they were using drugs. " - Right. - And also another criticism of his, which I also understand and probably can steelman, is if you look too much through the singular lens of drugs, you can overemphasize it. You know, you can overemphasize how important it was as an explainer of the effectiveness of Blitzkrieg, for example. Because there is some... I mean, I should say there is something really compelling about a singular theory that explains everything, and you can fall in love with it too much as an explainer. So, can you steelman his criticism or a criticism you received, and also argue against it? - I think he's absolutely right that you shouldn't argue in a monacausal way. And this is actually what Mommsen also said to me, because, of course, I was enthusiastic about all my drug findings. And he said, "Don't argue in a monacausal way, especially the war. " - There's a lot of variables, a lot of factors, a lot of things going on. - Yeah. So that sentence of his, "Don't argue in a monacausal way," that always stayed with me. And I think that, I didn't deviate from that path actually. But it was still interesting that Evans thought that I put too much emphasis on the drugs. I think it's a totally fine, you know, opinion. I would disagree. Otherwise, I wouldn't have written the book. What I can state here is that I invented nothing. In all of my three non-fiction books, nothing is invented. If you are a good writer, and I trained as a novelist, for me, it was also very unusual to write a non-fiction book. I wanted to write a novel about Nazis and drugs. My publisher said, "No, this is... " And he looked at the, you know, at the facts. He said, "Someone has to write the facts. " So I said, "But non-fiction books are boring. " He said, "Not necessarily. Maybe you can find a way to write it with your novelistic style, but based 100% on the facts. " And that is like... In German we say "Spagat. " How do you say that? A split, like when you do with your legs, like... It's hard, you know? Because with a very fluent, sophisticated language, you can easily overpower the reader. If I describe how the German guys, 19-year-old guys took the meth and went into the tank, and the meth started kicking in, five guys on meth after like one hour of ride into France, you can write that in a powerful way that if you are the reader, you would think, "Yeah. I mean, the Blitzkrieg without meth is unthinkable. " - There is a bit of a... Man, I wish I found that kind of feeling for historians, right? Like, "How did I miss this piece? " So some historians, like great historians like Kershaw, obviously, see, they kind of give you a, like a slow clap, applaud. And some historians are a little bit skeptical, like, "This is a little too good. " So totally understandable. And... - Also, they have different techniques to write texts like this. I used a totally different technique. And I have an apparatus, so it really feels like it could be an academic work. But still, it's written in a way that it kind of overpowers. It, it kind of colonializes the story in a weird way. I never thought about it like that. But while I was writing it, I was just trying to write it as well as I could. I didn't think about these questions we're talking about now. I just... I got carried away, obviously, but I never left the area of facts. - Yes. So we should talk about your process. That's also super fascinating. You went to the archives. sources. What's that take? What does it feel? What does it smell like? What does it look entail? How much text is there? What language is it in? What's the process there? - I never thought of going to the archives. And my girlfriend at the time, she said, "You have to go to the archives. " And she's an academic. So she... And I was like, "Yeah, okay. I'll go. " "I'm fine. I'll check it out. " And then when I met a historian, he claims that without methamphetamine, there would be no Blitzkrieg, no victory of Germany. Like he's mono-causal. But he was also extremely helpful to me, and he's an academic. He, he gave me the signatures, it's called in German, where you find stuff in the archives. Signature is like... Then it says like H2/538, something like this. And these were the files of Professor Ranke. And Professor Ranke was... He was the head of the Institute for Army Physiology. His job was to improve the performance of the soldier. And all of his stuff was filed in a certain place in the military archives, which in Germany is in Freiburg, in the south, in a small town, not in Berlin. Because Germany is a bit of a decentralized country. We don't want to put everything into Berlin again like the Nazis did. We try to avoid our mistakes. So the military archive is in Freiburg, and I went there. And because I had this signature, immediately I got original documents that were all relating to my research. I had the original. - What does it look like? Is it sheets of paper? - Yeah, it's like- - Like, it's not scanned, it's- - Well, it's different things. The guy who did the meth into the army, Professor Ranke. He was writing a war diary. That's what the name was, War Diaries. So every day he would write it by hand. So this war diary was given to me. - So you're reading that? So it's like dated? You have a date- - Yeah -... the diary? - It was a bit funny with him because he took a lot of meth himself because he thought it was great. He just thought it increases your performance. By now, we know a little bit more that methamphetamine is not so healthy. Because you get used to it and you burn out, you get depressed, then you take more. Big problem. And he became depressed and burnt out, and he didn't realize it's because of the meth that he's describing to the whole German army. He made a convincing case. I can explain that in detail how that actually happened. But just to have his war diary was great, and then he would also type letters writing to the Company of Temmler, how fast they could produce stuff in which time. So you have all these original documents. You have like 500 documents and he writes reports, like, what happened in this battle on methamphetamine. There's a lot of stuff you can find in the archives if you find them. But, the tricky thing is that you can only look. You kind of look at a so-called find book. In the find book you cannot type in "drugs. " It wouldn't find anything because at the time when they were taking all the notes from this doctor, his war diary, everything, they didn't put the label "drugs" there. They put the label his name, his position, World War II, French campaign, stuff like that. Because at the time they didn't know that I would at one point come and look for drugs in that. But he was the drug guy, but also they didn't realize he was the drug guy. No one realized that So it's not easy to find stuff in the archives. The archives you go to, it's a very Kafkaesque experience. You go into this building, and you have to understand the rules and you will never fully understand what's going on. Also, the archivists, they don't really know what's going on because there are so many documents. No one's read them all, you know? No one knows. History is just kind of lying there, somehow organized, somehow stored. - I mean, it does sound like a very Kafkaesque- - It's- -... thing. - But it's great if you find something, but you can also sit there for a week and not find anything. - So what was the process for you? You're just reading, open-minded, trying to see if there's some truth here to be discovered? - Well, I have a friend. He's a DJ, and we talked about Berlin. We'll probably talk about it more, and he takes a lot of drugs and he knows his Let's put it that way, he knows his drugs. And one day he said to me when I was trying to figure out what I would write about next, he said, "The Nazis took a lot of drugs. You should write about that. " And I said, "The Nazis didn't take drugs," because, you know, when you grow up in Germany, you get educated about the Nazis quite intensely, especially in West Germany. They teach you everything, but they don't teach you drugs. Now they do, maybe, you know. But it was not known, so the Nazis always had this aura of being law and order. No drugs, of course. No chaos. Everything... My grandfather, he was a Nazi, always said, "Well, at least there was discipline in the country. There was law and order. " So this doesn't match with drugs, you know? - You know, I should also say I think that's the experience for a lot of people. Before reading your book, I had the same kind of feeling, that the Nazi ideology was all about law and order and purity, and surely they would not be doing drugs. So this really blew my mind. I think I wasn't quite ready, similar to Richard Evans. This is a big, like, okay, a narrative transforming into a deeper, more complicated understanding what Nazi forces and the Hitler inner circle actually looked like. - That's why I didn't believe Alex. - Always take the DJ, the drug expert, with a grain of salt. - I didn't believe him, but I said, "It's a great topic. Maybe I could invent it. " He said, "No, we don't invent this. This is real. " And I said, "How do you know? " And he said, "I have a friend. " And I know this guy by now. I met him. He's an antique dealer in Berlin, and he had bought an old medicine chest in an old Berlin apartment. This was in 2010. And he found Pervitin tablets inside, which were the methamphetamine product that was marketed in Germany in the late '30s. And this guy, the antique dealer, took some tablets and they were quite old, you know, 70 years old, but they still had an effect on him. I later asked him, and he said, "Well, we took them for about a month. It was the greatest month we ever had. We had so much fun. We were so productive. " 'Cause that methamphetamine back then was also a quality product. It was not crystal meth made in a trailer lab, you know? - So this is many decades later. - They were still potent. - Especially, Alex convinced me because Alex has a high tolerance and he said, "Okay, they still had some. " So I said to him, "Can I have some also? " I took one and he's like, "And this was... We were standing in my writing tower, which is at the river in Berlin, and he was like, 'I took one, and I could feel something. Then I took another one,' and then it's, you know, 'I could feel more. ' And then I took a third one. Typical Alex, he would take three, you know. Instead of just taking one, he took three methamphetamine tablets from the 40s. And he said, "And then I felt like... " And he looked at the river. There was a big cargo ship going by, and he said, "I felt like this ship. " Suddenly there was this "Shoop" he said in German, like a motion that was like energy that was grabbing me, and I felt so powerful. And he told me this, and I was like, "Wow! " This is like... And I Googled, "Methamphetamine, Nazi Germany. " This was in 2010. And there was this one professor at the University in Ulm who said, "The Blitzkrieg was only possible because of methamphetamine. " So I called up this guy and he said, "Sure, I'll meet you. " And then he gave me the signature for the archive. Then I went to the archive, and then I really started to do my own research. Then I went to different archives, and I tried to find everything on Nazis and drugs. And that came... Everything is in the book. So that crazy meeting with Alex in my writing tower, that kind of got me on this research journey. - It makes me wonder what other mysteries like that are in the archives. Do you think there's stuff like that in there that we deeply don't understand? I mean about, for example, there's a bunch of mysteries that we think we understand maybe about the concentration camps, maybe about the Eastern Front, the interplay between Stalin and Hitler. Maybe about Britain that could be discovered in the letters, in the data that were completely missing. - I think so. And I think that also there are archives that are not open. Let's say the Vatican archive. Some secret archives that some very powerful structures have, structures that we might not even know, you know, now off the top of our head, which still have a huge influence. So I think that human history is quite different from what most historians write. I think that's just one version. I think there are several versions, and I think that it goes much deeper and is much more interesting. So I guess this history is a very active thing, which I also didn't know. You know, I was writing historical non-fiction book, and I suddenly realized that this is like a shark pool because history defines the future or is very connected. Our history teacher always said, "If we don't know where we come from, we cannot know where we go. " And that is... That is, I think, true. That is what I now really am interested in for my next book. I'm trying to really understand human history. And obviously, I'm not the first. There are a few, you know, alternative historians that go like... Because you have to go back in time quite a bit, and then it's not easy to write about it, but it's very interesting to think about. And I would love to find the truth on Atlantis, which I don't believe in, actually, and we can also talk about that. But maybe there's an archive where we can actually see that they had this king ruling. I don't think this could be found, but, I think we can still also find a lot of documents, but I think especially in closed archives. So we won't find them. - You said a lot of really interesting things. It's so important to have people like you that do the daring work of going to the archives, the sources, the evidence and trying to find a thing that completely transforms history as we thought we understood it. That's revisionist history at its best. Revisionist history has a sort of negative connotation sometimes because you go to conspiratorial land without much evidence, and you're just being a rebel for rebels' sake. But when you ground it in data, and dare to challenge the historical narrative, that's really powerful. So, I should also mention that we've been just setting, laying out the context. - Yeah. We're still in the context phase. - In context phase. And for the next 10 hours, and maybe for the rest of our lives, we will be continuing just setting the context. But let us dare return to the original question of

Pervitin. How did that come about? Take me to 1930s Nazi Germany. The Munich and the Berlin tension that we all laid out beautifully. How did Pervitin come into the picture? - Well, the Nazis managed to grab power on January 30th, 1933, and they immediately became an anti-drug regime. That is important to them because the only intoxication they allow from now on in Germany is the Nazi intoxication; it's the ideological intoxication. So they quickly install concentration camps, which were, at the time, run by the SA, not the SS. The SS takes over later and turns the concentration camps into an industry. The first SA concentration camps were in cellars in Berlin or in the countryside. And some of the first people that landed in these cellars and were disciplined were drug users. Also, anti-Semitic policies were very important from day one for the Nazis, like they. Anti-Semitism is the defining pillar of National Socialism. of it, really. They quickly They connected anti-drug policies with anti-Semitic policies. They claimed the Jews in Germany, the German Jews were taking more drugs than the non-Jewish Germans. And National Socialism's goal was to purify the German body. So they saw the whole Volk, the country, the people, as one body, and that has to be purified. So all Jews are poison. But not only Jews, everyone who thinks differently. Communists are also poison. Jews are the worst poison, but, you know, a lot of... Yeah, and then you create this clean body. And obviously drugs have no position in that. If you're addicted to drugs, that's weak, you know, you're a morphinist. You use cocaine, that's all degenerate, that's Jewish. Jewish doctors are all morphinists, you know? So Nazi Germany and Hitler was the shining example of the person who doesn't take drugs. He was, he didn't have a private life, he didn't even have a body. He just led the Volksbody, you know? So Hitler was not putting any poisons into him. He stopped smoking cigarettes in the '20s already. He never touched alcohol. - Vegetarian. -... vegetarian, no caffeine even. So he was... That's what he was in the beginning. The story, of course, changes at a certain point in time, but he started as this. - As far as you understand, that's true? The beginning? - Yeah, I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure that this is true. Also, vegetarianism was a right-wing thing in Germany. It was an elitist thing. If you were a vegetarian, you had a higher frequency, which kind of gave you superiority over, let's say, these workers who need to eat the sausage so you can, you know, do the work. Like Wagner, the composer, he was vegetarian. Hitler was impressed by Wagner. So, vegetarianism, all... I think that's all true. I think Hitler was like that. And... And it's hard to be like that actually, and I think that gave him an attraction inside the movement to all drunk, you know, drunkards and Goering using morphine all the time because of his pain, he got used to morphine, so they were... The movement wasn't like this, but he was like this. So he was, He symbolized, but he symbolized that whole approach of cleanliness, like purity. So then how does methamphetamine come into the picture? It's totally absurd. That's why I thought it was fun researching this, because it doesn't make sense, you know? And, you know, they use this simple trick by, you know, defining what is an illegal drug and what is not. Because drugs don't have it written on them, "This is an illegal, dangerous drug. " You know, drugs are basically neutral. These are molecules, you know? So the methamphetamine molecule was found in a Berlin-based company called the Temmler Company. And the head of Temmler, he was very upset with the Olympics in 1936 because an Afro-American athlete, Jesse Owens, was running faster than German superheroes with the best genes, you know? How can this be? So they thought that he was on something, because he won, I think, five gold medals. It was ridiculous. This was supposed to be Germany's games, you know, and then the Afro-American runs better than the Aryan ubermensch. So the only explanation is he took a drug. He probably took Benzedrine, which was illegal amphetamine, and there were also no doping checks at the Olympics. And if you're taking amphetamine, of course, you can run a bit faster maybe when it kicks in. That this has to do with the immense release of dopamine in the brain. But it was never proven that Owens used any type of drugs, but the head of the Temmler Company, he said, "We have to prevent this. We have to invent a better amphetamine. We have to make a German amphetamine that is stronger than the American Benzedrine. " So his main chemist, Fritz Hauschild, he did research and found that in 1917, in Tokyo, a Japanese chemist had made methamphetamine, and he remade that methamphetamine and they tested it among themselves, the chemists in the Berlin pharmaceutical lab, and they loved it. They made pure methamphetamine, and, you know, they had a really good time, and they were more active, they were talkative. That's what happens with methamphetamine. So the company really thought this is a great product, and they turned it into a product. They went to the patent bureaucracy and got the patent for methamphetamine, and then it quite quickly came onto the market. It was labeled as Pervitin, which is a great name, because it has like the perverse already in it. And this Pervitin was available in any pharmacy, so you didn't need a prescription. A child could go and buy 10 packs of pure methamphetamine. So methamphetamine was also very cheap, so it became quite popular because people, you know, talked about it. - Did they understand the side effects and negative effects of methamphetamine? Did they care? - They didn't really know what it was. I mean, I also went to the archive of that company also, of course. So they were like, "What is it good for? " Like, "I just feel great when I take it and I have more energy," and they didn't know if that could be a product. It was 1937, '38 when they were discovering it. - But also, how did they think about the fact that this is a drug? - Well, they called it a performance enhancer. - Got it. - Is drinking coffee in the morning a drug? I mean, it is a drug, but we don't think of it as a drug, you know. It's legal. And this was kind of how meth was treated in Germany. It was normal to use it. Like, you had a very important business meeting, of course, you would take a Pervitin. There's a movie by Billy Wilder called 1, 2, 3, a very good movie, and he shows... the American executive... The movie was set right after the end of the Second World War. So we see, I think it's a Coca-Cola executive, American, and he says to his secretary, "How should I have the morning coffee? I think half a Pervitin. " So Pervitin was normal, it wasn't stigmatized. It was not the American "just say no" propaganda, where your teeth fall out and... I mean, it was a German quality product, people liked it. Of course, they did tests at universities. But most of them were quite positive. It reduces your fear. Today, we might, you know, look for different things, but this was also a performance-driven, totalitarian society moving towards war. So if someone takes Pervitin and says in the clinical tests at university, "I have- I'm not afraid of anything anymore. " So that's positive. That's actually what got the guy who worked for the German army interested, because he read university reports. Like I also saw all of these reports. They were also in the military archive. So he's like, "Okay, you're not afraid anymore if you take methamphetamine. You don't need to sleep anymore. eat so much, 'cause your appetite is lowered. " Like, this is perfect for a soldier. Negative effects only became public in 1940, when the first Pervitin opponent, he was actually a relative of Albert Speer, Hitler's architect, and later armament minister. He was this Speer psychologist. He was the first one who said, "Wait a minute. First of all, methamphetamine is against the Nazi ideology, because now we're all taking a drug to be high performers. We have to be high performers without a drug. " And he also said, "You know this- the obvious, this is gonna make you addicted," et cetera. "This will, you know, create a tolerance. " So only then the first negative reports came out. Before that, what Temmler did and then what the universities did, they all thought methamphetamine is really good. - So what was the process of convincing the German military, the Wehrmacht army, to use it at scale? - Well, Professor Ranke was employed by the army, so it was his job to find things that would improve the performance of the German soldier. I always imagined him like a James Bond character, like Q, who develops gadgets and stuff, because he also developed gadgets. So he was quite a... you know, he was an academic, but he was also a soldier, you know? He was employed, but he was basically running this institute, examining it. And he was so convinced that Pervitin is the answer to his question: how to beat the main opponent of the German soldier. And that was not the British soldier, not the French soldier, not the Russian soldier. That was fatigue. He had been looking for a way to keep a soldier awake longer. So when he read these reports from universities, he did his own tests in the military academy with young medical officers. They came together at 8:00 PM in the evening, and then they received either methamphetamine, caffeine pill, or a placebo, or Benzedrine. They had different experiments, and he always concluded at the end, like they started at 8:00 PM and at 10:00 AM in the morning, one time he notes, the Pervitin people still want to go out and party, while the caffeine guys are sleeping on the bench. You know, it was clear that Pervitin is the strongest. It gives you the most energy, lets you work for the longest time. So he was convinced, but his superior, the Surgeon General of the German army, was an old school dude, and he didn't even react to these. Ranke would write letters, "We have to use this synthetic drug in the next campaign," which was against Poland, which he knew about. And because Pervitin was quite known in the civil society, people were using it already. So he even said, "A lot of soldiers will just take it with them, and we should control that. " "We should make it an official drug. " But the Surgeon General didn't understand. He didn't reply. So Germany attacked Poland without clear regulatory system on methamphetamine, and indeed, a lot of soldiers used it. And what Ranke then did was he requested from all the medical officers in the field in Poland. The war was over after a few weeks. But the German army was occupying Poland. He said, "Send me all reports, and tell me: Did your people take Pervitin and what were the effects? " And he collected all these reports, which are also studied in the military archive, and he came to the conclusion, "This is a really good fighting drug. " And it probably is, because people are still using it today. Methamphetamine is still being used. And Ranke discovered this. He had everything in front of him. And Poland was beaten, and then Hitler wanted to attack the West. And the West was a different story than Poland, because the West was the world empire of Great Britain combined with "La Grande Armée," the strongest army in the world, the French army. These two combined, you know, how can you win that? Poland, they could overpower. They had, you know, a better army than Poland. But is the German Wehrmacht really better than both of these armies combined? His officers didn't think so. High Command said, "No, we're not going to attack the West. We're going to lose. " And Hitler was fanatic about it, he really wanted to attack. They were planning a coup against him in November 1939 just to prevent him ordering the attack on the West, because it would have been a catastrophe for Germany. Because they really cared, you know? If you're High Command, you don't want to start a war that you're going to lose, you know? Very bad.

- Can you just briefly give a sense of, do you think this is genius or insanity on Hitler's part to think that he can take on probably what's perceived to be the most powerful military in the world, which is the French military, or at least in Europe? - I think his hatred for the French was very, very deep. He really, he really wanted to go to war with them. It was an ideological, irrational decision. That's why he was not... He didn't hate the empire. He kind of looked down, he admired it and looked down on-- - You mean the British Empire? - But the French he really hated, and France had been the "Erbfeind," the genetic enemy of the German people, at least right-wingers would say so. There had been two wars. The first one Germany had won, then the First World War, Germany had lost. So Hitler wanted to kind of revenge and also stop the Treaty of Versailles. So he really needed to attack the West, at least in his mindset. But it was an irrational decision, and that's why High "No, we're not going to do it," basically. And Hitler's position at the time was not that he could do anything he wanted. I mean, high command is still a high command of the German Wehrmacht. That's a very old, you know, it's a tradition. It's... They, they do whatever they want, you know? But also, they have to obey Hitler's orders. So it's a power struggle, basically. But to invade France was a totally stupid idea, but it changed in the morning. On the morning of February 17th, 1940, Hitler invited three young tank generals to his office, and they had a plan, which was the plan to go through the Ardennes Mountains. That was the victorious idea. So it's not the drugs. Actually, that idea to go through the Ardennes Mountain, if you think monocausal, you would say that's the reason. That idea was genius, and Hitler immediately understood it because before, the plan was to attack in the north of Belgium, which is the same as World War I. You... It becomes a stalemate and they fight for months, and no one really moves, and it's bloody, and nothing's happening. It's a bad... But that was the only plan that they had. That's why the high command said, "No, we're not going to do it. It's stupid. " But these three tank generals, they had kind of somehow they were able to sneak into Hitler's office, and they said, "Look, if we go with the whole army through the Ardennes Mountains," and like Hitler, "Eh, this is not possible. This is like a mountain range. How can the whole German army fit through this eye of a needle, basically? " And they said, "No, we can do it because everyone misunderstands what tanks can do. Tanks are not slow machines in the back that kind of wait for the action to happen and then, you know, I don't know, support it somehow. We're going to use tanks in the front as race cars, basically. We're gonna overpower the enemy. We're gonna be in France before the French, who are stationed all with the British in northern Belgium and also on the Maginot Line, but not really in the Ardennes Mountains. That was hardly fortified because no one could imagine that Germany would go through there. And before they know it, we are already behind them, basically. We are already in France, and they're still hanging out in northern Belgium because it takes quite a while, you know, to travel. This was a different time also. So he was convinced, and he then ordered the attack. The attack would happen, but it would only work if you would reach Sedan, the border city of France, within three days and three nights. So the whole army, or at least, you know, the avant-garde of the machinery, had to be like a big part of the army, had to be in Sedan after three days and three nights. And that was only possible if you don't stop. And that was the problem. The sleep suddenly became a huge problem, and Hitler said, "When I was fighting in World War I, of course I could stay awake for a week. I'm a German. " You know, even though he's not even German, he's Austrian. But that was a problem. Suddenly Ranke realized that his moment had come because he had the recipe of how people could stay awake for three days and three nights. So Ranke suddenly became... Before that, he was kind of an outsider, a freak with a drug idea. Suddenly, he became, "Okay, tell us, how does it work? " And he gave lectures in front of the officers, and he wrote a stimulant decree where a whole army is prescribed a drug, in this case, methamphetamine. "How much should be taken? At what intervals? What are the side effects? " This became a very big thing. And then Temmler had to deliver 35 million dosages to the front lines, which were... No, not the front yet. They were stationed in the west of Germany. Then on May 10th, they took their methamphetamine, and they started the surprise attack through the Ardennes Mountains. - So the 35 million dosages for the French campaign. I mean, we could probably talk for many hours about this particular campaign, because it is, I think, it's fair to say, the most successful military campaign from the German side. - Ended with a big mistake, Dunkirk. - It was brilliant up until that point. That is the turning point. That was the first big mistake Hitler made, and it also had to do with drugs. - We'll talk about it, but let's just linger on this three days. - Right. - We should also mention that's where Blitzkrieg really shined. So it wasn't just the tanks, it was the infantry, it was the aircraft moving very fast behind the French lines. I mean, what can you speak to just the execution of that campaign and the role of drugs in it? And we should say it's a really bold strategic decision to use meth. I mean, it's a big risk. There are a lot of risks taken here, which could be seen as military genius or military insanity, or a mixture of both. - Well, they were very lucky that it all worked out. Also, the guys in the tanks could have all freaked out on the meth. It was never tested before, "Can you actually be in a combat situation, in a tank, in enemy territory, on meth? Can people actually cope with that and be better fighters? " - Going through the mountains... - It's insane, yeah. -... against the biggest military in Europe. - Well, what meth does is... I read reports of a depressed atmosphere right before the attack started because they were afraid. They thought they would lose. They didn't want that. You know, soldiers, maybe some really hardcore Nazi soldiers, but most people were normal guys. They didn't want to start that. But once they had the methamphetamine, it kind of... you're in a party mood. So also, when you're in the tank, everyone likes it. It's rather an uplifting thing. They were really getting into it, and they really started fighting then. It's also intoxication, you know? It's a rush. - What does meth feel like? - Well, meth creates the so-called fight or flight modus. releases all the neurotransmitters in the brain which are released in situations of high danger, for example. So in a highly dangerous situation, you become very alert, so you can cope with the situation, if you're, like, under life threat and you don't even react to it, you're probably gonna be dead, you know? But the body does that, and methamphetamine does that. So you take a pill of methamphetamine or you snort a line of methamphetamine and you're like this. And, then it's the fight or flight mode. Either you run away like it's too much, you know? But on meth, you usually don't run away. You kind of think it's really cool what's happening. You like to move, you like to be with your pals, you like to, you know, be in a tank is great on meth. - So there is a party aspect to it? - I think it was very joyful for the German soldiers because it was springtime. They had immediate successes. And it wasn't heavy fighting, it was just being in the tank. I mean, there was, of course, fighting and there were also war crimes. And I read a report when Rommel, high on meth, at night, doesn't stop, of course, because they all, you know... They didn't stop at night, but every army usually stops at night. So the French army were stopping. They were in a village camping out, and the German, Rommel, was going with the tank through that village with his division, just running over people. And he was standing like in the open lid of the tank, and he was like, going through that thing, you know, and you know, like a berserk type of warrior. And that was when... That to me is a war crime. That is when the Wehrmacht lost its innocence in that push of Rommel through the French countryside. Because you don't do that, you know? Your enemy is sleeping. Because the French also had a drug regulation. They received three quarters of a liter of red wine per man per day. So, of course, at night, they're going to be sleepy on red wine, and the Germans were on meth and they were just running over them. There's descriptions of the chains of the tank becoming bloody. I don't think he did it, and he was like, "Oh my God, what did I just do? I'm sorry. " "What am I doing here? " He was in the movie, you know? - This is the dark thing about human nature, that in war, if you dehumanize, if you allow your brain to dehumanize the enemy, the opponent, the humans on the other side, you can actually... I think hate can take over, and in that hate you can find pleasure when you murder the other. And people have written about this, they've talked about this. It's probably a thing that a person like me can't possibly comprehend unless they experienced it. And you have to be in the mania, in the hysteria, in the insanity intensity of war. - I mean, what Evans, for example, said is that, "I excuse the Germans of the war crimes because they were just in an intoxication. " I understand that argument, but... And if you look at individual soldiers, it's quite tricky. Like, it's a 19-year-old guy, he's been drafted. And in Nazi Germany, if you don't go, you land in the concentration camp. So you can choose, you know, concentration camp or you just join the ranks and then you get Pervitin and then you invade France. There was a trial in Germany because someone said all soldiers are murderers. And I think then the German Bundeswehr sued him. "No, soldiers are not murderers. " And he actually won in court. So it's legal in Germany to call every soldier a murderer. But it's a tricky question. - Yeah, I remember seeing this documentary on the ordinary people. I think there's also social pressure. Again, insane it is to say, I think the documentary, Ordinary People, was looking at the Germans that were a part of the shooting squads. And, you know, they didn't understand what they're signing up for, and they were told that they're free to leave once they understand what they're doing, and many of them didn't. And they didn't have hate for Jews or for the people who they're murdering. You are, again, a 19, 20-year-old young kid, like, it's so hard to comprehend the moral insanity that's happening all around you and you just kind of want to fit in. - I mean, that's why I wrote the book, The Bohemians, because there were a few people in Berlin that didn't react this way, but they reacted in a different way. They said, "We cannot be part of this. " - But it's hard to be the person— - It's very hard, yeah. And most people are part of it because it's much more safe, or at least it seems more safe. I mean, it has its own perils, you know. Because you might become a genocidal murderer, you know. That might happen. Like, are you responsible? I would say you are responsible, but that's just my personal gut feeling. Like, I always thought my grandfather was responsible for the genocide because he was working for the German railway system, and he once saw a train car full of Jews in a cattle wagon, and he only said to me, "Yeah, this was against German railway regulations. " And I said, "So what did you do? " And he said, "Well, there were SS at the station when I was working, and I was too scared. I didn't do anything. " So I thought that he was... he made himself guilty, I thought. That's... and my father, for example, reacted very strongly because of that. He never called him by his first name, the father of his wife, because he still had that, you know, he was a Nazi because he was working for the railway. So I wouldn't excuse... I wouldn't excuse people actually, and I certainly would not excuse high-ranking politicians that make policies because the genocidal policies that the Nazis developed and the war policies that they developed had nothing to do with drugs. And I never write that in any, you know, because there's no documents. If I would find documents that say, "Yeah, when we... " you know, but this the Nazi ideology has nothing to do with drugs. Maybe with alcohol, you know, but it's... and I spoke with my father, who had been a high judge in Germany. What does actually the law say, and the law says if you plan a crime and then maybe when you commit it, you are under the influence, it does not diminish your responsibility. Your responsibility is only diminished... Let's say you're a totally normal person, never done any harm to anybody, and suddenly you take a drug that... or you're totally drunk, and you don't know what you're doing and you kill someone. Then a judge could say maybe you have a lesser responsibility. But this is not the case with the crimes of National Socialism, and I never even hint at that in my book. So I think that criticism by Evans was short-sighted. I wouldn't... I think he's not right about that. - Yeah, I think I agree with you totally. I didn't get that sense. - He thought the book was very successful because a lot of right-wing people bought it, but that's not... it's simply not true. - I think your book did a masterful job of never making itself amenable to that kind of narrative. - To the contrary, I got an angry letter by a German army employee, quite a high officer and a military historian, and he said that I... he also thought I overemphasized the drug use of the methamphetamine in the western campaign because he said the German army was just so good, and you kind of diminish their capability by saying they were only so good because they took methamphetamine. I thought that was kind of funny because the Wehrmacht doesn't exist anymore, and the current German army is called the Bundeswehr, and they're not... historically, they're not supposed to be connected. Like, there was a clear-cut, but he still felt that I was kind of hurting the pride of the Wehrmacht, so. - I generally sort of agree with him. In general, it seems like great historians often... I'm just a human, so I'm not a historian, but they undermine the importance of the heroes that make up an army. The Soviet Army, the British Army, the French Army, the German Army. These are humans, and some of the great military campaigns involve people really stepping up. Now, the effectiveness of the military tactics with blitzkrieg, the effectiveness of meth, the strategic decisions around where to invade, the timing, the speed, all those are important, but there's humans there. There's real heroes. And sometimes historians kind of diminish that. I don't know what to make sense of it. I might be just an idiot, but I've had a great conversation with James Holland. I've gotten to know him well. He kind of analyzed the mistakes made by Hitler and by Stalin in the Operation Barbarossa. But I just, through generations, because I grew up in the Soviet Union, you hear these stories of these heroes, you know. My grandfather was a machine gunner and miraculously survived. And, like, and just knowing those stories, Stalingrad would not have happened without the heroes on the Soviet side. It's easy to say there's a lot of blunders, a lot of bad tactics, all this kind of stuff, but to me, from the human side, I just know through my bloodline, the people that have fearlessly given their life to defend their homeland, and that sometimes can be a little bit easily dismissed. So, I don't know what to make sense of it. Maybe I'm romanticizing or maybe I'm speaking to the suffering that the people have felt, and they just propagate themselves through my life story, and then maybe the gratitude I have for the people who have stopped the Nazi forces. - I think it's amazing what the Russian soldiers actually did because they beat the Wehrmacht. It was really the Red Army on the ground that did the job, you know. And did they love communism and the system? I don't think so, and I think they were... I mean, of course, some people, but basically, they were defending their country, and... I'm also very grateful to them. - Yeah, they're defending their families. Quick pause. Bathroom break? - Okay. - All right, we're back. So can you say a bit more about the French campaigns in

um... It was over in six weeks. It took six weeks to defeat and occupy most of France. And the initial operation, three days, was, from a military perspective, successful. What else can we say about the role of drugs, the effectiveness, what was learned from that experience by the Wehrmacht? - I mean, for me to research the Western campaign was very interesting because I didn't really know anything about it except that Germany won very quickly. So to actually look at the details is very interesting, and the drugs give you a way in. - What are some things you found in the archives that were interesting, like, about maybe letters, reports, diaries, that gave you some insight about the human story of it all? - Well, there are letters, for example, by Heinrich Böll, who won the Nobel Prize later in literature. He writes to his parents describing in detail what Pervitin did to him, how it kept his mood up, and that without Pervitin, he wouldn't have been able to do the job. But also military documents I found very interesting. For example, I could see exactly how the methamphetamine was distributed because it was not distributed equally. It was done in a way that the tank troops who were leading the advance received the most meth, and they also needed it. I could see how many pills on which date were delivered to Rommel's troops. And Rommel became, I call him the Crystal Fox in my book for obvious reasons. His division was using a lot of meth. - And he was using meth as well? - I just have descriptions how he, like, totally crazy stands in the open lid of the tank and all his people, well, they had the meth, but there's no- - So you can infer from that. - There's no, maybe they didn't use it. Maybe he didn't use it. But it looks like he used it. There were also never any reports that all the meth was given back. I mean, a lot of soldiers write that they take it, but Rommel specifically, I wouldn't write in my book, Blitz, that Rommel would take methamphetamine. on such a day or something if there was no record for it. But Rommel, there is a record for it that Rommel's division used the most meth of any tank division. So, I write about that. And that's, that already makes him the Crystal Fox because, you know, in his division, crystal meth is, you know, rampant. - You know, it's like in Animal Farm when the pigs discover alcohol. Animal Farm by George Orwell. There's no evidence that they drank. It's just the next day that they're all hungover. - I mean, Rommel is a very interesting character in general because later he turned, apparently, turned against Hitler. He was part of the conspiracy of Operation Valkyrie. He received, you know, the offer to shoot himself in the forest, which he did instead of being tried and executed. - Is he just part of this general tension that the generals, the military had with Hitler? Would that be fair to say? - I would say so, yes. I'm not an expert on the Wehrmacht. This is a very complex, large organization. But I see most of the officers of the Wehrmacht as not necessarily Nazis in the way that they would, you know, shout, "Heil Hitler," all the time. They were highly intelligent, highly trained, super professionals that ran a very effective war machine. And at one point, more and more of these generals realized that the orders that Hitler was giving were not really helping, you know, and they have their men dying because of it. So that creates a lot of tension. And that led to the mistake that Hitler did in Dunkirk, basically. What Churchill called the sickle cut, which was the idea

to storm through the Ardennes Mountains and kind of cut off the British and French troops who were still, you know, in the north of Belgium trying to figure out what was going on. Suddenly, the Germans are behind them, so they kind of cut like a sickle into enemy territory, the sickle cut. That was so successful that, basically, the campaign was won already. So then the Germans invaded, like occupied all the cities on the canal back to England to kind of cut off the British completely, so they couldn't, you know, even flee. But Dunkirk was open, the last port that was open. And the German army was like, you know, they were already on the outskirts of Dunkirk. They could have just taken it and closed that, you know, that hole for the British military to get out. But Hitler then did his famous... And this is all the dynamic of the Western campaign, you know. A lot of things happen every day. And then they're saying like, "We're going to have Dunkirk tomorrow and then it's over. " And then Hitler stops the tanks. It's his famous Halte Befehl, the order to stop. And you know, they were all on meth. They didn't want to stop. But Hitler was not on meth. Hitler was, he was, he- he basically, it was a little bit similar than Berlin, Munich thing. Hitler didn't really understand that campaign. It was too fast for him. He... Because they didn't say like, "Oh, they're all on meth. They're not going to sleep. They're going to behave erratically. " They didn't discuss this. They discussed this in the old-fashioned terms. And Hitler was seeing like, "They do not protect their flanks. What if the British come from the north? " This is terrible. Militarily, it was, they were already fighting World War II, while Hitler was still fighting World War I. And especially the Allies, they were still fighting World War I. But the tank generals on meth, or the tank generals without meth, the tank generals per se, they were fighting a new type of war. And Hitler then got a visit from Goering, the head of the air force, the Luftwaffe. And Goering was a morphinist. That is very well documented. He was on morphine. He was high as a kite most of the time. And that comes with losing touch with reality, I would say, or at least it changes your grip on reality, you know. Maybe you're still a good decision-maker, but it could lead to... You know, if you're intoxicated, let's say you're writing, and you're intoxicated, you think it's great, but the next day you read it, and it's shit, you know? Goering was using morphine in the morning, then met Hitler at the Felsennest, which was Hitler's headquarters to command the Western campaign, the Felsennest. And Goering said to him, "If the army generals are now gonna take Dunkirk, then basically the army has won this campaign, and that will give army high command, which is already against you," because they were, you know, for them, Hitler was always like, "der kleine Gefreite," like this small, kind of regular army guy because that's what Hitler had been in the First World War, and now suddenly, he was the big decision-maker. So they never, they thought they make much better decisions than him. So Goering says, "Their power will be so overwhelming that they will, from now on, call the shots how this war will continue and what will be done next. You should let me with the Luftwaffe do the job from the air. The National Socialist Luftwaffe is gonna end the Western campaign. " So he thought that he could destroy... It doesn't make sense, you know. Even to destroy the British military from with planes, maybe you can do it. But certainly, he couldn't do it. So the tank generals received the Haltebefehl, the stopping order. They didn't believe it when they received it, because the victory, this would've been complete victory over Great Britain. This would've been the end of Great Britain. The whole British military was encircled, but they did get out through Dunkirk. That's why the movie Dunkirk with Christopher Nolan is not good because he doesn't describe what happened on the German side. It's just this heroic British thing, "Yeah, we just got out and we reformed, and then we beat... " You know. This was just because Hitler was afraid of the power of his army high command, and convinced by Goering's morphine-high vision that he would stop it with the air force, which he couldn't, which he couldn't. I mean, he bombed, and then the British, you know, they were on ships, and a few ships were sunk, but basically, they got, they got out. You need to do this on the ground. At least back then, you would've needed to do it on the ground. So that was a big mistake by Hitler. That's why von Manstein, one of the three tank generals from February 17th, it was Rommel, von Manstein, and Guderian, and von Manstein, he later said, he spoke of a "lost victory. " He said the Western campaign was a lost victory because we really could have achieved the victory. We could've dominated, you know, Britain. They could've invaded Britain. There was no more military. - Well, okay. On land, yes. - There was still the Royal Air Force. - And the Navy. - And the Navy, yeah. - So, invading Britain, I think any invasion of actual Britain is a gigantic mistake on the Nazi part, but- - But if Britain doesn't have a standing army anymore, it's much easier- - Well, I- -... than still have one. - I think it's still extremely difficult to invade, but it's much easier to sort of neutralize, make sure that Britain is not a player in the war. I mean, the co- - For sure. Maybe Hitler wouldn't have invaded at all, anyhow. - Also, because of his sort of, not respect, but non-hatred- - Right -... of the British Empire. - Because they're also white supremacists, so... Why would we fight them? You know, it doesn't make sense. While the French, they were already like half black, basically, in Hitler's eyes. - If we're to talk about counterfactual history of the possible trajectories of the war that would lead to Nazi victory, one of the big mistakes is the invasion of Britain. So you already mentioned the stake with Dunkirk, but beyond that, if they even captured mainland Europe, they could've just neutralized the British threat and not invaded Britain, and then go after the oil, which is much needed maybe in the Middle East. So focus on that campaign before invading the Soviet Union. And then maybe wait for the Soviet Union to invade them through Poland, which would be likely coming, or wait until 1943, something like this, to invade east without the Western front having to be, been there. And the other really big mistake is declaring war against the United States. Having complete disrespect for the United States and declaring war on the United States. Which didn't have to be done at all. So it's collecting enemies when those didn't have to be. So there is, to me actually, there's a lot of paths there, as dark as it is to imagine for Nazi Germany to be successful in the invasion of the Soviet Union, even. - Well, I think that's why the Wehrmacht officers were pissed at Hitler, because they knew that they could actually win if it was done in a certain way. But Hitler's ideology and his stupidity... and later also, his degeneration of his cognitive abilities did not allow the Wehrmacht to fight in a most effective way. Hitler was a very bad leader after Dunkirk.

- So can you speak to the morphine? What kind of drug is morphine? - Morphine was developed in the 19th century by a German, a young chemist called Sertürner. He wanted to know what the potent alkaloid is in opium. Because opium is a natural drug, but there's something in the opium that is actually decisive, and that's morphine. So he was able to extract that from the opium. So he basically, this young guy, invented morphine, which then became this young guy, he became, you know, very important in wars. Very important in wars, especially like the American Civil War is unthinkable without morphine. Or at least it would have been very different, because with morphine, you can treat people, you can amputate people, you can fix people up, and send them back into battle. And that also corresponded with the development of the hypodermic needle, the injection needle. That was around in the mid-19th century. So the injection needle and morphine together became a very efficient way to treat soldiers. And that prolonged, for example, the Civil War in America. - So Göring was taking morphine. - Yeah. Morphine is like the classic. You don't eat opium, you know? You take what is active in opium, and you inject it, and that's a much... That's a very potent... You know, that numbs all your pain. You don't have pain anymore if you're on morphine. - It also affects judgment. - I've never taken morphine, so I cannot really say. There are a few junkies that are highly creative on it. A lot of musicians in the '60s were using heroin, which is a more potent form, or it's a half-synthetic. It's an opioid. Morphine is an opiate, and heroin's an opioid. I guess you could be quite sharp on it also. That's why Hitler liked Eukodal, which is OxyContin, oxycodone. And he injected that. - Which is another opiate, heroin-like. - It was a product by the Merck company from Darmstadt, Germany. They made Eukodal, which when Germany lost the war, the patent was basically taken by America and then ended up in oxycodone. So if you inject Eukodal, that was a very popular drug in the '20s. Because apparently, it gives you the most beautiful high on Earth. You're like super high. You feel extremely well, and you can think very clearly. And you feel like this is how life should feel. High on Eukodal, this is like Klaus Mann, the son of Thomas Mann. He used Eukodal. Quite a few doctors actually used it also, and probably quite a few Jewish doctors also used it, because this was like a doctor's drug. Doctors knew how to, you know, set the injection. And it was a great experience. And Hitler, he really loved to be on Eukodal. He would use Eukodal every second day. In the beginning, 10 milligrams intravenously, then he raised to 20 milligrams. And I spoke to someone who's actually done exactly that drug application, because I wanted to know how Hitler felt, and I didn't feel like doing it myself for some reason. I don't like needles, so I didn't want to put a needle in my vein to have the Hitler drug experience. I should have done it. Like a historian, a proper historian never does that, okay? But I thought I should take quite a few drugs that I write about to understand it better. But this drug I didn't take. I never shot oxycodone intravenously into my veins. But I met someone who did, and he said it's like the, it's like the king's high. You know, if you do that properly, obviously you get addicted to it, you know? - I'd be scared to try. - Very intense experience. - I think it's a very badass thing to do for a historian, by the way. But I think it's a big risk. I think, I mean, there is a risk that comes along with it, right? - Well, but not for Hitler, because he got the Eukodal from the pharmacy. He knew exactly, like his doctor knew exactly what was inside. It was made by a pharmaceutical company. - No, I mean, the risk of addiction. - Yeah, that is a big risk. But there's also the risk of getting impure stuff and- - Yes, yes - like heroin on the street and die from an overdose or... But the addiction thing is very... I think it happens quite quickly with Eukodal, because it's such a great feeling. So why wouldn't you do it over and over again? Because... And then the opioid receptors in the brain want you to take it. And if you don't take it, you get withdrawal symptoms and you feel like shit. And you have to... So that's the problem with opioids, with morphine. That's what happens. And that's what happened to Hitler. - I generally say yes to most things, but those drugs, like cocaine doesn't scare me. Heroin scares me. The opioids scare me. Oxycodone scares me. - Because they really make you physically dependent. I don't even know if cocaine makes you physically dependent. It makes you psychologically addicted. But you actually have to get it, otherwise you feel bad. That's a physical, terrible addiction. - And also for life to feel like less when you're not on it. That scares me. - That's the problem also with methamphetamine. People who use a lot of methamphetamine, on days they don't use it, they don't feel great at all, especially not compared to the methamphetamine days. So that became a problem in Germany when people were really using more and more of the Pervitin. - All right, you got to take me through the full drug cocktail that Hitler was on. Patient A of Morell's. Let's start at the beginning. We're big on setting context here. So tell the story of Dr. Theodor Morell. How did he meet Hitler? - Well, Morell was... He had his practice on Kurfürstendamm, which is like the main boulevard of Berlin, in the west of Berlin. Kind of a fancy street. And he was a celebrity doctor, which was a new type of doctor, in a way, a Dr. Feelgood. He kind of was one of the first Dr. Feelgoods. So you didn't go to him when you had a disease. You went were... Let's say you were an opera star in the Berlin Opera, and you had a big premiere, so you would go to Morell in the afternoon, and he would give you a nice shot, and then you would, you know, be So he... But he was not a quack. I mean, he was... He just knew his drugs, and he believed in, you know, why shouldn't you treat someone even if that person doesn't have a disease? If you can make that person feel better, it's good, especially if that person pays. Like, he said, "Everyone who pays my... " And he wasn't cheap. "Who comes to me and wants a testosterone hormone injection or a vitamin injection or an opioid injection, you get it from him. " He didn't have any scruples. - I mean, but we should also say, he was pretty innovative and extremely knowledgeable. So you mentioned hormones, but also, you know, like probiotics. Like, you talk about— Just he knew his shit. - He was a bit of a nerd. - Like, a legit doctor, just didn't have boundaries about what he used. - He had a very unappealing physical appearance, and I think that was a problem for him, and he was known to have very bad eating habits. Like, sauce was running, and... So people were easily disgusted by him. He was like an outsider. He was really like a freak. But when people looked at him after he had given them an injection and they said, "Thank you," and "I feel so great now," that's what kind of made his day, you know? So one day, a man entered his doctor's office on Kurfürstendamm named Hubertus Hoffmann. And Hube— Hubertus Hoffmann was a photographer, and he had gonorrhea. And Morell, because he knew about alternative ways to treat, he actually cured him. And Hubertus Hoffmann said to Morell, "I have a good friend, and I think you should meet him, and I'm gonna have a dinner in Munich, and I think it would be really worth your time to come. " And Morell came, and the good friend was Hitler, because Hubertus Hoffmann was the photographer of Hitler. And they were... In German we have a "you," a formal you, which is "Sie. " Like, if I don't know you so well, I say "Sie. " And if you're my close friend, I say "du," you. And Hitler only had about four people he would say "you" to. He would always like the "Sie," like the distance. It was always about distance and respect and borders and boundaries. - What are the two again? "Sie" and what? - "Du. " - "Sie" and "du"? - Yeah. "Sie" is the formal one, and "du" is the informal one. - Yeah. In Russian, there's the same thing: "vy" and "ty. " So there's a big... That's a big thing. - Also in French, you also have that. You have that in Spanish. Only in English you don't have it. - And it is part of the cultural sort of discourse, of, like, when you upgrade from the "vy"... - Right -... to the "ty," from the "Sie" to the "du"... - Yeah -... or from the "du" to the "Sie. " - From the "Sie" to the "du. " - That would be the upgrade, because you become more intimate. - Yeah, like, and you ask, "Can I go-" - Yeah. -... from "Sie" to "du"? " - Yeah. Like, the older person must suggest it, I think. - Yeah. Okay. Beautiful. Language. - So Hoffmann was a "du freund," we say, of Hitler. So he was quite close to Hitler, and that's why he could also make that close connection. So he had a dinner with just him, Hitler, Eva Braun, Hitler's girlfriend, and Morell came. They sent a plane to Berlin to pick him up, so it's like VIP treatment. It was-... the whole thing. - And this is 1936? - '36. Yeah, they had spaghetti with tomato sauce on the side, I read in the... There's like a description of this event. The tomato sauce was on the side. And there was Muscat. What is Muscat? It's a spice. Nutmeg. - Yeah, it was with nutmeg, which is an unusual recipe, I guess, but that's what they had. And spaghetti wasn't a fancy thing, you know? It came from Italy, from Mussolini, who invented fascism in Italy, and who was like Hitler's role model for a long time until Hitler surpassed him, obviously. So the spaghetti that came from Italy, and it was a big thing. And Morell had the big problem that spaghetti's hard to eat, right? And he couldn't even like it. It was a catastrophe. But he got out of it because Hitler complained about stomach problems cause Hitler was a terrible vegetarian. He was a so-called cake vegetarian. He would only eat sweets, like cake. No meat of course, but he wouldn't eat healthy stuff, you know? So he was bloated the whole time, because he only ate cake and white bread, and it's not good. So he voiced that, and there was also a Brandt was there, like his official doctor from the SS that was his doctor, and Hitler said, "My doctors can't cure me. " And Morell was like, "This is my chance. Thank you, God. " And he told Hitler about the probiotics, which Hitler had never heard of. And also Brandt, the doctor, he hadn't heard of, because that was a new thing that you give. And he- Hitler was asking, "What is that? " And Morell said, "These are live bacteria from German soldiers from the war in the First World War that were fighting in Serbia. " There was one guy who didn't get the stomach flu when all the others, like, drank the water in Serbia and all got sick. But this one guy, so his bacteria... And this is a true story. His gut bacteria were cultivated into a medicine called Mutaflor. And Morell told Hitler about this and he said, "This is amazing. I have to try this," you know? And it helped, you know? He got the Mutaflor, he did the Mutaflor kind of therapy and it cured him. He suddenly had no bloating anymore, and the farting of Hitler was really bad. So bad that he'd- it would, like, diminish his ability to work, you know? So suddenly he could work. He said he felt better. He didn't have the pain. He felt great, so he really thought that Morell is a wonder doctor. And he asked Morell pretty quickly afterwards, "Do you want to be my personal physician? " And Morell's wife was very much against it because she said, "If you become the personal physician of Hitler, you won't have any time for me anymore. " And he said like, "Come on, man. This is the chance you only get once in your life. " - Yeah, I mean, at this point, Hitler's a really big deal. - He's the most powerful man in Europe. And there have not been war crimes 'cause the war hasn't started yet. Obviously there's concentration camps and a lot of crimes have been committed, but it's also kind of hushed up, you know? It was... it's not such a huge thing as now we know it became. So, Morell never really has any conscientious problems. He just thought it's great, you know. "I'm going to be the doctor. I'm going to be part of history. " So he becomes the personal physician, and being this vitamin guy, like vitamins were really his thing. He believed in the power of vitamins. And today I think we know that he was right. Vitamins are good, but back then, no one knew. And Hitler was like, "Okay. " He told Hitler, and then Hitler said, "Okay, I want to try these vitamins and... " what they did from the beginning was injections because Hitler didn't want to take a pill, 'cause the pill takes too long and it goes through the- the track that he has the problems with, like the digestion. Like he didn't want to take a pill. He believed in the injection, and Morell was the masterful injector. So Morell, because the needles were thicker than they are today, but Morell could give you an injection without you feeling any pain. So Hitler was quite impressed, so he got like a vitamin C injection, but Hitler loved the daily injection, so he got hooked on the daily injection. Once he got the injection, the day was good. And he never got sick, actually. And he could stand like for a long time with the arm raised. He did, he went to the gym, basically. I mean, he had a gym where he was doing exercise so he could have his arm up for like hours when a military parade would walk by. So he was quite fit and he was never sick and Morell was giving him the daily injection and they lived happily ever after, basically, until the Soviet Union attacked. they- they lived happily ever after basically until the Soviet Union attacked. - Wait, wait. He literally lifted so he could do the Heil Hitler salute? - Yeah, I found a document for that. That's funny. Oh God, that's dark. - He had an expander, we say. I don't know, do you use that word in English? Expander? Oh, like a band. - Oh, like a- a band. - Yeah, it's like this. You do like... Yeah, yeah, I have one of those. - Yeah, that's what, that's what- Wow. - That's what he did. In front of the- And I do those kinds of exercises. -... in front of the window. Well, at least he's not doing it in front of a mirror. Okay, wow, that's dark. - dark. Okay. That's... I mean, those little details, yet another reminder that he's just a human being. - I mean, it's hard to keep your arm up for like hours. You can't let it down. If you keep it up, that's what it's all about, you know? - I mean, he was very much about the façade, right? It's very important to present himself in a certain kind of way when he's giving the speeches. - Yeah, it was, everything was orchestrated. The Nazis were masters in propaganda. They really knew how to create the perfect image.

- Okay, so let's go into the cocktail. It started with the vitamins. This is in '36. - Right. I think it was pretty harmless in the beginning. Mm-hmm. Just the addiction to the injection was the main thing that I think happened, that Hitler needed his doctor. But from '36 to '41, only like vitamins are being injected and glucose. glucose, So I don't think it really harms you. I mean, it might benefit you. He never got sick. He was fit. - This, I mean, this is the thing that... That was phase one of his drug use, the vitamins, until '41. - That was phase one of his drug use were the vitamins, until '41. - So, you think the tweaking at the Olympics, you've talked about before but still, so you're saying this person-... we're watching a video of here, is not on drugs. I don't know. I don't think so. - So the- the video could be faked. - There are no records. - It could be sped up. - I think it's fake, because I think someone read my book that Hitler was on, thought that Hitler was always on meth and created this. But I might be wrong. - Yeah, and the narrative takes hold, and I think the thing you mentioned, he could be on sugar, so it could be a lot of elements. - He was also a weird guy. Maybe he was really just rocking... because he was so happy with what he saw, you know? Maybe he really got into it. Maybe it was a sexual thing for him, what he saw. I don't know. There's no document showing that he took a drug on that day, let's put it that way. - I think I've been, especially, like, stay up all night, I'll get fidgety. You can just be caught in a certain moment when you're being very like... like fidgety. - I think he probably rocked a few times, and then the video was cut in a way... that he rocks more or something. Also, methamphetamine wasn't yet available in 1936. So... - That's important to say. -... for sure he was not. So, what is said here, on Hitler tweaking on meth at the 1936 Olympics, is definitely false. - Okay. There you go. So when did it start getting more

serious? The injection and the kind of drugs he was taking? - This was a day in August of 1941. Germany had invaded the Soviet Union on June 22nd. So this is about six weeks into the campaign, which was called Unternehmen Barbarossa. And Germany was doing pretty well, and it came to a crucial moment where High Command said, "Now we're going to take Moscow. " And Hitler said, "No, we're going to split up the troops and take Leningrad," which is now Saint Petersburg in the north, and in the south, we're going to go for the, for the oil fields, basically. That was his plan. He said, "Let's not do Moscow. " And High Command was like, "This is the biggest mistake. We must take Moscow. If we, if we take Moscow, we're going to win. " And Hitler became ill for the first time on the day this decision was made. I mean, this is a dynamic thing that's going on, you know? They're moving, and now they have to decide, "Will we split up or will we continue towards Moscow? " And he had the Russian flu, in German, the Ruhr, which is a like a flu-type disease with very high fever. It comes... Like, they were in the field, like so, east, you know, camping out. Maybe he drank water that wasn't good or he had some, you know, they tested everything meticulously, but he got, you know, he got sick. High fever, he felt like shit, and he said to Morell... And, you know, you can see it in Morell's notes. Like Morell describes this very vividly in his notes, which are at the Federal Archives which no historian ever, ever looked at, except me, the non-historian, which is kind of funny. So, he describes how Hitler then asks of him, basically says, "Vitamins are not enough anymore. " Like he's very weak. He must, he must go to the military. Briefing, but the flu is quite a severe disease, I think. If you have a heavy flu, you really feel like you're going to die, you can't go to a military briefing. But Morell kind of fought with himself, and then he decided to inject an opioid into Hitler's veins intravenously, like the strongest application possible. And this was Dolantine, which is a German opioid that was legal. And I was once an exchange student in Flint, Michigan, 1988, and I was number one of the tennis team because I was quite a good tennis player. We were playing our main enemy. I think I was at Flint Powers Catholic High School in Flint, Michigan, and I think it was Powers Central, and they had a number one, Marc Resstiner. - Still remember, wow. - He was feared. And no one could beat him. - Yes. - And on the day of the match, I had the Russian flu, basically. And I was the hope, I was the number one, the wonder kid from Germany. And they took me to a doctor, and the doctor gave me an injection. I don't know until this day because I was a kid, I got the injection, I was 17, and I felt great. The flu was gone like this. It was probably an opioid, something that just shuts off all the pain and gives you energy. And I beat this guy. in a way I totally thought of a new technique by playing very high balls. In the direct, fierceful competition, I would have lost, so I played something that in Germany we call "Lüddeln," which is something you don't really do. You just play high balls. - Lobbying, yeah, yeah. - which is not pretty to look at, but it's very effective. And he just lost his nerve, and I beat him like 6-0, something like that. Sensational. So Hitler receives this Dolantine injection, and he gets up, he goes into the meeting room, he dominates feels great. He decides, in front of everybody, no one is able to overpower him in that meeting. He was very good in the room. And the troops are split up. Leningrad is now a target. This weakens the general thrust towards Moscow. This is probably why they didn't take Moscow. They probably could have taken it, or maybe not. But the decision was made in August to- - I think it's one of the biggest blunders of the Eastern Front. - To not take Moscow. I think they had a straight shot given the- - Right -... disorganization. - They had the one-time thing, the one-time moment where they could have done it. And the German war machine could only win in so-called speed wars like lightning war. Only if they would do it very fast and surprise, because they were always weaker, basically. They just had this moment, this dynamic moment, and this was fueled by the methamphetamine. Also, in the Soviet Union, hundreds of millions of dosages were given, so the Germans were really going. And at one point, this ends, you know? You can't take meth for the rest of your life. You're just going to end up being a nervous wreck. But you can do it for like two months. You could do it, but then it stops. - I think if you're really honest about where you have the asymmetry of power, which is in the speed of the Blitzkrieg. So that's similar to Genghis Khan, who had a very small military, but their advantage was, I mean, I think at the peak it would be probably 100,000. And every soldier of Genghis Khan's had five horses. So the- - Right -... the whole point was they can move really fast. They, and they, not just fast, but they can move on all terrain, so they can go around. You know, if wars were fought on normal roads, you're supposed to travel a certain kind of way. If you go fast and around, not on paths that are usually taken, attack from all kinds of sides, that's why you can conquer as much as Genghis Khan was able to conquer. And the same thing with the Nazi forces, this is their biggest advantage. And not using that is essentially the end of its effectiveness. - I think that's also why the tank troops were such a good weapon, because they can go off-road while military vehicles, cars, cannot do it. Like a tank can even go through a forest and just, you know, kill small trees and just run over it. So those are kind of the five horses that was the idea they had at this working breakfast. That's what they presented to Hitler. "We're going to use the tank force in a very different way, and that's going to enable us to win the lightning war of campaigns. " - Was that one of the first times he tried an opiate like that? An intense one? - That was the first time. - And then that was it for him? He loved it? - Well, not immediately. You can see when you study his medications, that is the turning point in a way, that now he deviates from the vitamins. He becomes more interested in what's out there. And from '41 to '43, he tries out a lot of medications that he didn't try out before. Before that, it was quite conventional, mostly vitamins and glucose. But now he becomes experimental, and he discusses this with Morell. And Morell is also very experimental. They really nerded themselves into, like, "What can we use? " Like, bull's testicle extracts. So, Morell, in order to present those things to his patient A, he created a pharmaceutical company that he ran. So he was the personal physician of Hitler, and he was also the CEO of Hammer Pharmaceuticals, which had its production site in occupied Czechoslovakia. And for example, at one point, when Germany had invaded the Ukraine, Morell asked for a monopoly for all the organs of all the slaughtered animals from all the slaughterhouses in the Ukraine. So, this was a huge logistical operation. All the slaughtered animals, all the organs were removed for the personal physician of the Führer, sent in military trains back to the factory in occupied Czechoslovakia. And the military became really upset with that, because they said, "We need our trains to transport back our wounded soldiers. " Now there are cars full of offal and pigs' hearts and pigs' livers, and it was totally bizarre. And Morell, but Morell then became, he was this good-natured Dr. Feelgood in the beginning, and then when the Ukraine was occupied, he became just like, a business freak who made a lot of money with his dubious hormonal concoctions, where he would threaten the army. "If you don't let the train with my raw materials go to my factory, I will tell Hitler and you will have a problem. " He was acting like that. He became quite an asshole, actually. And a war criminal, because he also, at his factory where he would make the famous pig liver extract that was then tested by Hitler, and Hitler said, "That's a good medication. I feel more, I have more energy. So, this can also be sold to the German military. " That's how it worked, because the regulations at the time were, that it was very difficult to bring out a new medication onto the market. Because medications, to bring them onto the market, you need certain test phases and all of that stuff. So, that's hard to do in a war, especially in World War II. So, Hitler said to Morell, "I'm going to be your guinea pig. You just make it in your factory, I test it, and if I think it's good, then I'm just going to write a... " Today, you would say, like, a decree. "Because I'm the President, you know, I can order it that it's going to be legal all over Germany. " - So, Hitler was a real drug guy. He liked drugs. - Well, he liked to experiment, I would say, with drugs and with Morell. They never... He was against drugs, you know? He was- - But that's a crazy thing for a guy who didn't do anything, right? - It's a big contradiction, or it's a big irony, or it's very weird. - But isn't it even a bit of a mystery? Because, at that stage, I'm sure he was paranoid about being killed and all that kind of stuff. So, he must have really trusted Morell, right? - Yeah, he trusted Morell, because Morell was not part of any organization. He was the loner coming from the VIP doctors, his own VIP doctor's office, and now he was basically Hitler's toy. Hitler could get access to all kinds of medications through him, and Morell would never say it to anybody, you know? He would just write it down. But this was kept quite secret. No one knew what was going on between the two men. - See, it's just so interesting, because why would he? There might be... Can you maybe even speak to that? Why did Hitler trust another human being this much? Because you could probably make the case nobody was closer to Hitler than Morell. - That is- that is certainly the story I'm telling. - Isn't that crazy? Like, what is it about Morell? This guy who's... He's- I guess he's fat and weird, and, like, Nobody really likes him. - He was not a threat to Hitler. Like, Hitler hated all the super smart medicine people. Like, he didn't- he never undressed before them. He never let himself be seen naked, 'cause he didn't want anyone to know anything, you know, about him that he couldn't control. So, Morell was harmless. Morell would- basically did what Hitler wanted. They wouldn't say, "We're gonna take- today we're gonna take drugs together. It's gonna be fun. " You know, Hitler was always about optimizing his performance, because he knew, "Only I'm doing this. I have to... " And he always thought he's gonna die young, so he always like, "I don't have unlimited time. The, the clock was always ticking, so I have to be always the high performer. " So Hitler, when he first experienced the beauty of the opioid high that was given to him in August 1941 intravenously, when he experienced that, kind of his eyes opened. And he didn't think this was a, drug. I mean, this is a medicine. This is a medicine that helps me function. my doctor gives me in a very controlled manner, and that lets me be extremely sharp for, like, eight hours. I can convince all the generals. I can do my job. I'm happy. Because Hitler was also depressed, you know? I mean, this is, uh... He need- he need... Like, he really appreciated what the drug gave him, but he never thought, "Now I'm becoming, like, a drug addict," or... - So it begins to, oxycodone in general, begins to work within 30 to 60 minutes, and lasts for about four to six hours. This is a long-lasting thing. - Yeah, but these are, this, this you swallow. If you get an intravenous injection, it works after one second. - Wow. - Get the injection, you're high, but that- - But it lasts for many hours. - Yeah. That's why people love heroin, who take it, because you feel like shit, you take the injection, you feel great. I mean, it's in your system for quite a while. Like, you can go into the meeting quite comfortably. - Into the meeting. Yeah, okay. - I mean, there's the briefing. It starts at 1:00. Morell comes, and you can see this in the notes. Like, "I have to be at the Führer's bedroom at 12:00. " And then, you know, you chat a bit, and then Hitler rolls up his uniform sleeve, and then he gets the injection maybe at maybe 12:30. Then the high comes on, and then it's very stable. Like, you feel great. This is a pure product from the Merck company. This is not some heroin from the street. And Morell knows exactly what dosage you want right now, so you feel at the top of your game. You, you don't feel... You're not intoxicated. I mean, you are, but it makes you clear, you know? - So the mind is clear? - The mind's totally clear. Your body feels fantastic. You know exactly your points. You know exactly how the others... 'Cause the others are just mortals, you know, because they're sober. They just sit there, and they just... They haven't slept very well, or they have problems with them, you know? And you're, you're way above them. - What do we know about general psychological effects of it? So, does it boost your confidence? Does it boost aggressiveness? What effect did it have on his vision of the world? - It makes you feel extremely confident. You have a lot of energy, but it's not too much. Like, let's say you take cocaine or methamphetamine, you're like- That's why Hitler was never a meth guy. That's also why I think this video is fake. He was... He didn't take meth. I mean, I studied Morell's, the things he gave him. He gave a lot of things, and only twice was meth. So that was... That's not a lot for Hitler, like, twice. - I read that the multivitamin had some amphetamine and maybe meth, a little bit, or no? - It's- - Multi- - I mean, I've s- - Vitamultin. - Vitamultine. - Multine. - I mean, Vitamultine is interesting because it was a little bar of a sweet that was lying next to his food, so he would just, you know, eat. eat, and then at the end, he would take this. It was nice-tasting. It had some sugar in it. And I read through all of the ingredients. There were different types, and never, there's never methamphetamine in it. - Oh, there isn't? Okay. - No. There was an SS, Dr. Schenck, and he claims that Morell made special Vitamultine in his lab with meth in it, but I think he just made that up. - Okay. - There's... There was never any proof of that. - I mean, that's a really important, like, line to draw. The, the army, the Nazi army, at scale, not everybody, but some fraction, especially during the French campaign, used meth. - Right. - And then there's Hitler, which used a lot of drugs, but meth was not one of them, really. - No, meth, for him, was just for the foot soldiers, you know? I mean, he didn't even talk about meth. This is not nothing that concerned him, you know? This is something that makes you function. Maybe... He signed... I mean, it went over his desk, the stimulant decree, but I don't know if he really read it or understood it. I mean, he probably knew Pervitin because everyone knew it. And maybe, you know, they discussed it, but they would probably also not... I mean, there was... Da- day there's a point when there's a conflict about methamphetamine in the army. This is when the Secretary of Health of the German government, the Nazi government Conti, he starts writing to the army, and he says, "You must stop this. This is against Nazi ideology. " But the army basically doesn't listen to him and keeps on using meth all the way to the end. So maybe that guy, Conti, maybe he discussed this with Hitler, but... Also, Hitler never... You know, if Hitler would have said, "We stop the methamphetamine," it probably would have stopped. But Conti saying that wasn't enough. I don't think Hitler was really into meth. It was not his thing. He was more into the opioids, into these weird hormonal things. Those things were, especially the opioids, were interesting to him, because you can function on opioids for a long time if you have a proper product and a doctor that gives you the injections. Göring was high on, was addicted to morphine from 1923 until when the Americans captured him in '45. That's 22 years he was functioning on morphine. And when they captured him, he had... I write about it in Blitz, like the amount of morphine capsules he had on him. So what the Americans did was first take away all the morphine from him, and then he went through withdrawal in American, you know, incarceration. And he lost, you know, a lot of pounds, and he became more of a haggard Göring, which was then in Nuremberg, you know, this haggard kind of guy defending what he did. And so... Hitler was really an opioid guy, while the army was really meth-ed up. That's how you could sum it up briefly.

- He did try cocaine. Why didn't he get into the cocaine? - He started cocaine after the bomb attack by Stauffenberg on July 20th, 1944. When this bomb went off, which actually killed a few people in the room, this was during a military briefing. Stauffenberg put a bag with explosives under the table, and the table actually saved Hitler's life because it was a good German quality oak table. So the table was so stable that the bomb explosion kind of just, it blow up the table, but Hitler behind the table was protected by this table. - Yeah, this is the closest assassination attempt, probably. - Yeah. I mean, it's very weird that it didn't succeed because he had the bomb. He put it next to Hitler. He took out some of the explosives before he went into the room. This is one of the big mysteries. Why did Stauffenberg take out some of the explosives? There's no explanation for it. But Hitler survived, but he was quite injured, which Nazi propaganda always denied. They always said the Führer was miraculously unharmed. But he was quite harmed. There were over a hundred splinters from the wood everywhere. His eardrums were blown, which was, you know, it's quite an injury, I guess. You know, he was bleeding internally, and he was shell-shocked basically. And then a new doctor comes in. His name is Keesing. Because Morell was not a... In Germany we have, well, I guess worldwide, it's the ear, nose and throat specialist, right? So an specialist from the German army called Dr. Keesing, he was ordered to come into headquarters after the bomb attack to treat Hitler's blown eardrums. And Keesing gave Hitler cocaine, because cocaine at the time was being... You know, it was used. It was not Schedule 1, you know. It was... It had the effect that it would numb the pain, and you could use it, you would put it on a certain place where you had the pain and then it would numb that area. But Hitler had never taken cocaine before, but he got very interested in it. And Keesing writes a meticulous report about his experiences with Hitler. Alone, that report is really fun to read. It's about a 15-page report that he did for American military after the war. When he was being interrogated by American military, he described what happened with Hitler and him. And he realized that Hitler really liked the cocaine, and then he started saying, "Now give it in the nose now," and then it was a liquid that he could apply with a dab into the nose. It wasn't cocaine powder, but he could- - It was liquified. Yeah, interesting. - Liquefied cocaine. And Hitler loved it, and he's just saying things like, "Finally, I can think clear again. " He had this cocaine rush, which is a rush of superiority. It's a dangerous drug because you think you know more than the other. It's not a very humble drug, you know. It just increases the ego. And that actually he liked that because that was after the bomb attack, he thought everyone was a traitor. He didn't feel safe anymore in his own bunker, you know. And he was like, "Nazis... " The right wing is always paranoid. "Who's the enemy? They're behind us. They're stabbing us in the back. " Hitler was this type of person. So the cocaine kind of stabilized him, and Keesing realized that this guy is a drug guy. He didn't know. He came in, he saw the Führer for the first time. He was in awe. And a drug wreck was approaching him. And as soon as he had some cocaine in his system—this was the summer of '44—he had already taken a lot of opioids and a lot of drugs. So he, these dubious hormonal concoctions which led to autoimmune diseases in Hitler, maybe he even had Parkinson's. He was Morell basically turned him into a physical wreck. Keesing also writes about this, like he's trembling before he goes into the room for the first time where the Führer is. And then there's like an old guy in a blue kind of pajama, kind of coming up to him and shaking his hand. "That's the Führer," you know. And Keesing is totally shocked because, you know, the destiny of the German nation, the whole of Europe, everything is like- hangs on this guy, you know. And then whenever he takes cocaine, he's a little bit better. But the cocaine had the problem that Keesing was more of a, at least later in his discussions with the U. S. military, he described himself as a conscientious guy. He's like, "I became... I had problems giving Hitler more cocaine. " And- - Yeah, and I'm sure Hitler could have sensed that. - And then Morell started disliking Keeseing because Hitler spent more time with Keeseing than with him. And there was this- this, what I call the doctor's war ensued. 'Cause Keeseing then tried to get rid of Morell because Keeseing could suddenly see that Hitler was receiving a lot of drugs. He was taking cocaine with Keeseing. Keeseing left the room. Then Morell would come in and give him Eukodal opioid intravenously, which is the speedball effect. Cocaine and an opioid, you know, at the same time. That's like, that creates a really crazy high. But that's a high that's not stable anymore, you know. That's a high that you... That's like at the end of your drug career. You take the speedball. - So a speedball is a combination of a stimulant- - Right -... and a depressant. Cocaine and heroin. - Opioids are depressants. - Yeah. So combining cocaine and heroin, huh? Wow... Oh. - I've never had a speedball, but I think it's the most hardcore drug experience you can have, you know. And Hitler had this in the summer of 1944 for quite some time. And then the doctors really fought for influence over Hitler. And Keeseing teamed up with Himmler, head of the SS, and basically said to Himmler, "This Morell guy... " And Himmler was really suspicious of Morell obviously, because Morell was spending so much time with Hitler. There's no control. Himmler was a control freak. "What is he actually giving to the Führer? The Führer doesn't look good anymore. " So Keeseing was trying to get Morell out. Maybe because he wanted Hitler to have better health. Maybe he wanted to have the job himself. He certainly tried to get rid of Morell, and it came to like, a high noon situation, like the duel between the two doctors. It's, by the way, why I think it's completely insane that Hollywood hasn't bought the rights yet. Alone, this doctor's war. - You mean for the entire Blitz story or? - Yeah, of course. - Yeah, yeah. That's really... I mean, some of the greatest movies... I mean, like, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. - You can do a drug movie on the Nazis. - You know, one of my favorite movies, probably Downfall, which is Hitler in the bunker, which does, I guess... Does Downfall have a drug- - No. -... component to that? - They missed the drug angle. Because my book hadn't been out yet, they didn't know about it. That's why they can't- - That'd be a different story. - They can't really explain why Hitler became a physical wreck. There's no explanation for it except the drugs. - Well- - The opioid addiction. - You could explain it. It is a part of it that you're... It's just an extremely stressful position he's in. - Yeah, but you don't become a physical wreck if you're... - And he's losing the war. The physical wreck aspect, yeah. - And there were two bedrooms in the bunker in Berlin. Two bedrooms. One, of course, for Hitler, the other one for Morell. No one else was sleeping in the bunker. I mean, you can see the importance of, especially in those last months, of Morell in the bunker. And they didn't get that when they made the movie, The Downfall. But it's still an interesting movie, but I can't take it seriously because they didn't see this as a... - As a drug component. - It's missing. - Again, I don't think it has to be the main thing, but a part of it. A serious movie on Blitzed would be really nice. It's not easy to do. - No. - There's something about drugs, if you do a movie on drugs, that involve drugs, that it makes it... You can go too far into like Tarantino territory... - Right -... where it's more like... which is also incredible and awesome, but it's a different thing. - Well, he invents history, and he's very open about it. - Yeah. - Like, this is not what actually happened. I think a Blitzed movie would have to stick to the facts. And I've spoken with some directors, very good German directors, and it's just very hard to do. But... - But if you do it well, that's a legendary movie. - I think it would be. Yeah. - Yeah, that would be incredible. Can you just speak high

level from, from... What is it? You said '41 to '45. What were some behavioral changes or changes in decision making that we can trace in Hitler that could be attributed to drugs? Like, how did they change him? - Well, an interesting event is July 1943 in a villa in Northern Italy where Hitler meets Mussolini. And Mussolini is basically fed up with the war, and he wants Italy to leave the Axis of Evil. And Hitler is really pissed when he hears that. He knows that's what the meeting is all about. And Mussolini, I mean, the Italians invented that modern type of fascism. And they were all... Italy was the role model for Nazi Germany, but by now, Nazi Germany, of course, has been much more powerful. But, you know, Italy is the most important ally. And now Mussolini is like quitting in the middle of the war. I mean, what is going on here? So Hitler becomes... And Morell writes about this quite a lot. He's in a terrible mood. He really... he doesn't want to go. Like, he might lose his, you know, temper or whatever. He's not happy. And that's actually, that's the day when he receives the Eukodal for the first time. And he... Because he says under such stress, I'm not gonna go. " He threatens, like he calls off the whole thing. The plane's already waiting in Obersalzberg. Everything is ready, and he says, "I'm not meeting this guy. " And then Morell gives him Eukodal, and you can see, you know, the time when he gets the Eukodal. And that's when he has this effect for the first time, this like, "I can do anything. This is great. I'm gonna, I'm gonna explain to Mussolini that he's not gonna leave the war effort. " And on the way to the plane, he says to Morell that this Eukodal is really helping him, and he wants another shot, and he receives another shot. So he has quite a lot of Eukodal in him when he speaks to Mussolini. And there's like the people who write the protocol of the meeting, and also other people around. It's not just two people in the room. It's like, I don't know, 15 or 20 people in the room. And a lot of people talk about that meeting in their memoirs. And Mussolini is not able to say one word basically, because Hitler is so high and so charged, and he's just telling the whole time how great this is, you know, what they're doing right now. And of course, it's not even possible that you're gonna leave, you know. We are in this together from... you know, he explains everything, the whole thing, for like two hours, and Mussolini is just like, is like... Then a messenger comes in and says, "Rome has just been bombed. " He's like, and he's like he knows, but he can't say anything and he stays, you know. So that was very much influenced, that meeting, by his Eukodal. And that's probably because it was so successful in Hitler's eyes, what happened, is why Eukodal became a very attractive drug for him. And this happened, this was the first time in July 1943. And then, so it didn't take Eukodal through the whole time. You know, it only started in July 1943, he started with regular opioid use. You can see that he takes it more and more regularly now. Not every day, but sometimes, like there's a September 1944, he takes Eukodal every second day, which is like a junkie rhythm. You take it, and the next day, you don't take it. Then you take it again. - Why is that junkie rhythm? - You don't take it all the time because you need to, I don't know, relax or, you don't, there's like, you take it maybe Saturday night, you take it, and the high lasts till Sunday morning. And then Sunday when the high slowly wears off, you sleep, and then you wake up, and you're hungry. Maybe you eat. And then the next day, Monday, you're gonna do it again. So that's, that's this rhythm. - And it was more potent than what is it, Dolantin? - Dolantine. - Do- Dolan- - Eukodal is said to have the best effect, the best in the... In the sense of it's not about strength, you know, you just increase the dosage and you have a stronger effect, but you can't increase it too much because then you're gonna die, you know. That's also the problem with opioids. If you take too much, you're going to die, 'cause you're just gonna have a heart attack. So but... - There's nuance differences that... it's hard to convert into words, I guess. Yeah. - Different molecules have different effects. So Eukodal apparently had the best effect. That's why they had the oxycodone epidemic in America, because people take this pill, I mean, thank God they're not injecting it all like Hitler did. They take a pill, so it's not as dangerous as injecting. But apparently the effect is so pleasant of this Eukodal, of this particular type of opioid, that it just is more attractive maybe than Dolantin. - Is it possible to try to reverse engineer the effect of Hitler's drug use on the outcome of World War II? So if he didn't use any drugs, would the Nazis been more successful or less successful? What do you think? - I think it would be speculative to answer, but I can try. Uh, but it's very the war is so complex. I mean, there's many different ways this war could have played out and ended, but I think it would always have ended with a German defeat. - I don't think it would Well, if you don't attack the Soviet Union, then of course you can win. But as soon as you attack the Soviet Union... - As we talked about, I think the probability of success is low. But, you know, I would put it like, I don't know, 10%. Again... - Right -... extremely speculative. But if you do Blitzkrieg type of attack, very rapid, don't split the forces in Operation Barbarossa, go straight for Moscow. Don't invade Britain. Don't declare war on the United States, and really focus on gaining oil from the Middle East. So maybe making the Africa campaign the central point in the very beginning so that you have the resources that are essential for the industrial capacity of Germany that's required to, you know, keep manufacturing and keep fueling the planes, the tanks, the mechanized aspect of the army. So there's a lot of paths to this. I mean, but I don't think, I think it's probably fair to say that reasonable, thoughtful, calculated, disciplined leader would not have done any of the things Hitler did, even in the beginning. I mean, it requires insanity, it requires hatred, it requires ideological self-capture where you tell yourself narratives that rapidly deviate from like ground truth, from first principles of things. And you're just an insane person. You're an insane dictator that's drunk on power. And it's impossible for you to make great military decisions at that point. - Yeah, you would need like an impossible Hitler that is as crazy as he was, but still wouldn't make any... - Mistakes -... irrational mistakes. So that doesn't exist. Hitler can only be imagined or understood as this, this, in a way, as the drugs. Hitler without drugs is unthinkable for me. And it, it doesn't, it makes, he was the drug guy. You cannot, you cannot separate this. So Hitler was a self-destructive personality, and National Socialism is a self-destructive movement. That's why I said I think the Germans would have lost in any case. You know, except if there was this, this perfect Hitler, which is theoretically impossible. - Theoretically possible in the 20th century. I mean, you could think of a Genghis Khan or Alexander the Great type characters that would really internalize the sense of, in the case of Hitler, that the German people are, like without the hatred, without the ideology, but with the murderous with the ability to dehumanize the rest of the world and see the German people as, uh- - Superior -... the superior, and so it's fair to do the Lebensraum and all of that kind of stuff. - Right. - It's hard to, it's just, the reason you want to think about that kind of stuff is Hitler got, to me at least, close to capturing a very large part of the world. And it's inc- it's, it's terrifying and sort of unbelievable that somebody could get close to that. - I mean, what you described as this feeling of superiority and conquering countries, that was basically what the Wehrmacht, the high command, that's what they were going for. And they wanted to eliminate Hitler in the Operation Valkyrie, not because they thought, "He's an evil guy, he's killing the Jews," or, you know, they wanted to eliminate him because he was not this effective decision-maker anymore that they needed to win the war, or to end it in a different way. And I spoke with Anthony Beevor once about the attempt of British intelligence to assassinate Hitler, and he had seen some evidence that at the point in time, they dropped those plans because they knew that drugged Hitler or malfunctioning Hitler, which he was after, you know, the summer of 1943, is better for Britain than, you know, killing Hitler and then having to deal with, like, some kind of, you know, maybe the army would have taken over the country, and that would have been more uncomfortable for Great Britain than having the continuation of the degenerating maniac. - What do we know about the very end, Hitler in the bunker? The moments, the days, the weeks, the months leading up to the suicide, all those kinds of things? - It's quite well-documented because people at the time were keeping diaries and writing about it, writing about their experiences. Also, Morell wrote quite a bit what happened in the bunker. Um, one thing that changed was that Eukodal was not available anymore, so the drug that Hitler actually had become physically addicted to was suddenly not available anymore. This had to do with the bombardment of the Merck company, the factory in December 1944. British bombers destroyed the production facilities. And Morell, there's a report of Morell, the overweight person riding on a motorcycle through bombed out Berlin from pharmacy to pharmacy, basically going into the pharmacies trying to score Eukodal, and he couldn't find it anymore. It was nowhere to be found, and that's when Hitler goes into withdrawal. What I find surprising is that he didn't use another opioid because morphine was available all the way till the end, but he never kind of made that switch then. Like, he doesn't... Also, he didn't realize for a long time that he becomes physically dependent on a drug, that he becomes a drug addict, but this realization happens in the last weeks in the bunker because Goebbels, he understood it, and Goebbels wanted that bedroom, the second bedroom. So he said to Hitler, "Do you understand what's going on, that Morell turns you into a drug addict? " And Hitler's like, and at one point he realized what Goebbels is saying is true because he felt the withdrawal, he was shaking and he felt like shit, and- and Morell is, like, giving him weird stuff in the end. Like, one time he gives him harmine, which is an MAO inhibitor, which is part of ayahuasca actually because he still had that in his doctor's bag. It hadn't been used yet, so he gives him that, which also creates some kind of a weird high, but, you know, Hitler at one point realizes really what's going on. This is late April, so very late in the game, and there's a few reports of what actually happens, like some say that Morell has to kneel in front of him and that Hitler puts a gun on his head and says, "You've been making me addicted to opioids. Get the hell out of the bunker. " For sure he fires him that day, and then Morell's described as being in tears, like, leaving the bunker, he gets one of the last planes out of Berlin. He has a research lab in the south of Bavaria close to the Berghof, and he makes one of the last or the last plane out of Berlin. - He survives? - Yeah. And he goes to this research lab, and this is like May 2nd, 1945. He has like a little apartment in this research lab. His wife is still in Berlin. He's all alone, and he starts doing his taxes, and that kind of shows you that he was probably insane at that point, you know? - Just totally out of touch. - Why would you do your tax... Maybe he was bored, you know, maybe he didn't do his taxes for so long because he always had to treat Hitler and then he thinks like, "Now what am I gonna do? I'm just gonna do my taxes now. " Very German thing to do. - He's just a strange character. I mean, you tell this whole story... - I would put that in the movie for sure, him doing his taxes and... - That's how the movie ends. - Well, then the Americans move into Bavaria, liberate Bavaria from national socialism, which was a great job they did there, and so I'm also thankful not only to the Red Army but also to the American forces. Really very thankful that they... Because national socialism was hard to beat. It was a beast, you know? It was hard to beat. So they capture Morell. and they interrogate him, and he actually lives for another two years in American custody in Germany, in a military prison. And after these two years, his health's really bad. He has heart problems and, the Americans dump him in front of the Munich train station in a much too small kind of uniform jacket, like probably an American uniform, and he's lying on the pavement in front of the train station. And a half-Jewish nurse that walks around there, finds him, and she says, "I'm Theo Morell. " It's like, it's really like in a movie. "I'm Theo Morell. I was the personal physician of the Führer. " She's like, "This is 1947. Germany's in ruins. " And she brings him to a hospital. His wife comes from Berlin for the last time. They meet in a hospital at Tegernsee, beautiful lake in Bavaria, and then he dies. So that was the end of Morell. So we know pretty much what happens in the end. -... did somebody try to talk to Hitler about this? Like, what about Eva Braun? Has anybody close to him tried to talk about- - Well, Goebbels did. - Well, that at the very end. But you would imagine maybe the generals, or friends, or inner circle. I mean, that, the reason I mentioned Eva is because, you know, like, personal, and people close to him. - There is a certain tension between Eva Braun and Morell. And I could very well imagine that she talked with Hitler about it, but there's no record, so I don't know exactly. But they had a very intimate relationship. So Eva Braun was not just the dumb blonde that plays no role. They actually spoke every day. And when Hitler was in the military headquarters, he would phone her every night at 10:00 PM. They would have a long phone conversation. So they had a very deep relationship, and I'm pretty sure she didn't really like Morell because, you know, for the obvious reasons. He was closer to Hitler than herself. And, you know, if you count one plus one, it's two, you know. So- - But she could have maybe not liked him because she might have cared for Hitler. And you can see the effects of drugs on humans that you care for. - She also had a good relationship with him at times. Because he was often at the Berghof. The Berghof was like the, what is it called? Mar-a-Lago. Um- - Oh, the Mar-a-Lago? Yeah. - Yeah, that was kind of what it was. And it was actually, it became an official headquarters for Hitler so he would actually make decisions from there. It was not just a vacation place. And Morell was often there, and Eva Braun was always there. That was her place. She was running that place. She was like the woman of that place. And Hitler was often, of course, in the field in the headquarters, but he came as much as he could to the Berghof because it's quite beautiful. I went up there. It's quite interesting. And she also had a good relationship with Morell, and there's like a paper that I found where like they were very intimate and very close. Like, there's a paper of Morell where she comes to him in the morning and she has scratch marks. So apparently, they had violent sex. So Morell is also kind of a witness to that, that I found in Washington, DC in the National Archive. - Wait, Hitler and Eva had violent sex? What do we know about Hitler's sex life? It's like not known, right? - I found it interesting that Morell describes these scratch marks. I mean, it's interesting. So they had some kind of kinky sex maybe. Maybe they also had normal sex and sometimes it was kinky, or- Maybe Hitler was aggressive in bed, but it doesn't really matter. It's just what happened between Eva and him. - Yeah, I don't think that affected-... military operations of the Wehrmacht. - The drug use did. His sex... If he would have had sex with a lot of people, maybe with his generals, maybe then, you know, it would be worth writing about it because maybe he dominated these generals in bed or something. But he was just having sex with Eva, and I don't think that's historically relevant. It might be interesting for the movie, but Also, I don't want to see Hitler having sex. - I don't think anyone wants But Eva Braun is an interesting character because she had more of a say than historians for a long time attributed to her. Then a biography was written on her by a female German historian, and that's a very good biography. It really shows that she had, you know, quite a lot to say in this relationship. She was not the dumb blonde that just... She was quite opinionated and active. And she was filming him a lot. She was always filming in the Berghof. You can go online and look at the Eva Braun clips, and you will see Hitler in color at the Berghof, how he's meeting children, petting their head. And she was contributing to the myth of this private, the good private man. So Eva Braun is an interesting character for sure. But I found one note that she, in the beginning when Morell started with his drugs, said to Morell that she wants the same medications, not drugs, the same medications as Hitler so she would be on the same wavelength with him. She wanted to be... She didn't want to lose this world. But, Hitler became such a drug polytoxicomanic user that, of course, Eva couldn't keep up with that. They weren't a drug couple. I didn't see any evidence for that, that they would take all the crazy drugs together and then have crazy sex or something like that. That's not how it was. So I think she was sympathetic to Morell in the beginning and then changed her opinion. And I'm pretty sure she talked with Hitler about it, but there's no records about their private conversations.

- Let's talk about another perspective on this whole story that you document in your book, 'The Bohemians. ' The subtitle is, 'The Lovers Who Led Germany's Resistance Against the Nazis. So this is the story of the people who resisted from within Germany. - Right. - Can you tell their story? In particular, let's talk through the story of the two key figures in the movement who--... happened to also be in love. - Well, the main guy is Harro Schulze-Boysen. He caught my attention when I was doing research in an archive in Munich, researching drugs in the Luftwaffe, Göring's Luftwaffe. Göring being the more, I mean, the Luftwaffe was a drug... very promiscuous place. A lot of people in the Luftwaffe were high. - Oh, so more for entertainment versus the practical aspect? So it's less about the meth optimizing human performance and more about just exploring? - Like the number three of the Luftwaffe, Ernst Udet, he committed suicide in the fall of 1941. He had seven Pervitin tablets for breakfast. - Okay. - So he was really high on meth. He really enjoyed it. But he loved to take meth and then drink. Alcohol was a big thing in the Luftwaffe. You can drink a lot more when you're on methamphetamine. And I found this letter, and that was really a coincidence, while I was looking through the drug stuff. I was searching for drugs, and I found this letter by Harro Schulze-Boysen, who had nothing to do with drugs, but still, I found this letter. I don't know why, I can't remember how exactly it happened that I was suddenly reading this letter, and it was the last letter that he wrote in his life. He wrote it to his father, and he said that, "Everything I have done, I'm totally fine with it, and I know it's very hard for you, and I really am mostly sad for you and mother and my brother, that you have to go through this. I'm very sorry, but I'm fine with it, and I have a clean conscience. I did what I could to stop this madness. " And I'm like, "What? Who is this guy? " I googled him, and there were not so many hits on him, but I read a little bit, and he actually had formed together with his wife, Libertas, which means freedom-- - Good name. - He had formed the largest resistance network against the Nazis that ever existed. Over 100 people in Berlin that were all connected, and they were, they were like from all flights of life. Like, there were some artists, others were workers. Some were leftists, others were patriots. Harro always believed that people could come to an agreement, like it's possible to actually talk about things, and he was a, he was a true democrat, maybe you could say, or a true, I don't know, libertarian. He had to learn a hard lesson that with Nazis, you cannot argue, because they, they are always right. They're not... It doesn't work. At least it didn't work during the Third Reich. He had published a newspaper during the Weimar Republic called Gegner, which means opponent. And in the Gegner, opponents could all write. Whoever were the street's opponents, they could all write in The Opponent. And so you read all kinds of texts and opinions, and he thought when Hitler took over power in '33 that he could continue to publish The Opponent, because he thought even in a Nazi-led Germany, you know, this keeps the discourse. You have to have a discourse. We have to discuss. We have to disagree, you know. And then in April 1933, two months after Hitler took power, they had a meeting with the editorial staff. They discussed the new issue, and then there was a knock on the door. It was the SS, and they beat up everybody and they destroyed the typewriters and the printing press that they had in the office in Berlin. They took Harro and his best friend, who was half Jewish, to one of these early concentration camps, and they tortured both of them, and the Jew was killed. He didn't make it. Henry Erlanger and Harro, at that moment, he realized who he was against. He realized that he has to... He decided to become... to fight the system. And the way he fought the system was later during the '60s. We also had a '60s cultural and political changes in Germany. And then our '60s, they called it "March through the Institutions. " That is a way to infiltrate the system, to become part of the system, and then, you know, change the system from within. So you don't leave the country, you stay, you go into the institutions. You march through the institutions. So Harro decided to go into the Luftwaffe, and he was working in the Luftwaffe Ministry, a huge building still intact today in Berlin Wilhelmstrasse. Quite an interesting building that was like the power center of the Luftwaffe, or like one of the most important structures in the whole Nazi regime. And he was working there, and he worked his way up, and he received quite a lot of information. For example, when Germany, for the first time, became militarily active again. This was in 1936, when the Germans supported the fascists in Spain in the Spanish Civil War. This was a clandestine operation. The Luftwaffe did this, and German soldiers went to Spain like in plain clothes, posing as vacationers. But then they, you know, were actually soldiers and supporting Franco's... You know, were part of Franco's victory later on. And Harro had this information, and he tried to pass this on to the BBC. He failed passing it on. He met a BBC journalist during the Olympic Games in Berlin, and told him about this, and the BBC guy was too afraid to make this public, and he kind of buried that information. So Harro is just a very interesting character, and he was in love with Libertas, and Libertas with him. Harro came from like a bourgeois family, very educated. His great granduncle was von Tirpitz, who built up the marine, the Navy for the Kaiser. So he came from this influential German family, but they were all patriots. They were not Nazis. They were democrats, patriots, and militarists, I guess you could say, or even, you know, very straight-laced also. And Libertas, she came from a castle north of Berlin. She was this bohemian, like aristocratic Bohemian type. She's very good-looking, always playing music. And they fell in love. They met on the Wannsee on boats. They were both on... Harro was rowing, and she was on a sailboat of a guy that Harro also knew. So he was rowing and he saw his friend on the sailboat. He looked at Libertas, she looked at him, and they were in love in 1934. And the other guy, the friend of Harro, he left his sailboat, because he realized, "I'm like the fifth wheel on the car, not really needed," right? "not really needed," right? How do you say that in sailboat terms? I don't know, the third sail is not needed. But what happened at night, Harro didn't sleep with Libertas. For her, that was very unusual because everyone wanted to sleep with her, but Harro wanted to keep his clothes on, and it was a very warm night. I researched this quite thoroughly. I know exactly the temperature. So also, when you read The Bohemians, you really experience the life of these people, what they experienced, but everything is nothing is invented, which is very tricky to do. So what happens that night, Libertas wants to take off his clothes, and he doesn't want to take them off. Why? From the torture in April 1933, he has quite a lot of scars. They even burned swastikas into his thighs. Like, not burned, sorry, with knives. the SS. So he doesn't want to show that to her. He hadn't had a girlfriend for a while. He can't open up emotionally, because he's fighting the Nazis. It's very secret. No one knows about this, that he's long-term planning his life to fight the system that he hates so much because they killed his best friend in front of his eyes. But at one point, Libertas does, you know, take off his clothes and she sees this, and she's naive. She's even a member of the Nazi party, but she's not a very active party member. She just, you know, she works for MGM actually in Berlin. A Hollywood film studio office in Berlin, Germany was one of the biggest movie markets, and she was the press girl. She did the campaigns for the big Hollywood movies in Germany. - So just a regular German girl? - Well, she wasn't regular. She was from a very high family. Actually, her grandfather had been in a relationship with the German. emperor, which is a side story that I found out when I researched The Bohemians. The German emperor apparently was bisexual and was going to that castle, and they had homosexual kind of meetings there with Libertas' grandfather. So she came from a very... Unusual family. - Yeah. But what I mean by a usual German girl... that is it's not obvious that a person like that would hold a crucial role in the resistance against the Nazis. - No, not at all. That was always a problem because for her, it was weird that someone was against the system. But Harro told me... Harro was totally convinced that fascism is wrong and that he has to fight it. More and more Libertas was convinced, and then more friends came into the group. And the way Harro organized this resistance group was through parties. They were like a power couple of Berlin, and they had a great loft apartment. They moved together to a loft apartment on also a side street from Ku'damm, a huge room, and there they had parties every second Thursday night, and they would invite friends. Then once they trusted someone personally, then they would spill the beans and say, "This is actually not just a party. " But they would test it. At the party, they would say something critical of the regime, and you immediately, you know, either the person jumps on it, responds, or you know, goes somewhere else, gets a drink at the bar. Not into it. So that was the way of recruiting people, and that was such an efficient way that the Gestapo was not able to understand this group for a long time, not even recognize that there's a group, because Gestapo was very good at infiltrating, for example, communist resistance groups, because you just had to go in as a Gestapo guy and be a communist. Just say the right words and they would, at one point, you know, take you. But with Harro and Libertas, it wasn't so easy, you know. They would sniff you out. - These parties were what, like intellectuals? Like artists and that kind of stuff? - Yeah, yeah. They had music, they would dance, they would sleep with each other. They also... - Oh, sex stuff too. - Well, they had... and this is, again, kind of a parallel to the '60s. They had the idea that if you're against fascism, if you're for freedom of everything... - Yeah, free love, the whole thing. -... yeah, they had free love, but it wasn't a dogma. There was also a female doctor there. She was quite square, I guess you would say. say, and she was, like, against this and she said, "This is too complicated. We are a resistance group, like, what if there's jealousy and what... " This could compromise operations. And it did sometimes. That's why The Bohemians are a very interesting subject, because sometimes it just doesn't work. In a way it works that love really bonds them together. But also especially Libertas and Harro, they have a terrible marriage sometimes. They really fight, because Libertas is not so much intellectually convinced. She's more of a resistance fighter from the heart, like, she feels that the Nazis are not good, but Harro is more like the analytical guy. So they have a lot of friction also, and it's a... It's a fascinating story. And they came quite far. They made... There was a point in time when Harro had militarily relevant information through his position at the Luftwaffe ministry, and he passed that on to allies, to Western allies and to the Soviet Union. So he went a step further than just being a resistance group. He became, you could say, a traitor, or... - He would give information to the Soviets. - Yeah, he would, because he said, - As part of the resistance. - Yeah, they can beat Germany. But that was also discussed in the groups. Very interesting to see, like, some say, "We can't do this 'cause the Soviet Union's also a totalitarian regime. " But then Harro says, "Yeah, but they are going to beat Hitler. " So, it's... The Bohemians is a very interesting topic. - What lessons do you learn from these folks, maybe about why so few resisted Hitler while in Germany? - I mean, it was extremely dangerous. - It's purely the danger? Is it also people believed it's hard to take yourself, like, be an independent thinker and take yourself outside the propaganda? 'Cause they're also swimming in propaganda. - I mean, the chances of succeeding are quite small, 'cause the system was extremely strong. And if you made a joke about Hitler and the wrong person heard it, like, in a restaurant and would rat on you, you would land in a concentration camp. So, people were very, very careful. Also, at parties, with how Libertas was singing and they were drinking and dancing, and then suddenly the political discussion started, that's... You know you have to have guts to then actually not leave the party but to stay, because they were rising their lives, basically. As soon as they would be found out, they would be dead. And people don't want to die when they're in their mid-20s. They were pretty young. And Libertas would often say, like, "We can't win. You know, why are we risking our lives for what, you know? " So, one time they did a... Gelbe Sättel Aktion, Gelbe Sättel. Like, they produced... 'cause one guy had access to a printing press, and they produced leaflets, like, small papers that had glue on one side, and the paper said, what the Nazis did, they set up a huge exhibition hall, which was called the Soviet Paradise, and this exhibition always in the center of Berlin. I'd never heard about this before. I found this when I researched the Bohemians, and it was the most popular exhibition during the whole of the, of the war. Like, two million people, two million Germans saw this. They went into this exhibition, and they saw how horrible the Soviet Union is, how horrible communism is to people. So, it was a propaganda show. And the group decided to make these leaflets which didn't say "The Soviet Paradise," but it said "The Nazi Paradise," torture, SS torture, hunger, war, how long will it last? And they glued over a thousand of these stickers everywhere in Berlin in May 1942, at night, and they organized it in a way that they, always two, a man and a woman would go out, and they had, like, the stickers with them, and then they would pretend to kiss and would, like, lean on a wall. And then while they were kissing, one would, like, put the sticker on. Then they would move on in the dark. So, in the morning of that May 1942, tens of thousands of Berliners saw that the city was, like, saw these things. So, does it make a difference? It made one on that day, you know? It was a very dangerous thing to do, and no one was, no one got caught. And in the morning, a lot of people saw that there is actually resistance, that there are people who do something against it. So, I think they did something. - Yeah, I was reading about protests in recent human history, and most of them, many of them, don't have an effect until they do. It's like this threshold effect. It's very hard to know. know because it's, it's a match that lights a fire. And sometimes the spark, it takes a little bit of time to propagate through the whispers. What happens is the people whispering, it's the whisper network of people talking, and sometimes it just takes that one sticker to begin the whispers, and then a few months later, the regime is overthrown. It's funny. But it's hard to sort of trace back what was effective and what was not. - I mean, Harro was convinced that the system would lose, so he thought that maybe we can make a contribution that it's going faster. Maybe we will be that spark. So- Unless, when I think that there's this possibility, I must try it, you know? That's, that was his conviction. So, he would put his life on the line for that possibility. - How did they get caught? - They were approached by the Soviet Union, who wanted to recruit them as spies. And they didn't want to do that. Harro refused the Soviet intelligence. These are documents that were found in the early '90s. One of the sons of one of the members of that group of Harro's, a good friend of Harro, one of his sons went to Moscow to look at the files, and he found a kind of furious Soviet KGB kind of descriptions of this weird guy, Harro, that doesn't want to be a proper Soviet spy and just says, "Yes, I'm going to give you information so you can hurt Hitler, but I'm not going to play your game. be one of you. " So, still they did collaborate with the Soviet Union. They accepted a radio transmitter from the Soviet Union with, with which they were supposed to send military information via radio to Moscow, and they struggle with the technology. The Russians give them, like, an apparatus only with a Russian instruction, and it's, like, very difficult. They make mistakes. But what actually then gets them caught is the Russians at one point answer and send a message to them through the ether, and that message is decoded. But the Nazis intercept that message and are able to decode it. And in the message, it gives the clear names of Harro and his address, which is a total intelligence blunder. Or maybe they just wanted to give them up, and had their revenge because Stalin did crazy stuff like that, you know? So they suddenly know, the Gestapo knows Harro Schulze-Boysen, the high-ranking officer in the Luftwaffe ministry is giving military information to the Soviet Union, and apparently, he's meeting with all kinds of friends. So the Gestapo started observing the group for months. And the group at one point realizes that they've been basically found out, and then it's already too late. Then they capture quite a few of them, and quite a few get trial, military trial, and receive the death penalty, and are also being executed. And Harro and Libertas are among them. And also, that last chapter of their lives is very well-documented, and it actually ends with that letter, you know, that I found in the beginning. That's the last thing that Harro does, is write that letter. - To his father. - That's very interesting what happens with Libertas because she gets in custody. The Gestapo asks one of their secretaries, Gertrude Breiter, to go in and pose as a friend to Libertas. And Libertas actually falls for it, and starts telling that secretary who pretends to be her friend and kind of helps her with certain things, tells her secrets, and that kind of breaks the neck of the group. It's a very tragic ending. So while my books always contain as much humor as possible, that is not a funny story, but it's a very dramatic story. Even though they had a lot of humor, obviously. I mean, they had parties to recruit people.

- What lessons can we learn from that about how to resist totalitarian regimes? Is there some deeper wisdom? - I just think it's admirable to be brave and not do things that you cannot really justify in front of your own conscience. I don't know if I would have been so brave. I don't even know how my conscience would have been, but I'm probably more the fleeing type. Like, a lot of writers would just leave Germany. Like Thomas Mann just left Germany and lived in Pacific Palisades. - And then, and then maybe write, criticize, but leave first. - And he criticized it from the outside, and he was quite influential. He worked for the BBC. They did shows against the Nazis. So you can Maybe you could do more when you leave. It's just you have... Like today, let's say we see something. We live in a system that suddenly changes, and we're not happy with it anymore. Do we just go along and, you know, continue to stare at our smartphone, or do we do something against it? What do we do? I mean, every situation has very different, you know, conditions, you know. I think it's probably even harder now to be in the resistance than it was back then. - But I think it does, at the end of the day, boil down to facing yourself, looking yourself in the mirror— that you're facing your conscience and doing the courageous thing. And I think that in itself, that it's the tree falling in the forest, even if there's nobody there to hear it. Just the fact that exists, somehow through the karma channels of the world— can materialize into progress, into a revolution against oppression. Something about that human spirit still shining through can start a revolution. - I mean, it is that spirit that actually made us human. It is that neuroplasticity in our brain that we do not just repeat the conditioned sets that we ought to repeat. But that we actually dim down the command center in the brain and let other parts of the brain react, which is the psychedelic experience, basically. That, I think, contributes to the evolution of our species. And our species is certainly threatened by extinction. So I think if we somehow care for the human race, then resistance becomes a very immediate and important topic, you know. Because you can resist, obviously. Your brain is yours. You can resist in many ways, you know, by thinking, just by thinking. That's why I became a writer when I was a teenager. I was very political. I wanted to change the system. I thought, "This is not good what's happening. " This was in the Cold War. Very conservative— I don't know if conservative is even the right word, but Ronald Reagan was president. So I thought my writing... could change the brain waves of the readers basically, and therefore have a neuroplastic effect on the reader. And just because that is what literature is. Literature, and I started off as a novelist, and that's really literature. It's about what do you see right now? How do you describe it? So you do it in ways that when you read it, when you read a good book, you feel good because suddenly you see different things, your brain changes. You become more free, I think, if you read good literature. That was always my form of resistance. Communist resistance cells would probably say this is nothing, you know, but I think it is resistance. And that's a little bit... I- I think it resembles a little bit what this group did. Just living differently, not living, you know... That's why I said in the beginning, Nazis were bad dancers, because they-... I think they were good dancers at the parties, you know, and they were like, I think it's big. Dancing can be a form of resistance. - Yeah, but I also like the scale when you resist and through that resistance you have impact at scale, and I do think writing is that. So if you can encapsulate your, sort of the spirit of that resistance into writing, that's- that's beautiful. And some of the greatest literature does exactly that. - Right. That is the aim of my next book.

- So is it still called Stoned Sapiens? - Yeah, it's called Stoned Sapiens. - Great title, great title. So what- what is this lens that you're looking at- at all of human history through? - I discussed this with already mentioned Antony Beevor who is like the master in historical non-fiction books and said, "Is it also possible to write a world history? " Like, about everything, basically. And he said, "Yes, it is possible. " It's not easy, because you have to understand like a lot, you know? And obviously it will always be a selection. It's clear, you know. That's why I also think that the historical science is basically a fictional science. I mean, I have a foreword, the Blitz foreword basically tells that story. Don't... Take it with a grain of salt. Not only Blitz, but every historical book, because we weren't there, you know? That's what Johnny Depp said when the- when the guy said, "So you had like a mega pint of- of red wine. " He just said, "Were you there? " You know, and the guy wasn't there. So... history, historical sciences is a fiction. But, you know, it- it's a certain type of fiction, and it- it's based on facts. So I'm not inventing anything in Stoned Sapiens, and I'm highly interested in the very early human history, and there are not a lot of sources. So the- the beginning of the book is more speculative than, for example, the Vietnam War chapter. In the Vietnam War chapter, I'm in Hanoi speaking to Viet Cong generals, asking them did they supply heroin to the- to the GIs which would dimin- which diminished their fighting capability. That's... You can research that, and that's- that's also a chapter. By the way, the Vietnam War is not called the Vietnam War in Vietnam. It's called the American War. And also, I was like sitting with these Viet Cong generals in Hanoi just like a few weeks ago for researching bring heroin? " Because there's never been evidence that it happened this way. way, and they just looked at me and they said, "There's no Viet Cong. " Like, "What are you talking about? " "You are the Viet Cong. " They said, "No, this is an American propaganda term. We were the North Vietnamese Army. We never call ourselves the Viet Cong. " So the book is full of surprises, obviously. But the very early beginning of Stoned Sapiens goes back to about 1. 5 million years ago, when Homo Erectus, who also has become kind of famous by now, Homo Erectus. It's like the first human that really gets shit done, you know. - Yeah, they get moving. - Yeah, they move. - And why were they moving? - I mean, then you can examine exactly where they originated, which was, I mean, it's also disputed by now that it's the Great Rift Valley. That only the most fossils have been found there, but that doesn't mean that they originated there. Maybe they originated in the Central African rainforest where fossils disintegrate, and only there in the Rift Valley we still find it. But we know for sure that in the Great Rift Valley we still find it. So, there was a plant called khat, which is a plant speed. So they were using that. It's still being used now in these countries, in Ethiopia, Yemen, around the Horn of Africa, khat is very normal to use. You chew the leaves, and it gives you like, it's like an amphetamine. It's a plant amphetamine basically. So Homo Erectus, there's no proof that they actually used it, but they were living in that area and the plant was there, so you can write about that. So it's interesting because they were able to do certain things, like they shed the fur. They were the first ones to suddenly be naked. And that has the effect that sweat glands are produced. Homo Erectus could sweat it out basically when they were very hot. What animals couldn't do because they had the fur. So an antelope can run faster than a Homo Erectus, but after 10 minutes, the antelope has to stop, like what dogs do, like their tongue goes out. And humans didn't have to do that because they were sweating, so they could They developed the jogging mode basically. So they were jogging. They were not sprinting to get the animal. They were jogging it, and when the animal couldn't do it, had to rest, then the humans would come and hunt it down. So Homo Erectus was evolutionary very good. And then later one of the species coming out of Homo Erectus is Homo Sapiens. At one point, there were only about 1,500 people left. There were not a lot of Homo sapiens. There was a point in time when there were quite a few of them, and the problem became inbreeding, and there was a real danger of extinction. They were vulnerable, you know? They were not on top of the food chain yet, so they had to develop consciousness. Consciousness is what basically saved us from extinction. Without human consciousness, we wouldn't be here, you know? That is what made us, in the end, then superior to the other animals. So, how did this happen? You can kind of trace how they moved. You can trace that they went through the Central African rainforest, and there's one plant there which elephants like, and that's Iboga. And Iboga now is the hot thing of the psychedelic renaissance. Iboga, Iboga. But it's also the oldest drug in the book, basically. They saw that elephants were eating Iboga, the root and the leaves, and suddenly were like, walking backwards and were behaving in an unusual way, and then people were also using this. And this was going on over 100,000 years in the rainforest. So, you can, you can write a story about that, you know. Was it maybe Iboga? Of course, you can't prove it. You know, maybe the frontal cortex grew by itself, you know? - That's a really compelling story. That's one of the great mysteries of... How did the light turn on? - Right. - The magic of human cognition and consciousness, and the... - Like Sapiens by Harari, which is a great book, he also misses that. Like, when it comes to those moments, he writes like, "We don't understand how the first cognitive revolution and the second cognitive revolution actually happened. " So, I find it interesting to kind of look, could it have been drugs? Like, I include, like everything he leaves out, I I- I look at thoroughly in Stoned Sapiens. - I mean, he does a good explanation of interesting consequences, you know? Our ability to imagine ideas and share them, and, you know, collaborate on them, and the imagination, all that kind of stuff. But the why, the transitions of why did it happen, he doesn't provide, right? I mean, there's some theories, but if Iboga is one of them, that's a compelling one. That's a really compelling one. - Yeah. I mean, I'm still researching this book and writing it. I also want to go there, because they still take Iboga in Gabon, for example. I also interviewed one of the leading Iboga experts at Columbia University, and for Stoned Sapiens, and he described how Iboga works in the brain, because that's... And he's never taken Iboga himself. - Oh, interesting. - He just relies on the data. He doesn't want to be personally influenced. But he said he will take it at a certain point in time. But right now, he's still just working on data, just with patients, you know? And what he found, and also examining the brain through brain scanners, what actually happens. Like classic psychedelics, like LSD or psilocybin, they dock at certain points. They interact with certain receptors. It's quite well-understood how they work. And he said iboga is completely different. It's like... and he also showed this with his hands, because he's just so mesmerized by his own findings. Like it's kind of everywhere at the same time in the brain. He says it's like a spa for the neurons, basically. The it's... his findings show, and these are academic findings at Columbia, that iboga... it's like, as if, he says, he said to me, as if iboga would know our brain for a long time. Like, it knows exactly. Like if you're addicted to something, or if you're depressed. The depression literally is a depression in the neuronal network. Depression is a thought loop, for example, or, you know, a system of thought loops that you're, that, "I'm not worthy, I'm not whatever, I can't do it. " You always go back. This is... It really kind of depresses your brain in a way. And iboga sees this immediately, and kind of takes the depression out and makes your brain go basically well again. So this is what he, this is what his findings are. So, he says he's totally convinced this is like a... He doesn't call it a plant. He calls it like a neurotechnology of the 22nd century. So iboga really seems to be in a different kind of category. That's why I really feel that "Stoned Sapiens" must be written, because there's so much that historians just shied away from. It all started when I was on the island of Crete, the biggest island of Greece. Crete, that's another, like, Harari moment. On Crete was the first what is called high culture of Europe, the Minoan culture. You might have heard of the Minoan culture. And no one can explain so far, why there on Crete, suddenly in Europe, they started making amazing structures and amazing art, and how did it happen there that this, like, totally backwards place, Crete, became... I mean, backwards as any other place, you know? Why did it happen there that such intricate objects were being made and that the culture was developing so intensely? And I was kind of thinking about that. That's how the book started. I was with my kids on vacation in Crete. And if you go to, like, Knossos or Phaistos, the big archeological sites, or to the museum in Heraklion, you don't find an answer. Why did it happen there? And then I found like an old book in an old bookshop, and it described an excavation site at the sea, and that it was like maybe a maritime place, or like a harbor basically. And then while I was swimming there, I found on the sea floor, the remnants of a wall that was a harbor wall that was out, that was breaking the waves, and then I climbed over the fence because the archeological site is still fenced off, like it's not explained officially what it is, and the walls in there are the biggest walls of the whole Bronze Era. It was actually quite a big harbor. The next step is, what did they trade? And they traded olive oil because Crete was the first place to produce olive oil. And I also found, and this is historically documented, opium was made in Crete and the poppy flower was growing there. And this was the harbor. They became incredibly wealthy through olive oil and opium trade through that harbor. So you could say that the whole of European high culture, which we goes from Minoan, goes to Athens. It all started basically with, you know, they were drug dealers in a way. Or they... I mean, it was the most potent medicine, 'cause it was the only medicine that numbs the pain for sure. Opium works, and the Minoans developed that. So, I mean, it's kind of, it's a bit similar to the Blitz experience. You know the more I researched, the more I found - that there's this whole component to human history... that could be a really critical component. I'm really interested about the origin... There's certain leaps, like the origins of human civilization, and then the origins of Homo sapiens. Those are really big leaps. - I mean, there's some evidence, like, they came through the area where Iboga was, but there's no academic proof. So, I guess an academically trained historian couldn't really write about that. But I can write about it. possibilities. - Yeah, sometimes... The farther into history you go, the more it's about writing the possibilities. - I mean, it's also interesting, why did the Neanderthals die out? And what we can compare is the cave art. And the cave art of the Neanderthals is much simpler than ours. If you really get into the cave art, I don't know if you've done that. - Have not, no. - It's quite fascinating. Picasso looked at some of the cave paintings in Southern France, and he said, "We didn't learn anything new. " And if you study them, they're really good. But only the humans are good. The Neanderthals, they were worse artists than us. And you can also see, there's a very famous one that comes from Algeria with a shaman, and around his body, mushrooms grow out of his body, so he was a mushroom shaman. So mushrooms seem to have been, part, at least in that area. And that's the 'Stoned Ape' theory, that Terence McKenna did. And I think a lot of evidence kind of points to it that we were able to develop our consciousness in a better way than the Neanderthals who did not have a drug culture. They were basically too sober for the future. We assimilated them. They had no chance against our impetus of boldly going where no one has gone before. They were much more happy with what they had. They were not progressing all the time. Like, we have the transcendental kind of moment, which is, you know, the psychedelic experience. I guess you could think of it without it, but to imagine Sapiens makes more sense to imagine Sapiens as Stoned Sapiens, as a species that was able to incorporate psychoactive components into its development. It makes a lot of sense.

- What about one of the great, if you can think of it that way, technologies that humans have developed is religion. Religion evolved different kinds. Do you think there's a connection between psychedelics and religion, the development of religion throughout different parts of the world? - Well, I think Moses is quite interesting. Moses was a traumatized man that had fled Egypt where he had killed a man who had been beating up a Hebrew, so Moses kind of took revenge and killed him. So he was running from the law and he was together with, in the Bible it says, I think 66 people, they were in the desert, in the Sinai, and they had been fasting for days and no alcohol, so it was kind of a psychedelic retreat, basically. I mean, this is being examined by Israeli scholars and I think it's very interesting work. They examine in detail what does the Bible say, and the Bible mentions in that passage where Moses sees the burning bush and then gets the Ten Commandments. In that Bible passage, there's a lot of several times the acacia is mentioned. And the Egyptian acacia grows right in the Sinai area and contains DMT. So there's this Israeli research that Moses was actually having a trip, basically, that he was seeing, he was hallucinating the burning bush, was... you know, if you take LSD and you look at a bush in the heat, you know, it will move, you know? It might resemble, like, a burning experience. And you know, experience. And he went up the mountain, which takes three hours, while the others were staying down. And with the DMT type of experience, it's not that everyone in the group has the same experience, you know, to Ayahuasca. Sometimes, like, one guy has an incredible experience, while another person might not feel that much at all. And Moses felt a lot. And you do feel a lot when you, you know, when you are, when you have something to work through, and he had certainly the trauma of killing a man. So it's also no surprise that he receives one of the commandments, "You should not kill. " You know? So for him, it's like extremely, extremely important and, what he receives on the mountain, that God is like, there's someone speaking to me, and he understands that God is not, that there's not many gods, just one God. Like, he has a revelation, you know? And I think it, when I, when I read, you know, these examinations by these scholars, I think it makes a lot of sense to imagine that the Jewish religion comes from Moses' trip. And also, if you look at the Jewish religion, they are quite open to drugs. I don't know if that, you know, that could be an unconscious reaction to that, to that kind of trippy beginning. Like, they to get intoxicated to get closer to God. They're not as straight-laced as the Christians. They just allow alcohol. It's like the blood of Christ. So, Stoned Sapiens is a book about religion. Islam and intoxication is also a very interesting topic, 'cause you have the Sufis who intoxicate themselves to get into ecstasy, to be closer to God. And then you have the conservative Islamic scholar, Ibn Taimiyya, who defended Damascus against the Mongols by combining anti-drug rhetoric, like, "They're bringing drugs to us and they are not good Muslims. " So, drugs in religion. Sometimes drugs help religion, like, are used in religious religion to, contexts. But then you can also see that religions work as prohibitionist movements against drugs, like the Christian church. Also the Purity Law, for example, it's very famous in Germany. It's called the Reinheitsgebot. Beer can only contain three things: water, hops, and barley or something like that. That's the Purity Law. And that was done by the church in the 16th century. And in Germany, for a long time, this was seen as a quality control. seen as like, this is like a quality control, like beer has to be pure, it only has these ingredients. But it's actually a move by the church to weed out all the other ingredients that had been put in beer before, like nightshade plants. So beer... Also, witches were brewing crazy beer you drink and you have visions and you have like visions and you dance around the fire. And the church didn't like this. So the church said, "This is the beer now. " And especially, hops was the new ingredient for the beer. And so the Purity Law is the first prohibitionist law in the Middle Ages in Europe. Another fascinating... - Yeah. I think as society develops more and more, it seems to resist, certainly psychedelics, it seems to resist drugs. I don't know what that's about. - One of the very fascinating turning points that I've been able to pinpoint, or at least I think this is what happened, is when do the first kings come up? They weren't kings for a very long time. The first king that I can identify was in the so-called Sumerian high culture, was in Uruk, was Gilgamesh. And they wrote the Gilgamesh epic about the great king. Gilgamesh epic about, you know, the great king. But that was four or 5,000 years ago, something like that. But what happened in the thousands of years before, there's no source that there were rulers. It seems like humans were quite good in organizing themselves without kings before these first kings came. I mean, thousands of years from the end of the Ice Age until the Sumerian high culture, there were no kings. So people were quite able to organize their communities. There was, for example, Çatal Hüyük in Eastern Turkey-... that was working for like 2,000 years without any hierarchies. I think that is quite interesting, and then why do suddenly the hierarchies start and what makes the hierarchy stronger? And again, I'm still researching this, but in Sumeria, we can see that it's the beer that destroys the hierarchy-free society, because they are able... I mean, beer is quite old. The first beer was made in Gobekli Tepe, the famous first kind of structure of mankind. I also write about that, because it's very interesting. Small detour, what is Gobekli Tepe? No one knows. How did they make it? No one knows, but they made it, but why did they make it? I think they made it because they were creating a meeting place, and why was that so important? There were not so many humans at the time, there were like one to 4 million, those are the estimates, on the whole planet. And they were usually living in small communities of like a hundred people up to 500, not more. So the problem then is inbreeding. Inbreeding means it's a degeneration, so it's a problem. We are genetically not so diverse, actually, as humans, so Gobekli Tepe people were meeting from different areas, having sex with people they usually wouldn't see creating healthy children. And Gobekli Tepe was working for 1,600 years, and I think it was like an evolutionary kind of machine. Like, without that idea, we're going to create a party place. You know, it was a party, basically. They were eating very well. They found a lot of bones, but no one lived there. They just came together there for parties. And then after 800 years, they start making beer there, and then the situation slightly changes. They found this beer, these places where they made beer. You can still find the chemicals and it's sure that they made beer there. And then once they make beer, they create different stone circles, and then somehow, it changes. And we can see clearly how it changes in the Sumerian high culture when beer... Beer then becomes a business. Beer is being done by the priests, by the ruling class, or ruling class emerges. Like, monasteries often brew beer, and that was also the case in the Sumerian high culture. They make beer. They labeled the beer, like the temple that would make the beer, the beer would be attributed to that temple. It would be sold, so that temple kind of rises in status, makes money. So that's how hierarchies started up. So the hierarchy, which is the big problem right now, that we have these hierarchies, kings everywhere that kind of steal our money or at least make it very difficult for us as humans to organize on an egalitarian planetary scale, which is our only chance for survival. If we, at one point, overcome the hierarchies, overcome the nation-states, and create a planetary, probably AI-assisted, open source AI-assisted planetary society and everyone has the same political rights, there's no more borders, there's a planetary minimum income, so no one is starving. Everyone has at least what everyone needs, which is totally possible. It's just a problem of organizing and of breaking the resistance of those who don't like that, and there's a lot of resistance, obviously. I mean, I'm talking about what's happening on the planet in 50 years, not what's gonna happen tomorrow, but that is where we slowly are moving towards. And you can see that this actually comes from, you know, a time when we were able to organize ourselves without kings. We don't need kings. Kings always say, "If you don't have me, then someone else, some other guy will come. " But, you know, that's why I mean, that's why I'm not... You know, if a nation-state makes war against another nation-state, I'm not taking a position and saying, "This country is, like, better. " Basically, both nation-states are doing war, and who has to suffer is us, you know? It's Stoned Sapiens, it's the human species. - Speaking of which, I have to ask you... So, I've done psilocybin a bunch

and I've done ayahuasca, but I've never done LSD, acid, and you have quite a bit. So, maybe the big general question is what's LSD like? In the space of psychedelics, which funny enough, we haven't really spoken a lot about psychedelics... - Right -... except in the context of Stoned Sapiens. What's LSD like? - Well, this is probably the third book that we want to talk about, is-is- - Tripped -... Tripped, because Tripped is an examination of the history of LSD. And that sounds maybe less interesting than it actually is. It's- It's... I mean, I find it fascinating. I had tried LSD. It was given to me by my girlfriend at the time, Anya, in Lower Manhattan on a Saturday night, 1993. So, I was, like, 23. And she said, "Let's take LSD. " And I'd never really taken any drug. Like, I'd maybe smoked a bit of weed, but I didn't know what a strong drug is. And she gave me this paper, and I took it, and we walked around in the East Village, pre-gentrified East Village. It's pretty cool, actually. And it didn't work. For like one hour, I felt nothing, and then I went into the toilet. I had a falafel or something. I went into the toilet, and there was a mirror. Like, I was peeing, and then there was this mirror. But the walls had, like, lines. They were painted in lines. Suddenly, these lines started to, like, vibrate, and that's... Then the trip started, and it was such an empowerful that I thought I would go insane. Like, it was the worst trip I've ever had. - You got scared? -... it was so strong. I was totally scared. I didn't know what it was. I suddenly... I walked. I said to my girlfriend, "It's working. " And she said, "Yes, it's working. I feel it also. " And I went into No-Tell Motel, which was my favorite bar, just to be in a familiar environment. It's not a good idea on your first very strong LSD trip to be out-... in Lower Manhattan on a Saturday night, but I also didn't know this. You know? So, I was in the bar, and I saw my friend, Dora Espinoza, from Peru. She was quite a small woman. She was only, like, I don't know the American system, maybe 1 meter 50, so she was quite short. Short is the right word. But on LSD, she was like this. - Like, tiny. - So I saw her down there, like... And I said, "Dora, do I look normal? Because you look very small. " And Dora's like, "No, you look fine. " I'm like, "Okay, I gotta get outta here. " And then we walked up to 2nd Avenue, and we saw, like, a bunch of Puerto Rican kids killing one of their... It was a gang. Kind of, it was more of a druggy kind of... I mean, Manhattan back then was kind of dangerous in the East Village. And they killed one of them on the hood of the car. In front of our eyes, we saw it, and I said, "Do you see this? Thank you, my God. " And then they resurrected him, like, they gave him mouth-to-mouth, and the guy was fine again. And we walked past, and we were not sure anymore what we were seeing. And this was a very strong hallucination. And then we saw a full-blown racial riot on 2nd Avenue. People were smashing in taxi windows, pulling the drivers out. It was like a- A GTA. - Grand Theft Auto? Yeah. - Right, it was like that. And... - So most of this is basically hallucinating. - I think so, yeah. And I have taken- - But it felt real. - It felt totally real. And so I was happy when this trip was over, because I thought I had gone insane, basically. I thought there was a switch in my brain that had been, like, switched. Something chemical. I have now a chemical imbalance in my brain, I'm gonna be crazy for the rest of my life. I thought that. But after, like, 10 hours, it suddenly got, you know, the effects wore off, and I became normal again. And I thought that was quite fascinating. So in hindsight, I thought it was a great experience, even though it was quite scary. But it also had moments of incredible perceptions, like I could see that the atoms are not, you know, rigid. Obviously everything's moving in our universe. Everything. There's nothing fixed, you know? So I could see that. I could see that everything was basically alive, and that my previous perceptions of how the world is just my conditioned perception, and that the world was very different, and, you know, just how you look at it, it looks different, and... - So it was freeing in a way? - Yeah, totally freeing. Also, it was much stronger than all the LSD I've taken since. And I've taken high dosages, so I'm not even sure if that was LSD. There are also other compounds - Okay - that are quite rare, like DOM or whatever. Maybe it was something else. But then I also spoke to LSD experts by now, also for the book Tripped. And it can happen that your first trip is much stronger than all the other trips, because your brain kind of reacts very strongly to it. Because what happens in the brain is basically that the default mode network receives less energy, and other parts of the brain, they communicate better. So if this happens for the first time, your brain maybe is totally surprised by this firework that's going on, and then creates hallucinations, so it can somehow make sense of it. There's a lot of things firing, and then so you see things that maybe are not there. But that's not usual on an LSD trip. You don't have such hallucinations. Like, you don't have... I've never had such hallucinations afterwards again, you know? - What's the usual experience on LSD? - It really depends on the dosage. If you microdose, it's just like drinking an espresso that lasts maybe for two, three hours in a very pleasant way, so you're just slightly buzzed. - Is it visual artifacts, like- - No -... color? - Then you would take, like, more. Maybe if you take 50 micrograms, the colors become more intense. But if you take a microdose of 10 micrograms, nothing happens. The trip starts with about 100 micrograms. And then you could see maybe it would be... Like, I took, uh, I took a swimming trip in Thailand in January, and I took about 200 micrograms, which is quite a lot. I just, because it was so beautiful on this island, and it was kind of, "Will it be more beautiful if I'm on LSD now? " And of course, every LSD trip also tells you about your life, like, some things you didn't understand. Suddenly you see, like, "Oh, it's like this. " It's very good for, you know, reflecting on your life. But it's also a lot of fun. So I swam for, like, three hours through the ocean, which is something you usually don't do, you know? I like swimming, but after, like, 10 minutes or 20 minutes, I go out. But I was swimming and swimming and... So- - Yeah, for me on the psilocybin and ayahuasca, there's a intensification of beauty of the world around you. Whether that's nature, or whether that's people, or whether that's your own memories of your past, or maybe your imagination manifesting itself in different kinds of visuals. You know, on ayahuasca, I saw dragons of different kinds, and they were just really beautiful. Um, and maybe I've never taken, like, a heroic dose of psilocybin, but it was always, everything was just always so beautiful, and I was just grateful to be alive and grateful to be in this world and get to appreciate it in this most intense way. There's something about, like you said, you could see the individual atoms. Like, there are certain ways to deconstruct, or maybe to visualize or reinterpret, revisualize the world, that makes you like, appreciate, "Holy shit, this is really, this is really awesome. This is really special. " And that can only be done through the process of, showing you a different version of it a little bit. - I mean, when the Swiss pharmaceutical company Sandoz developed LSD in 1943, they were having to solve the big question, "What is it good for? " Albert Hofmann, the chemist, he found it basically involuntarily. And he reported to the CEO, "I had very strong reactions, basically, in the brain. " So they set up an intoxication room. I found the documents about this intoxication room in the Novartis archive when I researched Tripped because Novartis bought Sandoz in the '90s. So all the LSD stuff is in the Novartis archive. And this intoxication room, I always think is kind of interesting to imagine. This was 1943; there's a World War going on everywhere in Europe, except in Switzerland, which is a neutral country. But Basel, where the LSD was found, is like a stone's throw from the German border, so you actually hear the war going on. And so they created a nice room within the company, and then all the employees voluntarily could go and take LSD. So they were the first people to take LSD, and they had no idea that there was, at one point, MKUltra. You know, they were just trying out something that one of their guys had developed. And I read through all these reports, and they all had a great experience, like sitting in a nice chair. And they looked outside the window, and they were reporting stuff like, "I just had to laugh the whole time. I felt so good. I realized about my life. " Or it kind of created in them the feeling like a heightened sense of sensitivity and a feeling that this is the life, this is how life should feel, kind of. So the CEO, Arthur Stoll, he was really trying to figure out what he could market it for, because he thought maybe this is a game changer in mental health. Because this was before antidepressants, before antipsychotics, and it was in the middle of World War II, which had created already millions of traumatized people. "How do you treat these people? " So they thought LSD could be really a big, big thing. And I mean, I came... I just told you when I first took LSD, and I somehow was interested in LSD, but I never thought I would write a book about it. I just used it once in a while when I wanted to understand something about my life or just enjoy a day in the ocean. But I read a study that microdoses of LSD, at one point, help against Alzheimer's, and my mother has Alzheimer's. So I discussed this with my father who takes care of my mother, and this was an academic study. I discussed this also with a leading Alzheimer's expert that I interviewed for Tripped, and he's like, "Wow, this is amazing. " Because LSD interacts with the very same receptors, the 5-HT2A receptors in the brain, that LSD interacts with those receptors and Alzheimer destroys those receptors. So LSD basically does the opposite that Alzheimer does. And I discussed this with my father and he said, "So why can't I buy LSD in the pharmacy if it's so good? " You know? He was a judge before. He actually put people in prison for drugs. So he said, "You better bring me the story. " So I did a kind of a research loop. This is the book Tripped. Then I came back to him in the end with the true story of why LSD has been made illegal, and that is quite fascinating because the Swiss CEO, Stoll, he had learned biochemistry. This is very nerdy, but I think it's quite interesting. He had learned biochemistry from the Jewish German god of biochemistry, Willstätter. Richard Willstätter was Nobel Prize winner for chemistry, and his work was he would extract the potent alkaloids from so-called poisonous plants and make, you know, poison. Paracelsus taught us it's the dosage that makes the poison, you know? If you take too much of a potent alkaloid, maybe it's a poison, but if you extract a potent alkaloid, maybe you could turn it into a medicine. So Stoll learned this from Willstätter, and there was another guy that was learning from Willstätter, Richard Kuhn. So it was Kuhn and Stoll. Those were the two students of Willstätter, and they, Stoll left and became the CEO of Sandoz and developed the pharmaceutical branch of Sandoz. And Kuhn became Hitler's leading biochemist and was responsible in finding a truth drug and also developing nerve gas. But the two guys, Kuhn and Stoll, stayed friends also when the Nazis took power. I researched the papers of Stoll in the archive, and in the '20s, he would communicate all the ergot research. LSD is an ergot product. Ergot is a fungus that grows on rye. He would communicate all this with Kuhn, and Kuhn would come to the Sandoz lab, and they did experiments together. And then in '43, Kuhn was, you know, a hardcore Nazi scientist, and especially looking for the truth drug at the time. I was looking through the archive, I wanted to find the connection that Stoll also sent LSD to Kuhn, because when I was researching for Blitzed in Dachau, I had found that the SS had done in the concentration camp of Dachau, experiments with mescaline and another hallucinogenic substance which was not named. And mescaline has the problem... The truth drug idea is I give you something without you noticing it, like something that doesn't smell or taste like anything. Then after half an hour, I know that something's working in your brain, and you become insecure because suddenly something's working in your brain. I can play with that situation, and therefore extract all the secrets from you because it's a power. I'm suddenly above you because I know something about you that you don't know. That was the idea. The problem with mescaline was it has a bitter taste, and it's hard to make. And LSD is very easy to make. Not very easy, but it's quite easy. And LSD is odorless and tasteless. So I was trying to... I somehow had the notion that LSD has a Nazi past, you know, which is something that no one ever thinks about. LSD is like the hippie drug, right? It's a drug of the peace people. But I wanted to see all the papers of Stoll, the CEO. And the archivist, he already knew, like he was the Swiss archivist. This is not a public archive. In a public archive, you basically, like the National Archives of the United States, you see what's there, you have the right to see it, freedom of information. But a company archive, like Novartis archive, the archivist can just say, "No," you know, "I can't find this right... " You know, you're basically at his mercy. So I bribed him with LSD because he didn't want to show me the Stoll papers. And I said to him, just to distract him, "Have you ever seen LSD? " And he's like, "No. Why? How would I see it? " And I said, "Well, I have some here. " And I had some, I just had gotten it from a friend. - What does LSD look like? Tabs or... - Yeah, a tab. I had a paper. And the funny thing about... Yeah, these are different designs, you know. - Oh, and you can put it on your tongue? Is that how people usually take it? - Right. Yeah. You take it like that. And the one I had was given to me by a Swiss friend and it had... Like here you see certain prints on - Oh, yeah. - And it had the print of the old logo of Sandoz from the '40s. So the guys who make this illegal LSD in Basel, in some kind of lab, they know where it comes from. So they made like a joke to make the old logo of Sandoz. I showed this to the archivist, and he said, "This has the old logo of our company. " I said, "Well, it was made by your company. " He said, "I know this, but it's not... This is very interesting, actually. " And I said, "I'm going to gift you one of these trips now. " And he said, "Wow, you really, you would do this? " And I said, "You can archive it. " And he's like, "Ha-ha-ha. " And then he actually took one, he was... And then the ice broke. - That's great. - And then he said, "Okay, I'm going to show you now the correspondence of Stoll, our CEO. It's no problem. " And he just went to the next room and he looked for like 10 minutes, and then he brought me these boxes. And then I actually saw the correspondence between Stoll and Kuhn, between the Swiss CEO and the German Nazi scientist, what they were talking about. And then I found a smoking gun, October 1943. Kuhn acknowledges that he receives half a gram of ergotamine, which is the precursor drug to LSD. And so it's highly likely that the Nazis used LSD together with mescaline in Dachau. And when the Americans liberated the Dachau camp, they had a special unit called Alsos with them. And Alsos' job was to find German scientists and interview them, get their knowledge for the nuclear program mostly, but also for biochemical weapons. And one of the first persons they interrogated was Richard Kuhn, and Richard Kuhn immediately collaborated because he didn't want to go to the Nuremberg trial. He wanted to continue his career actually. He was an opportunist, so I guess his Nazi convictions were not so strong after all, because he also liked the Americans. So he told the Americans immediately about LSD. And the next day, a very high general flew from the States to Frankfurt, went to Heidelberg, spoke to Kuhn again. Then, he took off his uniform and went in civil clothing to Basel, because Switzerland is neutral, and received the first LSD from Stoll's son. So, the American general had LSD. This was in '45 in the summer. Then the American military started to examine LSD. Could LSD be the truth drug? Because if the Nazis think so, maybe it's true, because the Nazis were cutting-edge scientists as evil as they were. - In Dachau, this was presumably used for the different experimentation that was done. - Well, I read one report from a guy who was an inmate, and he received it in coffee, and he had a full-blown psychedelic trip. And he had this SS guy who was asking him questions, and the guy had such a great trip. I would always imagine you'd have a terrible trip in a concentration camp, but he was seeing fractals and colors, and he could see that there was something bigger than these Nazis, and the concentration camp. And he only said it was so horrible when the trip ended and he became sober again and was just an inmate again in the concentration camp. - I mean, one of the things you get from books like Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl is that in the concentration camp actually, the slightest good things are so rich of... feeling. You just get... So, I would actually expect to have incredible trips there because you're just grateful for anything positive, anything positive. - Yeah, I didn't think about that. - It becomes intensified. - Makes sense. - But from the perspective of the Nazis, they're trying to develop the truth drug. - They miserably failed because LSD... Is not the truth drug. LSD leads you closer to your own truth, because when suddenly the default mode network receives less energy and other parts of the brain think more and the brain becomes neuroplastic, you know, the neuroplasticity of the brain is enhanced and is stimulated, you might understand something about your life. You might not, you know. LSD doesn't necessarily turn you into a more knowledgeable person. You could also focus that on your Orthodox belief system. But many people realize different things, have different ideas. So it doesn't work as this conditioning drug. But also the CIA then kind of took over the LSD experiments that the US military took over from the SS. So now it's in CIA hands. In 1947, Central Intelligence Agency is founded, because America didn't have a Central Intelligence Agency before. They had, like, the military agencies like OSS. Now they have the CIA, and the CIA makes Dulles, the first director, he says, "The brain warfare is going on now between the Soviet Union and us. This is Cold War. We have to... " you know, maybe they are using something against us. We have to be really on our, you know, prepared, you know, for the brain warfare, 'cause Communism is a propagandistic system. So they were always, like, either really afraid or just pretending to be afraid the Soviet Union would, you know, develop the truth drug quicker than them. So the LSD truth drug program which was labeled MKULTRA, the infamous MKULTRA is, is a mind control program. I mean, it is, and LSD played a big part in it. - It's a deeply illegal one. - It certainly... I mean, it was never approved by Congress or anything that. - It's probably deeply unethical, maybe one of the more un-American, unethical things done in, in recent times. - It's certainly unethical. It continues the Nazi human experiments. - Right. - That's what the CIA did. - It's, it's continuing one of the worst aspects of what the Nazis were doing. Defeated the Nazis and carried the flag forward. It's, it's just dark. - And this is basically the reason why LSD at one point became illegal, because it did not get the chance... Stoll still wanted to put it on the market, but Sidney Gottlieb, the head of MKULTRA, he really didn't want LSD to be on the market. He wanted, not because he thought it's not good or dangerous for anybody, he just wanted to control LSD. He wanted LSD to be his so he could use it for MKULTRA, for experiments. He couldn't really stop. There was also legit LSD research always going on until it was prohibited in 1966. There was legit LSD research done in universities which came to all kinds of conclusions. But the decisive thing was a visit by Gottlieb in the office of Stoll in Basel where he basically says to Stoll, he comes with a suitcase with 240,000 US dollars to buy the world's supply of LSD, because he has the information from the American ambassador. Like he has, he said like, "I think, we think by now Sandoz has produced, like, 400 kilograms of LSD. " So that was the price for this 400. And Stoll said, "No, actually we have produced only 400 grams. " And "But I'll sell everything to you, of course. " I mean, because the pressure that he received from the CIA was, 'cause the CIA and the FDA, they're quite friendly organizations. So the CIA has a certain influence on the FDA, at least back then, you know? So the pressure was if you want to put your medicines on the market, which is of course the biggest market in the world, and Sandoz, you know, I'm sure you want to thrive as a pharmaceutical company, then LSD is not going to be one of these products. And Stoll basically betrayed LSD. So he said okay, and LSD was only distributed as a research drug. It was never sold by the company. So researchers could actually write to Sandoz, "I'm doing this and this test, and I'm a neuroscientist, I need LSD. " Then they would receive it. But mostly what happened to the LSD was it went into the CIA's hands, and then it was used in MKULTRA. But then it spilled out, obviously, because one of the guinea pigs was Ken Kesey. He received 75 US dollars for taking LSD for the CIA, and he was working in Menlo Park in a psychiatric ward. And on LSD, he basically had the idea to write One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. He understood that these people maybe are not crazy. It's just a different way of seeing. That's like an LSD revelation. These are not bad, crazy people. They just see the world differently. Because that neuroplasticity that kind of leads you away from one way of thinking. You realize that there are different ways. So, I would say, LSD the tendency of LSD is more to increase... - Empathy? That kind of thing? -... empathy, diversity, all these kind of things.

- So because you mentioned the effect of LSD on you as a writer, that it at least changed the way you write. - Well, I mean, the book Tripped is a book where I come back with that story to my father, and then my father decides to give LSD to my mother. And we did the LSD, the three of us, on Christmas. And we did mushrooms on Mother's Day. And whenever my mother takes LSD, and Alzheimer's is a horrible disease, obviously. For example, on Mother's Day, there was the newspaper lying on the balcony. We were sitting in the sun, and she was on mushrooms. It's just a microdose, you know? It's not that you have a trip, but you have that stimulation of your brain. That's what you have. Even her brain, attacked by Alzheimer's, reacted stronger than my father. He always says, "I never feel anything from a microdose. " And you're not supposed to feel anything, but my mother suddenly picked up the newspaper, which she hadn't looked at for a year. So on mushroom microdoses, she picks up the newspaper and starts reading the headline to us, which was about the Ukraine war. She'd never heard So when she, like, she had problems, like, pronouncing the word Ukraine, because that was a new word for her, because she hadn't been part of the news cycle in about a year. And this was because of the mushroom microdose. So this book, how did it change my writing? On an emotional level, writing... Right. Taking LSD and then writing about LSD changed something in my family. It improved the health of my mother that made me very happy, of course, very satisfied, you know? - Yeah, there's a deep personal connection, but I even mean on Ken Kesey's side, like... - I know what you mean. - I mean, what does it do? Listen, writing, I don't know. Again, me as a fan of writing, it feels like writing is suffering, kind of. When I see, just these great writers in history talk about writing, it seems like it's really hard, it's a kind of torture. You know, Hemingway, and you have the Kerouac stories that just kind of flow out of you. But a lot of times, it's really disciplined, day after day. You're really digging and digging. And so, it's interesting what that looks like under the different supplements, right? Like, - Well- - Stephen King famously, I mean, there's a lot of people, they go to the drugs, to the alcohol. You have the Hunter S. Thompson, who goes, when given the option, just says yes to all of it. Um, and the mind is a weird thing. And a lot of writers talk about how they're not really developing the ideas. They're plugging into some, they're channeling. - Right - a voice from somewhere else. And- - Yeah - with psychedelics, that's certainly, it feels like you're modifying the channel. or you're expanding the channel. - Yeah - Or you're directing the channel to a different direction. That's why I asked. - I think for me, writing has two important parts, and one of them is the actual writing part, and that's the painful part that you talk about. It's basically discipline, focus. It becomes harder and harder to focus because of the telephone. - Yeah, distractions. - There's a place in Switzerland, The Nietzsche House. I go there as much as I can to write. It's in Sils Maria, it's quite high up. Nietzsche went there every summer from 1882 to 1888, with the exception of 1887. He didn't go that summer, I don't know why. And he stayed there for three months and wrote most of his work - Yeah - in that room. And that room is still there, and his desk is still there. And you can rent rooms in that Nietzsche House, and it's great. And I do this as often as I can. Only there am I able to switch off the phone in the morning. I don't even switch it on. I'm like a soldier. I'm in the Nietzsche House. Also, Nietzsche House is magical, so it gives you so much. I would never take drugs in the Nietzsche House, because it would disturb that clarity that is in that house. When Nietzsche wrote Zarathustra and... - You can sense his presence a little bit? - Yeah, I speak to him quite a bit. Like... - Yeah? - His door is always open. - Is he an asshole? Is he a nice guy? - No, he's a nice guy. - His room cannot be rented. It's always like a museum-type room. And I mean, I never thought of him as an asshole. I mean, he's a total weirdo, obviously. - had issues, like, struggled getting laid. - Yeah, I think he had a lot of problems. - That's one of them. But he had a lot of good qualities too. - But he's also part of Stoned Sapiens, because he did experiment with drugs there and he writes about it. It's very hard to find, but in the Nietzsche House, I found a book on Nietzsche's medicine history, and he takes quite a bit of hashish, he smokes. Is it to help? - Does it help with the stomach issues or whatever, or is it... - No, he's interested in what happens in the brain, and this... - Oh, interesting. -... this comes back to your question how did... The drugs change my writing? Well, first of all, it's this one. It's this discipline. I can do it up in the Nietzsche House. I can also do it sometimes in Berlin. It's just sitting there, trying to focus and writing. But what you need, of course, is the inspirational part. And LSD helped me just the first trip to realize that it's not all black and white. The world's quite colorful, and there's like the abyss and it's, there's also the horror. And I was a happy-go-lucky kid, you know. I never thought that the world is so deep as I understand it now. So the LSD makes the world deeper. So I think for me to understand the world better, to understand myself better, it improved my writing, but I would not write on LSD. Because on LSD, you want to walk in the forest or you want to go up the mountain, or that's what I like. I would never sit in front of the ugly computer with a stupid screen and write, you know. Maybe I would lie in the mountains with a notebook and kind of write poetic lines. That could be done on LSD, because you have... When I was researching Stoned Sapiens, I did one LSD trip in... from the Nietzsche House, I went quite high up in the mountains on LSD, and I came and it was not just, it's just, I... I just thought about the book and kind of looked at the different chapters, just did work together, like, kind of like macro without taking too many notes, just kind of letting it, you know, play out in front of, in my mind. And then when I walked down, I passed a cave... and I realized a lot about people's relationship to caves and the cave paintings, how, you know, actually the cave walls, you see all the arteries of the rocks. And I mean, on LSD, you see all of that and you see how alive that is and how beautiful it actually was by humans to then use that canvas. and work your cave paintings in there. I mean, I never had the appreciation of that before. - Yeah, you're right. You are able to detect the on psychedelics, the aliveness of the details, if I can put it this way. - For me, it's a very creative drug. But for other people it might not be, you know? So I cannot advertise it, because if you have a psychological problem, maybe it's overwhelming. - Yeah, that's actually a good thing to say at this moment, from my perspective, and maybe you can comment on it. In general, when people ask me, I've done psilocybin a few times and I did ayahuasca, and I've talked about it. When people ask me if I recommend those things, I, as a general statement, I say no. You know, to the general population. And then as a second step, if I'm talking to specific people on a case-by-case basis, I can just discuss my experience and let that be kind of an inspiration. Because I'm very hesitant to recommend a thing that could be so powerful. Because I don't know. Like I had a tremendously positive experience, and I was sure I would be meeting some demons. I thought I would have some demons in the basement or something, but I didn't meet them, not yet. And my... But people might have some demons that they meet and then it might destroy them or it might change them in a way they don't like. And actually, it's a good question for me whether it's good to do psychedelics when you're in a good place in life or in a bad place in life. Because I know that, even scientifically there have been studies where psilocybin helps with extreme sort of depression and PTSD and all these kinds of things. But I'd be very nervous about that too, because the mind is such a powerful thing and it's such a complicated thing that with these really powerful tools it's unclear where it's going to take you. But I have heard a lot of stories of people who have taken incredible journeys, sometimes difficult journeys, with psychedelics and have come out much happier and much freer and have healed some of the things they have been going through. But when people ask me to recommend or not, I'm just too afraid to say yes. I think the right thing is always just in general, no. Be very careful. - Yeah, I think it would be irresponsible to recommend it to people you don't see. You know? Maybe if you know a friend and the friend asks you, then you could... Maybe I would say to a friend, "Yeah, I think you would be fine taking it. " But even that is a big responsibility, you know, because LSD in German, the book "Trip" is called "The Strongest Substance," and it is actually the strongest substance because it works in microgram dosages. Like, even the strongest snake poison, cobra toxin, if you use that in microgram dosages, you don't feel anything. But if you take 250 micrograms of LSD, it can totally overpower you. And if you have an unstable psyche, it could, you know, make, turn you mad, you know? - Do you understand how it compares to psilocybin and ayahuasca and DMT? How does LSD compare to those? Is it similar territory, just more intense? - Well, LSD and psilocybin are like cousins. - Distant cousins or- - No, quite close cousins. And I spoke to a neuroscientist from a university clinic in Zurich, who's been researching psilocybin and LSD since the early '90s. And he puts people in, uh, in brain scanners, for example. So he sees exactly what happens in the brain on LSD or on psilocybin. And he said to me when I asked him that very same question, he said, "LSD is the more sophisticated molecule. " He meant by that is that LSD docks onto more receptors than psilocybin. Like, psilocybin interacts with like five different types of receptors in the brain and LSD like with nine. So that makes LSD a more complex molecule. So that's why it already works in very small quantities, because it's like the key is perfect for our brain. Our brain really reacts strongly to LSD. For psilocybin you have to take milligrams, not micrograms, but milligrams. So mushrooms are also described as the softer, you know, psychedelic experience because it only lasts for like five hours, whereas LSD lasts like eight hours. And LSD can be more LSD is also a mushroom, but it's an ergot, which is turned into a diethylamide. It's the, you extract the potent acid from ergot, which is lysergic acid, and you turn that into a diethylamide. So it's a processed drug in a way. It's a potent processed drug that works also for mass movements quite well. That's why it was so popular in the '60s, because people could just make it. While mushrooms, they kind of, they have to grow. Like, the hippie movement, they could never have sustained on mushrooms because so many mushrooms don't even grow. A good LSD chemist can make LSD for the whole world, basically.

- Can we go back to something we talked about in the beginning about Berlin? Is it'd be fascinating to learn more about this culture. Are you still connected? I'm sure you've been to some wild parties. I've been told that Berlin has some wild parties. - Well, it had them in the '90s. I mean, it had the best clubs that I... I mean, it was just a dream. You go into this club. But I was also in my mid-20s, so I would go into this club, I'd take MDMA, and the DJ is amazing and the sound system is crazy, and there's like 500 people on MDMA just dancing for like eight hours. - And that's when electronic music was really— - Yeah, it was really good. Like, a friend of mine, he runs a club of visionaries, which is kind of a famous underground club in Berlin. And he asked me in the early 2000s when this club was offered to him, "Should I do this? " I said, "Gregor, techno is over, you know, electronic music is dead. " But obviously it's not dead, it's still going on, but in the '90s it was new. So it was... You really went into the club and you heard something you'd never heard before. And the first time, I came from New York, and New York was a very old-school, kind of urban place. I mean, rock and roll or grunge music. And I came to Berlin, it was in a club called I Am A Bucket in East Berlin, doesn't exist anymore, like, in a rundown, totally rundown, like, squat. And I went to the bar and I had a beer, and I looked, and there were just a few people on the dance floor, and this like electronic music which I'd never heard before. And the guy in front of me, he was like... He looked like an East Berlin skinhead, kinda type of guy, but, like, totally smiling. I'm sure he was on ecstasy, and he was disassembling, like, an imaginary machine. And I just looked at this guy, he was like for one hour, he was just doing the most- most complicated things. And I was like, this is totally, totally different way of moving, and I liked that actually. I liked to dance in clubs. Yeah. And I did this for like two years very intensely with my girlfriend at the time. We went out a lot, like, from Friday to Monday, basically. But it means... And a lot of people still do that in Berlin, but it means that you can't really work. I mean... - Yeah, you escaped that. It's interesting that you were able to do that for a short time, just as an experience, and then go on to be extremely productive. - For me, it was also kind of research, even though I didn't know this. - I mean, life is research in a way, if you allow it to be. - I could not have written these books on history and drugs without having had these drug experiences, because that... I mean, also, like, when I wrote about methamphetamine and the Nazis, I asked... At the time, weed was illegal in Germany, so I asked a friend of mine, she's a cannabis dealer, I guess you would say. I said, "Can you also get me crystal meth? " And she was like shocked, like, "No. " 'Cause she was a weed dealer, but then she found like a Polish guy who actually had crystal meth. I just wanted to have it. It was like the Paul Schrader thing when he wrote the screenplay to Taxi Driver, he had like a gun in his drawer. So he would play, you know, get the vibe of, like, danger. And so I wanted to have this crystal meth. So this Polish guy sold it to me, and he gave me without me saying anything. And maybe my friend, maybe she said, "He's a writer" or something, but he gave me a Xerox. He gave me the methamphetamine, one gram, and the Xerox copy of the r- the patent of Pervitin from 1938, so this was a crystal meth dealer that actually had historical- - Mm-hmm. Knowledge, yeah. -... knowledge about it. So, - Did you, did you ever try? - Yeah, well then I tried it, because I really wanted... I could not really write about it in the same way without having tried it. I can't recommend it. It feels very toxic, like, when you take a psychedelic. I can say this with a clear conscience, it's not toxic. LSD is not toxic, it doesn't poison you. You might have reactions in your brain that are too much for you, but if you snort crystal meth it goes on your central nervous system, your heart starts pounding, your blood pressure rises, so it's stressful on the organism, it's toxic, you know... but still, you know, the effect in the brain is not so interesting as with LSD. Like, you couldn't go crazy, I would say, on- on crystal meth, you just have, like, you're just very much awake but you don't have, like, crazy thoughts that you can't, you know, evaluate anymore. So it's a very, very different drug, but taking that of course made me understand better how a soldier feels in the tank taking it. - Yeah. Yeah, I think that's really, really important to do. Um, I- I have to ask, your friend Alex, who's... I- th- it sounds like he's taken every single drug there is. Has he spoken about, like, what's the most interesting drug? What's his favorite drug? He seems like a connoisseur, right? - But he's not a psychedelic guy, so. - Oh, well then, okay. - More i- he's more into the addictive drugs. - It's very difficult, I guess... Yeah, that would be a special person that can be a full-on explorer of the drug space. 'Cause if you get into psychedelics, then you don't really want to do the hard drugs, and if you get the hard drugs you don't wanna- - Right. They contradict each other. - They do contradict each other. Yeah. - It's why we spend less and less time together. - Um, Since you mentioned Kerouac. Listen, I love Kerouac. Do we know any sort of famous writers that have used drugs as part of their writing? So Kerouac is one. - Do we an- do we know any famous writers who have not used drugs as part of their writing? - Interesting. So, wait, I didn't actually know, to be honest, this story. I- I love Kerouac- - That's the good thing about being a writer, you can take drugs on the job and no one will cancel you for it. If you're like a politician you can't really do it. - That's right. Rock... You can be a rock star or writer. - Yeah. You can be an artist and take drugs. - You mentioned that Kerouac did what? - Amphetamine. - Speed. Basically speed. The legend has it that On The Road was written in two weeks on speed, basically without sleeping, and using an endless paper roll. - Yeah. The whole scroll. Yeah. - in this typewriter, so he was just writing. And I can imagine that you can write a hell of a lot on amphetamines, and I do it sometimes, but I don't do it a lot, you know. So I can take amphetamines and have a really good time and write, like, 20 pages, but then the next day I wouldn't do it anymore. But he decided, "Okay, for 14 days I'm gonna do it. " Philip K. Dick was an amphetamine writer. And also, I think if you take a lot of amphetamines, you get into kind of psychedelic spaces at a certain point in time where you start hallucinating, and... like, if you write, you know, Blade Runner, maybe it helps you. So amphetamines are also they can be creative, I guess. It's just not, I don't, it's not my type of drug. And they're certainly not as creative as But it also depends on the person. Like, Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano, he was drinking a lot. Or Hemingway was drinking a lot, and they could only write when they're drunk. When I'm drunk, I can't write. I just can't do it. - Write drunk, edit sober. - And that's advisable. Like, if I would write something on amphetamines, I would certainly edit it sober, of course, because on amphetamines, your self-criticism is lowered because you feel so good. Like, you feel so confident. You just write, and... But writing is about nuances, especially literary writing. Maybe a non-fiction book would be easy on amphetamines, but a novel, it's all about you have to be very, very open. Amphetamines close you. You become like a machine, like, you write. But if you're on the right track, like Kerouac with On The Road, he had the right, you know, he was on, he was going, you know? But you could also be on the wrong one and then write 200 pages, and you just have to throw it away. And probably he did a lot of that also, you know? - Yeah. And also, On The Road is a particular kind of book. - It's an amphetamine book. - You want the spontaneity, the speed of... - It's about speed. It's about moving fast, but not stopping. It is a speed book. That's a great book. - It's such a great book. But then I've recently been rereading all of Dostoevsky. So, so going through Notes on the Underground, The Idiot, Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov. And that, I don't think... - Which one's your favorite? - Brothers Karamazov. Well, I read in both Russian and English. And for the longest time, it was The Idiot. Until... It's a complicated philosophical issue. When I was younger, I thought Prince Myshkin, the main character in The Idiot, was not as flawed as I believe he is now. I think Dostoevsky tried to create a Jesus-like character in Prince Myshkin. - Right. - and I think kind of failed because he was, too giving in a way that was actually counterproductive and destructive to the world, which is he tried to fix in The Brothers Karamazov with Alyosha Karamazov. But anyway, I don't think you could do that. I'd be very surprised to learn that Dostoevsky did any drugs. - Also, there was not so much available. - That's true. - Alcohol, of course, nicotine, coffee. Those are really powerful drugs. - And I'm also doing a podcast with Chuck Palahniuk, author of Fight Club and many other amazing books. - Yeah, he's a great writer. Fight Club influenced me quite a bit. I think the novel is even better, maybe, than the movie. But the movie's great. - I mean, in that case, as he said, the movie is great and that is almost like a bigger than life thing. Sometimes the book and the movie and those things can influence culture. - That certainly influenced culture. - To where, like, "Okay, this has a life of its own. " I'd like to think some of your work might influence how we perceive history. That's really important. That's really powerful. To not just change, but to sort of expand our conception of history, which is important to do. Are there particular books, fiction or non-fiction?

So you were both a fiction writer and a non-fiction writer. Are there books that had an influence on you? - Yeah, it's Ulysses by James Joyce. Ulysses is good, but only when you're in your early 20s, living in New York, and you're writing your first book, and you just have taken LSD. - Oh, nice. - Then I read it, and then it opened... - It made sense? - Well, it just showed, it's just a very experimental novel, so it opens up. You don't have to understand everything, but it shows you that there's many different ways of telling a tale, and that was quite interesting to me. But the most influential book, maybe, is "The Stranger" by Camus. Because I like the language so much, and I'm really mostly interested in language. I don't really care what it's about. I was lying on the beach in Morocco when I was 20 and reading "The Stranger. " Then a Moroccan came and he said, "Why are you reading a racist book? " I'm like, "What are you talking about? This is world literature. " He said, "Yeah, right. He's like, killing an Arab without consequence. No, actually there's consequence, but no reason, basically. Just because he's bored. So this is racist. " That was like, made no sense to me, that argument, because I was just interested in how Camus constructed. It was just for me a stylistic experience to read that. - I always love books, and "Stranger" is a short book. I love books that are able to accomplish so much in so little, in so few pages, in so few words. "The Stranger. " - There's nothing unnecessary in "The Stranger," and I always try to write a book where every sentence is just... There's nothing unnecessary in the book. But it's very hard to do, actually. Nietzsche could do this. Peterson talked about this, that every sentence in Nietzsche is like, chiseled, and it's like, perfect. And I think not every- I mean, but that's his tendency. He tries to write like this, and that's very hard to achieve. That's actually where the writing becomes poetic. So for me, Nietzsche also is like a poet. The aphorisms are poetry. So Nietzsche also, stylistically, since you asked, was very important to me. So Camus, Nietzsche, James Joyce, and then, and Kafka also. I like Kafka always. And I like Thomas Mann. I don't know how well he translates, but in German, it's interesting his take on how to... It's funny. He's a very funny guy. Even though he talks too much, but he's good. So I always wanted to have these guys as my colleagues, basically. - Mm-hmm. Are they there somewhere in your head as you're writing? - Less and less. But it was like an incentive to be part of that club. Like, to be able to write a book, and it's out there, and it's perfect, and it's... and you are on one level with Camus, you know? It's very hard to do. Let's say you become a carpenter, which is also, you know, a very challenging job, but you don't have these kind of great... Well, you have Jesus, I guess, as your potential colleague. - Yeah, true. - But for the... I just like these writers, these two. So the ones I mentioned, and also then Thomas, Thomas Pynchon. who wrote "Gravity's Rainbow," which I think is one of the best novels of the 20th century. And I read that in Berlin in the late '90s, and it really blew my mind. I thought it... I think it's an absolute masterpiece. The intensity of this novel, "Gravity's Rainbow," is unparalleled, and I'm still puzzled by how he did it. And it's not known how he did it, because he lives... He lives a completely obscure life. No one knows basically who he is. So he's also a very interesting colleague. - It's widely regarded as one of the most challenging and significant works of postmodern literature. - It's pretty good. - Set primarily in Europe at the end of World War II, the novel centers on the design, production, and deployment of the German V-2 rocket. The narrative follows several characters. It lists the characters. - Well, Slothrop is the American agent who's the main character. He works for Allied Intelligence, and he's really a funny guy. He smokes a lot of weed and he's, like, in Berlin, in bombed out Berlin after the war, and it's just funny to go with him through that. He's a great character. It's a great novel. It really is. - So it does, it does give a window into history also. - It does, yeah. But that's not why it's interesting to me. It makes it especially interesting because the way he describes these situations, it's just the way he writes is phenomenal. - Oh, it's a Pulitzer Prize and all. - Oh, but I'm sure he didn't take it. - On lists. - 'Cause, yeah, he declined. Well, no one knows who he is. I know a little bit. I know who his wife is, but I'm not gonna talk about it. He really wants to protect his privacy. And I think that's also amazing. - I think that's a beautiful thing, but for me, from my perspective... - He wouldn't appear in the podcast? - He would not. - It would be great if he would come on the podcast. - He would not, right. Well, I believe it's possible, but with people like that, it has to be a long journey, and it has to... you have to... for me, for example, I just interviewed Terence Tao, who's one of the greatest mathematicians, living mathematicians, probably one of the greats in history. And there's another I wanna speak with, which is Grisha, Grigori Perelman, who's a Russian mathematician, who's more akin to Thomas Pynchon. He declined the Millennial Prize, the one, one million dollars. He declined all the prize Fields Medal, Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics. He declined everything, and he just lives with his mom now, quit mathematics. - Like Kirilov, he also lived with his mom. Mm-hmm. - There's something really beautiful about a human being like that. - Right. - Um, especially because in his case it was done for principles. Like, he has a certain set of principles, and no amount of money, nothing could buy him or... - Yeah, that's amazing actually. - Yeah. I had somebody tell me this, a really interesting guy I met a few days ago said that there's nothing, there's nothing more exhilarating. Perhaps only a rich person can say this, but there's nothing more exhilarating than saying no to a lot of money. But he said, he said it with so much confidence that I somehow believed him. But the deeper truth there is living by principles and having integrity. There is something deeply fulfilling. If that means saying no to money, or if that means standing up to Hitler, and then risking your life, that's a deeply fulfilling thing. Big, ridiculous question. I thought you're a good person to ask. What's the point of this whole thing? What's the meaning of life and our existence here on Earth? - I somehow think that the universe has a big story to tell, or it's telling a big story the whole time, and our consciousness is part of that bigger story. So the consciousness of the whole of the universe, the big, the huge story is something that is probably the meaning of life, or of our individual life, is to understand that story. And that is something, for example, that I understood quite well on LSD when I walked in the mountains about a month ago. Because the mountains, they actually, you know, take you quite high up into the atmosphere, and they are made of all kinds of minerals. So they are receiving cosmic energy that comes, you know, that hits our planet. And walking up there, I guess if you're on LSD, you're more open somehow because you're not closing with your default mode network that, you know, this is the tree and this is the path mountain, and now it's 2:00 and I have to go back, and the rain. Like, you're more open so you're more, like, perceiving. I... That's at least the impression I had. And I couldn't put it in words what exactly I was perceiving, but I was perceiving more of the bigger story. And I think that is inspiration, and I think those moments bring you quite close to the meaning of life. And I wouldn't put that meaning on life in words. It's an experience, and I think that for me as an artist it was an important experience to make, to get close to that. And, and that is what you can achieve in each of your professions, you know? Like a mathematician, he comes to that point when he, like, sees more or, like, he grasps connections. And he might not be able to put it into a formula yet, but if he's an open person, he might be a better mathematician because he can understand a bit more of the meaning of everything. - Of this bigger story that's being written. - Yeah. I mentioned to you my Substack which I think is going to be the best Substack. - Do you think it's possible it's the greatest Substack of all time in history? - That's what it's going to be. - It's going to be, yeah. - Stoned Sapiens Substack, but something else... - I just hope you actually do it. - Well, you should become a subscriber. - I will definitely subscribe. - I really realized that there is a greater, a bigger story and it's somehow interesting to try to open up. Because if we live... That's why I like to be in nature also quite a lot. You get a better access. We live boxed in. Walter Benjamin called us the boxed human beings, like we're living in the cities, we're waking up, we're doing... It's good to be, therefore it's good to be outside the system. And I hope that my art can contribute to, you know, freeing the brainwaves to, you know, understanding a bit more. What that is, I don't know, but I think the process of understanding more and connecting in different ways, that is what I'm going for because I think that is the meaning of life. - Well, thank you for doing that with all of your work and for inspiring us all to do the same. Thank you so much for talking today. - It was great. Thank you. - Thanks for listening to this conversation with Norman Ohler. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description and consider subscribing to this channel. And now let me leave you with some words from the great Terence McKenna: "Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under; it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done, by hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering that it is in fact a featherbed. " Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.