Norman Ohler, an award-winning German author, has a new book to be released on October 6 called “Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany”
According to Ohler, Adolf Hitler was not just a failed artist, World War I veteran and genocidal dictator. He was also a “gibbering super junkie.”
Historians have long known Hitler to have been a hypochondriac, but Ohler insists that he was also hooked on a heroin-like drug called Eukodol.
Ohler further suggests that the fateful decision to invade Russia in 1941 was due to his addiction. Many consider Hitler to have been “virtually insane for taking such a risk,” the Huffington Post has stated. His bad decisions and erratic behavior during the Battle of the Bulge lend further support to theories of his mental instability.
According to Ohler’s book, Hitler spent the last years of World War II high on nearly 70 different drugs – including methamphetamine, bull semen, and opiates. Ohler said that Hitler had “turned to steroids and hormone products like liver extracts of pigs, stuff like that, pretty unsavory things got into his veins.”
It’s Ohler’s opinion that Hitler’s collapse as a leader in 1944 was a direct result of his drug abuse.
It was during the Battle of Berlin, April 1945, that Hitler ordered raids to find any drugs that could be salvaged from the pharmacies of Berlin during the Allied bombings. When that attempt failed, and his supplies ran out, he committed suicide.
Ohler includes excerpts from the journal of Hitler’s personal physician, the controversial Dr. Theo Morrell. In the journal, the doctor describes Hitler as being “ravaged” by drug abuse.
Hitler is quoted at one point, saying, “I canceled injections today, to give the previous puncture holes a chance to heal. Left inside elbow good, right still has red dots (but not pustules), where injections were given.”
Anthony Beever, a World War II historian, applauded the book, saying, “All of these elements show how [Hitler] was really no longer in control of himself, but he was still in control of the German armies.”