Don’t Take these Historic Events Out of Context Like Everybody Else Does

1. The Context That Explains Hitler’s Cocaine Addiction

Dr. Morrell not only got the Fuhrer hooked on crystal meth via Pervitin, he also turned him into a cocaine addict after the quack prescribed it to soothe the dictator’s sore throat and clear his sinuses. It was in the context of that treatment that Hitler soon developed an irresistible compulsion to soothe his throat and clear his sinuses. By 1945, Hitler was a full blown junkie with rotting teeth, addicted to a bewildering variety of drugs. When his drug supplies ran out in the war’s closing weeks, the Furher suffered all the symptoms of severe withdrawal: delusions, psychosis, paranoia, extreme shaking, and kidney failure.

Pervitin remained popular and readily available in Germany after the war, frequently prescribed by doctors as an antidepressant or as an appetite suppressant, or readily obtainable on the black market. German students – especially medical students – were huge fans of the drug, which they used as a stimulant to help them cram for exams. It was only removed from medical supplies in East Germany in the 1970s, and in West Germany in the 1980s, before it was finally banned and declared illegal after German reunification in the 1990s.

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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading

All That is Interesting – How Drugs Like Pervitin and Cocaine Fueled the Nazis’ Rise and Fall

Atkin, Ronald – Pillar of Fire: Dunkirk 1940 (2000)

Black Loyalist – Washington’s Revolution (Harry, That Is, Not George)

Bright Hub Education – Famous African Americans Of the Revolutionary War

Bussanich, John, and Smith, Nicholas D. – The Bloomsbury Companion to Socrates: The Politics of Impiety – Why Was Socrates Prosecuted by the Athenian Democracy? (2013)

Encyclopedia Britannica – Socrates

Encyclopedia Britannica – Thirty Tyrants

Fleming, Peter – Operation Sea Lion: The Projected Invasion of England in 1940, an Account of the German Preparation and the English Countermeasures (1957)

Groves, Leslie R. – Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project (1983)

Guardian, The, September 25^th, 2016 – High Hitler: How Nazi Drug Abuse Steered the Course of History

Gonick, Larry – The Cartoon History of the Universe, Volumes 1 – 7: From the Big Bang to Alexander the Great (1990)

History Collection – 10 Prominent Ancient Athenians

Horne, Gerald – The Counter Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America (2014)

Kolchin, Peter – American Slavery: 1619-1877 (1993)

Krentz, Peter – The Thirty Tyrants at Athens (1982)

Morrison, Donald R. – The Cambridge Companion to Socrates: Socrates and Democratic Athens (2010)

Ohler, Norman – Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich (2017)

Online Institute For Advanced Loyalist Studies – A History of the Black Pioneers

PBS – George Washington’s Runaway Slave, Harry

Rhodes, Richard – The Making of the Atomic Bomb (1986)

Rolling Stone, March 15^th, 2017 – Hitler and His Drugs: Inside the Nazis’ Speed Craze

Schama, Simon – Rough Crossings: The Slaves, the British, and the American Revolution (2007)

Skeptoid – No, Hitler Did Not Let the British Escape at Dunkirk

Spiegel, May 30^th, 2013 – The German Granddaddy of Crystal Meth

Toland, John – Infamy: Pearl Harbor and Its Aftermath (1982)

Waterfield, Robin – Why Socrates Died: Dispelling the Myths (2009)

Wikipedia – Drug Policy of Nazi Germany

Wikipedia – Thirty Tyrants

Wolpert, Andrew – Remembering Defeat: Civil War and Civic Memory in Ancient Athens (2002)