7. The Germans Were Once the World’s Biggest Drug Addicts
Until the post-WWII era, German attitudes towards drugs differed greatly from how they are today. The widespread tolerance towards drugs was boosted by WWI and its aftermath. With millions of casualties, many of whom needed drugs for pain management during long periods of recovery, the authorities’ were not that worried about the addictive properties of drugs. Instead, they were more focused on their availability and effectiveness as pain relief. As a result, Germany experienced an under-reported but widespread epidemic of hard drug addiction in the 1920s and 1930s. It was fueled by WWI veterans who got hooked on drugs taken for pain relief, or medical personnel who had easy access to such drugs.
Addiction was so pervasive that even a high-ranking official such as Reichsmarschall Herman Goering, Hitler’s chief deputy and second in command, was widely known to have a pill habit. He developed his addiction as he recovered from a gunshot wound that he had received during the failed 1923 Beer Hall Putsch. The fact that he was hooked on drugs did not generate much controversy. To the extent that addiction was recognized as such, it was perceived as readily curable. Most of the time, however, addiction’s symptoms were wrongly attributed to other conditions. That was when they were not misdiagnosed altogether, in accordance with quack pseudo-scientific theories that were prevalent at the time.
