2. The Doctor Who Turned Hitler and Nazi Higher Ups Into Drug Addicts
As German “super soldiers” raged across Europe and the Mediterranean basin while high on cocaine-laced crystal methamphetamine, their commander in chief, Adolf Hitler, himself became a daily user of Pervitin. It explains some of his otherwise inexplicable wartime decisions. As the war progressed, the Fuhrer found it increasingly difficult to even get out of bed in the morning without shots of a drug concoction that included Pervitin. That was thanks in large part to a quack doctor, Theodor Morell, who eased Hitler’s chronic digestive ailments with him cultures of live bacteria.
To reward Morell, the relieved German dictator made him his personal physician. As a result, the doctor’s popularity skyrocketed, especially among high-ranking Nazis. That popularity was not due solely to the boost that Morell got from his status as Hitler’s doctor. He routinely treated his patients with injections of addictive drugs that had them coming back for more. Herman Goering, himself an all-out drug addict and a copious pill popper, sarcastically referred to doctor Morell as “the Reichmaster of the injections“.
