Merged High Hitler / How High Were The Nazis?

[Belz...]

From what I hear, it made them perform well early on but quickly took its toll.

 

[Drewbot]

Hitler took it in IV form for most of the war. That explains some of his rages probably.

It was also used by the allies. I don't know if overly aggressive was necessarily a bad thing, when it comes to combat forces.

The RAF began procuring Benzedrine from skf in large quantities
by early 1942, and Winfield’s recommendations to issue two 5 mg
tablets per man for each mission were formally adopted late that
year.

Keep in mind, some Allied commanders looked at some science, and determined it wasn't necessary.

One late 1942 study found a gain of marginal statistical
signiªcance in physical performance with Benzedrine. A
carefully controlled, double-blind follow-up found no difference
in efficiency between drugged and undrugged officers doing calculations
and paperwork. Thus by the end of 1942, leading British
scientists had few grounds to recommend amphetamine, despite a
year and a half of intensive and sophisticated testing, and what evidence
they had was not getting stronger.

Monty was a BIG FAN of it however, and went against those non-combat studies.

Bernard Montgomery, the
North African commander from August 1942, showed special interest
in Benzedrine; the pill’s reputation as a “conªdence drug”
might have appealed to him as an antidote for his troops’ wariness
of Erwin Rommel, the formidable German commander. Two
simple experiments in the ªeld seem to have convinced him. One
compared drugged and undrugged marching speeds of an ambulance
unit. The other compared two infantry squads during ªftysix
straight hours of riºe shooting, trench digging, and specialty
testing (such as code signaling and machine-gun re-assembly), followed
by a competitive seven-mile march. Not only did the
“Benzedrine squad” win by eleven minutes in the latter study, and
report feeling more energy and clearer thinking; they also displayed
a “snap and zest” “conspicuously absent” in the placebo
squad. No effort to ascertain equal undrugged performance was described, raising obvious questions about the marching result.
Nonetheless, Montgomery ordered large quantities of amphetamine
for his massive offensive against the entrenched Germans at
el Alamein.
Montgomery’s opinion of the drug’s value at Alamein must
have been favorable, since in November 1942, Middle East command
issued standard orders authorizing amphetamine use at
higher doses than those approved by the Air Council—as much as
20 mg of amphetamine per day for as many as five days straight, or
half that dose for officers not physically taxed. Thus, by late 1942,
the British Army, like the RAF, had adopted amphetamine use
mainly on the basis of the drug’s effects on “morale” as assessed by
military men. Quantifiable, objective advantages for physical and
psychomotor performance (perception and hand–eye coordination)
remained unproven despite thorough testing by experts in
England.

The Americans issued it shortly afterwards.

By the first half of 1943, Benzedrine tablets were supplied to
the Army’s ground forces and aviators. Flight crews also received
the Benzedrine Inhaler, which both cleared the sinuses and, with
concerted sniffing, produced significant stimulation, at a rate of
two per airman on combat flying duty per year (and one per airman
on non-combat flying duty). Official sources, like the U.S.
Army Air Force’s chief medical officer, cautioned servicemen to
use Benzedrine only in special circumstances. Policy notwithstanding,
special circumstances evidently prevailed; journalistic accounts,
as well as one Air Force survey, indicate that Benzedrine
consumption was routine both in the air and on the ground, and
did not follow official usage guidelines. The Navy also adopted
Benzedrine for use by the Marines, in time to use the drug during
their bloody November 1943 battle for Tarawa atoll.

It may be just a case of aggressive tactics being confused for use of drugs in the case of the Nazis. Because most of the studies done in the paper I am quoting do not really show much of an increase over caffeine.

Remember as well that the allies didn't get the stuff until 42-43, so they were probably finding these drugs on captured Germans, and thinking that was why they were winning.
Pretty good, if you are losing, and you have a ready made excuse as to why!

https://www.researchgate.net/public...llies'_Use_of_Amphetamine_during_World_War_II

 

[baron]

Jacob's Ladder.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

"Go pills" (stimulants) and "No-go pills" (sleep aids) are still occasionally used in the US military, specifically for air force flying crews that need to conduct very long continuous flights or series of flights. Go pills keep you up and alert, no go pills help you sleep after using go pills so you are back to normal sooner.

Use of stimulants to extend human endurance isn't a terrible idea, but that boundary can only be pushed so far. A person needs to sleep eventually and no drug can eliminate that need.

Close medical supervision is probably wise for such programs, and only used in limited circumstances.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

The subtle difference being that Benzedrine is amphetamine, i.e., Speed. Pervitin is meth.

 

[kayle]

no idea. the soviets were drunk. so vodka wins ?

 

[Belz...]

the soviets were drunk.

Aren't they (Russians) always?

 

[dudalb]

Like the Supernatural and the Nazis, there has been a lot of sensational nonsense written about drugs and the Third Reich.
Bottom line, there was some drug abuse in the higher ranks of the Third Reich,but it's impact was minor .

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

no idea. the soviets were drunk. so vodka wins ?

Well, vodka definitely gets my endorsement, but then I'm probably biased. I mean, I'm not a Russian, but I am an alcoholic

 

[kayle]

despite the large majority, soviets were not only russians. beer without vodka being useless is a great cultural heritage... statistically, it seems that Moldavians win the consumption table

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Like the Supernatural and the Nazis, there has been a lot of sensational nonsense written about drugs and the Third Reich.
Bottom line, there was some drug abuse in the higher ranks of the Third Reich,but it's impact was minor .

Well, I dunno about the thread it got merged with, or for that matter what kind of drugs caused someone to think that my asking about the troops is the same as the thread about Hitler But that's kinda the thing: you'll notice I never even mention Hitler in my message.

Frankly, I'm not even all that interested in Hitler. As a topic, WW2 isn't equivalent to Hitler. It's not like he went alone and attacked Russia with his trusty PPK, while the rest of Germany was watching amused.

The issue of troops hopped up on meth is actually raising a lot of questions about both the effectiveness and behaviour of those troops. Increased aggression, for example, may or may not be a good thing as long as you only interact with enemy soldiers. But in practice we also see overly aggressive stuff in WW2 ranging from just getting out of position without considering the troops to your left and right, to taking it out on civilians, to documented cases of drugged soldiers assaulting their officers. The latter was maybe the main reason why the Heer stopped pushing Pervitin as hard to their soldiers after France.

In a nutsa... err... nutshell, when it starts affecting discipline or the ability of large units to function coherently, yeah, I would say that too much aggressiveness CAN be a problem even on a front line.

And the SS continued pulling that kind of stunts to the bitter end. As did several Luftwaffe pilots until the very end. E.g., right before the war ended, Erich Hartmann (you know, the biggest fighter ace of all time) deviated from his defensive patrol route to go a long way into enemy territory and attack an air show that the Russians were putting up for the locals. That's the kind of aggressiveness gone out of control that I'm talking about.

That's not something that can be blamed only on the top echelon of the NSDAP, except in the fact that they encouraged it. But someone's thought process still had to go something like, "screw defending Berlin from bombers, Imma going waay over there to ambush someone." Hell, you can't even blame it on the Nazi ideas much, since Hartmann apparently never was all that big a fan of the NSDAP. Yet he pulled that kind of aggressive stuff routinely, including his MO of shooting the enemies recklessly point-blank, to the point where his aircraft was severely damaged several times by debris from the enemy he just pulverized.

Or there are documented cases of luftwaffe pilots going out of their way to attack some civilian convoys. Including from the Brits spying on captured pilots.

And btw, just to put that kinda thing in perspective, altitude was a major factor in WW2 aerial combat. The most effective kind of attack against other aircraft was to build up potential energy by climbing as high as feasible, then convert that into kinetic energy by diving at them. Essentially being higher (and not as in the herbal kind) than the enemy was THE biggest advantage you could have. Yet here we have documented cases of fighter pilots who'd rather piss off that advantage to go low looking for some horse-drawn cart to shoot. That's not even just a problem of being a war crime, it's also horribly bad tactical thinking.

Well, as I was saying, the Luftwaffe was using Pervitin pills like they were candy. To the point where even other branches of the armed forces were calling those pills "Stuka tablets" or "Herman Göring pills." So how much meth is too much, basically? If your pilots routinely will rather sod off from their assigned patrol, put themselves in a bad tactical position, and feel like they have to kill something, even if it's a horse-pulled wagon on a country road, can it be that it's two steps beyond too much? Just asking.

 

[Drewbot]

Low ranking officers in the German Army were given much more leeway to execute orders on a unit level, rather than on a divisional or brigade level. French and Russian troops were often handcuffed by lack of orders early in the war. The luftwaffe also targeted communications to coincide with the early blitzkrieg, making these small unit engagements seem even more aggressive and unusual to the French/Russian units.

This timeframe (invasion of France and Russia) also coincides with the heavy German drug use.

Having more officers and units reacting and changing tactics on their own, rather than waiting for orders from the top, would mean there are more incidents that could be interpreted as aggressive or stupid by the losing side.

But this is just a factor of how many more decisions were being made on the German side, so naturally more of these decisions would fail. Just on a smaller scale.

Once the Allies understood the Blitzkrieg and were learning to react to such aggressive counterattack, attack tactics, on a unit scale. They started winning, therefore they didn't have to use the "GERMANS ARE ALL AMPED UP ON CRAZY PILLS" excuse to explain why they kept getting walloped.

One of the taught tactics in the German Army that probably added to the "DRUGGED UP GERMAN" excuse, was their small-unit , basically standing order, to ALWAYS COUNTERATTACK IN FORCE. Early in the war, this would seem like a drugged up aggressive tactic, 'can't they wait until morning to counterattack? they must be on drugs'. Later in the war, it was just a given. As the Americans moved into France, and took towns, or hills, or woods, the commanders of the American units always knew a counterattack was coming. They were prepared, and didn't have to make up stories about the drugged up Germans.

 

[zooterkin]

Well, I dunno about the thread it got merged with, or for that matter what kind of drugs caused someone to think that my asking about the troops is the same as the thread about Hitler But that's kinda the thing: you'll notice I never even mention Hitler in my message.

The thread, and the article linked in the OP, were not just about Hitler but about drug use in the Third Reich in general. Pervitin is mentioned specifically.

Naturally, it wasn’t long before soldiers were relying on it too. In Blitzed, Ohler reproduces a letter sent in 1939 by Heinrich Böll, the future Nobel laureate, from the frontline to his parents back at home, in which he begs them for Pervitin, the only way he knew to fight the great enemy – sleep. In Berlin, it was the job of Dr Otto Ranke, the director of the Institute for General and Defence Physiology, to protect the Wehrmacht’s “animated machines” – ie its soldiers – from wear, and after conducting some tests he concluded that Pervitin was indeed excellent medicine for exhausted soldiers. Not only did it make sleep unnecessary (Ranke, who would himself become addicted to the drug, observed that he could work for 50 hours on Pervitin without feeling fatigued), it also switched off inhibitions, making fighting easier, or at any rate less terrifying.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

@Drewbot
Maybe, but we also know that the Heer tended to loathe the Waffen SS for their less than sane tactics and insubordination, so it must have been a bit above and beyond what the normal leaway was in the army.

And when you look at it, Luftwaffe stunts like individual wings putting themselves in a tactically unfavourable situation for the sake of shooting some horse drawn cart on a rural road, are hard to justify anyway. Being allowed some initiative in any army doesn't mean having a blank check to do anything you damn please. Normally you kinda have to be able to tell your superiors why you did it, and what was the purpose of it all.

Or take the following example: in the beginning of May 1945, AFTER Hitler had just vented his skull, a regiment from the 17'th SS Panzergrenadier Division decides to simply ignore the general retreat order and run amok terrorizing the local population. And this wasn't in France or Russia or even Italy, but in AUSTRIA. Which was considered at the time just another province of Germany.

So anyway, their initiative is to just run around destroying civillian property in and around the town of Worgl and executed a few "traitors" for such crimes as flying the Austrian flag.

Culminating with the attack on Castle Itter on the 5th of May, 1945. You know, the same day as Dönitz was negotiating surrender to the Allies. Apparently attacking an old medieval castle turned political prison, was more important than obeying the new Führer's orders to retreat and reinforce the Eastern Front.

Frankly, I doubt that they even knew what to do with the castle, even if they took it from the defenders, any more than a poodle chasing a car knows what he'll do with it if he catches it. As in, literally, to this day nobody knows why exactly that SS unit decided to attack a German political prison. Or what gave them the idea to attack such a fortified positon without artillery or anything, except for ONE 88mm AT gun, which turned out to be rather ineffective against castle walls.

Anyway, that's the kind of senseless aggression I'm talking about. An SS unit decides to terrorize the civilian population of a German-speaking town instead of obeying direct orders.

 

[Drewbot]

yes but that comes well after the Germans stopped handing out pills like candy.

It is far more likely that in the SS, crazy fanatics were promoted. So your result was that crazy fanatics were running those units.

Why they attacked Itter? I always thought that they were looking for a way (without admitting it) to surrender to the Americans, before the Russians caught them. There was only one SS casualty, and the rest were taken prisoner.

Remember also that they had just gone through the area torturing locals, and may have found out that the commander of Itter was collaborating with Austrian resistance.

So yes, a rage-attack by a fanatical SS officer, against a traitorous officer, might have also been possible.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

The commander of Itter had fled long before. The closest it had as a commander at the moment was SS-Hauptsturmführer Kurt-Siegfried Schrader, who was wounded and in hospital when the rest of the SS guards buggered off. So when he heard that everyone had deserted the castle, the dude put his uniform back on and went back to open the armoury, arm the prisoners and send for help.

The one you may be thinking of is Wehrmacht Major Josef "Sepp" Gangl, who had stayed behind precisely to defend the town from the maraudering SS regiment. He wasn't really in command of Itter at any point, but rather simply the guy who got the Americans to send help.

And that's where the whole story doesn't really seem like a surrender action by the SS. If you want to surrender, you can do just what Gangl did when he went to ask for help. He just drove straight to the nearest American unit and surrendered to them, then asked for help.

At any rate, surrendering to the Americans was really that easy. I mean, even Himmler managed to do that, so it can't have been that hard. It's not like you had to shoot an 88mm at their tank to be allowed to surrender

Also if you want to surrender through Gangl, maybe, just maybe, not having a sniper shoot him in the head would help. He ain't exactly gonna put in a good word for anyone after getting fatally shot in the head, is he?

All in all, if that was a surrender plan that escalated into full scale assault on a castle, that's EXACTLY the kind of thing that makes me wonder exactly what insane thought process happened there and how much meth was involved

I don't think surrender was the plan, though. Because they didn't actually surrender even when the American reinforcements finally arrived. They just ran back into the forest, and the Americans didn't chase them.

Most of them were captured LATER, but I don't think getting captured was the plan when they started shooting at Itter.

 

[crescent]

The subtle difference being that Benzedrine is amphetamine, i.e., Speed. Pervitin is meth.

I'm under the impression that Benzedrine/Amphetamine was legal "over the counter" in the U.S. until much after the war. It was Jack Kerouac and Neil Cassidy's drug of choice when they were younger. They would get it as decongestants from a pharmacy, in which the drug was contained in a little sponge inside an inhaler. Take the sponge out, drop in a cup of coffee like a teabag.

Kerouac died from alcoholism, Cassidy seemed to be losing his grip on sanity in his later years, there are suggestions that the amphetamine caused a lot of damage to his nervous system.

I don't know if meth was ever that legal in the U.S.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

I think amphetamines were legal in the US until the early 70's, when America kinda ran out of other wars to wage and lose, and decided that it doesn't have to be a country. Yeah, someone thought, we could waste a lot of money and manpower in a war on drugs. Not to be confused with waging a war while being on drugs, like the previous ones