by Norman Ohler
In the rush of the victorious campaign Morell’s thoughts turned to his role as a vitamin pioneer, and he set about manufacturing a combination preparation called “Vitamultin.” His pan-European marketing strategy was as simple as it was striking: he just had to persuade the great commander, his Patient A, to swear by his product, and everyone else was bound to follow. To heighten the appeal to Hitler, Morell had the Hamburg firm Nordmark, of which he owned 50 percent, manufacture the so-called Nobel-Vitamultin. They were meant for one person only, wrapped in glittering gold paper and stamped “SF”—Sonderanfertigung Führer (“special product for the Führer”). Somewhat less glamorous than the packaging were the contents, which consisted of rosehip powder, dried lemon, yeast extract, skimmed milk, and refined sugar.109 Even though Hitler didn’t suffer from a lack of vitamins, since he hardly ate anything but fruit, vegetables, and salads, he pounced on the tablets as if they were the apples of the Hesperides. After all, additional vitamins could never hurt. Soon he was consuming several of these gilded gifts every day, and Morell advised the Engel-Apotheke, a kind of court pharmacy near the Reich Chancellery, “always to keep a small store of about 50–1000 Vitamultin-F bars. . . . You must ensure that there is never a gap in supplies.”110 He kept the recipe strictly under lock and key, and instructed the pharmacist only to supply the product to him in person or to Hitler’s valet.
Now came the second step in Morell’s marketing strategy. For the senior officers of the Wehrmacht and important members of the staff he made a brand stamped “SRK”—Sonderanfertigung Reichskanzlei (“special product for the Reich Chancellery”)—wrapped not in gold but in silver. Soon the senior officers were fighting over the moderately tasty sweets, which were ostentatiously consumed at military briefings. Morell wrote contentedly from the Führer’s headquarters to his wife: “Vitamultin is proving a great success here. All the gentlemen are very appreciative of it, and recommend it to their families at home.”111
This success laid the foundation for large-scale deals with the mass organizations of the Third Reich. Shamelessly exploiting his influence as Hitler’s personal physician, Morell won over the German Labor Front (DAF) for several “Vitamultin operations.” Huge quantities were ordered: sometimes 260 million, then even 390 million. Overall the DAF took almost a billion tablets. The goal was to heighten the performance of munitions workers and increase their resistance to infectious diseases. The doctor also approached the SS, who received one hundred thousand free Vitamultin biscuits, as “an affectionate gift.” These were supposed to get the Mountain Corps in Norway hooked. At a personal discussion with Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, Morell touted the usefulness of Vitamultin in Scandinavia: it was demonstrably clear that an increased intake of vitamin C improved night vision, and up there it was often dark.112 The SS seemed pleased with the result and ordered more, hundreds of millions in all. The product even received a special-edition branding of its own and bore the label “SS Vitamultin.”113
The commercially focused doctor also fixed his sights on the ground troops: “Mustn’t we offer Vitamultin to the army again?” he wrote in a letter.114 But when he approached Ranke, the dealer for the Wehrmacht, Morell found he was banging his head against a brick wall. The advisory defense physiologist, used to stronger stuff, wasn’t impressed by a mere vitamin preparation and refused to pack the bars in the troops’ equipment.
But the Vitamultin business worked without the army. Morell could even cope with a rejection by the Luftwaffe, although he did take it personally and plotted against Dr. Erich Hippke, leader of the Luftwaffe medical service: “On the basis of false data the Generalstabsarzt [Senior Staff-Surgeon General] is trying to disavow a valuable preparation and circulating a letter seeking to defame me,” Morell wrote to Hippke’s superior, the Reich aviation minister, Göring. “I can’t calmly accept such a mode of behavior, which has happened on duty. If it had happened in private life, I would go to court so I ask you, my dear Reich Marshal, to be so kind as to make a just judgment. In deepest respect for you, Herr Reich Marshal, I remain yours, Heil Hitler.”115 Göring reacted, and Hippke had to go. This was a triumph for the physician. His own rise to becoming a pan-European pharmaceutical entrepreneur was off to a good start.
Flying High: The Battle of Britain
After the fiasco of Dunkirk, for which the blame was laid at his door, Göring, “the Fat Man,” tried desperately to appear as the radiant lordly figure he imagined himself to be when under the effects of morphine. “Operation Sea Lion” was planned: the invasion of Great Britain with ground units. For the precarious sea journey of thousands of German soldiers across the English Channel, air supremacy also had to be achieved so as not to risk the troops. This was Göring’s job, as well as his great opportunity to impress Hitler and justify his great power as well as the extravagant lifestyle that went with it.116
The Battle of Britain was beginning. To force Britain to its knees from the air, Göring first bombed logistical air force targets: aerodromes, hangars, landing strips, planes. This successful strategy was changed, however, after the British bombed the Berlin districts of Kreuzberg and Wedding in a night raid on August 25, 1940. Hitler ordered an attack on London for September 4, to demoralize its population—a severe tactical error, because it meant that enemy airfields were no longer the prime target. Consequently, the British were able to strengthen their defenses.
Bombs fell on the British capital and other towns. Over forty thousand civilians had lost their lives by the end of the campaign. These were the first systematic terror attacks of the war. On the island there was a grim comment: “London can take it.”117 The Royal Air Force (RAF) struck resolutely back: countless German planes were shot down over England, and the British flew retaliatory attacks against German cities. The clash escalated. Soon it became too dangerous for the Luftwaffe to operate by day. One bomber pilot describes the situation:
The launch was very often late, ten o’clock, eleven o’clock, and then you were over London or some other English city at about one or two in the morning, and of course then you’re tired. So you took one or two Pervitin tablets, and then you were all right again. . . . I had a lot of night operations, you know. And, of course, the commander always has to have his wits about him. So I took Pervitin as a precautionary measure. Imagine the commander being tired in battle! Uh, yes, please, that’s not going to work. . . . One wouldn’t abstain from Pervitin because of a little health scare. Who cares when you’re doomed to come down at any moment anyway!118
This certainly wasn’t a one-off remark. There are no statistical studies of Pervitin among the Luftwaffe, and by historiographical standards there is little supporting evidence of the comprehensive use of the “speedamin” among pilots, apart from Ranke’s original order of 35 million doses for the army and the Luftwaffe together.
Control of the skies was essential to win the war, and to do that you needed the right materials: steel and manpower. Both had to function perfectly and keep going longer than the enemy could. While Messerschmitts were technically inferior to Spitfires, the Luftwaffe’s use of drugs was far ahead of that in the RAF. Pervitin had several nicknames that indicated its use: “pilot salt,” “Stuka pills,” “Göring pills.” One commodore reported from the Mediterranean: “In my knee pocket there is a hand-length strip of linen covered with cellophane, with five or six milk-white tablets stuck to it, the size of a chocolate bar. The label reads: ‘Pervitin’. Tablets against fatigue. I open the bag and tear first two, then three of these tablets from the pad, take the breathing mask off my face for a moment and start chewing the tablets. They taste repellently bitter and floury, and I’ve got nothing to wash them down with.”119
After a while the effect kicked in: “The engine is running cleanly and calmly. I’m wide awake, my heartbeat thunders in my ears. Why is the sky suddenly so bright, my eyes hurt in the harsh light. I can hardly bear the brilliance; if I shield my eyes with my free hand it’s better. Now the engine is humming evenly an
d without vibration—far away, very far away. It’s almost like silence up here. Everything becomes immaterial and abstract. Remote, as if I were flying above my plane.”120
After landing, reality was a strange world for the zonked pilot:
I kept my course precisely, in spite of my euphoric indifference and my seemingly weightless state. Upon landing, I find the place in a state of complete stasis. Nothing moves, there’s no one to be seen, rubble of the hangars forlornly looms . . . between the bomb craters. As I roll on to the squadron’s stand my right tire bursts. I’ve probably driven over a bomb splinter. Later I meet Dr. Sperrling and ask him in passing what kind of “crap” this Pervitin really is, and whether it mightn’t be better to warn pilots in advance? When he learns that I’ve taken three tablets, he nearly faints, and forbids me to touch a plane, even from outside, for the rest of the day.121
As hopped up as the Germans might have been, this couldn’t give them the advantage over the Royal Air Force, which was plainly better run. The Battle of Britain was lost by the Reich—Germany’s first defeat in this war. Hitler had to call off Operation Sea Lion and thus an invasion of Britain, and looked for a new theater for his war.
Göring suffered no consequences resulting from this failure. He still held court in the huge building of the Reich aviation ministry, built of pale stone blocks on Wilhelmstrasse. Red Reich war flags emblazoned with a swastika fluttered confidently above, as if to point out unequivocally that even the winds were subject to the power of this government and particularly to that of the Reich Marshal. But anyone who passed through the big cast-iron gate and crossed the broad forecourt stepped into a realm of chaos, of unbridled alcohol and drug abuse, of intrigues and general mismanagement. The conditions in Göring’s three-thousand-room fortress (which today houses the Federal Ministry of Finance) were symptomatic of the regime’s loss of political reality and the wrong track that Germany had set off on.
An officer described the Reich Marshal’s appearance: “We struggled to keep a straight face. He dons a white silk, blouse-like shirt with flowing sleeves, and over it a yellow, sleeveless, fur-lined suede jacket. With this he sports long, medieval-looking bloomers, and around his waist a broad, gold-studded leather belt, with a short Celtic sword jangling from it. Long silk stockings and golden-yellow Saffiano leather sandals complete the picture.”122
The face of the powerful minister was covered in makeup, and his fingernails were painted red. Often during discussions Göring, once the opium content of his blood had dropped, felt so deranged that he would leave the room abruptly without a word of explanation, then return a few minutes later, plainly much refreshed. A general described one such surprising transformation: “Göring had the air of being newborn, he looked magnificent and fixed his sparkling blue eyes on us. The difference in his whole appearance between the first and second parts of our conference was notable. For me it was clear that he had been taking some form of stimulant.”123
These frequent escapes from reality didn’t help Göring’s official duties. Soon the precondition for holding a senior post in his office was not so much one’s qualifications as one’s entertainment value.124 He swept aside criticisms of one of his closest colleagues, Bruno Loerzer, whom Göring himself described as his laziest general, with the remark: “I need someone I can drink a bottle of red wine with in the evening.”125 Similar considerations may also have played a part in the appointment of Ernst Udet as “Generalluftzeugmeister,” or General Master of Aircraft, one of the most influential positions in the Third Reich. Admittedly, after the Frenchman René Fonck, Udet was very popular as the most successful surviving fighter pilot of any nation in the First World War. But this exceptionally gifted flyer and bon viveur, who enjoyed his cameo appearances in Leni Riefenstahl films, struggled with his desk job at the top level of the leadership. Göring couldn’t care less, however, and his treatment of Udet was a particularly impressive example of how capriciously he ran his ministry, where the concept of administrative supervision was unheard of.
When the Reich aviation minister and his Generalluftzeugmeister talked together, they liked to reminisce about the good old days, when they had fought aerial battles together in the First World War, high on cocaine.126 On the other hand they were less keen on talking about current armament problems, the complex process of developing new types of aircraft, and other similarly intricate matters. At his opening speech at the ministry Udet, his face cloudy and terribly hungover, admitted that it would be unwise to expect him to perform many administrative duties. The only problem was that he was now in charge of up to twenty-four different offices, which were soon in a state of indescribable chaos. Udet, who was known to serve cognac at meetings throughout the day, and to take methamphetamine in enormous quantities to balance out the effects of the alcohol, was notorious for extraordinary mismanagement even within the inefficient Reich aviation ministry.
A lot of alcohol, even more Pervitin: Generalluftzeugmeister Ernst Udet (center).
It’s possible that Göring was referring to Udet when he observed: “There are departments you have no idea about, but all at once they appear, and promptly some mess happens. . . . And swiftly you discover: there’s been a department there for years, and no one knows anything about it. In all seriousness: it’s happened a few times. There are people who have been thrown out three times, and then they reappear in a different department, and become bigger and bigger.”127
Udet particularly liked to spend his days drawing caricatures, often enough of himself. Whenever possible, he crept off home, where he ran a small private bar decorated with trophies from his world travels, and always surrounded himself with friends because he couldn’t bear to be alone. Although he just wanted to be sitting in a plane stunt flying, there was no time for that now; Udet was imploding under the burden of his constantly increasing responsibilities. In the course of 1941 he shoveled Pervitin into his mouth in dangerous quantities to keep himself capable of functioning. In that way he personified the hubris of German warfare, which had overstretched itself and lost contact with reality long ago. “Our defeat was caused by Udet,” Hitler, of all people, would later claim. “That man concocted the most nonsensical state of affairs ever seen in the history of the Luftwaffe.”128 And that was saying something.
In the German theater play most often performed after the war, The Devil’s General, the dramatist Carl Zuckmayer gave his friend Udet far too flattering a monument in the figure of the honorably tragic, nonchalant swashbuckler, Air Force General Harras. Udet is not worthy of such a heroic status. At best one might say in his favor that he unwittingly might have done great damage to the system through his incompetence and drug addiction. So he is no more and no less than a buffoon, a historical curiosity, and he embodies those deviant qualities that historians usually ignore.129
On November 17, 1941, a report from the German news service came over the ticker: “Generalluftzeugmeister Air Chief Marshal Udet . . . while testing a new weapon suffered such a severe accident that he died of his injuries on the way to hospital. The Führer has ordered a state funeral for an officer who was lost so tragically while carrying out his duty.”130 In fact Udet had fired a bullet into his head at his grand villa on Stallupöner Allee in Westend, Berlin’s most exclusive residential area, and at a stroke delegated all the thousand technical and organizational problems of the Luftwaffe back to his old fellow soldier from the First World War, Göring. Just before he brought his intoxicated life to an end with a bang, Udet had scribbled one last message beside his deathbed: “Iron man, you have deserted me.”131
The suicide of the self-aggrandizing Udet anticipated the downfall of the Third Reich. As Göring walked behind the coffin at the state funeral, with a metallic, morphine-doped expression and muttered something about “one of the greatest heroes in German history,” the Wehrmacht was getting stuck in Russia. Just behind the Military Medical Academy, in the Invalidenfriedhof, only a few steps from the place where Otto Ranke had tested Pervitin
for the Wehrmacht, Udet’s grave can still be seen today.132
Just What the World Was Waiting For
On September 13, 1940, the Milan daily Corriere della Sera reported on a “courage pill” used by the Germans, which had gone from medicine to secret weapon. The military effectiveness of this “pillola di coraggio,” the article said, wasn’t a match for a Stuka bomb, but it did guarantee the German General Staff the uninterrupted operational capability of its soldiers.
Britain went on to study and eventually use Benzedrine (which has fewer side-effects than Pervitin) as a result of the Milan piece.133 The article provided the reassuring explanation that the Germans’ relentless fighting power could be explained chemically rather than ideologically. The British Broadcasting Company immediately produced a feature on the provision of Pervitin to German pilots. As a result, a controversy at the highest level of the civil service broke out in Berlin. Leo Conti, the Reich Health Führer, who was critical of Pervitin, wrote to the army medical inspector: “I would be grateful if you could tell me in what quantities and with what degree of success Pervitin is actually being administered to members of the Luftwaffe. I would also like to know your attitude towards this issue. . . . I cannot approve the prescription of Pervitin. After repeated declarations of the harmfulness of this substance, I have wondered whether stricter regulations should be introduced concerning the prescription of Pervitin, perhaps identifying it as an intoxicating drug. Heil Hitler!”134
This letter made little impression on the army. It was not until a month later that their new army medical inspector, Professor Siegfried Handloser, wrote: “British propaganda has claimed several times that the German Wehrmacht is only capable of its achievements thanks to drugs. The fallacy of these reports by London radio is apparent from the fact that they also have German Panzer divisions in France marching on drugs. The fact is that Pervitin was only used at that time by individuals and in vanishingly small quantities.”135 A clear lie, because Handloser must have been aware of both the 35 million tablets ordered for the Western campaign and Ranke’s report from France.