by Norman Ohler
Hitler hailed the small battle units as a real chance to stop the Allied landings: “If I’ve got them I can resist the invasion.”12 Even during an arms conference in early January 1944 at the Wolf’s Lair, in the presence of the arms minister, Albert Speer, and the head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, as well as several field marshals, Hitler had demanded the accelerated production of the supposed miracle weapons in which he put so much hope. These were new kinds of two-man U-boats, midget submarines and one-man torpedoes. The huge enemy superiority was to be nullified by the tactic of launching numerous small attacks. It was David versus Goliath, albeit less biblical: the K-Verbände were seen as the new celebrity units of the navy. Their special operations would be based on surprise effects—on their not being discovered or located. The supposed aim was to creep up to the big enemy ships, ready the torpedo, and attack. Therefore they would have to spend several days and nights uninterruptedly under water—distinctly longer than the forty-eight hours for which a high dose of Pervitin would have kept them awake. No special naval training was planned for these life-threatening operations; instead there would be special drugs that far surpassed everything that had gone before.
If there was ever a time in this war when perseverance was necessary, this was it. In the spring of 1944 Heye frantically tried to find a “quickly available medication that will keep soldiers who are on solo operations for longer than usual and for those who are not in a position to sleep awake and ready for deployment.” The drug was also supposed to “boost the soldier’s confidence and mobilize his reserves of strength.”13 But who could develop such a substance?
In civilian life Professor Dr. Gerhard Orzechowski, naval staff surgeon and head pharmacologist of the Naval Supreme Command on the Baltic, was a professor of pharmacology at Kiel University. During the German occupation of France he worked in the Naval Medical Research Institute for U-boat Medicine in Carnac in Brittany, where he had studied performance-enhancing substances.14 The bespectacled scientist seemed like the right man for the experiment of squeezing the last residues out of the battle-weary troops, pepping up the mini-sub fighters, and forcing through the final victory by means of pharmacology. Orzechowki’s explicit goal was to use chemicals to “make man a beast of prey.”15
Such an approach suited Heye, since he wanted to deploy the one-man fighting boat known as a Neger (“Negro”—a play on the name of its inventor, Richard Mohr, i.e., Moor). It was shaped like two torpedoes, one on top of the other, the lower one being the weapon itself. In the upper part were the control seat and the pilot’s cockpit, protected by a watertight Plexiglas dome: a ride on the bomb. Through a simple iron-sights visor the combination of carrier torpedo and live torpedo could be aimed at a target; with good vision the pilot launched the weapon by foot pedal. Then he had to speed back to the safety of the harbor—an uncertain endeavor given the U.S. fighter bombers target-shooting at those Plexiglas domes poking out of the water.
Admiral Hellmuth Heye swore by “D IX,” a combination of cocaine, Pervitin, and Eukodal.
For these kamikaze commandos Orzechowski suggested ten different preparations under the abbreviations “D I” to “D X”: Drug 1 to Drug 10. They consisted of different quantities of Eukodal, cocaine, Pervitin, and Dicodid, a semisynthetic morphine derivative similar to codeine but considerably more potent. Those were the strongest known substances in the world, thrown together at random—a sign of how lax the navy had become in its treatment of drugs, and of how desperate the situation was.
On March 17, 1944, the pharmacy of the navy hospital in Kiel produced five tablets of each of the ten creations; a day later fifty soldiers from the Blaukoppel training camp ingested them. Everything had to be done quickly, and serious tests of the complex interactions of the individual ingredients didn’t occur for reasons of time. D IX was the front-runner: a mixture of 5 milligrams of Eukodal, 5 milligrams of cocaine, and 3 milligrams of methamphetamine—a brutal combination that might even have been to Hitler’s taste. The medical head of the navy, Admiral Staff Surgeon Dr. Emil Greul, had to rubber-stamp D IX, as cocaine in its powder form was banned from prescription. Heye also gave the project a green light. The medical service quickly prepared five hundred tablets for the Biber (Beaver), a mini-U-boat with two torpedoes, as well as for the Neger.
In spite of extreme secrecy, the search for the wonder drug was being talked about—especially among the SS. They too were increasingly reliant on special commandos and interested in new discoveries. A collaboration was on its way, one that the navy later wanted to forget. The notoriously unscrupulous Obersturmbannführer Otto Skorzeny, head of SS secret operations and known to the Western services (who overestimated his actual abilities) as “the most dangerous man in Europe,” came to Heye’s headquarters on March 30, 1944. Since his involvement in the abduction of the arrested Mussolini in September 1943, both Hitler and Himmler supported him in all his undercover operations. Officially the man with the striking scar on his face only wanted to see the small battle units’ new weapons, but Skorzeny, who had never made a secret of his hard-drug use, had come chiefly because of Orzechowski’s promising D IX. He immediately took charge of a thousand tablets to test them “on a special operation.”16
The drug designer Gerhard Orzechowski: “Making man a beast of prey.”
Use only while on strong drugs: the one-man combat vessel Neger.
So what were the effects of D IX? “In all subjects unpleasant disturbances occurred after taking one to two tablets,” says one of the few surviving reports. “Subjects who were previously fresh and rested displayed shaky hands during a brief euphoria, and those who were already tired complained of weak knees and tautness in the muscles. A general paralysis of the central nervous system set in, the desirable euphoria immediately subsided, decision-making power and intellect were inhibited, energies impaired, the critical faculties diminished, profuse perspiration followed a feeling of hangover, a high degree of fatigue and dejection.”17
This sounds anything but promising. And yet D IX was administered—and led to a fiasco for the navy. Two thirds of Biber pilots did not survive their daredevil operation. The supposed miracle drug, because of its strong side-effects, made combat deployment more difficult rather than easier. It was dropped as swiftly as it had been developed.
In the meantime the German military situation had drastically deteriorated. The Allies had landed on the European continent, and huge forces were advancing toward the western border of the Reich. From autumn 1944 German hopes rested on a new small battle device, again supposedly revolutionary because of its outstanding diving capability, the Seehund (Seal). Heye’s plan was to direct these mini-subs to the Thames estuary and the beaches of Normandy in order to blow up Allied ships. The Seehund’s navigation represented an extraordinary challenge, however. Conditions were extremely cramped. Meals were warmed up in a heatable pot, and the crew were obliged to answer the call of nature in empty food tins.18 “Bearing up for four days in this combat vessel will be difficult and not always possible without stimulants,” wrote the navy medical officer, Dr. Hans-Joachim Richert, who was now responsible for treating the K-Verbände. He seems to have had qualms about using chemical intoxicants to overcome these natural difficulties, when he wrote in a rather detached manner in his war diary: “The military leadership takes the view that in this war, if required, damage as a result of powerful medications must be taken into account.” On October 11, 1944, Richert met the drug designer Orzechowski near Lübeck to talk about “a substance that would keep Seehund crews awake and boost their performance.”19
Since preparations combining several hard drugs were largely rejected because of severe side-effects, the two men discussed whether high doses of pure cocaine or pure methamphetamine could keep a person awake and efficient for more than two days and two nights. Time was pressing. Nine days later, on October 20, 1944, Grand Admiral Dönitz visited the small battle flotilla, aware that Hitler was breathing down his neck with his belief in this new mi
racle weapon. Richert informed him that the “conditions for the submarine Seehund with a deployment duration of 4 x 24 hours are difficult and call for the development and testing of new kinds of medication.” To avoid a further disaster like the one that had occurred with D IX, the decision was made to carry out experiments beforehand, to “establish the tolerability and effectiveness of high doses of cocainum hydrochloricum in pill form, high doses of Pervitin in chewing gum, and smaller doses of cocainum hydrochloricum, and basicum in chewing gum.”20
From a naval doctor’s war diary: “Dr. Orzechowski about a stimulating and performance-enhancing substance for Seehund. Bearing up for four days in this combat vessel will be difficult and not always possible without stimulants. The military leadership takes the view that in this war, if required, damage as a result of powerful medications must be taken into account in so far as they make it possible to carry out operations. The substances available apart from coffee are Cardiazol-caffeine, Pervitin, and cocaine. The necessary experiments will be discussed with Prof. Orzechowski.”
But where and on whom should such tests, which were plainly far from hazard-free, be carried out? Connections to the SS, which had been made through Otto Skorzeny, were remembered. Might these open certain strongly secured doors to the navy? Dönitz gave his okay. Heye also agreed. The clean-cut navy men in their neat uniforms again got into contact with the SS, and a secret collaboration began, one that up until today has not been fully studied. In late November 1944 a gate indeed was opened to the naval doctor Richert, who was to run the experiments. It led to a huge facility, and the steel lettering over the entrance spelled out the words: ARBEIT MACHT FREI, meaning “Work will set you free.”21
Business Trip to the Concentration Camp
Cold wind blasted over the open space, surrounded by a circular wall ten feet high, which had flowerpots of evergreen plants arranged symmetrically on top. The perimeter was secured with an electric fence, and in front of that were rolls of barbed wire and a raked gravel strip: NEUTRAL ZONE. LIVE AMMUNITION WILL BE FIRED WITHOUT WARNING.
Sachsenhausen concentration camp, twenty-one miles north of Berlin on the edge of the small town of Oranienburg, was opened in 1936, the year of the Olympic Games. As an equilateral triangle, its architectural concept was based on the principle of total surveillance. From the balustrade of main tower A, painted pastel green and partly timbered, a single guard could see the barracks arranged in four arches around the semicircular parade ground. A single machine gun could keep all the prisoners covered. Altogether over 200,000 people from around forty nations would be confined here until just before the end of the war: political opponents, Jews, Sinti and Roma, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the citizens of occupied European countries, “anti-social elements,” alcoholics, drug addicts. Tens of thousands of detainees perished from hunger, illness, forced labor, mistreatment, and medical experiments. In the autumn of 1941 an estimated thirteen to eighteen thousand Soviet prisoners of war were executed with a shot to the back of the neck in a special facility that was designed to standardize the killing process.
One other perfidious specialty of the camp was the so-called shoe-walking unit. Prisoners had to test the resilience of soles for the German shoe industry on uninterrupted forced marches. Companies such as Salamander, Bata, and Leiser sent their latest models to the camp: they were seeking a substitute for leather, which was rationed during the war. The shoe-testing ground, parts of which can still be seen today, was a track 2,300 feet long, consisting of 58 percent concrete road, 10 percent cinder path, 12 percent loose sand, 8 percent mud that was kept constantly under water, 4 percent chippings, 4 percent coarsely graveled paths, and 4 percent cobbles. This was designed to provide a cross-section of all the roads in Europe that German soldiers walked on during their campaigns.
The shoe-walking unit was a punishment unit. Anyone who was found guilty of refusing to work, or caught playing cards, bartering, or stealing food from the mess or the kennels, ended up here. “Laziness,” refusal to obey orders, or even the suspicion of homosexual acts could also lead to referral. To start with, the unit consisted of 120 prisoners. A master cobbler from Sensburg in East Prussia, Dr. Ernst Brennscheidt, a career civil servant who never joined the SS or the NSDAP but who was known for his cruelty, expanded this to 170 prisoners. He increased the daily walking quota to over twenty-five miles by speeding up the pace. For this marathon he also made the prisoners carry around rucksacks weighing twenty-five pounds, so that greater stress would be put on the soles. Often he made inmates wear shoes that were too small or ordered different sizes for left and right feet, supposedly to collect additional data.
The foreman in charge of the march had a series of numbered cardboard markers at the ready, and as soon as the shoe walkers had performed one round, he put one of these markers in a lead-lined wooden box attached to a pole, so that they could be more or less accurately counted. Every six miles shoes were examined to see how worn they were. Prisoners were ordered to lie down, perform knee bends, crawl, or jump on the spot. Often enough one of the emaciated “shoe walkers” would collapse. In these instances, Brennscheidt would unleash one of his Alsatians. In step, breaking step, or goose-stepping, they marched even in bad weather to avoid financial losses. The German economics ministry paid for the maintenance costs of the shoe-walking track. The Reich economics office controlled the material tests centrally, and only allowed leather substitute materials to go into production once they had been successfully tested in Sachsenhausen. It paid the camp six reichsmarks per day, per prisoner. In the case of rubber soles, after several improvements they could withstand 1,800 miles, or a seventy-five-day march. Still, most materials were unusable long before that. Leather fabrics barely survived 600 miles, but a sole made of Igelit, a form of soft PVC, survived for over 1,200 miles.22 All of this was painstakingly noted down. According to estimates, up to twenty people died on the track every day.23 The SS called this “extermination through labor.”
Pill Patrol
From November 17 to 20, 1944, the navy hired the shoe-walking unit for a “Secret Command.” On the first evening, at half past eight on the dot, the prisoners were given high doses of drugs by the naval doctor Richert: the enormous quantity of 50–100 milligrams of pure cocaine in pill form, 20 milligrams in chewing gum, or 20 milligrams of Pervitin, also as chewing gum (about seven times the dosage of the traditional Temmler pill). Thirty minutes later the effect set in, and the march on the testing track began—a walk that literally lasted to the end of the night.
Between four and five o’clock in the morning (seven or eight hours of tramping in the dark later), most of them gave up “because they were footsore.”24 The camp inmate Odd Nansen, later cofounder of UNICEF, described the experiments: “Just now a singular patrol is marching round and round the parade ground interminably. All are kitted up and sing and whistle as they walk. That’s the ‘pill patrol.’ They’re being used to test out a new energy pill. How long can they keep going full steam on it? After the first forty-eight hours it’s said that most of them had given up and collapsed, although the theory is that after taking this pill one can perform the impossible. No doubt the Germans could use a pill like that now.”25
“Secret Command Matter!”: Substance names were abbreviated in reports to avoid the retransmission of knowledge about medications used.
Richert’s notes do not mention the abuse that the inmates were subjected to during this torture. “Experimental subject No. 3,” the twenty-year-old Günther Lehmann, was the only one still walking the next morning. He had taken 75 milligrams of cocaine, and went on performing his lonely rounds, a total of sixty miles, “without fatigue,” as the experimental records cynically put it.26 At one o’clock he was sent to the barracks to join the others. All the pumped-up inmates waited there until the evening, unable to sleep. At 8 p.m. the drug experiment was repeated. Another sleepless night for the prisoners: totally blitzed on strong cocaine, on strong crystal meth, in the concentratio
n camp.
The next day at eight in the evening there was “fresh distribution of medication. The group remained in their room under the same conditions.” The men played cards, talked, read. Some of them lay down, dozed off momentarily, then woke up again. The following day Richert described their appearance: “Nos. 1, 10, and 11 look sleepy in the morning, No. 9 well rested; the others do not seem affected. They continue about their business as before. 7.30: medication administered once more.” On the fourth day at four in the afternoon the experiment was ended, and the forced participants staggered back to their barracks.
Meanwhile a second group had to begin their march carrying heavy bags, forming a new pill patrol. These prisoners had been given Lehmann’s performance as a standard. The threat was that if they gave up sooner than he did they might face death. Consequently almost all of them covered the sixty miles required. The naval staff doctor noted with satisfaction: “On this medication, state of mind and will are largely eliminated. . . . The experimental subjects have clearly been forced into a state contradicting their predispositions.” In spite of their exhaustion and their weak constitutions the camp inmates were mutating into marching machines. Such results pleased Admiral Heye, as he could not assume that his soldiers would by natural means drum up the necessary strength and motivation for the futile final battle.