by Norman Ohler
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161. Giesing, “Bericht über meine Behandlung bei Hitler,” conversation between Giesing and Hitler, October 2, 1944.
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162. Ibid.
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163. Ibid.
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164. BArch-Koblenz N1348, Morell entry, October 8, 1944, and BArch-Koblenz N1348, letter from Bormann to the Reich press secretary, October 10, 1944.
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165. BArch-Koblenz N1348, Morell entry, November 8, 1944.
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166. Ibid.
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167. Ibid., November 7, 1944.
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168. Letter to Bernhard Wenz, October 23, 1944, National Archives Microfilm Publication T253/36.
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169. IfZArch, MA 617, Roll 1.
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170. BArch-Koblenz N1348, Morell entry, November 9, 1944.
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171. IfZArch, MA 617, Roll 3, Letter from Professor Nissle to Morell, March 1, 1943.
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172. IfZArch, MA 617, Roll 1.
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173. Ibid.
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174. BArch-Koblenz N1348, Morell entry, December 8, 1944.
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175. Ibid., November 3, 1944.
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176. Ibid.
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177. IfZArch, MA 617, Roll 1.
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178. BArch-Koblenz N1348, Morell entry, November 9, 1944.
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179. IfZArch, MA 617, Roll 3, letter from Professor Nißle to Morell, March 1, 1943.
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180. IfZArch, MA 617, Roll 3, Morell entry, November 1, 1944.
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181. Ibid., October 30, 1944.
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182. Ibid., October 31, 1944.
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183. Ibid., November 8, 1944.
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184. Giesing, “Bericht über meine Behandlung bei Hitler.”
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185. BArch-Koblenz N1348, Morell entries, July 18, 1943, and September 29, 1944.
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186. See Toland, Adolf Hitler, p. 1013.
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187. BArch-Koblenz N1348, Morell entry, September 30, 1944.
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188. Ibid., November 21, 1944.
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189. Ibid., November 24, 1944.
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190. Ibid., November 27, 1944.
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191. Walter Benjamin, On Hashish, trans. Howard Eiland et al., Boston, 2006, p. 24.
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192. Hermann Römpp, Chemische Zaubertränke, Stuttgart, 1939.
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4. The Wonder Drug (1944–1945)
1. Richard Wagner, Tristan und Isolde (premiered 1865), act 3, scene 1 (Kurwenal).
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2. Hans von Luck, Mit Rommel an der Front (3rd ed.), Hamburg, 2006.
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3. Roland Härtel-Petri, Crystalspeed–Crystal-Meth: Kristallines N-Methamphetamin: eine kurze Einführung, Bezirksklinik Hochstadt, p. 50; see also H. Klee (ed.), Amphetamine Misuse: International Perspective on Current Trends, Amsterdam, 1997, pp. 181–97.
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4. After the end of the war problems of addiction were hardly discussed. The effects on society in the 1950s have barely been addressed. See, for example, Billy Wilder’s Berlin-set film One Two Three, in which the Coca-Cola manager played by James Cagney, C. R. MacNamara, “only takes two Pervitin: ‘Today’s going to be a tough day.’ ”
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5. Landesarchiv Berlin, A Rep. 250-02-09 Temmler.
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6. BArch-Berlin R86/4265: On January 17, 1944, the Temmler Company was given a new permit for Pervitin production there. In this context see also the letter from the patient Gorrissen to Morell from November 8, 1944, which sheds light on the mood of the elderly population in the Nazi state: “Because I am very keen to have a general refreshment. Every time I want to go down to the town for treatment, for example (or even more important, when I have to come back up from town twelve minutes later), I first have to take between half and one tablet of Pervitin, which really peps up a weary body, but which equally you shouldn’t take too often because otherwise you become ‘addicted’ to it, as my GP tells me. You can imagine that these days more than ever it is no fun living on like a physical old wreck, when you still feel mentally on top form and think back on considerable levels of performance even ten years ago.” National Archives Microfilm Publication T253/38.
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7. BArch-Freiburg RH 12–23/1930. The agenda of the meeting speaks volumes: “9.30, ‘Chemical construction and production of performance-enhancing substances, particularly caffeine and Pervitin,’ Prof. Dr. Schlemmer, Pharmaceutical Institute of Strasbourg University. 10.00, ‘The pharmacology of performance-enhancing substances,’ Staff Surgeon Dr. Brok, Medical Academy of the Luftwaffe, Berlin. 10.20, ‘The clinical application of performance-enhancing substances,’ Senior Physician Prof. Dr. Uhlenbruck.”
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8. BArch-Freiburg RH 12–23/1611, Staff Surgeon Dr. Soehring: “Use of Morphine-Pervitin in the Transport of the Wounded,” November 23, 1944.
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9. Interrogation report on one German naval POW, in Entry 179, Folder 1, N10–16, RG No. 165, Stack Area 390, Box 648, National Archives, College Park, MD.
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10. OKW 829/44.Geh., quoted in Pieper, Nazis on Speed, p. 142.
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11. Walt Whitman, Specimen Days and Collect, Philadelphia, 1883, p. 80.
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12. Nicolaus von Below, Als Hitlers Adjutant, 1937–45, Mainz, 1980, p. 366.
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13. Hartmut Nöldeke and Volker Hartmann, Der Sanitätsdienst in der deutschen U-Boot-Waffe, Hamburg, 1996, p. 211.
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14. In Carnac, Orzechowski also encountered Ranke in October 1942. What they talked about is not recorded. Where Pervitin is concerned, in the late phase of the war Otto Ranke was far from prominent and instead turned his attention to different areas of defense physiology. After the war he became a professor of physiology at Erlangen University, where he died in 1959 of a heart attack. The word “Pervitin” does not appear in the obituary published in the Klinische Wochenschrift, vol. 38 (1960), no. 8, pp. 414–15.
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15. BArch-Freiburg N906, unpublished war diary by Armin Wandel, February 26–April 12, 1944.
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16. Ibid.
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17. Cajus Bekker, Einzelkämpfer auf See: Die deutschen Torpedoreiter, Froschmänner und Sprengbootpiloten im Zweiten Weltkrieg, Oldenburg/Hamburg, 1968, pp. 160ff.
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18. BArch-Freiburg N906, from the “Report on the State of Health of the K-Command and Hygiene of the Individual Fighter,” secret commando file. Supplies listed were “white bread sandwiches, gingerbread, chocolate, glucose, some fruit, warm coffee in Thermos flasks, additional preserved meat for Seehund.” The purpose of the deliberately poor nutrition was “so that with an adequate supply of calories rectal tenesmus is avoided.”
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19. BArch-Freiburg RM 103–10/6, medical war diary of the K-Group Command, September 1, 1944–November 30, 1944, by Dr. Richert, p. 5, entry of October 11, 1944.
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20. Ibid.
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21. Admiral Heye wasn’t shy when it came to evaluating the results of experiments on humans in concentration camps. Thus, for example, he borrowed ideas for the improvement of the winter clothing of his underwater fighters from Prof. Holzlöhner, who was responsible for the “Kälteversuche” on inmates of Dachau, “so that deployment even in low water temperatures is possible. As Prof. Holzlöhner has specialist knowledge concerning the question of preventing hypothermia, his advice on this issue has been requested.” BArch-Freiburg RM 103–10/6, medical war diary of K-Group C
ommand, September 1, 1944–November 30, 1944, by Dr. Richert.
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22. See also Anne Sudrow, Der Schuh im Nationalsozialismus: Eine Produktgeschichte im deutsch-britisch-amerikanischen Vergleich, Göttingen, 2010.
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23. Claudia Gottfried, “Konsum und Verbrechen: Die Schuhprüfstrecke im KZ Sachsenhausen,” in LVR-Industriemuseum Ratingen, Glanz und Grauen: Mode im “Dritten Reich,” Ratingen, 2012, p. 48.
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24. BArch-Freiburg RM 103–10/6, medical war diary of the K-Group Command, September 1, 1944–November 30, 1944, by Dr. Richert, entry for November 16–20, 1944, as well as Richert’s report on the experiments in Sachsenhausen.
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25. Odd Nansen, Day after Day, trans. Katherine John, London, 1949.
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26. BArch-Freiburg RM 103–10/6, medical war diary of the K-Group Command by Dr. Richert. Quotations in the next four paragraphs come from the same source.
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27. Interrogation report on one German naval POW, p. 12.
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28. With every successful mission a red stripe was added to the fin. Ibid., p. 5.
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29. Nöldeke and Hartmann, Der Sanitätsdienst in der deutschen U-Boot-Waffe, pp. 214ff.
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30. Ibid.
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31. Ibid.
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32. Ibid., pp. 216ff.
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33. Ibid.
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34. BArch RM 103/11, radio message from Heye, April 3, 1945.
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35. “US Report Prepared by A. H. Andrews Jr., Lt. Cdr. (MC) USNR, and T. W. Broecker Lieut. USNR,” in RG No. 319, Stack Area 270, IRR Files, Box 612, National Archives, College Park, MD.
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36. Dachau, outside the gates of the Bavarian capital, was the first concentration camp to be built in Germany, in 1933. From the very first, National Socialist “health leadership” would be spiced up with biological racism there. Nothing symbolized this more obviously than the “Institute for Medical Herbal Studies and Nourishment” that Himmler, the head of the SS, had set up here on the advice of his nutrition inspector, Günter Schenck. In Europe’s largest herb garden, concentration camp inmates had to breed all the plant-based drugs and medical herbs that Germany required for the war. Almost all the needs of natural healing substances and spices for the Wehrmacht and the SS were grown, harvested, dried, and packed in Dachau. Once again it was a question of import independence, as the leader of the Main Office for the People’s Health confirmed: “The high consumption of plant-based healing substances in war requires an organization that is at the given moment in a position to make up for the shortfall in drugs from abroad.” Fields of gladioli provided vitamin C, and even a pepper substitute was bred—Himmler proudly called it “Dachau pepper.” The goal was, as Rudolf Höss—a Rapportführer in the Dachau concentration camp and in May 1940 camp commandant in Auschwitz—explained, “to wean the German people off foreign herbs and artificial medications that are damaging to the health and turn them toward the use of non-harmful, good-tasting spices and natural herbs” (Pieper, Nazis on Speed, p. 282). Everything German was supposed to become ostensibly more healthy while everything un-German was eradicated. Work in the Dachau “plantage” was seen as heavy labor; the area, which directly abutted the main camp grounds, was substantially guarded and torture was common. Polish clerics were particularly badly abused for this forced labor; the herbs grew in blood, so to speak. For Himmler the “herb garden” in Dachau was a major building block for the economic empire that he was trying to expand the SS into. Research and production fully exploiting the inexhaustible possibilities of the camp system were to turn his terror organization into a global player, with him as CEO. It included several SS health firms such as the “German Experimental Institution for Nutrition and Healing GmbH,” “Convalescent Homes for Natural Healing and Way of Life GmbH,” and “German Healing Agents GmbH,” as well as the control of the mineral water market in occupied Europe; and, in Dachau, alongside the production of herbs and natural drugs there were also medical experiments on human beings. In the camp these were carried out principally by the Luftwaffe to find out at what altitude the organism collapses—and how immersion in ice-cold seawater could be survived. Prisoners were exposed to simulated altitudes in pressure chambers and plunged into icy baths. Biochemical experiments into the treatment of infected wounds and malaria experiments were also performed; the latter were to benefit the German settlers in the southern areas of the Soviet Union, in the Crimea, and in the Caucasus. The drug experiments also fell under the heading of this pseudoscientific torture.
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37. As early as 1938 Professor Ernst Holzlöhner, who ran human hypothermia experiments for the Luftwaffe from 1942, had tested the effects of narcotics and poison gas on the central nervous system of prisoners. This included the use of Pervitin to discover how “this affects the organism during a parachute jump.” Alexander Mitscherlich and Fred Mielke, Medizin ohne Menschlichkeit: Dokumente des Nürnberger Ärzteprozesses, Frankfurt am Main, 1978, p. 28.
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38. Canetti, Crowds and Power, p. 284.
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39. Harvard University/Francis D. Countway Library of Medicine/Henry K. Beecher Papers/H MS c64/Box 11, f75, “U.S. Naval Technical Mission in Europe: Technical Report no. 331–45.”
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40. Ibid.
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41. These Luftwaffe experiments in Dachau formed the basic capital that Hubert Strughold used as a pledge in his negotiations with the Americans. In the context of “Operation Paperclip,” along with Wernher von Braun, who had designed the prototype of the cruise missile in the form of the V2 rocket, he was among the pioneers of U.S. space travel, such as the development of the Pershing II rockets, which would help to decide the Cold War for the United States at the end of the 1980s.
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42. Hitler’s Table Talk, 1941–1944, trans. Norman Cameron and R. H. Stevens, London, 1953, p. 288.
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43. BArch-Koblenz N1348, Morell entries, December 9 and 10, 1944.
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44. Ibid., December 8 and 9, 1944.
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45. Ibid., December 11, 1944.
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46. Quoted in Claudia Schmölders, Hitlers Gesicht: Eine physiognomische Biographie, Munich, 2000, p. 210.
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47. William L. Shirer, Aufstieg und Fall des Dritten Reiches, Cologne/Berlin, 1971, p. 997 [The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, New York/London, 1960].
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48. BArch-Koblenz N1348, Morell entry, December 11, 1944.
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49. Ibid., December 19, 1944.
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50. Ibid., December 31, 1944.
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51. Joseph Goebbels, Das Reich—Deutsche Wochenzeitung, December 31, 1944, leading article, pp. 1ff.
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52. BArch-Koblenz N1348, Morell entry, January 2, 1945.
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53. Pieper, Nazis on Speed, p. 103.
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54. “Conditions in Berlin, March 1945,” in SIR 1581–1582, RG No. 165, Stack Area 390, Row 35, Box 664, p. 1, National Archives, College Park, MD.
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55. Hubert Fischer, Die militärärztliche Akademie, 1934–1945, Osnabrück, 1985 [Munich, 1975].
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56. BArch-Koblenz N1348, Morell entry, February 17, 1945.
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57. These were not free of problems, as Morell now admitted—see his record of a conversation from March 22, 1945: “Communication that new liver preparation in all ampoules toxic when tested in Olmütz. Distribution impossible under all circumstances.” A telegram from Morell to the Kosolup paint factories dated March 18, 1945, sets things out quite clearly: “Ampoule testing in Olmütz showed all unusable
as unsterile and hence toxic. Not to be used under any circumstances. Prof. Morell.” National Archives Microfilm Publication T253/39.
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58. “Request permission to bring the Hamma hypophyse total extract on to the market. The preparation is to be distributed in dragees and ampoules.” Letter from Morell, February 24, 1945, National Archives Microfilm Publication T253/35.
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59. “At the beginning of 1945 the situation became somewhat tense with regard to alkaloids, the manufacturers being unable to produce sufficient quantities owing to the continual air raids,” dated April 10, 1945. See also 0660 Germany (Postwar), 1945–1949, Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs: Subject Files, 1916–1970, RG No. 170, National Archives, College Park, MD.
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60. BArch-Koblenz N1348, Morell entries, February 13 and 17, 1945.
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61. Lev Bezymenskii, Die letzten Notizen von Martin Bormann: Ein Dokument und sein Verfasser, Munich, 1974, p. 191.
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62. BArch-Koblenz N1348, Morell entry, March 22–23, 1945.
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63. Sebastian Haffner, Anmerkungen zu Hitler, Munich, 1978, p. 51.
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64. BArch-Koblenz N1348, Morell entry, March 5, 1945.
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65. Der Prozess gegen die Hauptkriegsverbrecher vor dem Internationalen Militärgerichtshof Nürnberg, 14. November 1945–1. Oktober 1946, vol. 41, Munich, 1984, p. 430.
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66. BArch-Koblenz N1348, Morell entry, April 20, 1945.
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67. Letter from Morell to his pharmacist, Mulli, April 20, 1945, quoted in Schenck, Patient Hitler, p. 50.
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68. “Life History of Professor Dr. Med. Theo Morell,” p. 6, IRR–Personal Name Files, RG No. 319, Stack Area 230, Row 86, Box 8, National Archives, College Park, MD.
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69. Tania Long, “Doctor Describes Hitler Injections,” New York Times, May 22, 1945, p. 5.
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70. Copy of a letter from the Hamma Company to the corporate tax office in Hamburg, National Archives Microfilm Publication T253/39.
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71. Christian Hartmann, Unternehmen Barbarossa: Der deutsche Krieg im Osten, 1941–1945, Munich, 2011, p. 81.
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72. BArch-Koblenz N1128, Adolf Hitler posthumous papers, Hitler’s personal testament.
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73. See Bekker, Einzelkämpfer auf See.