Hitler’s soldiers were whacked out on crystal meth

As our regular readers are well aware, Cops is the Editor’s favorite TV show. His normal life is lived in a peaceful, antiseptic bubble and everything he knows about the horrors of the outside world comes from that outstanding program. And if there’s one thing he’s learned from years of watching Cops, it’s that crystal meth is one bad mofo drug.

Now it turns out that Hitler’s army was whacked out on the stuff 60 years ago.

The News Australia has the story:

The German army’s drug of choice as it overran Poland, Holland, Belgium and France was Pervitin – pills made of methamphetamine, known today as crystal meth. Thousands of Nazi soldiers were using the drug by the time the Soviet Union was invaded in 1941. About 200 million Pervitin pills were given to Nazi troops between 1939 and 1945, research by the German Doctors’ Association revealed. A pharmacologist from the GDA said this week: “The blitzkrieg was fuelled by Pervitin. The idea was to turn ordinary soldiers, sailors and airmen into automatons capable of superhuman performance.” The downside to the scheme was that many soldiers became addicted to the drug and of no use in any theatre of war. … In January 1942, a group of 500 troops surrounded by the Red Army was attempting to escape in temperatures of -30C. The unit’s medical officer wrote: “I decided to give them Pervitin as they began to lie down in the snow wanting to die. After half an hour the men began spontaneously reporting that they felt better. “They began marching in orderly fashion again, their spirits improved, and they became more alert.”

So thanks to crystal meth, Nazi soldiers were completely alert as they were freezing to death, being slaughtered by the Red Army or captured and sent to Soviet slave camps.

The Editor’s wife might prefer any of those options over watching another episode of Cops. But her taste in television is as questionable as her taste in men.

Source: News.com.au