Story highlights Nazi officials took meth, cocaine, painkillers, according to a forthcoming book

Drug use during war isn't just "a Nazi thing," one expert says

(CNN) Historians have long known that Nazi soldiers took drugs -- but what exactly did these drugs do to their bodies and brains?

German physicians prescribed the methamphetamine drug Pervitin when World War II troops felt tired or depressed and sought to enhance their energy, according to research.

Nazi leader Adolf Hitler inhaled powdered cocaine to treat sinus problems, as suggested in historical documents of his medical records (PDF).

However, "we do not know how extensive methamphetamine consumption was in the Third Reich in an exact quantitative sense; there are indications, but I doubt the suggestions of some that the whole war machine was fueled by these drugs. That's just not how these drugs work," said Stephen Snelders, a historian at Utrecht University in the Netherlands who has studied the history of drugs in Nazi Germany.

"I think that the drugs were pragmatically used and administered by (military) physicians and by soldiers and civilian consumers, but the evidence remains scanty for most of the war," he added.

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