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Blaming Drugs for Nazi Germany

the philosophical problems with 'Blitzed' by Norman Ohler

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

December 7, 2022



It's becoming fashionable lately to ascribe Nazi madness to drug abuse, thanks in large part to the 2017 publication of "Blitzed," by novelist Norman Ohler. But this implicit scapegoating of drugs for homicidal madness is problematic. First because, taken to extremes, this line of argument could be seen as excusing Nazi atrocity. "They were 'on drugs,' after all, and did not know what they were doing." But there is another troubling (though very telling) problem with this attribution as well.

Hitler was like Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson when it came to drugs. He did not consider himself a drug abuser or an addict. Why not? Because he was receiving substances from a physician, not a "dealer." He was, he believed, therefore receiving medicine, not drugs. In other words, Hitler was a hypocritical drug prude just like modern Americans. He shared our modern drug-war belief in what Julian Buchanan calls a "drug apartheid," a world in which there are God-blessed "medicines" that we are obliged to take every day of our life and devil-sent "drugs" that we are obliged to never take, ever. Hitler believed that he only took the former kinds of medicines and therefore was simply looking out for his own health. He would be the first to agree with us that there were lousy drug addicts out there, but he would never have counted himself as one of them. In this way, Hitler is like the 1 in 4 American women who are dependent upon Big Pharma meds for life: they, too, would never consider themselves to be addicts. Why not? Because in the age of a Drug War, the term 'addicts' is an aesthetic term. This is clear when we consider the relevant Drug War Newspeak. Addicts go to dealers to get their "fixes." American women go to doctors to receive "their maintenance meds."

The Drug Warrior might argue, "Well, still, at least we can all agree that morphine really screws people up, Hermann Goering included." But that conclusion is wrong as well. Yes, Goering was a boor and no doubt used morphine in excess, that is to say, to the detriment of his duties; but the mere regular use of morphine does not destroy lives (unless the Drug War is on hand to ensure that outcome by withdrawing supply and demonizing and incarcerating the user). Dr. William Halstead, a founder of Johns Hopkins University, used morphine for a lifetime1, and that use was so far from interfering with his work that his colleagues were not even aware of it until after his death -- at which point they asked naive questions amounting to: "How could he have accomplished so much while using a dirty evil drug called morphine ?" Of course, as Thomas Szasz would point out over a half century later, it never occurred to those baffled colleagues that Halstead might have accomplished so much THANKS to the morphine use.

Why not? Because it is a firm tenet of the Drug War religion that criminalized substances can have no positive uses whatsoever. It is therefore anathema for the Drug Warrior to think that cocaine could have helped Robin Williams be funny or that coca wine could have helped HG Wells write great short stories. In fact, the Drug Warrior is so oblivious to common sense psychology that they will tell us that these self-actualized individuals would have been so much more successful had they only said "no" to today's long list of demonized substances. But this belief is just that: a belief, a tenet, a faith. It is anything but a prima facie conclusion to which all unbiased minds would naturally accede.

The title of Ohler's book shows his drug-warrior bias. The title is "Blitzed," suggesting that drug use can only lead to scatterbrained and distracted mental states. This is far from the truth, however. Did Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's great detective, Sherlock Holmes, use cocaine 2 3 in order that he might think less clearly? But Ohler is under the spell of Drug War ideology as promulgated by America's Office of National Drug Control Policy, which says that "drug use" must be a sign of pointless hedonism and can have no positive outcomes, like greater mental clarity, for instance, or self-insight. In reality, one might have WANTED the Germans to get "blitzed," if they did so by using entactogens such as MDMA 4 and psilocybin, which might have taught them how to feel empathy for their fellow human beings.

There is another problem with referring to the Nazi leadership as being "blitzed" on "drugs." It is hypocritical. As Thomas Szasz reports, JFK and his wife were routinely prescribed what we would call "speed" today by their doctor. But there are no books out there provocatively describing how that drug use could have impacted his handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Indeed, most American writers will not even acknowledge that drug use, let alone speculate extravagantly about how it might have affected his abilities to keep us out of World War III. This is not to say that I blame or condemn that use. To the contrary, I think that it is likely to have helped him in trying circumstances (not by "blitzing" his mind but by focusing it). My point here is only to underline the hypocritical selectivity with which modern Drug Warriors employ the phrase "drug abuse." The term seems to be a weapon that we reserve for use against someone of whom we disapprove, rather than a concept that we apply according to some objective criteria.

While we're on this subject, how does the frequent and often excessive use of alcohol, coffee, tobacco, chocolate, sugar and caffeine affect world leaders and their decision making? That's a question that the Norman Ohlers of the world will never ask, because the world they live in considers substances like these to be like water, substances whose use may be considered a baseline condition of all modern societies. Meanwhile, the substances of which we disapprove can be allowed no positive uses whatsoever and are to be demonized in every way possible, with all past episodes of positive use being censored from historical accounts and biographies.

But the popularity of the book "Blitzed" is not surprising given that American's have been taught for many decades now to blame all social problems on the boogieman called "drugs." It makes learning 20th-century history so much easier for us, after all. "Oh, the Nazis were on DRUGS," we cry. "Why didn't you say so? Now I understand everything!"

But this naive way of viewing the world makes sense only in light of Drug War lies.

The fact is, people are always on "drugs," many of which intensely focus the mind rather than "blitzing" it. Some of us use coffee in excess, many of us use sugar in excess, some of us drink in excess, and some of us (myself included, alas) are dependent on Big Pharma 5 6 meds for a lifetime. So, why are WE not blitzed? Answer: because Norman Ohler is a typical Drug Warrior: he ascribes the apparently negative outcome of getting "blitzed" only to the use of the substances of which American politicians disapprove, not to any of America's "favorite poisons." The success of his book merely demonstrates how bamboozled Americans have become by the insidious Drug War logic of substance demonziation.

Author's Follow-up: September 14, 2023



I have recently given a detailed critique of the term addiction in my essay entitled "Prohibition Spectrum Disorder, where I parsed the definition given by Webster's and found at least four reasons why the term is more political than scientific.


September 28, 2023The above post originally identified Johns Hopkins founder William Henry Welch as the morphine 7 user, whereas it was founder William Stewart Halsted who availed himself of the substance in question. Welch invited Halsted to join in founding Johns Hopkins. (Don't worry, folks: heads have rolled! Heads have definitely rolled!) What? I pay my extensive editorial team to catch these things!











Notes for essay entitled Blaming Drugs for Nazi Germany: the philosophical problems with 'Blitzed' by Norman Ohler:

1: “Ceremonial Chemistry – Syracuse University Press.” 1974. Syr.edu. 2026. https://press.syr.edu/supressbooks/1114/ceremonial-chemistry/. (up)
2: Sigmund Freud's real breakthrough was not psychoanalysis DWP (up)
3: “Freud on Cocaine : Freud, Sigmund, 1856-1939 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive.” 2023. Internet Archive. 2023. https://archive.org/details/freudoncocaine0000freu/page/n5/mode/2up?view=theater. (up)
4: How the Drug War killed Leah Betts DWP (up)
5: Seife, Charles. 2012. “Is Drug Research Trustworthy?” Scientific American 307 (6): 56–63. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican1212-56. (up)
6: LaMattina, John. n.d. “Why Is Biopharma Paying 75% of the FDA’s Drug Division Budget?” Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnlamattina/2022/09/22/why-is-biopharma-paying-75-of-the-fdas-drug-division-budget/. (up)
7: Three takeaway lessons from the use of morphine by William Halsted, co-founder of Johns Hopkins Medical School DWP (up)




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We should hold the DEA criminally responsible for withholding spirit-lifting drugs from the depressed. Responsible for what, you ask? For suicides and lobotomies, for starters.

Until prohibition ends, rehab is all about enforcing a Christian Science attitude toward psychoactive medicines (with the occasional hypocritical exception of Big Pharma meds).

If I smoke opium nightly, I am a drug scumbag. If I use Big Pharma "meds" every day of my life, I am a good patient.

SWAT raids have increased by 15,000 percent from the late 1970s to today, resulting in 50,000 to 80,000 SWAT raids annually in the US alone. --War On Us

It is a truism to say that we cannot change the world and that therefore we have to change ourselves -- but the drug war outlaws even this latter option.

It's already risky to engage in free and honest speech about drugs online: Colorado politicians tried to make it absolutely illegal in February 2024. The DRUG WAR IS ALL ABOUT DESTROYING DEMOCRACY THRU IGNORANT AND INTOLERANT FEARMONGERING.

The drug war outlaws everything that could help both prevent addiction and treat it. And then they justify the war on drugs by scaring people with the specter of addiction. They NEED addiction to keep the drug war going.

The drug war is being used as a wrecking ball to destroy democratic freedoms. It has destroyed the 4th amendment and freedom of religion and given the police the right to confiscate the property of peaceful and productive citizens.

My local community store here in the sticks sells Trump "dollar bills" at the checkout counter. I don't know what's worse: a president encouraging insurrection or an electorate that does not see that as a problem.

Prohibitionists have blood on their hands. People do not naturally die in the tens of thousands from opioid use, notwithstanding the lies of 19th-century missionaries in China. It takes bad drug policy to accomplish that.


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