German combat use of stimulants & D-IX wins them the war

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Von Schadewald
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German combat use of stimulants & D-IX wins them the war

#1

Post by Von Schadewald » 02 Dec 2004, 08:45

This article refers to the German drug D-IX that enabled a soldier to fight 3 days at full energy without pause, before he probably dropped dead!

Is there any event or battle in WW2 where judicious or even widespread use of such a drug would have been avail to the Germans? eg at Kursk and the Battle of the Bulge, where the Germans continue to advance whilst the Russians and Americans collapse of exhaustion?!
http://www.rense.com/general34/enhance.htm

Even today, would such a drug would be of use eg to terrorists?

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#2

Post by Christoph Awender » 02 Dec 2004, 09:15

Well although there is a true background especially the article you linked to contains many flaws, errors and exagerations.

There were of course tests and research about new drugs and I also cannot deny the tests with concentration camp inmates.
What I consider as absolute nonsense is that the german army wanted to introduce such a "wonder drug". Already after the first experiences after Poland and France the OKW gave out very strict regulations for the medical officers concerning use and issuing of drugs.
The regulations, reports and overall oppinion of the High command and the medical authorities were fixed, strict and did absolutely never consider any drug of such kind used by soldiers in the field.
Although I did not research this particular drug I think that the described results and effects are highly exagerated or misinterpreted.

But besides that all I think the best point is the most logical one..... what value does a soldier have who is exhausted to death after 48 hours???
I know you love hypthetical discussions and unrealistic comparisons neglecting the reality but such a drug was not, would not be, would not have been used in large operations like Kursk, Bulge etc....

\Christoph
Last edited by Christoph Awender on 04 Dec 2004, 19:03, edited 1 time in total.


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Matthew Jordan
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#3

Post by Matthew Jordan » 04 Dec 2004, 18:11

I agree...

How far could you really advance in 2 days, only to have every soldier drop dead?

They were already dying enough as it were... they fought with such feracity and carried on so long, that I doubt that drug would have been of any use considering the circumstances

and I doubt as well the generals would have stood for this blind slaughtering of their men, in the absence of enemy weaponry

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#4

Post by ÜberChad » 04 Dec 2004, 20:41

yea you guys are right...

though the only use I'd see in a drug like would be to take it when you know your gonna die, you cant retreat and you probably wont live 48 hours anyway..so the best thing to do would be fight to the death type scenario..

still though.. I doupt the german army would issue that drug extensively

Best Regards,
¤Ü.C.¤

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Matthew Jordan
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#5

Post by Matthew Jordan » 05 Dec 2004, 06:04

ÜberChad wrote:yea you guys are right...

though the only use I'd see in a drug like would be to take it when you know your gonna die, you cant retreat and you probably wont live 48 hours anyway..
Best Regards,
¤Ü.C.¤
yes, but how do you pick and chose who uses it?

you think you're going to get many volunteers? (heh)

even in retreat there's a good chance of living... and there's always the hope to live, if not, what are they fighting for?

when the fighting becomes desperate the soldiers are really no longer fighting for national socialism, hitler, or even his family thousands of miles away... he's fighting for his life, and his comerad's lives... I seriously doubt that this type of thing would do any good at all.. it would already doom to death whoever took it, and I'd imagine writing them off, never to fight another day, further weakening the probably already depleted ranks, was not something anyone would want to ask...especially on the eastern front.. where 48hours gets get virtually nowhere.. forwards or backwards...

any who.. :)

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#6

Post by ÜberChad » 05 Dec 2004, 06:53

von rundstedt wrote:
ÜberChad wrote:yea you guys are right...

though the only use I'd see in a drug like would be to take it when you know your gonna die, you cant retreat and you probably wont live 48 hours anyway..
Best Regards,
¤Ü.C.¤
yes, but how do you pick and chose who uses it?

you think you're going to get many volunteers? (heh)

even in retreat there's a good chance of living... and there's always the hope to live, if not, what are they fighting for?

when the fighting becomes desperate the soldiers are really no longer fighting for national socialism, hitler, or even his family thousands of miles away... he's fighting for his life, and his comerad's lives... I seriously doubt that this type of thing would do any good at all.. it would already doom to death whoever took it, and I'd imagine writing them off, never to fight another day, further weakening the probably already depleted ranks, was not something anyone would want to ask...especially on the eastern front.. where 48hours gets get virtually nowhere.. forwards or backwards...

any who.. :)
got a point there buddy..... I agree with cha, though the only troops I could see using that are the last remaining troops defending berlin from the russians durring the final days of the thrid reich.. (volkstrum I think is the word for em)

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Matthew Jordan
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#7

Post by Matthew Jordan » 05 Dec 2004, 08:20

ÜberChad wrote:
von rundstedt wrote:
ÜberChad wrote:yea you guys are right...

though the only use I'd see in a drug like would be to take it when you know your gonna die, you cant retreat and you probably wont live 48 hours anyway..
Best Regards,
¤Ü.C.¤
yes, but how do you pick and chose who uses it?

you think you're going to get many volunteers? (heh)

even in retreat there's a good chance of living... and there's always the hope to live, if not, what are they fighting for?

when the fighting becomes desperate the soldiers are really no longer fighting for national socialism, hitler, or even his family thousands of miles away... he's fighting for his life, and his comerad's lives... I seriously doubt that this type of thing would do any good at all.. it would already doom to death whoever took it, and I'd imagine writing them off, never to fight another day, further weakening the probably already depleted ranks, was not something anyone would want to ask...especially on the eastern front.. where 48hours gets get virtually nowhere.. forwards or backwards...

any who.. :)
got a point there buddy..... I agree with cha, though the only troops I could see using that are the last remaining troops defending berlin from the russians durring the final days of the thrid reich.. (volkstrum I think is the word for em)
They'd either have to be completely ignorant of the substance they'd be taking, or suicidal completely...

It'd be foolish to think that any of them, when the war was clearly lost, to be willing to waste their own life in a fallacious attempt to delay the inevitable that they knew long to be coming, would be the actions of a man not quite in his full mental capacity or having absolutely nothing to live for or no one to go home to.

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Dieter Zinke
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#8

Post by Dieter Zinke » 05 Dec 2004, 11:33

The german medicine in the Third Reich was criminal with the inhuman experiments in the KZ, in the "Euthanasie" and so on. But this is not the topic to be discussed here.

But it would be without rhyme or reason to use stimulants as you are imputing, because the risks are not to be foreseeable or to be steered without regard to paradoxical effects or those unwished for. There is also the danger of poisoning or self-deception for the guinea-pig. This couldn' t be a basis for an experiment not calculateable.

I think I have sufficient spezialized knowledges being an inteniste and a former assistant medical head of a department of the central hospital of the Bundeswehr in Koblenz.

Consequently we should close this topic.

"Oberstab"sarzt der Reserve a.D. Dr. med. Dieter Zinke

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Re: German combat use of stimulants & D-IX wins them the

#9

Post by Uninen » 13 Dec 2004, 10:40

Von Schadewald wrote:Even today, would such a drug would be of use eg to terrorists?
USAF flies and bombs high all the time, even today.

(on Speed - Meth - Amphetamine - Amfetamine - Meth-Amfetamine - Crystal what ever you wanna call it.)

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Matthew Jordan
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Re: German combat use of stimulants & D-IX wins them the

#10

Post by Matthew Jordan » 13 Dec 2004, 11:06

Uninen wrote:
Von Schadewald wrote:Even today, would such a drug would be of use eg to terrorists?
USAF flies and bombs high all the time, even today.

(on Speed - Meth - Amphetamine - Amfetamine - Meth-Amfetamine - Crystal what ever you wanna call it.)

basically bud, any airforce that has long range bombers, are going to have to have something, some kind of stimulant, to keep the pilots awake and alert, I don't care if it's the US airforce, or the Mexican airforce, it's no different here than anywhere else

edit: and I know firsthand, 39th airlift sqaudron, out of dyess airforce base, USAF 12 years

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Re: German combat use of stimulants & D-IX wins them the war

#11

Post by Von Schadewald » 02 Jun 2013, 18:53

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... -METH.html

" Nazis on narcotics: How Hitler's henchmen stayed alert during war by taking CRYSTAL METH

Millions of pills labelled Pervitin dolled out to troops during war
Said it would help soldiers maintain 'wakefulness'

Drug was highly-addictive form of speed we know today as crystal
"

Image

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Re: German combat use of stimulants & D-IX wins them the war

#12

Post by Annelie » 03 Jun 2013, 13:24

Spiegel also has



"Alertness aid" read the packaging, to be taken "to maintain wakefulness." But "only from time to time," it warned, followed by a large exclamation point.







ANZEIGE



The young soldier, though, needed more of the drug, much more. He was exhausted by the war, becoming "cold and apathetic, completely without interests," as he himself observed. In letters sent home by the army postal service, he asked his family to send more. On May 20, 1940, for example, he wrote: "Perhaps you could obtain some more Pervitin for my supplies?" He found just one pill was as effective for staying alert as liters of strong coffee. And -- even better -- when he took the drug, all his worries seemed to disappear. For a couple of hours, he felt happy.

This 22-year-old, who wrote numerous letters home begging for more Pervitin, was not just any soldier -- he was Heinrich Böll, who would go on to become one of Germany's leading postwar writers and win a Nobel Prize for literature in 1972. And the drug he asked for is now illegal, notoriously so. We now know it as crystal meth.

Many TV fans are familiar with the drug primarily from the hit American series "Breaking Bad," in which a chemistry teacher with financial troubles teams up with a former student to produce meth by the pound, while drug enforcement agents chase drug rings in the oppressive New Mexico heat.

Meth use is also on the rise in real-life Germany. According to the latest official reports, the country saw more first-time users over the last year than ever before. In fact, the number of known cases skyrocketed from 1,693 to 2,556 within a single year. Use of the addictive drug has been increasing in Germany since the mid-1990s, with most of it coming into the country from the neighboring Czech Republic.

German Miracle Pill

It was in Germany, though, that the drug first became popular. When the then-Berlin-based drug maker Temmler Werke launched its methamphetamine compound onto the market in 1938, high-ranking army physiologist Otto Ranke saw in it a true miracle drug that could keep tired pilots alert and an entire army euphoric. It was the ideal war drug. In September 1939, Ranke tested the drug on university students, who were suddenly capable of impressive productivity despite being short on sleep.

From that point on, the Wehrmacht, Germany's World War II army, distributed millions of the tablets to soldiers on the front, who soon dubbed the stimulant "Panzerschokolade" ("tank chocolate"). British newspapers reported that German soldiers were using a "miracle pill." But for many soldiers, the miracle became a nightmare.

As enticing as the drug was, its long-term effects on the human body were just as devastating. Short rest periods weren't enough to make up for long stretches of wakefulness, and the soldiers quickly became addicted to the stimulant. And with addiction came sweating, dizziness, depression and hallucinations. There were soldiers who died of heart failure and others who shot themselves during psychotic phases. Some doctors took a skeptical view of the drug in light of these side effects. Even Leonardo Conti, the Third Reich's top health official, wanted to limit use of the drug, but was ultimately unsuccessful.

Students, Athletes and Medics

Pervitin remained easy to obtain even after the war, on the black market or as a prescription drug from pharmacies. Doctors didn't hesitate to prescribe it to patients as an appetite suppressant or to improve the mood of those struggling with depression. Students, especially medical students, turned to the stimulant to help them cram through the night and finish their studies faster.

Numerous athletes found Pervitin decreased their sensitivity to pain, while simultaneously increasing performance and endurance. In 1968, boxer Joseph "Jupp" Elze, 28, failed to wake again after a knockout in the ring following some 150 blows to the head. Without methamphetamine, he would have collapsed much sooner and might not have died. Elze became Germany's first known victim of doping. Yet the drug remained on the market.

In the 1960s, the Temmler Werke supplied the armies of both East and West Germany with the stimulant pills. Not until the 1970s did West Germany's postwar army, the Bundeswehr, remove the drug from its medical supplies, with East Germany's National People's Army following in 1988. Pervitin was ultimately banned in all of Germany, but its meteoric rise as an illegally produced drug had only just begun.

Dangerous Crystals

The drug's new career came thanks to an American cookbook. In the United States, where meth use is widespread today, illegal methamphetamine was initially more an exception than the rule. Then, starting in the late 1970s, motorcycle gangs such as the Hells Angels discovered crystal meth as a source of income and began setting up large-scale drug labs. But since they targeted mainly the California cities of San Francisco and San Diego as their market for the drug, the problem remained limited mainly to the West Coast.

Methamphetamine was no longer a powder compressed into tablets, but instead sold in crystal form, and few people knew how to produce these crystals. That changed when a mad-scientist type named Steve Preisler, alias "Uncle Fester," a chemist in Wisconsin in the mid-1980s, published a drug "cookbook" entitled "Secrets of Methamphetamine Manufacture."

In this controversial book, now in its eighth edition, Preisler presented six different recipes for preparing the drug. All called for only legal ingredients, using a simple chemical reaction to extract the drug's principal component from cough medicine, then combining it with liquids that increased its effectiveness, such as commercially available drain cleaner, battery acid or antifreeze.

More and more illegal meth labs began to spring up, producing the drug in normal apartments, isolated cabins or hotel rooms. Meth production creates highly toxic, explosive substances, and it's not uncommon for improvised drug labs to explode or for drug-addicted mothers to store the drug's dangerous components in the refrigerator next to baby food and end up poisoning their children.

Like Living Corpses




There are a shocking number of these "private laboratories." According to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), around 11,000 meth labs were discovered in the country in 2010, compared to 7,530 in 2009. Of those, 2,000 were in Iowa, an agricultural state known as part of the country's "bread basket."

Meth can be snorted, smoked, swallowed or injected, with addicts often consuming 1,000 times the dose once taken by Wehrmacht soldiers during World War II. The side effects are alarming. Meth weakens the immune system, which leads to eczema, hair loss and so-called "meth mouth," in which the teeth fall out and mucus membranes rot. Meth addicts experience extreme weight loss and develop kidney, stomach and heart problems, which have a nightmarish combined effect: Before and after pictures of meth addicts show that they come to look like living corpses within an extremely short span of time.

Despite these terrible side effects, it seems the drug has lost none of the appeal to which Heinrich Böll succumbed. In 2011, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, based outside Washington, estimated that around 13 million Americans had tried meth at some point. The UN estimates around 24 million users globally.

Translated from the German by Ella Ornstein


http://www.spiegel.de/international/ger ... 01755.html



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Re: German combat use of stimulants & D-IX wins them the war

#15

Post by Sheldrake » 20 Nov 2015, 02:40

The British Army, and other armed forces issued amphetamines. There are some on display at the Pegasus Bridge Museum.

Taking some stimulant ahead of an intense period of effort seemed like a good idea. But warfare is rarely predictable. There was an obvious benefit One Royal Artillery tried them out on a pre D Day digging exercise, but instead discovered the big problem. The exercise was delayed by 12 hours, but only after the guinea pigs had taken the drugs, leaving the key personnel unable to sleep when they needed to rest and exhausted when they needed to work.

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