Did Hitler's Drug Use Lead To An Allied Victory? | How The Nazis Lost The War | War Stories

this channel is part of the history hit Network [Applause] what kind of leader murders Millions and takes on the world's major powers on multiple battlefronts Adolf Hitler was a megalomaniac he had a God complex he had all of these different issues that have been stemming since his childhood this gives Hitler a feeling of almost Messianic superiority that he knows things that even his professional Marshals and Generals don't know that he has these gut instincts that are unerring could a disease caught in the trenches during World War One have accelerated this delusional personality it was described by some as instant psychopath and these people became criminals particularly convincing con men could another contributing factor have been a raging drug addiction Hitler is a heroin addict he's also getting up with you know crystal meth you know purvatin and also taking cocaine he's really a wreck it was a recipe for disaster which led to Ultimate crushing defeat for Hitler and the Nazis and the deaths of Millions [Applause] [Music] in the last days of the reich's Reign Adolf Hitler revealed the depths of his capacity for self-delution [Music] Germany was under attack from both East east and west [Music] defeat was inevitable but Hitler ordered his men to fight to the death Hitler's war room was conducted in a fortified underground bunker in Berlin's chancellery Gardens when he's in the bunker in 1945 awaiting the Soviet attack on Berlin and you know he's trembling and some say this is Parkinson's Disease others say this is you know with withdrawal symptoms from uh the the morphine he'd been taking and was unable to get because the German pharmaceutical factories were getting bombed out by the British and the Americans so um no he's a wreck [Music] Ed in a handful of years ago from Germany's apparent savior [Applause] to her nemesis a broken and arranged dictator hiding in an underground bunker ordering his troops to certain death in the Years leading up to World War II Hitler achieved a string of remarkable victories his apparently Flawless military judgment much of the Messianic conviction of his own indestructibility coupled with his carefully stage managed public speeches and appearances turned Hitler into a feared military Chief at the head of an unbeatable Army in fact his military skills remained largely those of the lowly Corporal he had been in World War one and his blundering coupled with his increasingly unstable personality proved ultimately to be one of the Allies greatest weapons but was there something else going on behind the scenes that even the Allies couldn't guess at there's no question that Hitler's decision-making deteriorated in the course of World War II uh people noticed it at the time it became more and more self-pitying modeling sleepy just kind of imprecise as the war went on and he became physically more and more debilitated we can see in those weeks in the bunker how he self-destructs by becoming self-abusive picking his own skin with tweezers he just becomes a very unhappy unhealthy horrible person maybe that's the true Hitler that he always was now it really comes out history hit is a streaming platform that is just for history fans with fantastic documentaries covering fascinating figures and moments in history from all over the world from the Battle of Trafalgar and the revolutionary era right through to the second world war if you are looking for your next military history fix then this is the service for you we're committed to Bringing history fans award-winning documentaries and podcasts that you cannot find anywhere else sign up now for a free trial and War Stories fans get 50 off their first three months just be sure to use the code War Stories at checkout thank you Hitler's spiraling decline while he was Chief decision maker was in part due to years of drug abuse from 1941 on a regular basis Hitler was injected with methamphetamine and morphine a syringe was his preferred method was the man in charge of the biggest war machine in history little more than a junkie a Hitler is a heroin addict I mean this is a guy who by the end of the war is taking intravenous heroin every day other other opiates he's also getting up with you know crystal meth you know purvatin and uh he's also taking cocaine he's also injecting himself with vitamins testosterone bold testosterone he's really a wreck was displaying all these appalling symptoms yet he was still able to cling to power [Applause] as bunker the fuhrer's most loyal supporters lined up to mark his 56th birthday on the edge of Berlin a purely number of German soldiers were desperately defending the city few thousand Germans against the massed ranks of the Red Army as his delusional World collapsed all around him Hitler's drug idled mind kept alive his fantasy Germany would prevail private secretary Charles younger observed the worst the situation became on the front the happier Hitler was to discuss his plans for the future imagined he would surround himself with artists academics and civilians when the war was over he was becoming ever more delusional it wasn't just drug use the drugs were amplifying and already deranged character Adolf Hitler was a megalomaniac he had a God complex he had all of these different issues that had been stemming since his childhood and which made him a Broken Man Hitler's a pathetic individual you know he grows up he's bullied by his father his his mother and father die when he's a teenager he's sort of shiftless youth he ends up in art school doesn't do well he ends up sort of painting postcards on the street and sort of drifting around in the fringes of society so you know he endows himself with all these Powers as a way of I go I suppose pumping up his fragile self-esteem all the leading politicians look at him with contempt you know the Bohemian corporal youth living a penniless destitute life found a home in the German army fighting against the Allies in World War One this you know German enlisted man from World War One of absolutely no distinction who's trying to rise to the top of German politics and they and they see as as as his contemporary saw that he's truly a pathetic figure but Hitler did have this kind of ability to simplify matters for for people and narrow them down to a couple of key grievances that people could cling to and this is what brought him Fame and Power [Applause] so how did Hitler's experiences during World War One shape his capacity as a war leader was he up to the task of being a combat Soldier let alone the military leader of Germany soldiers that lived through the Battle of epro were promoted to Lance corporal including Hitler his new role was to carry messages between the front line and regimental headquarters a job for danger many dispatch Runners were killed in the line of duty but hit the sound by all accounts Hitler was a very good soldier he has a number of awards that he receives and citations not least of which the Iron Cross we also know that he's exposed to very real dangers he gets wounded twice once in 1916 once in 1918 in fact in 1918 it's a gas attack foreign ER from his regiment Hans mend described Hitler as odd and peculiar who preferred to paint and breed rather than mix with the other soldiers men claimed Hitler would sit in the corner in silence then all of a sudden jump up and start ranting attacking Jews and marxists who Hitler claimed were subverting the war effort Hitler's nickname was crazy Adolf according to Hitler's close friend Ernst Hampshire fellow soldiers mocked Hitler when they saw him in the washroom claiming his genitals were almost freakishly underdeveloped hamstrungal was one of Hitler's few friends and he queried whether Hitler's genital abnormality contributed to his terrifying and murderous rages he knew from a very early stage that he had congenital deformities which he was desperate to hide now Freud famously said Anatomy is Destiny and I think we have to say to a very large extent more so than most cases you look at this explains Hitler and at the same time this man is building gigantic impossible structures well you don't have to be a Freudian to see there's a connection between the two and it's it's a simple projection of his inadequacy Hitler's career in the Infantry wouldn't last long when he was wounded in a British mustard gas attack in 1918 at epla in Belgium he became temporarily blind and was evacuated to a German military Hospital lying in his bed a local Pastor would bring him the devastating news of Germany's surrender Hitler claimed the news was so traumatizing it sent him into another bout of blindness and in the darkness he claimed to have had an epiphany he would be the one to liberate Germany he said I would make Germany great I knew immediately that it would be realized Hitler's Messiah complex had begun was this a vision a moment of delirium or something else entirely latest theories suggest something else was at play a medical theory that might help us understand where Hitler's delusional mind and Psychopathic nature came from a disease caught in the trenches in late 1916 on the Western Front a new illness that had never been seen before broke out and the people affected by it mostly went into a deep sleep from which they could be awakened they developed a range of neurological and psychiatric symptoms 40 of them died with the first episode but if they recovered they would remain in a deep state of sleep they would have Parkinson's syndrome not Parkinson's disease which you get when you're older or they would have a major personality change it was described by some as instant psychopath and these people became criminals particularly convincing con men now we know that Hitler was right at the spot in the German front lines where the outbreak happened shortly afterwards he went to Munich which was a place where there were a lot of cases so the theory goes that Hitler had Encephalitis lethargica he survived it and it led to two things his dramatic personality change and his well-known Parkinson's [Music] whether Hitler had Encephalitis lethargic remains a theory but what's not in doubt is Hitler believed his Divine Destiny was to restore Germany's standing in the world as we know now Hitler could not deliver on all his promises and his diseased delusional mind would eventually lead Germany down a path of humiliation and destruction but how would this so-called Providence take Hitler from his hospital bed to a podium in 1918 Hitler returned to Munich the city was in a state of civil unrest his job was to help the Army infiltrate the German Workers Party an anti-marxist and anti-capitalist political party instead he joined them the German Workers Party would later become the National Socialist or Nazi party Hitler Rose through the ranks quickly propelled by the sheer power of His delusional self-belief and his ability to sell the Nazi party message to the masses I think that explains why Hitler was the most successful demagogue in history that away from the stage the plenum where he was talking to a massive people he was utterly insignificant there was just nothing there it was if you could take a personality and make it into jelly and you just your finger would just keep going through it and this was remarked on by everybody who knew him around him when Hitler got on the stage and he had to give a talk it was like a complete change of personality but of course you've got to remember that he was speaking words that people wanted to hear as a result of that he he could capture that desire that was certainly within the German people for strong leadership and the Fulfillment of a great vision Hitler started to really love the sound of his own voice and we start to see all the characteristics of a true narcissist come to the surface it's reasonable enough to take the general acceptance that not a narcissist is somebody totally self-obsessed they are the center of the universe everybody around them either has to make them feel better or be punished for not doing that another way of putting it is simply that a narcissist is a psychopath who hasn't been caught yet because narcissism as people generally conceive of it means you can rationalize and justify any Behavior so you could argue if you use that structure that Hitler was the greatest narcissist in history by August 1933 Hitler had become the chancellor head of the government and with the death of head of state Paul Von Hindenburg in 1934. Hitler then declared himself the president [Applause] he was now the fuhrer Germany's supreme leader crazy Adolf as he'd been known in the trenches was now one of the most powerful leaders in the world as military leader Avenged for Hitler instructed his generals to prepare for a massive expansion he ordered his troops into the Ryan land an area that had been stripped of its military power under the Treaty of Versailles next Hitler took control of his homeland Austria it was a bloodless invasion he was welcomed with open arms into Vienna even the very name of Austria disappeared from the man and he reclaimed the German sedating land in neighboring Czechoslovakia Hitler saw himself as bulletproof and Germany as unassailable it was only a matter of time before he turned his attention to the rest of Europe before the German armies launched a coordinated attack I think there's a good case to be made for Hitler is overconfident in some ways that's also the secretary's success the fact that he's ready to take so much risk but that feeds his narcissism that feeds his sense of inherent destiny that he is the chosen one that he is going to lead Germany and in some ways that's part of the reason why so many people are buying into this Hitler's arrogance led him to believe Poland's allies wouldn't fight back Hitler was contemptuous towards the Allies he saw them as weak and indecisive Hitler would later tell his generals the Allies are small worms referring to Britain's prime minister Neville Chamberlain Hitler said If ever that silly old man comes interfering here again with his umbrella I'll kick him downstairs and jump on his stomach in front of photographers I think this was characteristic of Hitler from a very early age and it exemplified the fact that he was totally self-centered totally obsessive incapable of having any opinion that he did that disagreed with him and he simply reacted in kind well the Panzer divisions rolled through the Polish countryside England and France presented a cold ultimatum to withdraw Hitler's generals invasion of Poland would provoke a response they asked Hitler for more time to fortify Germany for what they believed was certain War Hitler dismissed their concerns in a matter of days could this have been the moment when Hitler's diseased delusional mind tipped over into outright psychopathy seeing Hitler is the worst example possibly the only example of somebody achieving absolute power this is somebody who came from being a complete non-entity in 1919 to a man in 1942 who was the greatest conqueror of Europe since Napoleon and Caesar had the absolute worship of all the Germanic peoples and the belief that he was going to conquer the world so this just segued perfectly into his self-image I am the greatest man in the world I should control the world and it picked up from there going forward into World War II itself Hitler feels that you know he's been touched by God the generals are far too conservative in that he has this sort of divine ability to find the weakness of the enemy pounce on it and destroy the enemy he saw himself as invincible and his judgment impeccable the Divine fuhrer was now Beyond reproach [Applause] [Music] Britain and France honored their agreement to stand by their Ally Poland and on the 3rd of September 1939 World War II was declared Hitler was a great opportunist and somebody that would very much want to ride the wave of success Hitler believed there was an opportunity to exploit and therefore he went after his ideological AIMS in terms of foreign policy like a dog after a bone and he just wouldn't give up at any point during the war until there was either death or victory [Music] crushed Poland in less than five weeks Hitler was emboldened [Applause] Britain and France were next and it took only six weeks for France to fall as counseled against the invasion of Poland he goes in defeats Poland he's counseled against the invasion of France Falls this gives Hitler a feeling of almost Messianic superiority that he knows things that even his professional Marshals and Generals don't know that he has these gut instincts that are unerring he was a rock star to the German people delivering on all his promises [Music] but wherever there's a rock star drugs are often not far away three years earlier in 1936 Hitler had fallen in with Dr Theodore Morrell Morrell was an experienced physician he's amassed fortunes building pharmaceutical factories he made everything from lice powder to Chocolate vitamins [Music] in a circle regarded him as a quack he was known by a Nazi party insiders as the third reich's syringe master Morel always gave drugs by injections he thought pills worked too slowly and he said to Hitler you have to make fast decisions you cannot wait for a pill to dissolve you need the instant effect they they had a special word for it they called it instant recovery so that the the injection actually works very fast I mean you feel terrible you get an injection intravenously you will feel like in heaven five seconds later this is this is what impressed Hitler foreign ERS that when the Nazi party came to power it was pure Botanical it had adopted a stringent anti-drug stance now it's supreme leader was an addict they were the first anti-truck government in German history so all of this drug freedom of the Weimar Republic of the 20s was suddenly gone drug users were put in concentration camps because the Nazi movement tried to present itself as a clean movement cleansing the German population from poisonous influences it was instrumental in the beginning when they took power to connect Jews with drugs so they said the Jews among amongst us they take more drugs than the proper than the Aryan German the non-jewish German and so they they tried to push all the poisons the the so-called poisons out of the German Society in 1937 the German pharmaceutical manufacturer temra developed a new drug perverton a methamphetamine and within a year perverton was on the streets so when this product hit the market in 1938 it was not considered to be a drug it was considered to be a performance enhancing medicine this spread so wildly in the German population that for example methamphetamine laced chocolates came onto the market they were advertised as being perfect for the German housewife because with those beautiful chocolates laced with methamphetamine the housework would be done easily and would even be fun to stay at home and do the housework so in the morning like we drink coffee the Germans in 1938 39 used a little bit of methamphetamine to get ready for the day and perverting sold as a medicine not a drug soon found its way into the German army there was a professor he was called ranker and ranker found out that in in the attack on Poland already a lot of soldiers were using parvatine so he suggested to the Surgeon General of the army that for the next phase of the war which was was the attack against the West pavertine should be an official medication for soldiers it should be supplied and every Soldier should take this on the first day of the attack so 35 million dosages of methamphetamine were being ordered from the German Army from the temla company were being shipped to the front lines and then were being taken on May 10 1940 when Germany attacked the countries in the West in fact in the Pensacola they refer to it as Panzer chocolata tank chocolate there's also other names that people use like the sugar pill and this gives you an idea of just how powerful this stimulant was they didn't have to sleep at night the Brits and the French got tired after eight hours of fighting they they slept at night like every soldier on the planet has always slept that night but the Germans they just continued fighting all through the night [Music] foreign ly widely used in the medical core because they are overwhelmed by casualties nurses and doctors are taking pervatine because they have access to it and it gets to the point where people are taking it so much so that they stop sleeping they stop sleeping for up to a week on end and seemingly can function conducting operations looking after wounded then they talk about these enormous crashes that they that they sleep for a day or two on end but of course it's also addictive so it becomes a real problem was the entire Nazi war effort a drug-fueled rampage across Europe on the highly addictive methamphetamine pervertin Hitler's right-hand man Hermann Girling had been a morphine addict since he was wounded in the beer hall Butch in 1923 and he was in charge of the luftwaffe and with Hitler now in the hands of the syringe Master Dr Morrell drugs were now part of Nazi Germany from the top down but drugs and feelings of invincibility don't explain all of Hitler's plunders in 1940 when Germany failed to obliterate the Allies at the Battle of Dunkirk Hitler was not yet injecting hard drugs Hitler made a lot of good decisions early in the war but he also made a very bad one concerning Dunkirk when he stopped the German tanks and this decision had nothing to do with drugs because he wasn't using heavy drugs in the spring of 1940. at Dunkirk the Allies had been losing the battle to keep France out of Germany's hands allies were in retreat and the beach had Dunkirk was one of their only Escape Routes back across the English Channel the Allies were sitting ducks then Hitler decided to Halt the offensive Hitler sometimes had a what could be termed a schizophrenic style of leadership where he would sometimes do exactly the opposite of what would be expected of him previous victories would indicate that he would be very confident yet sometimes he would have cold feet and stop short he also had a tendency to listen to the general that last spoke to him and then that would become policy had Hitler not stop the panzers at this critical point around Dunkirk there is little doubt that the thef the British expeditionary Force the best part of the French army and some belgiums would have been destroyed they would have been taken out of the game what that would have done for British and French morale Can Only Be Imagined it didn't matter to Hitler that the Betrayal bef was allowed to make its way back to Britain with its tail between its legs he already had his side set on a much greater prize Hitler's errors of judgment came thick and fast as Hitler grew more maniacal his micromanaging became more intense after he and the morphin addict girding blew the Battle of Britain he turned his attention to the East and planned to invade Russia to keep on top of things Hitler needed something stronger from Dr Morrell so in 1941 in August when the Germany attacked the Soviet Union when Hitler wanted to divide the German troops part of the troops should go up to Leningrad Park should go to Moscow and the other heading for the oil reserves of the Soviet Union his generals disagreed with that they wanted to take Moscow first they said if we take Moscow that's how we win the war Hitler he became quite sick for the first time he had what was called the Russian flu so he asked Morel to give him something stronger than just Vitamins because he wanted to get up and Morel then for the first time gave him an opioid and Hitler got out of bed walked into the military briefing room and was able to command the the ongoings so this was the first time he tasted something stronger and he would not forget that was this the moment that turned the war where opiates the unknown secret ingredient that would cloud Hitler's judgment and fatally undermine the German Army's efforts in the east Hitler was confident the war would last two months three at the most Hitler was wrong again the war against Russia lasted almost four years the victories kitlov the self-confidence to press ahead for more military action right the way through until 1941 in the invasion of the Soviet Union Hitler's generals were saying to Hitler we shouldn't be doing this we don't have enough time we do not have the plans we do not have the resources to undertake the military campaigns that you want as the war progressed Hitler's drug use accelerated by 1942 Hitler's morning ritual was injections from his doctor Theodore Morrell Hitler would become a heavy user of cocaine and eucadol a morphine cousin of heroin Hitler's narcissism his belief in his Divine Mission and his drug addiction made for a deadly cocktail just like anyone high on drugs is not that much in contact with reality and and if you are the leader in the war you have to be very much in contact with reality you cannot live in a dream world this ultimately has to lead to terrible decisions Hitler's generals we're noticing how their fuhrer's behavior was changing in Daily military conferences Hitler's Armament Minister Albert Speer observed Hitler lack the Ingenuity he possessed prior to 1942. thank you it's a mad plan to take Russia the Eastern Front unraveled instead of admitting he was wrong Hitler purged the high command of the Nazi Armed Forces he surrounded himself with more and more Yes Men further feeding his narcissism and consolidating Power in his own hands Hitler always had a uh a tendency to be incredibly self-confident and only believing in his own ideas and beliefs his behavioral uh Tendencies towards um not allowing contrary opinion comes to the fore and he alone takes the key decisions in Nazi Germany supported by his henchmen who are protecting the power base that he's built and of the path of Glory for this once wild Nazi army the German front in Russia was collapsing the Soviets had gained the upper hand and would soon Advance on Germany by now Hitler was also losing against the Allies on the Western Front Fiora had another problem closer to home multiple assassination attempts on his life there were at least 42 assassination attempts on Hitler between the 1930s and the end of the war and certainly the most famous is the 1944 staufenberg Club there were dozens of other plots some of them near misses some of them Hitler never knew about you know he was a vegetarian they'd poisoned some meat on the table and he wouldn't eat it so he wouldn't get sick or or die or they'd put a bomb in a plane that he was on but the bomb would fail the fact that he survived them reinforced his view that he was sort of a Superman that had been you know chosen to lead Germany in this you know struggle for survival and that nothing could do him in and that and that these merely confirmed his greatness but the famous Von staufenberg attempt on Hitler's life on July the 20th 1944 had a more profound effect it sent his drug use into overdrive Hitler's psyche also suffered tremendously from that assassination attempt this is when he started to use the cocaine uh he used cocaine over 50 times after the assassination attempt and on the days when he didn't use cocaine he used oikodal the the strong opioid that was injected into his veins so the assassination attempt by stauffenberg didn't kill him but really turned him into a drug addict and actually turned him into a junkie because someone who receives an opioid intravenously every other day for several months can can be called only a junkie nose or is lost but they fought to the last bullet as Germany's defeats mounted was Hitler's conviction that he was indestructible influenced by his dependency on hard drugs did Hitler's drug use affect his decision making historians and clinicians believe methamphetamines cocaine and heroin altered the fuhrer's mental state and played a role in Germany's defeat there is absolutely no doubt that the medical attention that Hitler was was getting the drugs that he was taking was in a sense driving an exhausted man further and further they were perhaps addling his brain affecting his decision-making in a negative way for example when he's awakened uh during the D-Day invasion on June 6 1944 he's sleeping late as usual at Berkeley's Garden you know he's groggy and drowsy and doesn't really begin functioning until mid-afternoon because he's so hungover from this cocktail of drugs that he takes all day and night as his judgment became more impaired Hitler became ever more determined to focus military decision making in his own hands so complete was his self-delusion growing paranoia and neuroses that he was losing touch with reality [Music] by January 1945 the Russians were advancing on Germany Hitler had retreated to his fortified underground bunker in The Gardens of the Reich Chancery in Berlin Allied plans to assassinate Hitler had been aborted they believed that the deluded drug-addled and unhinged Hitler with his increasingly poor judgment was more valuable to them alive than dead as news came through that Soviet troops had entered Berlin Hitler feared he'd be captured and subjected to the same lurid public humiliation that his one-time friend and Ally Benito Mussolini and his mistress Claire patachi had suffered he'd had rumors that the Red Army planned to parade into the streets of Germany in a cage the prospect was too much for Hitler and he opted to take his own life fittingly his suicide was to come from one last drug cyanide plus a revolver just in case [Music] like their beloved Fury Germany had descended into smoldering ruins [Music] hollowed out a shell decayed and defeated by the end of April Soviet soldiers were only a few blocks from Hitler's underground bunker on the 1st of May 1945 at 10 20 p.m Grand Admiral Carl dermits commander-in-chief for the north of Germany made an announcement on Hamburg radio with the strains of a Wagner opera playing he announced that the fuhrer was dead he said Hitler had fallen in battle fighting at the head of his troops but it was yet another fiction to a party desperate to keep that myth alive Hitler had not Fallen as a hero but died as a coward [Music] foreign

Channel: War Stories

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Keywords: Allied Victory, Armored Divisions, Battle of Britain History, Code Breaking Operations, European History, Genocide, History Channel, Hitler's Drug Use, Italian Campaigns, Military Commanders, Military Tactics, Mind-Altering Substances, Nazi Regime, Nazi Regime Defeat, Resistance Movements, Strategic Planning, Suzannah Lipscomb, Third Reich, War Crimes, Waterloo

Id: xosnRLQ_iEE

Length: 45min 20sec (2720 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 18 2023