"Blitzed" from Norman Ohler.
It is about the widespread use of drugs during nazi Germany like pervitin which is basically crystal meth AKA Methamphetamine. Think "Breaking Bad".
And how Hitler also was empowered by drugs.
If i remember correctly, adolf hitler was trained by theatrical people to perform to give his speeches and presentations a lot more oompf , kind of like having had a mediatraining...
Add the stimulating drugs to make him more emotional in a weird motivating way...
Als add the invention of the magnetic tape "Magnetophon Audio Tape Recorder" around 1935 and AC-bias for magnetic tape around 1940 so that he could give his presentation without sound distortion everywhere in Germany at roughly the same time without the need of a wireless radiosetup and that would make him at the time even more powerful.
In reality, in those days and before 1800-1900 and beyond , a lot of drugs was for a short time widely and legally available in the western world. Only after all mishaps because of substance abuse by people who are no longer sane enough to use it responsible, most drugs became illegal.
But that is the caveat with drugs, it does affect your mental processes and with the sad parts, the dissapointing parts and the cruel parts of everyday life going on as time happens, you might make wrong decisions. And those decisions can result in dramatic events...
Something to think about.
Anyway, it is a good book and also focuses on Pervitin. A meth pil that was even advertised for the public , for housewives, for every day men...
And Hitler was once a human but life and disease happened and perhaps drugs also happened. Making him and his gathering as they where...
Fun fact is that one of the chapters is called : "High Hitler". Imagine that in "Allo allo" style : "High Hitlah !"
Or : "Sieg High !"
The magnetic tape part has nothing to do with the book but it explains his media power hitler had at that time.
Excert from the article about the origin of magnetic tape :
"
Joining AEG and BASF in 1938, the Reichs-Rundfunkgesellschaft (RRG) became the third branch of the Magnetophon R&D effort. Starting in 1940, the RRG successfully applied AC-bias to the new recording technology. RRG engineer Walter Weber discovered the AC-bias application through a combination of systematic research and a bit of luck. Weber was not the first to apply AC bias to magnetic recording, although he evidently had no knowledge of the earlier work. The engineer’s success was due to his ability to recognize immediately the practical value of his discovery and to use it to improve the Magnetophon’s recording quality.
Weber had been experimenting with phase-cancellation circuits in an attempt to reduce the distortion and noise of DC-bias recordings. An amplifier in a test set-up went into oscillation, accidentally creating an AC-bias current in the record circuit. It took some systematic engineering detective work before Weber found what had happened and could recreate the phenomenon.
"
Magnetic moments in magnetic tape have hysteresis. This hysteresis causes distortion when you record sound as analog information directly. And the AC-Bias is a way to record audio without the hysteresis of the magnetic moments in the magnetic tape to influence the information : In this case the analog audio.
A German writer tells how he unearthed a startling fact about the Third Reich for his best-selling book, “Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany.”
www.nytimes.com
For a while, the stuff seemed to be “the ideal war drug.”
www.theatlantic.com
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