Blitzed

In late September 1944, in the pale light of the bunker, the ear doctor, Giesing, noted an unusual coloration in Hitler’s face and suspected jaundice. The same day, on the dinner table there was a plate holding “apple compote with glucose and green grapes”! and a box of “Dr. Koester’s anti-gas pills,’ a rather obscure product. Giesing was perplexed when he discovered that its pharmacological components included atropine, derived from belladonna or other nightshade plants, and strychnine, a highly toxic alkaloid of nux vomica, which paralyzes the neurons of the spinal column and 1s also used as rat poison. Giesing indeed smelled a rat. The side-effects of these anti-gas pills at too high a dose seemed to correspond to Hitler’s symptoms. Atropine initially has a stimulating effect on the central nervous system, then a paralyzing one, and a state of cheerfulness arises, with a lively flow of ideas, loquacity, and visual and auditory hallucinations, as well as delirium, which can mutate into violence and raving. Strychnine in turn is held responsible for increased light-sensitivity and even fear of light, as well as for states of flaccidity.'°© For Giesing the case seemed clear: “Hitler constantly demonstrated a state of euphoria that could not be explained by anything, and I am certain his heightened mood when making decisions after major political or military defeats can be largely explained in this way.”!’ 

In the anti-gas pills Giesing thought he had discovered the causes of both Hitler’s megalomania and his physical decline. He decided to treat himself as a guinea pig: for a few days Giesing took the little round pills himself, promptly identified that he had the same symptoms, and decided to go on the offensive. His intention was to disempower Morell 

Track Marks 

While the Red Army was taking more and more towns in East Prussia in November 1944, Hitler’s veins were so wrecked that even the expert shot-giver Morell could hardly penetrate them. The skin of the veins, perforated too many times, was inflamed, scarred, and a peculiar shade of brown. Morell had to take a break: “I canceled injections today, to give the previous puncture holes a chance to heal. Left inside elbow good, right still has red dots (but not pustules), where injections were given. F. says this wasn’t the case before.”'” 

It actually made a crunching noise every time Morell gave him a shot. Each jab created a new wound that joined the previous one, and it produced an elongated, growing crust, what junkies call “track marks,” when one jab is followed by the next to form an unlovely line. Even Hitler was gradually becoming nervous and worrying about what the huge number of injections was doing to him: “When I gave him the intravenous injection the Fiihrer thought I wasn’t rubbing the area long enough with alcohol so that he often developed small red pustules at the needle holes.” But Morell had another explanation for the condition: “Blood low in oxygen, from months sitting in the bunker with no daylight or fresh air, and venous, as becomes apparent when applying a tourniquet, and consequently not sufficiently coagulable, and the needle hole staying red.” Hitler remained suspicious: “Fihrer still attributes this to bacteria, and thinks bacteria might be entering his body with the injections.” 

Out of necessity, Morell wanted to stop the orgy of shots for a while. But in the end Hitler swept all qualms aside and his auto-aggressive qualities came to the fore. In spite of the unpleasantness that the countless injections caused him, he didn’t stop demanding them, and when receiving his doctor the first thing he said was that he didn’t need treat

ment but that he did need an injection: 

vy cont UR TUO UP TEEEEEEIETIC TL Pal Pl Wun. 

But what effect was this uncontrolled consumption of multiple drugs having on Hitler's intellect, on his mind? Was the dictator still com. pos mentis? The philosopher Walter Benjamin, who had experimented mainly with hashish but also with Eukodal a decade previously (orally, which considerably diminishes its addictive potential), described the psychological effect of being permanently intoxicated: 

It is perhaps no self-deception if I say that in this state you develop an aversion to the open air, the (so to speak) Uranian atmosphere, and that the thought of the outside becomes almost a torture. It is ... a dense spider’s web in which the events of the 

world are scattered around, suspended there like the bodies of dead insects sucked dry. You have no wish to Icave this cave. Here, furthermore, the rudiments of an unfriendly attitude towards everyone present begin to take shape, as well as the fear that they might disturb you, drag you out into the open.'”! 

The chemist and author Hermann R6mpp wrote that long-term abuse of opiates causes “damage to the character and the will. ... Intellectual creativity is impaired, although there is no actual loss of earlier intellectual possession. Even the most upstanding characters will not 

baulk at swindling and deceit.” Paranoia and a morbid mistrust of one’s immediate surroundings also arise.'” 

In fact, Hitler’s bunker mentality had discovered in Eukodal the ideal end-time drug for the hapless final battle. His numbness, his rigid view of the world, his tendency toward the fantastical and the unscrupulous transgression of all boundaries all of this was ominously supported by the opioid that he used so frequently in the last quarter of 1944. During this time, when the Allies were entering the Reich from both East and West, the powerful narcotic erased any doubts about victory, any empathy for civilian victims, and made Hitler even more unfeeling about both himself and the outside world. 

On this tranquillizing painkiller the Fuhrer was fully in command of himself: this was the true Hitler, and that was how he had always been. The overestimation of his own significance and misjudgment of his opponents were both captured in his blueprint, Mein Kampf published in 1925. His opioid addiction only cemented an already existing rigidification, a tendency to delegate violence, and contributed to the fact that in the last phase of the war and in the genocide of the Jews he never once thought of relenting. 

So the goals and motives, the ideological fantasy world, were not the result of drugs but established much earlier. Hitler did not murder because he was living in a haze quite the contrary: he remained sane until the end. His drug use did not impinge on his freedom to make 

decisions. Hitler was always the master of his senses, and he knew ex. actly what he was doing. He acted always in an alert and cold-blooded way. Within his system, based from the beginning on intoxication anda flight from reality, he acted systematically and with terrible consistency to the end. He was anything but insane. A classic case of actio libera in causa: he could go on taking as many drugs as he liked to keep himself 

in a state in which he could commit his crimes. It does not diminish his monstrous guilt.