Dive deep into one of history’s darkest chapters with Nazi Secret Files, the gripping documentary series that uncovers hidden truths, classified operations, and shocking discoveries from the era of Nazi Germany.
This powerful history documentary explores secret missions, mysterious projects, and untold stories that remained buried for decades. Through expert analysis, archival footage, and detailed investigations, the series reveals the real secrets behind the Third Reich.
📌 In this series you will discover:
Secret Nazi operations
Hidden WWII mysteries
Classified German war projects
Untold historical evidence
Rare archival footage
If you enjoy history documentaries, WWII investigations, and real historical mysteries, this series is a must-watch.
👍 Like, comment, and subscribe for more full documentary series.
#NaziSecretFiles #WWIIDocumentary #HistoryDocumentary #NaziSecrets
This powerful history documentary explores secret missions, mysterious projects, and untold stories that remained buried for decades. Through expert analysis, archival footage, and detailed investigations, the series reveals the real secrets behind the Third Reich.
📌 In this series you will discover:
Secret Nazi operations
Hidden WWII mysteries
Classified German war projects
Untold historical evidence
Rare archival footage
If you enjoy history documentaries, WWII investigations, and real historical mysteries, this series is a must-watch.
👍 Like, comment, and subscribe for more full documentary series.
#NaziSecretFiles #WWIIDocumentary #HistoryDocumentary #NaziSecrets
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:06when Hitler unleashes an army of unstoppable supermen on Europe his war machine strikes with
00:13the speed and ferocity never thought possible but a dangerous secret is driving the Nazi forces what
00:23the Germans have is just a massive field experiment of performance enhancing drugs now incredible new
00:31research reveals how far Hitler and his high command push the drug experiment when I looked
00:40through the papers I was shocked the scale was enormous nobody came back from this operation to
00:49life this is the sinister truth of the drugged up Nazi super soldiers it will change the way you see
01:00the
01:00war forever May 10th 1940 the Nazis attack on the West becomes reality
01:20this is the dawn of blitzkrieg Germany's lightning war tanks airplanes and men attack as one a
01:31concentrated force moving at high speed day and night in the space of only 10 days they carve through the
01:42combined forces of Holland Belgium Britain and the world's largest army in France when the blitzkrieg
01:51happened it just seems so fantastical so impossible but what the Germans have worked out is that if they
01:57could knock their enemy France off balance quickly enough then they had a chance of knocking them out
02:04blitzkrieg blitzkrieg blitzkrieg succeeds because it doesn't pause for breath German tanks are fast powerful and
02:13they never stop and that relentless advance is driven by the superhuman feats of the Nazi soldiers they cover
02:23100 miles a day as they push the fight forward without sleep or rest it was not possible to drive
02:31to France in
02:32three days with your tanks at these times with these machines drivers drive two days without sleeping how could
02:41the Germans possibly have got to sit down across the Meuse in just four days that just broke all the
02:46rules of
02:47warfare the German fear marks incredible performance isn't restricted to their ground forces on the
02:58beaches of Dunkirk in France British soldiers are strafed by the Stuka dive bomber the airplane
03:07screaming vertical descent is terrifying new Nazi technology
03:18but in reconnaissance memos it isn't the airplane that amazes Allied engineers it's the pilot's ability
03:25to resist blacking out under the vertical g-forces the Fuhrer seems to have built a German army capable of
03:35the impossible within only a month Hitler is taking in the sights of the French capital and defenseless
03:44Parisians are forced onto the streets to witness their conqueror to the Nazis the victory is proof of
03:53German racial superiority the Nazis set themselves up as being this sort of phenomenal huge machine of
04:01highly trained highly motivated troops with all the best kit and that they keep going longer than
04:08their enemy is all part of that but their exceptional performance makes Allied intelligence highly
04:16suspicious the Aryan myth of superior breeding simply cannot explain the ability to fight for days without
04:24sleep confidential military communiques reveal the Allies suspect the Nazis are using something to supercharge
04:35their troops but they have no idea what it is they fear the innovative Germans have developed a
04:45powerful performance enhancing chemical for their men throughout the 1930s pharmacology had been
04:56developing at an incredibly fast rate we had drugs that could make people stay awake and work when they
05:02should rightly be asleep we had drugs that could make people relax and reveal hidden truths the whole concept
05:08was that drugs can change people and with the hot breath of war breathing down people's necks it was as
05:16though we
05:17had a chemical key to making troops do things that they couldn't normally do it was almost like a chemical
05:24unlocking of
05:26superhuman abilities though Allied intelligence can't prove their drugs theory the rumors still reach British newspapers
05:36the tabloids imaginations run wild with terrifying stories of chemically enhanced Nazi super soldiers
05:46there was a rumor that the Nazis were importing 50 tons of frozen beef adrenal glands in a giant submarine
05:52from Argentina
05:53to convert into this uh this this super drug if a soldier understands or believes that his enemy is on
06:03drugs
06:03and these drugs might be giving them some uh some some super courage or some super strength then what confidence
06:11do you have to stand up to them
06:16by july 1940 the skies of britain are swarming with german fighter planes
06:23and it is during the aerial battle of britain that a crucial breakthrough finally falls from the heavens
06:31a downed luftwaffe pilot is captured on england's south coast
06:36and the pilot is carrying an extensive survival pack they still have one at the german pharmacy museum
06:44so here we have dukoda a morphine preparate there is novocaine sedative
06:53further there are typical tablet packages and mercury tablets used to disinfect
07:02as the british intelligence officers dig into the pilot's pack they find something they don't
07:08recognize a roll of tablets wrapped in gold foil the instructions warn of the drug's extreme psychological
07:17and stimulating impact and say it must be used with caution
07:23they were told how to how to take it uh the order to use um you take one or two
07:31tablets in the maximum
07:35could this be the mystery drug powering the nazis to victory
07:41the allied intelligence team orders urgent forensic tests
07:48elite scientists were willing to believe that the nazi war machine had done all kinds of secret
07:53research that put them years ahead of the allies and so they felt they had to play a lot of
07:57catch-up research to beat the nazis at their own game when the results come back from the lab
08:04they reveal that the pill carried by the nazi airmen is a synthetic chemical compound unfamiliar to british
08:15scientists
08:16today it's known as the powerful illegal stimulant crystal meth
08:26the british don't know it but they've just scratched the surface of a huge clandestine nazi
08:32military program the extent of which is only just starting to come to light
08:41and that's why it's important to be able to do it
08:47blitzkrieg wasn't achieved by superior technology and strategy alone it was powered by drugs
08:56and now new research can finally unravel the truth of nazi drug abuse in the second world war
09:04you can't understand the blitzkrieg if you don't see the pharmaceutical underlying of it
09:09they use drugs to come quicker to the front to perform harder to shoot longer it was the first
09:15war where our whole military used drugs
09:21freshly unearthed top secret files reveal that the nazi war machine was utterly hooked on drugs
09:29crystal meth tabs are consumed by the multi-million from day one of the war until the very end
09:36of the war in the war in the war when i looked through the papers i was shocked the scale
09:40was
09:41enormous every soldier has every day the possibility to use this drug
09:47crystal meth is sinking its claws into hitler's military machine
09:52and the consequences will prove catastrophic
10:03in the early days of world war ii crystal meth is still very much an experimental drug
10:11although it quickly becomes critical to the nazi war machine allied scientists have never seen the
10:18compound before it is now infamous as a potent psychoactive drug
10:26methamphetamine is a stimulant drug it reduces the need for sleep it increases energy increases focus
10:33the effects of methamphetamine on the brain include increasing our brain's pleasure chemical dopamine
10:40so there's a dopamine surge therefore the pleasure that's experienced is more intense
10:45the high for methamphetamine can be long lasting eight to twelve hours
10:50astonishing as it sounds before the war crystal meth starts to be widely used in civilian germany
11:00a berlin-based pharma company tembler pharmaceuticals acquires the brand new synthetic compound from japan
11:07in 1938 although it is untested it doesn't stop tembler from rushing it onto the mass market
11:17they launch it as a wonder pick-me-up pill under the brand name pervitin
11:24tembler sells hundreds of thousands of pervitin pills to the german public
11:29you can just buy this over the counter there's no prescription at all and it's sort of you know
11:34don't feel depressed um have more energy when you're feeling tired at work take a pervitin and
11:39you'll feel better it's this kind of thing pervitin takes the domestic market by storm
11:45new mothers use it to cope with sleepless nights students take it to pull all-nighters
11:52and with war on the horizon it catches the attention of a senior nazi official
12:01military medical officer auto ranker sees potential in the drug to raise fighting performance
12:09the moment there was a scent of war every nation started looking around for new forms of weaponry
12:15and new ways of harnessing things that existed the discoveries had already been made but it was the
12:21war that was going to bring them to practical fruition
12:28auto ranker sets up a test he forces two teams of his young recruits to stay up through the night
12:34and perform draining mental tasks only one of the teams is given pervitin
12:43the control groups struggle losing concentration and falling asleep the men on pervitin stay wide awake
12:51alert and engaged come the end of the night their test marks are on a different level ranker believes
12:59it's the kind of increased performance that will give nazi forces the edge on their enemies
13:05without waiting for long-term trials ranker recommends pervitin to all military medics
13:11and places it on their list of prescribed drugs nazi soldiers are to have crystal meth on tap
13:22and as soon as the drug is used in anger the nazi command discovers it has a welcome and sinister
13:29side
13:30effect it drains soldiers of all empathy crystal meth turns them into ruthless killers
13:42a nazi soldier on pelveteen is like a war machine he's cold he's fast he has no limits
13:50and he has no empathy for you so this is like literally the the perfect nazi soldier
14:00loaded up on crystal meth the nazi war machine storms across europe
14:07and the success of the drug in battle makes pervitin extremely popular with german soldiers
14:14soon crystal meth tablets are being handed out in extraordinary quantities
14:20older soldiers are thriving with pelveteen and every eight hours or every four hours he took another pill
14:28anyone who could get their hands on these pills was popping them what could be better than to have a
14:33soldier
14:34that you stimulated so they produced them in their millions they handed them out like sweets
14:40during spring 1941 alone the german army distributes 35 million crystal meth tablets
14:54hitler's high command is riddled with users as well at lavish parties nazi officers pop amphetamines
15:06and reichs marshal herman goering is a morphine addict hooked since he was treated with it in the first world
15:14war
15:15in fact the lure of drugs reaches the very top
15:24this is hitler the way he was at his best so to speak with the most influence and power on
15:30the party
15:31and on the people
15:35but it's important to know that hitler was not like this 100 of the time some of the time he
15:40was the
15:40complete opposite completely depressed and non-functional hitler had manic depressive illness
15:48for years adolf hitler has been plagued by deep depressive episodes
15:54when they strike he is unable to sleep and is drained of all energy
16:01so before the war some of hitler's senior aides introduce him to dr theodore morell
16:09morell is the high command's dr feelgood they called him the reich spritzenmeister you know the
16:17the injection minister of the reich because he would give so many injections on a daily basis
16:23soon wherever hitler goes so does morell and amongst his daily dose of 23 different drugs including
16:32hormones and steroids dr morell has a drug especially for hitler's depression
16:40a liquid concoction he calls his special creation in fact it's a solution of crystal meth
16:47that he injects directly into the fuhrer's bloodstream when you take these medications
16:55intravenously they go directly to your brain and so there's a much stronger euphoric effect after the
17:01injection hitler would sit bolt upright and suddenly have tons of energy when one is looking at nazi
17:09germany and how warped it all is the fact that the leadership is so off-piste compared with the message
17:16that they are pushing for is just extraordinary they put physical health and well-being absolutely
17:21at the forefront the arian ideal is tall um blonde square-jawed you have big muscles and all the rest
17:28of it and yet you look at the nazi elite and they don't conform to this at all i mean
17:33hitler's got a
17:34big nose and an odd mustache martin bohrmann looks like a mafioso fug hermann goering is
17:40overweight and him there is shorter than five foot ten you know so although he's head of the ss he's
17:46not
17:46tall enough you know he wouldn't get in the fact that they all take drugs as well just such
17:50incredible double standards if hitler is aware of the hypocrisy he ignores it the effects of morrell's
17:59medicines are far too seductive the fuhrer is hopelessly hooked on the intense high he gets from
18:06his injections so this video is in 1940 three years have passed since morrell had started to treat hitler
18:14with intravenous amphetamines and steroids probably on a daily basis every morning hitler would be lying
18:21in bed and morel would come in and inject him and without that injection hitler could not get out of
18:27bed
18:28the great nazi fuhrer makes most of his major military decisions while jacked up on dangerously
18:36high levels of crystal meth and the aggressive rush impacts his decision making hitler was basically
18:46a meth head what we call here in the u.s a tweaker you know and and this is this
18:51makes him the first
18:53tweaker with the power of an industrial economy behind him every morning he's waking up and he's
18:58injecting and all of a sudden he thinks he can take over the world you can make a lot of
19:02sense
19:03around the decisions that they made by by looking at his drug use
19:08our knowledge about what these drugs do and medications do it's a rational conclusion to
19:14make that hitler's judgment was increasingly impaired throughout the war
19:19in the late spring of 1941 deep in the grips of his drug habit hitler makes an enormous military gamble
19:29he declares war on the nazis nemesis communist superpower the soviet union
19:37from the top down the nazi war machine is turbocharged on drugs and it's spiraling out of control
19:57in june 1941 10 million tablets of the new nazi wonder drug crystal meth are distributed to frontline
20:05troops for the attack on the soviet union pumped up on meth the germans storm nearly a thousand miles to
20:14the
20:14gates of moscow
20:19but back home in germany the nazis failure to test the drugs long-term effects is exposed as a dangerous
20:27mistake it turns out their wonder drug is a ticking time bomb
20:34many civilian users are showing signs of serious addiction
20:39after just two years on the market a leading psychiatric clinic reports that more than 10 percent
20:46of its patients are admitted for pervitin abuse methamphetamine is an addictive drug it is habit
20:53forming over repeated use and chronic use some individuals become dependent even though it's no
20:59longer producing the same high the urge to use is so intense that the individual may continue to use
21:06the problem comes to the attention of the third reich's health minister leonardo conti known as the
21:13swiss sadist conti is a dyed in the wool nazi overseeing the racial eugenics program
21:23this callous program to clean up the aryan gene pool selects groups nazis consider genetically
21:30racially physically or mentally inferior
21:35leo conti classifies drug addiction as a mental disability so civilian drug addicts are added to the
21:43groups rounded up and sent to the gas chambers they killed even doctors addicted to muffin in the
21:51third reich the racial hygiene ideology at the core of the nazi system was very deeply against drugs
22:04germany's growing taste for crystal meth places conti in a dilemma
22:08the nazi war machine is in danger of succumbing to drug addiction too with soldiers consuming millions
22:17of tablets every week
22:24so in june 1941 conti clamps down on the use of pervitin
22:32he passes a law to make it a prescription drug for civilians and restricts distribution in the army
22:39to extreme circumstances only until now it has been widely believed that german crystal metheus
22:47effectively stops at this point
22:53but medical researcher tilman holzer has discovered secret files that reveal german soldiers are already
23:01hooked and nothing is going to stop them getting their fix
23:07i discovered in this files a lot of secret medical information like the usage of pervitin secret
23:15experiments with pervitin and the huge production numbers even for the civilian population the use
23:22climbed up and for the military the numbers continued like the years before like there's no law
23:29pervitin was so necessary for the wehrmacht you couldn't prohibit it
23:35the documents reveal nazi medical officers and frontline soldiers completely ignore the reich health minister's ban
23:48in fact temmler ramps up peak production to 600 000 pervitin tablets a day
23:55and a second pharmaceutical company opens a factory to make meth exclusively for the military
24:03on the front line german soldiers now plead for their families to send pervitin one soldier writes dear
24:11parents and siblings perhaps you could send me some more pervitin so i can have a backup supply
24:18the dangerously addictive drug has become normalized it's like saying please send me a packet of
24:25cigarettes and a tin of cigarettes and a tin of boiled sweets i mean it's no more sinister than that
24:30and
24:30and yet of course we know now that is massively sinister
24:35in late 1941 the german assault on russia grinds to a halt the fast fluid attack that has served the
24:44germans so well becomes a bitter war of attrition
24:50no matter how many battles they win there are always more soviet soldiers ahead of them
25:02facing a relentless red army onslaught nazi soldiers pop more pervitin than ever before
25:11you cannot fall asleep if you're on watch it's punishable
25:14by execution if you fall asleep so your decision is how do i get to the next morning how do
25:20i make it
25:20through one more day you take the pill
25:26after weeks of constant use the devastating side effects kick in extreme sleep deprivation
25:35hallucinations and then total mental breakdown
25:39the german army is descending into a drug addled hell
25:45the ultimate destination is a final crash it physically can't go forever you're hallucinating at
25:52times so you have this this bizarre mixture of of genuine fear from the enemy actually trying to kill you
26:01combine that with the the typical paranoia that comes with uh it comes with drug abuse and it just
26:07creates this recipe for psychosis
26:16from late 1942 stories of crystal meth abuse seep back from the front line
26:25in one an ss unit prepares for a red army assault in freezing conditions near leningrad by loading up on
26:34pervitin
26:37come nightfall they are convinced they are under attack firing on the enemy until they're out of ammunition
26:48but the paranoid soldiers are attacking an enemy that isn't there
26:54the next morning the red army walks in unopposed
27:01german officers are trapped in a vicious cycle
27:05they can see the damage pervitin is doing but their troops need its potent energy more than ever
27:14so they start searching for an alternative wonder drug
27:23in their death camps they have a ready supply of human guinea pigs
27:29sachenhausen concentration camp holds 200 000 prisoners who are nothing short of slaves
27:37the function of a concentration camp was something and the nazis called um extermination by work
27:46these nazis who have been cruel sadists they could really do whatever they wanted with these prisoners
27:55the sachenhausen camp specializes in grueling trials using starving prisoners to test the endurance of different shoes
28:06they're forced to circle around a harsh and uneven pathway
28:13this is the former shoe testing track it was covered as we can see with different materials
28:20like like stones gravel concrete sand the shoe testing detail had to walk here all day long 10 hours
28:28in every weather winter snow now the men become the subject of tests
28:36as nazi scientists use them to test a range of experimental drugs
28:44each man is forced to carry a rock-filled backpack as heavy as a truck tire
28:51the ss guards push the drugged prisoners on for days at a time beating them if they stop until they
28:59totally
28:59collapse terrified inmates nicknamed the sadistic trials the pill patrol
29:07they would have people walk with these 30 kilo backpacks a rough 70 70 pounds of weight in a backpack
29:16and just see how long they could go until they quite literally died
29:26the idea of carrying this around for 10 or 15 minutes is a daunting one but thinking about somebody
29:37walking for days without sleeping with this on the back
29:44just gives you a sense of the strength of a drug that could keep this on your back and keep
29:50you walking it's just incomprehensible
29:56but while the nazis wait for their sadistic tests to produce results the allies are catching up fast
30:05they are cooking up a war drug of their own and the two super stimulants will come head to head
30:12on the battlefield
30:20when the allies discover nazi soldiers are fighting on crystal meth they begin their own search for a wonder drug
30:28the allies took a more cautious approach instead of just adopting methamphetamine because the nazis had it
30:34they organized studies to test in laboratory conditions the potential uses of methamphetamine and related stimulant drugs
30:43classified medical documents record the allies drug testing program a range of substances are given in
30:51small doses to a group of volunteer recruits caffeine and placebos are included
30:57the men complete a variety of tasks including target practice after exhaustive testing one drug the
31:08antidepressant benzadrine amphetamine commonly referred to as bennies comes out on top but only just
31:18but when the drug is tested in combat it really comes into its own
31:25a benzadrine charged bomber crew are accompanied by a royal air force surgeon on a dangerous mission
31:31over occupied france he is amazed by the risks they take to carry out the raid
31:41his pilot on benzadrine decided he was going to go down heavy flak so he could see the target properly
31:46these are big bombers this plane flew in at 200 feet sort of trimming the tops of trees and um
31:51machine
31:52gunned a an anti-aircraft emplacement as if it was a little fighter plane and the plane was actually hit
31:57by flak but they got a direct uh hit on the the target um nonetheless so um they they showed
32:03what he
32:03described in the report as um determination in situations of anxiety which is another way of saying
32:10behave more aggressive and brave in benzadrine the british believe they have the perfect drug
32:20and the perfect arena to test it north africa
32:28legendary german tank commander erwin rommel has had the british on the back foot for nearly two years
32:35and morale is critically low every time the allies mount an offensive rommel counter strikes pushing
32:45them back hundreds of miles in a matter of days academic analysis suggests the germans are using crystal
32:54meth as they did for blitzkrieg in europe whenever you see tanks driving 48 you know 72 straight hours you
33:03have to imagine that the tank crews are taking these stimulants the allied forces in north africa are
33:12terrified of the pumped up nazi super soldiers british general montgomery hopes that benzadrine is
33:20the answer to rommel's pervert and powered troops what he realizes what he's got to do before they're in
33:27any position to completely defeat the axis forces in the field is to bolster morale so what
33:33he finds particularly appealing about benzadrine is that it's not just about combating fatigue it's
33:38about proving confidence montgomery orders in a hundred thousand benzadrine pills
33:46and in one early maneuver the 24th armored brigade are told they can take as much as they like
33:54pumped up on benzadrine the brigade is brave to the point of suicide
34:01they went for three straight days uh just driving their tanks through one minefield all night long
34:06fighting heavy panzers with their with their new sherman tanks on open terrain and in the course of this
34:12five-day benzadrine experiment they fought until the unit completely ceased to exist
34:19benzadrine induced fearlessness costs lives but montgomery finally has an army ready to compete with rommel
34:30the fierce battle lurches backwards and forwards as the allies and germans trade drug-fueled blows
34:41in late 1942 a huge ally defensive pushes rommel to the coast of tunisia and the desert fox is finally
34:50expelled from north africa it's come at a high price but the allies have won the world's first amphetamine
34:59charged battle
35:03the allied war effort is finally in position to fight fire with fire even british spy chiefs are alerted to
35:12the effectiveness of drugs they're ready to add this new weapon to their tool kit as well
35:21for a while senior command had been looking for a way to assassinate hitler they had devised plans to
35:29poison him but he is well guarded and food tasters routinely check everything he is about to eat
35:36there was no point in putting anything obviously poisonous like strychnine or
35:40cyanide because the food tasters would immediately have identified the fact that it was poison british
35:46agents start to investigate if they can use a new drug instead of poison they cook up an extraordinary
35:54plan to try and modify the fuhrer's aggressive behavior by feeding him a newly discovered female sex hormone
36:04estrogen had certain advantages it's potent in very small amounts and of course it was colorless it was
36:10tasteless it could blend into his food the idea was that that you would change him from being this aggressive
36:16warmongering german into being somebody who was uh compliant and um a happy little housewife and
36:23uh soft-mannered and wouldn't bother to wage war on the west anymore now anybody who believes that if
36:31you put puffs of estrogen into someone's bloodstream that it stops them ever from having aggressive
36:36outbursts doesn't live in the real world fortunately for the british agents their plan isn't needed
36:49back in germany hitler is now ruined physically and mentally seven years of injections have turned
36:57him into a crystal meth junkie morel was increasing hitler's amphetamine dosage and frequency intravenously
37:07in the last two or so years of the war you increase it repeatedly over and over again the parts
37:13of the
37:13brain that make up make dopamine essentially die off and he looks quite different than he did even
37:19three or four years earlier hitler here is like 54 years old i believe and yet he looks a lot
37:25older
37:27by 1944 hitler's armies are also on the verge of collapse
37:33but the fuhrer's drug-addled mind is unable to grasp the seriousness of the situation
37:39whenever brutal reality confronts him the euphoria from an intravenous crystal meth injection sweeps his
37:46troubles away for those last couple years it's very probable that hitler didn't have a day of normal mood
37:54and this led to his increasing unwillingness to compromise to do anything that might lead to a
38:04different outcome other than complete victory the nazi dependency on crystal meth reaches an all-time
38:12high in berlin the hitler youth are pressed into action on anti-aircraft batteries
38:19they are fed meth tabs to keep them awake through the night
38:29and in russia retreating german troops are now taking pervitin just to stay alive
38:36on the eastern front was absolutely freezing cold like the grease it was freezing on your pistol like
38:43that that kind of cold and so if you can take this pill that takes the edge off the pain
38:49even for
38:49a couple days then you're going to go ahead and do that
38:55overdosed on crystal meth a german unit marches all night in a blizzard
39:01dulled to the pain by drugs they don't feel the cold eating into their limbs
39:08many lose their feet to frostbite you're going to want to realize that your foot is about to fall off
39:15but they didn't have a chance to make that decision because they're so high they don't quite
39:19realize the damage that they're doing until it's too late
39:25the situation is desperate
39:29but some nazi generals believe a powerful new breed of super soldier can still turn the war in their favor
39:39a top secret prototype weapon will be driven by men spiked with a deadly experimental drug compound
39:53by 1944 the germans are on the retreat as their broken troops are overrun
40:02but there is one area of the conflict where the nazis still have the edge the sea where german u
40:11-boats
40:11continue to score spectacular successes against allied shipping
40:22to press home their supremacy they design a new class of u-boat
40:27a two-man micro submarine that's almost impossible to detect
40:36the craft is a genius of engineering but piloting the submarine stretches human beings to the limit
40:43the problem in this kind of submarine is it's very narrow it's got very cold on the sea there is
40:51no heating system the only sound
40:54yet you hear is the engine and it never stops never stops for hours and hours and hours i think
41:02this is not
41:03a very comfortable situation for your ears and uh for your mind
41:09to be in this kind of submarine for two days must be a torture
41:19if these u-boats are going to turn the war the nazi submariners will have to break all endurance records
41:31so their commanders go all out to create a powerful new cocktail of performance enhancing drugs
41:42to select the drugs ingredients they turn to the test results from the human guinea pigs
41:47at sachenhausen concentration camp
41:51it's so controversial the admiralty hide the program from the nazi high command
41:57these secret medical files record the results of the experiments
42:03it's classified as a geheimic commandos a very secret document uh that wasn't um was something like a
42:11military secret as the document showed 26 men from the shoe testing details were misused for this
42:19experiments in the test four different medications were compared the prisoners marching on the pill patrol
42:29are given either liquid cocaine chewing and powdered cocaine or crystal myth
42:35the results are astonishing this is uh this graph showing um the four days and the experiments took place and
42:46um it shows
42:48some 12 different test subjects and these red fields give information on the time when they were exhausting themselves
42:58and the four different drugs nearly had the same result all the persons could stay awake for at least
43:05three most of them for four days so the result was equally good
43:13because both cocaine and crystal meth are capable of stimulating four days of sleepless marching
43:20the nazi scientists put both in their new super drug
43:28and in a desperate attempt to counter the microsub's crushing claustrophobia
43:32they add the sedative morphine into the mix as well they christen the secret super drug d9
43:45this potent nazi compound with no equivalent today is tested on the micro submarine pilots
43:53you're high on this bizarre cocktail of drugs you get into this tiny tin can over a period of days
44:02three or four days without any sleep without being able to move
44:07to be doing that on a strange regimen of drugs uh would drive most people completely bonkers
44:14the initial tests are such a disaster the impact of d9 on human beings will never be known
44:23the micro submariners do not resurface to tell their story nobody knows what's happened
44:29by this operation we know nothing of the test was successful or not successful i think
44:37uh nobody came back from this operation to life for the nazi war machine the great drug experiment is a
44:50total disaster
44:51by the end of the war hitler is holed up in his bunker a hopeless meth addict
44:58finally he grants his personal physician dr morrell permission to leave within days hitler commits suicide
45:11after the war civilian junkies in germany continue to get their fix of pervitin through a burgeoning black
45:19market and remarkably both the newly established east and west german armies continue to be supplied crystal
45:28meth by temmler pharmaceuticals
45:33on the allied side the american military issue millions of benzadrine tablets to their men
45:40many u.s soldiers are on it when they storm the beaches on d-day
45:49america's desperate enemy japan also turns to drugs
45:57kamikaze pilots load up on crystal meth as they prepare for their impending death
46:09if i were a kamikaze pilot i would probably want to be on speed if this was it for me
46:15you have to fly
46:16a plane into a ship or getting you over the finish line could be a pill or two
46:24ultimately the japanese stockpile of methamphetamine seeps into the civilian population
46:31and spawns a generation of addicts and many allied soldiers leave the army hooked on benzadrine
46:43the story of the war fought on amphetamine mirrors the experiences of users to this day
46:51the initial euphoria is eventually replaced by addiction paranoia and psychosis
46:59in europe it leaves a litany of atrocities and disasters strewn across battlefields
47:07the use of crystal meth emboldens an already savage dictator it helps empower a nazi war machine
47:16and drive soldiers to new heights of violence
47:21military historians are only starting to come to grips with the savagery of the second world war
47:27and the heat of the battle really brought out a lot of savage behavior on all sides
47:34this startling new research is rewriting history no longer will the second world war make sense
47:42without understanding the role of methamphetamine from the humble foot soldier to the leaders whose
47:50actions destroyed the lives of millions
Comments