Blitzed
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  • Published: 24 November 2016
  • ISBN: 9780141986074
  • Imprint: Penguin Audio
  • Format: Audio Download

Blitzed

Drugs in Nazi Germany

Formats & editions
Paperback
1 May 2017
EBook
1 May 2017
Audiobook
24 Nov 2016
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A compelling, original account of the overwhelming role of drug-taking in the Third Reich - from Hitler and his entourage to ordinary troops

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of Blitzed by Norman Ohler, read by Jonathan Keeble.

The Nazis presented themselves as warriors against moral degeneracy. Yet, as Norman Ohler's gripping bestseller reveals, the entire Third Reich was permeated with drugs: cocaine, heroin, morphine and, most of all, methamphetamines, or crystal meth, used by everyone from factory workers to housewives, and crucial to troops' resilience - even partly explaining German victory in 1940.

The promiscuous use of drugs at the very highest levels also impaired and confused decision-making, with Hitler and his entourage taking refuge in potentially lethal cocktails of stimulants administered by the physician Dr Morell as the war turned against Germany. While drugs cannot on their own explain the events of the Second World War or its outcome, Ohler shows, they change our understanding of it. Blitzed forms a crucial missing piece of the story.
  • Published: 24 November 2016
  • ISBN: 9780141986074
  • Imprint: Penguin Audio
  • Format: Audio Download
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Praise for Blitzed

German writer Norman Ohler's astonishing account of methamphetamine addiction in the Third Reich changes what we know about the second world war .. Blitzed looks set to reframe the way certain aspects of the Third Reich will be viewed in the future

Rachel Cooke, Guardian

Very good and extremely interesting - a serious piece of scholarship very well-researched

Ian Kershaw author of Hitler and To Hell and Back

A huge contribution... remarkable

Antony Beevor, BBC RADIO 4

The picture he paints is both a powerful and an extreme one... gripping reading

Anna Katharina Schaffner, Times Literary Supplement

An audacious, compelling read

Stern

This book transforms the overall picture

Hans Mommsen

Enthralling

Mitteldeutsche Zeitung

Sensational

Daily Mail

Bursting with interesting facts

Vice

Remarkable... energetic... retells the history of the war through the prism of the pill... it has an uncanny ability to disturb

Roger Boyes, The Times

The most brilliant and fascinating book I have read in my entire life

Dan Snow

Norman Ohler has written an illuminating account of the gobsmacking extent to which military strategy in the Third Reich relied on drugs. ... What you'll learn: Never trust a coked-up Nazi

ShortList

A fascinating, most extraordinary revelation

BBC World News

The Nazis were all on drugs! So far, so sensationalist but German writer Norman Ohler's absorbing new non-fiction book, Blitzed, makes the convincing argument that the Nazis' use of chemical stimulants... played a crucial role in the successes, and failures, of the Third Reich

Esquire