Drogue

2017 · rif. 29634 — Boston:: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2017. Third Printing of the First Edition. A Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket. The Nazi regime preached an ideology of physical mental and moral purity. But as Norman Ohler reveals in this gripping new history the Third Reich was saturated with drugs. On the eve of World War II Germany was a pharmaceutical powerhouse and companies such as Merck and Bayer cooked up cocaine opiates and most of all methamphetamines to be consumed by everyone from factory workers to housewives to millions of German soldiers. In fact troops regularly took rations of a form of crystal meth—the elevated energy and feelings of invincibility associated with the high even help to explain certain German military victories. While drugs alone cannot explain the Nazis’ toxic racial theories or the events of World War II Ohler’s investigation makes an overwhelming case that if drugs are not taken into account our understanding of the Third Reich is fundamentally incomplete. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, unknown