💭 Before and during World War II, Germany’s Nazi Party condemned drug use. But the book, “Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich,” claims German soldiers were often high on methamphetamine issued by their commanders to enhance their endurance. Nazi leader Adolf Hitler himself was a substance abuser. Author Norman Ohler joins “CBS This Morning: Saturday” to discuss his book.
In 1944, World War II was dragging on and the Nazi forces seemed to be faltering. Yet, in military briefings, Adolf Hitler’s optimism did not wane. His generals wondered if he had a secret weapon up his sleeve, something that would change the war around in the last second.
Author Norman Ohler tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that Hitler did have a secret, but it wasn’t a weapon. Instead, it was a mix of cocaine and opioids that he had become increasingly dependent upon. “Hitler needed those highs to substitute [for] his natural charisma, which … he had lost in the course of the war,” Ohler says.
Ohler’s new book, Blitzed, which is based in part on the papers of Hitler’s private physician, describes the role of drugs within the Third Reich. He cites three different phases of the Fuhrer’s drug use.
“The first one are the vitamins given in high doses intravenously. The second phase starts in the fall of 1941 with the first opiate, but especially with the first hormone injections,” Ohler says. “Then in ’43 the third phase starts, which is the heavy opiate phase.”
Hitler met a doctor called Theo Morell in 1936. Morell was famous for giving vitamin injections, and Hitler, with his healthy diet, immediately believed in this doctor and got daily vitamin injections.
But then as the war turned difficult for Germany in 1941 against Russia in the fall, Hitler got sick for the first time. He couldn’t go to the military briefing, which was unheard of before, and Morell gave him something different that day. He gave him an opiate that day, and he also gave him a hormone injection.
Hitler, who had suffered from high fever, immediately felt well again and was able to go to the meeting and tell the generals how the war should continue, how the daily operations should continue. And he was really struck by this immediate recovery from this opiate, which was called Dolantin. From that moment on, he asked Morell to give him stronger stuff than just vitamins. We can see from the fall of 1941 to the winter of 1944 Hitler’s drug abuse increases significantly.
👮 Police in Peru Seized Over 50 Bricks of Cocaine That Were Wrapped in Nazi Swastikas
🛑 Anti-drug police in Peru have seized packages of cocaine with a picture of the Nazi flag on the outside and the name Hitler printed in low relief. The discovery was made on Thursday in the port of Paita, on Peru’s northern Pacific coast close to its border with Ecuador. (May 25)
💭 When we hear Muslims claim that the State of Israel posed threats to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, our attention should be turned again to Haj Amin al-Husseini, the former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, a collaborator with Nazi Germany and the leader of Arab Palestinian nationalism before and immediately after World War II. Some historians and, briefly, Israels Prime Minister Netanyahu also attributed to Husseini a significant decision-making role in the Holocaust in Europe.
🛑 Travellers on an intercity train in Austria were startled on Sunday when a recording of an Adolf Hitler speech was played on board.
Instead of the normal announcements, a crowd could also be heard shouting “Heil Hitler” and “Sieg Heil” over the train’s speaker system.
The operator said there had been several such incidents in recent days.
One passenger on the Bregenz-Vienna service told the BBC that everyone on the train was “completely shocked”.
David Stoegmueller, a Green Party MP, said the speech by the Nazi German leader was played over the intercom shortly before the train, an ÖBB Railjet 661, arrived in Vienna.
“We heard two episodes,” he said. “First there was 30 seconds of a Hitler speech, and then I heard ‘Sieg Heil’.”
Mr Stoegmueller said the train staff were unable to stop the recording and were unable to make their own announcements. “One crew member was really upset,” he added.
In a statement sent to the BBC, Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB) said: “We clearly distance ourselves from the content.
“We can currently assume that the announcements were made by people directly on the train via intercoms. We have reported the matter to the police,” the ÖBB said.
It is understood that complaints have been filed against two people.
Mr Stoegmueller said he had received an email from a man who was on the train with an old lady who was a concentration camp survivor. “She was crying,” he said.
He said another passenger remarked that when other countries had technical problems, it involved the air conditioning breaking down.
“In Austria, the technical problem is Hitler.”
Hitler was born in Austria and emigrated to Germany in 1913 as a young man.
💭 ‘Pretty sure Joe Biden and Hitler share a mindset…’: Tulsi Gabbard
💭 Tulsi Gabbard: Tulsi Gabbard made these remarks during her first weekend on the campaign trail for the November 8 midterm elections.
Former Congresswoman and the first Hindu American to run for the White House in 2020, Tulsi Gabbard, has compared US President Joe Biden to Adolf Hitler, days after announcing her exit from the governing Democratic Party.
Gabbard, 41, who retired from the House of Representatives last year, made these remarks during her first weekend on the campaign trail for the November 8 midterm elections.
Speaking at a Bolduc town hall event in a town outside of Manchester on Sunday, the former Hawaii Congresswoman said that she was “pretty sure” both Biden and Hitler share a “mindset” of good intentions to justify authoritarian behaviour, according to The Daily Beast newspaper.
“I’m pretty sure they all believe they’re doing what’s best,” Gabbard said, while comparing Biden to Hitler, the Nazi leader.
“Even Hitler thought he was doing what was best for Germany, right? For the German race. In his own mind, he found a way to justify the means to meet his end. So when we have people with that mindset, well, you know we’ve got to do whatever it takes because, as President Biden said in that speech in Philadelphia, that those who supported (Donald) Trump, those who didn’t vote for him are extremists and a threat to our democracy,” the newspaper quoted her as saying.
In September, during his speech at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, Biden said that when people voted for Trump, “they weren’t voting for attacking the Capitol. They weren’t voting for overruling the election. They were voting for a philosophy he put forward.”
Last week, Gabbard announced that she is leaving the Democratic Party, denouncing it as an “elitist cabal of war-mongers.”
Read more: Russian commander says situation ‘tense’ for his forces in Ukraine: Key updates
Gabbard was the first-ever Hindu to be elected to the US House of Representatives in 2013 from Hawaii, and she was subsequently elected for four consecutive terms.
A fierce critic of President Biden, Gabbard has lambasted him for ‘pouring fuel on the flames’ of the division in the country.
She has also blamed Russia’s military invasion on Ukraine on Biden’s failed foreign policy.
Gabbard, who deployed to Iraq between 2004 and 2005 for the Hawaii Army National Guard, has long been critical of US intervention overseas.
She is now set to campaign for Kari Lake, who is running for Arizona governor.
Lake, a former journalist, is running against Democrat Katie Hobbs, who is Arizona’s secretary of state.
💭 Tulsi Gabbard Who Often Flags The Persecution & Genocide of Christians Leaves The Democratic Party
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on October 4, 2022
👹 U.S. Senator Jim Inhofe, who is retiring at the end of the year, was in Ethiopia this past weekend. For the 2nd time since the fascist Oromo-Islamo-Protestant regime began the genocidal war two years ago against Orthodox Christians of Tigray, Ethiopia. Of course, the Senator gave 👹 evil Abiy Ahmed Ali another green light to massacre children and women of Tigray. Today, the fascist Oromo’s air force conducted a horrific drone attack in Adi Daero town of Tigray. The air strike on Tigray camp for displaced people killed dozens of children and elderly. This is the second time in a month.
💭 Kosovo all over again. That’s why America is babysitting and allowing the fascist Oromo regime of Ethiopia (which is the enemy of historical Ethiopia, Orthodox Christianity and the Ge’ez Language) to survive – and attack civilian targets:
The aim of this genocidal war is to destroy Ethiopia + Orthodox Christianity + The Ge’ez language.
👹 Senator James Inhofe visits the black Hitler, Abiy Ahmed Ali.
Ethiopian leaders have expressed their genocidal intent in closed-door talks & openly on social media platforms. A while ago, their supporters called, openly, to ‘drain the sea.’ Look at what’s happening in # Tigray; # TigrayGenocide is not a plan anymore, nor is it a hidden desire
💭 TigrayGenocide | The Nobel Peace Laureate PM A. Ahmed The Black Adolf Hitler?
☆ The majority, according to Christian Ethiopians and ministry workers in Ethiopia that I interviewed, support the military operation. Their support has held strong even as reports of civilian deaths, ethnic cleansing, horrific human rights abuses, and widespread hunger inflicted on the Tigrayan population rise in scale and urgency.
☆ That evangelical support seems to be rooted in a particular interpretation of what God is doing in the current conflict. Many evangelical Christians, such as theologian and preacher Paulos Fekadu, have publicly declared that ☆ “what is happening in north Ethiopia, in Tigrayis the judgment of God.” Several of the Ethiopian Christians I interviewed said their friends and family readily declare that the Tigrayans “deserve what they get.”
☆ Her friend Desalajn Assefa Alamayhu, an evangelist who is Tigrayan himself, agrees. And he accuses Orthodox Christians in Tigrayof being active contributors to the conflict.
“ TigrayOrthodox Christians participate in evil things with TPLF. They participate completely with TPLF. They said, ‘In the Bible, we can oppose federal government because we need freedom.’” In contrast, he contends, “most Protestant Christians in Ethiopia agree with the federal government because Dr. Abiy teaches and preaches from the Word of God.”
☆ The The Elephant that many evangelical Ethiopians seem to be wrestling with is this: With whom would Jesus side—the charismatic evangelical leader determined to defeat his enemies, or the primarily nonevangelical Orthodox Tigrayans who are suffering immensely?
💭 EndNote: 98.5 % of Protestants side with the evil monster Abiy Ahmed Ali, who is guilty of war crimes and genocide in Christian Tigray.
As the humanitarian issues escalate in the largely Orthodox north, the conflict tests evangelicals’ loyalty and theology.
The transition to an ethnically Oromo leader marked a break from 27 years of rule by the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). And in a country historically dominated by Orthodox and Muslim believers, Abiy became the first openly evangelical head of government Ethiopia ever had.
But since a bitter and violent conflict broke out between Abiy’s government and the formerly ruling TPLF in the northern Tigrayregion in November 2020, evangelicals—who make up just over 18 percent of the population—have been divided over how to respond.
The majority, according to Christian Ethiopians and ministry workers in Ethiopia that I interviewed, support the military operation. Their support has held strong even as reports of civilian deaths, ethnic cleansing, horrific human rights abuses, and widespread hunger inflicted on the Tigrayan population rise in scale and urgency.
💭 Green Light from USA to The Fascist Oromo Regime of Ethiopia to Go Ahead with Genocide of Christians?
💭 Ethiopian journalist Solan Kolli on Tuesday won the Rory Peck prize for his coverage of the devastating conflict in the Tigray region of his home country.
💭The Rory Peck Award is an award given to freelance camera operators who have risked their lives to report on newsworthy events.