1939-1941

Test subjects had to solve maths and logic problems through the night until 4 p.m. the following day.
But after the test sheets were evaluated, not all of Ranke’s findings were positive.
Ranke concluded without a trace of cynicism that this made it ideal for soldiers,
‘Pervitin corpses’
Ranke hastily cancelled another Pervitin experiment planned for 1939, and sent a letter to the other Institute directors at the Academy warning about possible dangers of addiction and urging them to forbid Pervitin completely at the Academy.
Less than a week before the start of the war he wrote to a military general surgeon at High Command: ‘Of course it’s a double-edged sword, giving the troops a different medicine which cannot be restricted to emergencies.’
There were critical voices too.
‘The Germans started the war,’ the historian Golo Mann writes, ‘but they weren’t keen on it, not the civilians, not the soldiers, least of all the generals.’
‘The Germans started the war,’ the historian Golo Mann writes, ‘but they weren’t keen on it, not the civilians, not the soldiers, least of all the generals.’30 One person saw things differently. Hitler wanted to attack France as quickly as possible, ideally in the autumn of 1939.
Quite the opposite – after the Polish campaign their equipment urgently had to be renewed. Most divisions had poor equipment, barely half of it suitable for use.
and suddenly, unprepared, Germany had to fight a war against the whole of Western Europe.
It wasn’t long before Ranke was on the brink of a classic case of burn-out – though the term didn’t yet exist.
‘Stimulant decree’ of 17 April 1940:
Two days later, on 17 April 1940, a document was making the rounds of the Wehrmacht, one with no parallel in military history.
‘I demand that you do not sleep for at least three days and nights, if that is required.’63 And required it was. Only if the French border city of Sedan was reached during that time and the border river Maas (or Meuse) was crossed, would the Germans be in northern France sooner than most of the French army itself,
This was a campaign that was decided in the psyche.
But if, for example, Napoleon had been able to lead his troops out into the field two hours earlier at the Battle of Waterloo, things might have turned out very differently.
his trademark binoculars around his neck
After taking the border city he charged on even though he was given a strict order to stop. In the rush of the campaign he became wholly insubordinate.
Instead of waiting until the assault engineers had built pontoons, he put his massively heavy vehicles onto ferries across the rivers of France – and it worked.
Rommel didn’t halt.
Rommel didn’t hesitate for a second.
Even though they were successful, the dictator could not cope with the fact that he had effectively handed over control.
He had made his secret decision: he would disempower the army leadership as the locus of the war,
That was precisely the appeal of his personal physician: it was only if he remained an outsider, without a position in the Party, the Wehrmacht or any other mass organization, that he couldn’t be manipulated or abused – and he belonged to him, the Führer, alone.
lamenting that his villa in Schwanenwerder ‘can only be maintained with a large steady income, so I must either earn a great deal from medicine or get myself an income from chemicals/pharmaceuticals’.fn10 It was the latter course of action that he would take in the end, with wide-ranging effects, not only for his patient.
he decided that the glorious victory over the Allies should under no circumstances be left to the arrogant leaders of the army.
At 12.45 an order was issued which still puzzles historians even today. It is the ominous Dunkirk ‘Halt Order’, which cannot be explained rationally.
units were using between two and five Pervitin tablets per driver per 
Ranke’s military medical diary is proof that other forces were involved, chemical ones:
Side-effects of the pharmacological mass abuse were also observed,
There was a clear order that the Panzer troop had to use Pervitin.’
A classic case of an addicted dealer.
The goal was to heighten the performance of munitions workers and increase their resistance to infectious diseases.
Hitler ordered an attack on London for 4 September, to demoralize its population – a severe tactical error, because it meant that enemy airfields were no longer the prime target. Consequently, the British were able to strengthen their defences.
as if I were flying above my plane.’
‘I kept my course precisely,
But anyone who passed through the big cast-iron gate and crossed the broad forecourt stepped into a realm of chaos, of unbridled alcohol and drug abuse, of intrigues and of general mismanagement.
An officer describes the Reich Marshal’s appearance: ‘We struggled to keep a straight face. He dons a white silk, blouse-like shirt with flowing sleeves, and over it a yellow, sleeveless, fur-lined suede jacket. With this he sports long medieval looking bloomers, and around his waist a broad, gold studded leather belt, with a short Celtic sword jangling from it. Long silk stockings and golden-yellow Saffiano leather sandals complete the picture.’121 The face of the powerful minister was covered in make-up, and his fingernails were painted red. Often during discussions Göring, once the opium content of his blood had dropped, felt so deranged that he would leave the room abruptly without a word of explanation, and not come back until a few minutes later, plainly much refreshed.
Soon the precondition for holding a senior post in his office was not so much one’s qualifications as one’s entertainment value.
The only problem was that he was now in charge of up to twenty-four different offices, which were soon in a state of indescribable chaos.
In fact Udet had fired a bullet into his head at his grand villa on Stallupöner Allee in Westend,
‘Iron man, you have deserted me.’
On 13 September 1940 the Milan daily Corriere della Sera reported on a ‘courage pill’ used by the Germans, which had gone from medicine to secret weapon.
The BBC immediately produced a feature on the provision of Pervitin to German pilots. As a result, a controversy at the highest level of the civil service broke out in Berlin. Leo Conti, the Reich Health Führer, who was critical of Pervitin,
In an act of desperation he engaged a scientist friend to write, under the headline ‘The Pervitin problem’, the first major critical piece on the favourite drug of the Germans, regarding the dangers of the stimulant and its violently addictive properties.
At last the Reich Health Führer acted – or at least attempted to – and on 12 June 1941 made Pervitin subject to the Reich opium law.
because Germany was due to attack the Soviet Union ten days later,