Was Adolf Hitler a Meth Dealer?

Recently discovered letters from a former Nazi soldier suggest that Hitler’s troops were kept awake and alert with a little help from… crystal meth.

Heinrich Boll, a Nazi soldier who went on to become a Novel Prize winning novelist and one of Germany’s most well-renowned post-war writers, wrote several letters to his family during the war. Several of those letters include a reference to a drug called Pervitin, which contained the highly-addictive Class A drug crystal meth, and according to it’s packaging “maintained wakefulness” and was intended as an “alertness aid.”

Specific details of Boll’s letters were recently published in Der Spiegel, a German newspaper, and investigated by the Independent in Britain. Their investigation has validated the theory that Nazi’s used the drug to keep their soldiers alert, and that military doctors were responsible to providing the pills.

In a letter written by Boll on November 9, 1939 to his family, he wrote, “Dear parents and siblings… It’s tough out here, and I hope you’ll understand if I’m only able to write to you once every two to four days soon. Today I’m writing you mainly to ask for Pervitin… Love, Hein.”

In a letter dated about six months later (May 20, 1940), he wrote home again: “Perhaps you could get me some more Pervitin so that I can have a backup supply?”

“If at all possible, please send me some more Pervitin,” Boll wrote, yet again, in a letter dated July 19, 1940.

According to reports, more than 35 million Pervitin and Isophan (another brand name for the crystal meth pills) were distributed to German troops between April and July of 1940. An undetermined number of soldiers apparently died of heart failure or committed suicide with a gun shot wound while experiencing temporary psychosis caused by the drug.