A new book has delved into the personal life of Adolf Hitler, painting him as a cocaine, methamphetamine and opiate-crazed drug addict incapable of going about his daily routine without the help of uppers.
WATCH A CLIP EXPLAINING HITLER'S DRUG USE:
In his bestseller, Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany - first published in 2016, author Norman Ohler revealed that at the later stages of Hitler's life, the dictator's 'veins were so wrecked' his physician could hardly penetrate them.
Advert
When the physician did manage to make a breakthrough into Hitler's veins, 'it actually made a crunching noise,' Ohler wrote. Grim.
Other stories in the book concern stranger anecdotes, such as how during a visit to his 'frozen cloud-cuckoo-land' vacation mountain home in Obersalzberg, Hitler spent his time impersonating 'sounds made by different machine guns used in the Second World War' while watching ravens.
"Whether he did so high or not, we cannot tell," Ohler writes.
Advert
Hitler's drug use began in 1941 with steroid and animal hormone injections. As the Second World War progressed, his personal physician, Theodor Morell, would supply the Nazi leader with harder stuff.
Hitler soon began to rely on 'heightened feeling(s) that corresponded so perfectly to his own image of greatness - and that reality no longer supplied,' Ohler writes.
According to Ohler, Hitler's wife, Eva Braun, shared that Hitler's true drug love was opiates and she even insisted on doing every drug he was doing in order to be 'on the same wavelength as her lover'.
Advert
After 'date nights' between the couple, Hitler would turn down physical exams so his doctor wouldn't see the 'wounds on his body from Eva's aggressive sexual behaviour'.
Hitler's incessant drug use took its toll, though, and before long, they made him increasingly insular.
"In his isolation, all pleasure and energy previously received from the attention of a cheering crowd had to be replaced by chemicals," Ohler writes.
Advert
"Between the autumn of 1941, when he started being given hormone and steroid injections, and the second half of 1944, Hitler hardly enjoyed a sober day."
In his book, Ohler refutes the common belief that Hitler suffered from Parkinson's disease, claiming that the hand tremors caught on newsreels of the dictator were merely the signs of terrible withdrawal.
Without all of the gear Hitler took, Ohler writes, 'all that was left behind was a shell of a man whose uniform was spattered with rice gruel'.
Featured Image Credit: PATopics: Interesting, Community