German Book Club
Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich

Thu, 07/20/2017
11:30 AM Goethe-Institut Los Angeles

At the July 2017 meeting the German Book Club will read and discuss  "Der Totale Rausch / Blitzed" by Norman Ohler.

The Nazis presented themselves as warriors against moral degeneracy. Yet, as Norman Ohler's gripping bestseller reveals, the entire Third Reich was permeated with drugs: cocaine, heroin, morphine and, most of all, methamphetamines, or crystal meth, used by everyone from factory workers to housewives, and crucial to troops' resilience - even partly explaining German victory in 1940.
Blitzed is a fast-paced, highly original history that uncovers the full extent of drug use in Nazi Germany—from Hitler’s all-consuming reliance on a slew of substances, to the drugs that permeated the regime and played an integral role in Germany’s military performance and ultimate downfall in World War II.
 
Norman Ohler is an award-winning German novelist, screenwriter, and journalist. He spent five years researching Blitzed in numerous archives in Germany and the United States, and spoke to eye-witnesses, military historians, and doctors. He is also the author of the novels Die Quotenmaschine (the world’s first hypertext novel), Mitte and Stadt des Goldes (translated into English as Ponte City). He was co-writer of the script for Wim Wenders’ film Palermo Shooting.

Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich Hardcover 
by Norman Ohler, English translation by Shaun Whiteside 
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 
ISBN-10: 1328663795
ISBN-13: 978-1328663795

This meeting of the German Book Club will be moderated by Andy Vought.