Plot World History with Andrey Sidorchik
On May 10, 1940, Hitler’s forces launched an operation codenamed “Gelb”. It provided for the capture of Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg in the shortest possible time. The second stage of the plan was Operation Roth, which was supposed to defeat France.
“They rush into the breakout with tanks and armored vehicles”
Just five days after the start of the German offensive, the French Prime Minister Paul Raynaud called London.Winston Churchill, stating: “We were defeated… They rush into the breakout with tanks and armored vehicles. Churchill tried to calm Raynaud down, but Raynaud kept repeating, ” No, we are defeated, we have lost the battle.”
The blow inflicted by the Wehrmacht was truly amazing.It took the Wehrmacht only five days to capture Holland. In Belgium, in the first days of the war, the Nazis captured key points, which allowed them to successfully develop a further offensive. By May 14, seven German panzer divisions had crossed the Meuse River. In the area of their actions between Sedan and Namur werereserve French divisions that were defeated in a matter of hours. By 20 May, German units had reached Amiens and Abbeville, and the next day they captured Saint-Paul and Montreuil. North-west of Abbeville, the first German unit-a battalion of the 2nd Panzer Division – reached the sea. Pressed to the sea, the British and French units were no longer concerned with the question of victory, but only with evacuation.
By June 4, the Nazis occupied Northern France and Flanders. Demoralized French units tried to resist, but it was already like agony. A new phase of the offensive, launched by the Germans on June 5, finally brought down the French defenses. Attempts to defend Paris were not even made: the French government fled from the capital to Bordeaux. On June 14, the Hitlerite units entered the main French city without a fight. On June 22, France signed an agreement that meant its actual surrender.
Mr. Nagayoshi’s discovery
No one expected such a turn-neither London, nor Washington, nor Moscow. The Soviet leadership hoped that the Third Reich would be involved in a protracted war in the West, which would give time to complete the rearmament program. But Hitler’s Blitzkrieg broke these plans.
In addition to the excellent training of soldiers and officers, the brilliant leadership of the German generals, the most modern equipment, the German triumph also had another secret. The French were amazed at the endurance of the German military, who made rapid marches, after which they were immediately ready to engage in battle. Such incredible endurance was explained not only by good physical training, but also by the achievements of German pharmacology.
In 1893, a Japanese chemistNagai Nagayoshi he synthesized a substance called methamphetamine from ephedrine. In the course of studying its properties, the amazing effect of the substance on a person was established-he became unusually cheerful, energetic, fatigue went away and new forces appeared. Of course, the harmful effects of drugs were already known by that time. But it was believed that the new drugs, if not harmless at all, then the damage to the body is negligible. The voices of skeptics were immediately drowned out by those who saw great commercial potential in this.
Polish & laquo; debut & raquo;
In the 1930s, German pharmacists from the company Temmler Werke developed their own technology for the production of methamphetamine, releasing it to the market under the commercial name “Pervitin”.
Germany, where the Nazis came to power, was preparing for revenge for the First World War. The leaders of the Third Reich paid attention to the new powerful stimulant. Hitler, having tried pervitin personally, was delighted with the effect and decided that this tool could turn the Wehrmacht into a war machine capable of fighting without sleep and rest.
The baptism of Fire of Pervitin took place during the attack on Poland. After tasting the pills, the Wehrmacht soldiers rushed forward, acting for several days in a row with almost no rest. In addition to fatigue, the feeling of fear disappeared, which made the Nazis real “combat robots”. What was happening made a depressing impression on the Poles, breaking their will to resist.
Having tried the remedy, the military turned to it again and again. And since during the Polish campaign, not so many pervitin was put in the troops, some began to write letters home with a request to buy pervitin in a pharmacy and urgently send it to the front.
“If there were no drugs, there would be no invasion”
After this doping proved to be excellent in Poland, at the stage of preparation for the operation “Gelb”, the company Temmler Werke supplied the Wehrmacht and the Luftwaffe with 35 million doses of pervitin.
Various modifications of this tool were also created. There was even a Panzerschokolade, that is, “tank chocolate”, intended for pilots and tankers. In addition to the actual chocolate, which itself is a stimulant, it also included pervitin.
Amid the jubilation after the defeat of France, few people paid attention to the warnings of German doctors, who noted that the use of stimulants occurs without observing the established restrictions, which leads to the rapid development of addiction.
Researcher Norman Oler who studied the use of stimulants in the Wehrmacht, in an interview with The Guardian, noted that the operation in France would not have taken place at all without pervitin: “There would have been no drugs, there would have been no invasion. When Hitler heard about the plan to invade through the Ardennes, he liked it. However, the High Command stated: “This isimpossible, because we have to rest at night, and in the meantime they will retreat, and we will be stuck in the mountains.” Then a decree was issued on stimulants that would allow the army to stay awake for three days and nights. Rommel and all the panzer division commanders were incredibly active, and without tanks, the Germans would definitely not have been able to win.
“Everyone swallowed this stuff often and in large doses”
Of course, after the successes achieved, the Nazis continued to use pervitin during the attack on the USSR. Although formally, in the summer of 1941, some restrictions were imposed on its use: Hitler’s doctors reported to the command that soldiers who were hooked on the drug very quickly come to the stage of complete physical exhaustion, life-threatening.
Despite this, experts believe that the Nazi army consumed a total of about 200 million pervitin tablets. Russian search engines working in the areas of the battles of the Great Patriotic War, say that they often find packages of stimulants next to the remains of dead Germans. The facts of the use of pervitin are also confirmed by letters from German soldiers. Here, for example, is what Gerd Schmickle of the 7th German Panzer Division wrote in 1943: “I could not sleep. During the attack, I tooktoo much pervitin. We’ve all been addicted to it for a long time. Everyone swallowed this stuff often and in large doses. The pills seemed to relieve anxiety and fear. I plunged into a world of vivid indifference. The danger had ceased to seem so. The powers inherent in man seemed to increase. After the battle, you were in a strange state of ecstasy, in which a deep need for sleep fought with a clear alertness.
Ampoules of pervitin from Germany. It was administered intramuscularly, subcutaneously, or slowly intravenously. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org
« The arrival of & raquo; Private Koivunen
The Germans and the Allies were treated to pervitin. In particular, the case of a Finnish soldier is described Aimo Koivunenom in the spring of 1944. The group he was part of came across a Soviet unit. After the exchange of fire, the Finns retreated, and the exhausted Koivunen began to lag behind his own. Then he remembered about the package of pervitin, deciding to take a pill. Because of the uncomfortable mittens, the soldier poured himself a whole handful of pills. Without thinking, he ate them all. Soon he was, as they say, “covered”. In a semi-delirious state, he ran through the woods for several days, until finally he was blown up by a mine. When he was picked up a few days later, it turned out that he had covered about 400 kilometers in total.
But in the battles with the Red Army, Pervitin did not provide the Wehrmacht with a decisive advantage. The guys in earflaps and padded jackets, loaded only with 100 grams of vodka from the People’s Commissariat, proved to be hardier and more stable than the Wehrmacht combat robots under Pervitin.
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D-IX— & mdash; & nbsp; the last stimulator of the Reich
In the final stages of the war, the pharmacists of the Third Reich were actively working on new, more powerful stimulants. In 1944, they created D-IX, a rattlesnake mixture of pervitin, cocaine, and eukodal (a morphine-based painkiller). According to some reports, the tests were carried out on prisonersthe concentration camps and received a stunning result-exhausted and exhausted prisoners made marches up to 100 kilometers long, without experiencing fatigue. D-IX began to be delivered to the Luftwaffe and the Kringsmarine, but it did not come to production in volumes comparable to Pervitin-the war ended earlier.
In the last months of the fighting, stimulants were given to soldiers and officers of the Wehrmacht almost without restrictions-they literally filled the bags of the orderlies to the top. However, this could not help the doomed Third Reich in any way.
The fate of former Wehrmacht soldiers who lost their health due to pervitin, few people were interested in after the collapse of Nazi Germany. But the work of the German pharmacists, and they themselves, were very interested in the American military, who later used this knowledge.
But that’s another story.