Secrets of the Dead (2000–…): Season 17, Episode 5 - World War Speed - full transcript
Historian James Holland explores how amphetamine use affected the course of World War II.
- It's long been known
that German soldiers used
a form of methamphetamine
called Pervitin
in the Second World War.
- But have tales
of Nazis on speed...
obscured the other side
of the story?
- Wow!
That's amazing, isn't it?
- The massive use of stimulants
by British and American troops.
Did total war unleash
the world's first
pharmacological arms race?
♪♪
And, in the face
of industrial slaughter,
what role did drugs play
in combat?
♪♪
Now, one historian...
- My goodness, look.
There's the swastika.
- is on a quest to dig deeper...
- You got the machine guns there.
You got the tools.
So you just do this,
you just go...?
- Precisely.
- A cannon shell is just
gonna rip through.
- This soldier here
that can hardly walk.
- Yes.
- and learn the truth
behind World War speed.
- Stand by.
- Eight, seven, six...
- The amount of dust
was incredible!
- five, four...
- Oh, my goodness, me.
Look at that!
- three, two,
- Set, shoot. Fire One.
- One.
- Oh, my god!
♪♪
This program was made
possible in part by
the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting
and by contributions
to your PBS station
from viewers like you.
Thank you.
- December 1942.
A German bomber crew struggles
to keep their damaged
plane aloft.
♪♪
- Seven decades
after it went down,
this German
Heinkel He 115 bomber
is pulled
from a Norwegian fjord.
It's an amazing discovery.
The only aircraft
of its kind ever recovered,
from a time when England stood
alone against fascism in Europe.
The fjord's oxygen-poor water
has left the plane
remarkably intact
and the recovery team will soon
discover artifacts inside
in near-pristine condition,
including brandy,
caffeine-infused chocolate,
and speed.
- We're going to see
the remains of a Heinkel 115,
which is a float plane,
a sea plane,
that was used
by the German Navy.
And, not only did they pull up
this Heinkel 115,
they also found lots
of things on it,
including, it turns out,
a packet a Pervitin.
♪♪
For me, there's a massive
difference between just being
an armchair historian
and actually getting out
on the ground,
rolling up your sleeves,
and doing some proper
primary research.
♪♪
You can't really
understand a subject
unless you actually seen
what you're looking at for real,
you know, you've touched
those pieces of paper,
looked at the sites,
talked to other people
who really know
what they're talking about.
And it is amazing how
it actually then prompts you
to ask all sorts
of other questions
that you might not have thought
about in the first place.
- James Holland has written
nearly 30 books
about the Second World War.
He's an expert
on the blitzkrieg of 1940
and the Battle of Britain,
which will prove
pivotal chapters
in his quest to understand
how amphetamine use evolved
during the conflict.
- Could German
amphetamine packets
have survived the crash
and decades underwater?
If so, they may provide
unique insight
into the role speed played
during German bombing
missions over England.
- You know, I've seen
a few aircraft wrecks
that have been pulled
out of the water,
but this Heinkel 115 that's been
pulled up out of the fjord
was in incredible condition,
so good that you could still see
the paintbrush marks
on the tailplane.
So I'm looking at the bomb bay,
here, aren't I?
- Yeah. Yeah.
- Okay, but this was carrying
bombs when it was found?
- Yeah. Yeah.
- So where would they be?
- They was in the center section.
- And this is a camouflage
for going
over the dark North Sea.
- You know, you wouldn't
want it light, would you?
You look at that sea from above,
you can see how dark it is
all the time.
♪♪
- For German bomber crews,
night missions from Norway
involved a 12-hour round-trip
flight over the North Sea.
Raving spitfires and flak
over England, then,
surviving the long trip home.
♪♪
German victories make
the Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht
seem invincible.
Rumors circulate
of German soldiers and airmen
fueled by a super-drug
that makes them fearless,
energized, and able to press on
without need for rest
or recuperation.
Even Nazi dive-bombers
stir theories
about so-called Stuka-Tablets,
pills that enable fliers
to withstand G-force
plunges to target
no human being
could possibly survive.
♪♪
- This is the
Heinkel 115 elevator.
It was cut in two
when the plane crashed, so.
- Right.
- In the wing,
there was a dinghy.
- Yes.
- And, within the dinghy,
there was a rescue package.
- It's possible to look at it?
- Yes.
- Fantastic.
So, when I walked in and saw
the table full of objects
from this escape kit,
plus a few other little bits
and pieces they found,
I, you know,
I was absolutely staggered.
And, obviously, we've got
a brace of machine guns here.
These are 17s?
- MG 17s, yeah.
- You got the machine guns there;
you got the tools.
You got all this,
but this is the bit
that's really catching my eye.
- Matches.
- Yeah.
- Cigarettes?
- Yeah, it is.
- This is obviously chocolate.
This has a high caffeine
content, doesn't it?
- Yes.
- And this is the brandy.
- Yes, that's the brandy.
- I can't believe
you haven't tried it.
Okay, but there's one item here
that, to me, is missing.
- Yes, I guess we are
missing the Pervitin.
- Yes, where's that?
- Well, when it came up
and we tried to clean it,
it started to dissolve
and, when we looked back
into the box, it was...
There's nothing left, so,
it just vanished.
Well, I'm sorry, we have
only a photograph of it.
- The whole reason
for coming here
is because Pervitin
has been found on this plane
when it was brought up
from the fjord.
It was a little disappointing.
- Despite Jim's disappointment,
the Pervitin's location
on the plane
may be more important
than seeing the package itself.
- So this was in the...
This was in the wing?
What was really interesting
is it wasn't sort of
in the cockpit equivalent of the
glove compartment, you know.
It wasn't found right by
the pilot's seat
or something, you know.
It was actually found
in a pre-prepared
emergency escape pack.
That made me kind of think
that it wasn't used
in a kind of sort of casual way,
but in a quite pragmatic way.
- If the Pervitin pack
was kept out of reach,
it suggests the drug
wasn't meant
to keep men awake during flight,
but to keep them alive,
should their plane go down.
- So you've got the brandy,
to keep the cold away.
You've got some cigarettes
to keep you going;
chocolate with caffeine in it;
and, of course,
you've got the Pervitin.
We all know what that does.
That keeps you going
for another 12 hours or so,
while you're bobbing around
on the North Sea.
They were flying in winter,
so it's going to be bitterly,
bitterly cold.
The most important thing is
that they don't fall asleep
and die of hypothermia.
So what's gonna keep you awake?
Well, Pervitin's gonna do that.
- Jim's Norway stop has been
illuminating and frustrating,
all at the same time.
He decides to head south,
to a museum in Germany,
where you can still see and hold
Pervitin samples
from World War II.
- And I met
with Dr. Peter Steinkamp,
who's an expert in this.
You know, I just really wanted
to pick his brains
about what this stuff was,
how it came to be,
and to look at Pervitin packets
for the first time.
Wow.
That's amazing, isn't it?
- This was methamphetamine
created in the 1930s
by a German pharmacologist.
He called it Pervitin.
This is a version for injection
and this is the version
for piercing.
- And what's this say, here?
- "Inject slowly, not too fast."
Oh, goodness, me.
Imagine buying,
over the counter,
vials of stuff
to inject yourself,
you know, with a Class A drug.
I mean, it's just
absolutely extraordinary
and just so casual.
If I took one of those, how long
would I be completely wired for?
- Well, about two nights.
- So this came out in Germany,
what, in the late 1930s?
- Yes. In 1938, it was first
available in drugstores.
- So I could just walk in
and I could go,
"I'll have a packet
of 12 Pervitin, please"?
- Yeah, really.
- Wow!
That's amazing, isn't it?
♪♪
- By 1938, Pervitin manufacturer
Temmler Pharmaceutical of Berlin
had launched a PR campaign
modeled on Coca-Cola's
global marketing strategy.
♪♪
And, despite Hitler's
vehement anti-drug rhetoric,
many Nazis,
including the Fuehrer himself,
were heavy drug users.
Methamphetamines seemed
geared to the modern,
tech-embracing Reich
that was envisioned.
- The Nazi state is all about,
"If you work hard, if you
strive for a better Germany,
then you'll get
a better Germany.
Come on, get your backbone
into it and let's get working.
Let's make Nazi Germany,
the Third Reich,
let's make it
a thousand-year Reich.
Let's make it brilliant!"
You know, and they embraced
science and technology,
and pharmacology
is all tied in with that.
That's why it appeals.
So it's not much of a step,
is it,
from day-to-day domestic use
to being used
in the armed services?
- Yes, yes, you're right.
The officers said
to the medical officer,
"Please, now, give Pervitin
to our soldiers."
♪♪
- By May 1940,
German troops under the
influence of Pervitin
have already conquered Poland.
Now, Hitler's Army masses
for another attack,
against France.
♪♪
The British and French
armies facing them
outnumber the Germans in men,
artillery, and even tanks,
but the German plan
is audacious:
built on the use
of combined arms;
using air power
as moving artillery;
and what some will call
a new method of warfare,
which really wasn't new at all.
- The German way of war,
what has become known
as blitzkrieg,
has always been
traditionally depicted
as something kind of new.
It isn't.
It's an extension
of the way of war
that Germans have always
been practicing
and, before Germany
became Germany in 1871,
the Prussians before them.
And it's because they're stuck
in the middle of Europe.
They don't have those resources
of bauxite and copper
and iron ore
and, more latterly, oil,
and food, actually,
that you need to protract
a long, attritional war.
So what do you do?
Well, you get round that
by fighting your wars
with overwhelming force
at the point of impact,
where you first attack,
knocking your enemy off-balance,
surrounding them
and annihilating them,
and you do that
incredibly quickly.
- At this point in the war,
the German army is
outgunned and outnumbered.
To win, they'll have to move
swiftly, with no time for rest.
And, like the Luftwaffe,
the army also has
a secret weapon to help defeat
the military commanders'
oldest enemy:
sleep.
♪♪
- I mean, how much Pervitin
was used in 1940?
- During the war
against France in 1940,
there was a delivering
of 35 million pills
- Ha!
- Of Pervitin to the Wehrmacht.
- Wow. So, literally,
just in sort of 10, 12 weeks,
they're issuing 35 million
tablets of Pervitin?
- Yeah, yes.
- You know, all-in, there's only
about 3 million troops involved
in the whole thing.
- In the end,
the German army pulls off
what seemed impossible,
even to Hitler.
Wehrmacht tanks
and foot soldiers managed
to fight and march
for 10 days straight...
♪♪
Trapping the entire British army
on the beaches of Dunkirk.
♪♪
German troops move
an average of 22 miles a day,
under fire.
It's considered one
of the greatest feats
in military history.
- So, obviously,
Pervitin keeps you awake,
but what else does it do to you?
- When you're taking it
and you have to do a duty...
♪♪
You are focused on it.
There was no fear
and you don't think about
anything else in that moment.
- What other side effects
are there?
- I talked to some veterans
who used Pervitin
and they said,
after doing the duty,
they sometimes got frightened
- Oh.
- Because "We were in fear
that we could never,
ever, sleep again
and, when we could not sleep
anymore, we must die."
♪♪
- However the drug affects
individual soldiers,
the larger outcome is clear:
German troops,
fueled by methamphetamine,
crushed the combined arms
of Western Europe
in little over a week.
Nazi tactics and technology
seem unstoppable.
But did the Wehrmacht
truly need a stimulant
to achieve victory in 1940?
Was marching 22 miles
in a single day
an amazing pace
or has the blitzkrieg tale,
like the word itself,
been warped into legend
over time?
♪♪
Today, Jim's gathered a group
of fellow history fanatics
to put this question
to the test.
- The idea is that, rather...
- They start by comparing British
and German infantry gear,
to see if one was better
than the other.
- Much more. Just asking.
- Taff Gillingham has served
as a military consultant
for feature films and TV series.
- You then don't need to take
your eye off the target
until you've knocked him over.
- He's an expert on
Second World War paraphernalia.
- Well, Taff, you know,
we've got this all laid out.
We've got British here,
German here.
Presumably, this is
an ammunition pouch?
- That's right.
That's the ammunition pouch.
You've got three clips
in each of those pouches.
- I mean, they do love leather,
don't they, the Germans?
I mean, every bit of it is.
It's just leather,
leather, leather.
- The British had a simpler idea,
which was to carry
a cotton bandolier,
and then you just pull
the clips out,
ready to push into the rifle.
- Hm.
♪♪
- The British kitty
is actually pretty quiet
because it's all cotton,
it's canvas.
It doesn't make much noise
as you move around.
Whereas, the veterans
always had this story
that you could hear
the German Army coming
because they sounded
like a loose cutlery drawer
with all this stuff clinking
and clanking away
as the German... Exactly.
The gas mask tin
bouncing around.
♪♪
- I'll take this back.
- Next, they'll set out to see
just how hard it would've been
to cover 22 miles
while carrying a 60-pound
combat load,
with only coffee or tea
to keep you going.
That's quite heavy.
♪♪
- I can't believe that
they'd have walked a long way
with a kit like that.
- I mean, this is the reason
for doing this.
It's only when you actually
start using this practically
that you can understand how
people would operate with it
back in the day.
So the real point of this
entire experiment is,
after walking 20 miles
around here with all this kit,
if you've got a drug
that can keep you going,
can we understand why
they're using this in 1940?
- Okay. Let's do it.
- Let's do it.
♪♪
- My feet are... Oof.
♪♪
- How's that?
- That looks good.
- Feels better. Oh, post.
♪♪
Ooh!
That's my feet.
Now they hurt.
♪♪
♪♪
Ah!
We'll maybe leave that bit out.
- Two hours and seven miles in,
the group breaks for tea.
- It's heating up
pretty quick, isn't it?
- For many Allied soldiers,
caffeine was
the stimulant of choice.
Coffee was so critical
to American GI Joes
that, today, cup of Joe
is synonymous with the drink.
- All right, cheers.
- I've got my foot out.
- Peel your heel off.
Where is it?
- Just there.
- Wiggle your foot.
How much am I getting paid
for this is all I wanna know.
- So, because we're able
to take caffeine,
we're on these lovely,
delicious-looking chocolate,
caffeine-enhanced chocolate.
So, James, this should send us
around the next bit of the march
a bit quicker then, eh?
- Should do.
- Come on, let's go.
- Yeah.
♪♪
- They may not be in combat...
Hello, Woofit.
- but they are carrying
the same 60-pound load
that German and British soldiers
would've humped, back in 1940,
and it's proving no easy task.
- Where's the shortcut, then?
♪♪
- If it's not 100 yards,
I'm gonna collapse
in a pile, there.
Oh!
Oh. Oh, Ow.
My feet are broken.
♪♪
My ankles are broke.
So, I reckon that 20 miles is
achievable, but, day after day,
that's a very hard thing to ask
for a platoon of soldiers.
- Despite bruised ankles,
they've logged 14 miles
in just under 4 hours.
At this pace,
they'd have easily hit
the 22-mile mark
of the Wehrmacht.
- You know,
they're all trained up
for doing this kinda stuff,
so you have to think that
walking 22 miles a day,
over consecutive days,
for those guys,
really shouldn't have been
a massive problem without drugs.
I am not convinced that
the Germans needed it, at all.
♪♪
- Whether the Wehrmacht needed
Pervitin or not,
the Nazi victory in France
is a stunning one.
♪♪
By June 1940,
France has been brought
to its knees.
♪♪
The British army lies in tatters
and, soon,
London itself is ablaze.
♪♪
The English are desperate
to learn the source
of Germany's success...
♪♪
And, when a German plane goes
down in the south of England,
they find the answer.
Inside, they discover a packet
of an unknown substance
that holds the key
to the Nazis' boundless energy.
Lab analysis will soon
reveal the substance
is methamphetamine,
Germany's super-drug.
To find out more about the
British side of the story,
Jim's meeting pharmacology
historian Dr. James Pugh.
- So, what have you got here?
- So I brought some files along
which I thought you might be
interested in seeing.
- Mm-hmm.
- The first is a letter
to Winston Churchill,
in fact.
- Oh, really?
- And it's actually
from his physician,
Sir Charles Wilson,
letting Churchill know
that the British
have discovered that Germany
is making use of amphetamines
in a military context.
- Mm!
- And suggesting to him that,
perhaps, this is something
the British need to consider.
- I mean, this is a really
interesting line:
"In short, it was concluded
that the drug would be useful
to the majority of men
if it is desired
to keep them strenuously
and dangerously active
for 24 hours at a stretch."
- Germany has occupied France,
by this stage,
- Mm.
- So anything that the British
feel they can do
to gain an advantage
or to level
the playing field again
is something that
they need to consider
and I guess you could
characterize this
as maybe the beginning
of a chemical arms race,
I suppose.
One of the other ways
that the drug was used
is in its inhaler form.
- Gosh, look at that.
God, it's like a Vicks inhaler.
So you just do this,
you just go...?
- Yeah, I probably wouldn't do
that, at this point, but.
No, but I mean,
that's the process?
- Yeah.
- The Allied version of Pervitin
was called Benzedrine
and, like German speed,
it was already used by civilians
before the war began.
Both drugs make users
intensely alert,
flooding them
with a sense of euphoria.
With its added
methyl group molecule,
Pervitin races across
the blood-brain barrier
a bit faster than Benzedrine.
Otherwise, the two drugs
have virtually the same impact.
♪♪
During the battle of Britain,
exhausted Spitfire pilots
were getting Benzedrine,
unofficially,
from local pharmacies,
but Churchill seems to push
things to another level.
- So one of the very
interesting things is
that this is being sent
to Churchill
and what's important about that
is he's a man of science.
He's very interested
in novel developments
and new technologies and stuff
and so drugs kind of fit
that bill for him.
- Soon, the Royal Air Force
begins testing Benzedrine
under combat conditions.
They turn to a 30-year-old
flight surgeon,
named Roland Winfield,
to administer the drug
to British air crew
and record the reactions.
♪♪
By late 1941,
Allied bombers are hitting back.
♪♪
Long night missions
over Nazi Germany,
with a fatality rate
of more than 45%,
are a terrifying ordeal.
♪♪
- You know, that's one of those
things where, obviously,
so if that can keep you awake
and keep you alive,
then, you know, clearly,
that's a good thing.
- I suppose, on the other
side of it, too...
- Later, Jim and James
head out to explore
a British Lancaster bomber,
the same type of aircraft
in which Roland Winfield
conducted
the only known combat tests
of amphetamines during the war.
♪♪
- These bomb bays are pretty
impressive, aren't they?
- My goodness.
That's gigantic.
- They can take 6.5 tons.
- 6.5 tons?!
- Yeah.
And they can be adapted
to take a Grand Slam,
which is 10 tons.
- 10 tons.
- I mean, it is incredible,
the lift of this.
- Just absolutely overwhelmed
by the size of it.
This is gonna be tight,
I reckon, for you, James.
- I mean, look at it.
It's a tin can, isn't it?
- So there's no armor here
or anything like this.
- No. No.
- This is just thin.
- And, you know,
a cannon shell or a bullet's
just gonna rip through.
- Rip straight through.
- On that Lancaster,
you're just thinking,
"This is a piece of tin.
I'm gonna be shot at.
I'm gonna be scared.
If I need to escape quickly,"
you know,
it's just next to impossible.
There are very few concessions
to human comfort.
- Yeah, yeah.
- For me, this is designed
for one thing,
and one thing only, and that's
dropping large amounts of bombs.
Goodness, me, yeah.
Physically exhausting
and terrifying.
In the air war over Europe,
aviation technology
pushes men beyond the limits
of human endurance.
♪♪
- You know, I can understand
why you would take
a Benzedrine pill, you know?
- I think I can as well.
Just going past
the navigator's desk, here.
- Again, I mean,
look how cramped it is.
- It is. And, as you emerge
into the cockpit,
there's a little bit
more space here, I suppose,
until you try
and get in the seat.
Case... Oh, my goodness!
This is snug.
- Yeah, it really is, isn't it?
- Yeah, this is snug.
- So tell me about Winfield's
tests that he was doing.
- Yeah, he actually flies
with the crews.
He administers the drugs
in flight, you know;
he also administers placebos.
And then, yeah, he reports back
on the experiences
the crews have.
♪♪
- In all,
Winfield observed troops
who were given amphetamines
on 20 RAF missions.
♪♪
- I mean, just imagine
this, James.
You know, you're sitting here,
you're piloting this plane.
- We're over the lake now.
- You know, this is
unpressurized, this cabin.
- Yeah.
- You know, -45°, freezing cold.
♪♪
You've gotta watch out
for night fighters
and you've got lots
of flak coming up.
- Yeah, yeah.
- The whole thing is terrifying.
- So, after crews have dropped
their bombs,
they will experience what's
known as the post-adrenal crash.
So their bodies have been
flooded with adrenaline
for an extended period of time.
That adrenaline starts to leave
the body at that point
and they become
extremely fatigued.
This is one of the things
that Winfield concludes
and he recommends
in his reports,
is, if you take the drug
about an hour and a half
before you're going
to drop your bombs,
the drug will start
to sort of act
upon your consciousness
at that point.
♪♪
- Of all Winfield's findings,
perhaps the most influential
are his reports describing
how air crews high on speed
show increased aggression
under fire.
- One of the things
that he notes in his report
is an example of an attack,
which the air crews
actually dive down
to a very, very low height
and attack a flak
- Really, they start
shooting it up?
- Yeah, yeah.
Of course, Winfield is also
simultaneously concerned
by some of this, too.
Ultimately, when the RAF come
to think about this drug,
they're actually concerned
about those effects...
- Are you all right?
You get any of the baddies?
- where the crews will start
to lean on the drugs,
as opposed to using them
as a tool to help
manage their wakefulness.
♪♪
- But if the RAF sees these side
effects as a potential problem,
the British army sees them
as a benefit.
♪♪
Even more than keeping
troops awake,
British ground commanders
want a pill
that can make the men fearless.
♪♪
By 1942,
the Allies are losing
massive numbers of soldiers
to a byproduct
of industrial warfare:
shell shock,
known today as
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Over the course of the conflict,
as many as one in three
frontline soldiers
will be incapacitated by it.
- Oh, God, listen!
- Benzedrine, it is hoped,
might offer a solution.
For this hidden side
of the story,
Jim's traveling
to a small museum
connected to a hospital
that first treated thousands
of shell shock victims
during the previous World War.
♪♪
- Well, I suppose,
when we think of, well,
the concept of war neurosis,
shell shock,
it really goes back to the first
World War, doesn't it?
And is that the first time that
it starts to become recognized?
- I think the stress of combat
has always been recognized,
certainly from the
Crimean War onwards,
but what happens
in the first World War,
is that industry
has intensified killing power,
so large numbers
of soldiers, 60%,
are killed by shrapnel,
by artillery, by mortars.
♪♪
After the Battle of the Somme,
when there's been something
like 420,000 casualties,
a significant number of those,
maybe 50,000 to 60,000,
would be shell shock.
So it's not only
a medical problem,
it's also a military problem
because this is a war
of attrition
and, if you're losing
large numbers of men
to battle exhaustion,
to psychiatric breakdown,
and you're not able
to treat them,
then it's eroding
your fighting strength.
- So, in the treatment
of combat fatigue,
when do they start
looking at drugs?
When do they start looking
at pharmacology and Benzedrine?
- Well, Benzedrine has been
introduced to the UK in 1935,
but as the war
gets closer and closer,
senior doctors
and commanders recognize
that this could have
a major beneficial,
you know, use,
in all three services,
in keeping soldiers
awake, alert,
and boosting their morale
in times of stress,
so I think the British army used
Benzedrine to keep people awake,
but also to lift spirits.
- So Dr. Jones was
very interesting
about the use of Benzedrine,
not just as a wakey-wakey pill,
which is what is was
sometimes referred to,
but also one that would
improve morale,
that would give
those who took it
a sense of kind of well-being
and greater physical courage.
- Jim's Glenside visit
has given him critical insight.
By using the drug as a tool
to heighten aggression
and lift morale,
Britain is raising the stakes
in the pharmacological fight
against the Nazis,
who still primarily
see amphetamine
as a way to offset fatigue.
By 1942,
British troops in North Africa
are in desperate need
of a morale boost.
They've retreated
across 600 miles of desert,
chased by Germany's
renowned Africa Corps,
and are dug in around
a tiny trading post:
El Alamein.
But in October,
a feisty new commander,
who is likely familiar
with the RAF amphetamine
tests, arrives:
Bernard Montgomery.
He is ready
to go on the offensive.
- When Montgomery took over,
morale in British 8th Army
was at rock-bottom
and it was one of the things
he realized
that he had to turn around,
by the way he was talking.
- I want to impress on everyone
that the bad times are over.
- And, you know,
"There'll be no more retreats,"
you know,
"You're really well-equipped.
We're gonna smash the Germans
and the Italian forces,"
and trying to give them
a greater sense of self-belief.
- We can't stay here alive.
They'll never stay here dead.
- But if there's a pill
that could do part
of that job for you,
then it's gotta be worth taking.
♪♪
- It's always been
a bit of a mystery
whether Monty, himself, brought
Benzedrine to the desert
and whether he truly saw it
as a morale builder,
but Jim's recently
discovered a document
from Montgomery's
medical officer, QV Wallace,
which proves orders
for Benzedrine
came straight from the top.
- I've never before seen
any direct, written reference
in any official capacity,
to the mass use of Benzedrine,
but Brigadier Wallace's memo
absolutely knocks that
into touch
because there it is,
absolutely spelled out.
The troops that were involved
in the opening stages
of the Battle of Alamein
were given Benzedrine,
not just to keep them going,
not just to keep them awake,
but also to give them resolve,
to give them confidence,
to bolster their morale.
♪♪
- By late 1942,
the Americans still have not put
any boots on the ground
in the West,
but they do provide a new tank,
which will give the British
a technological edge
in battles to come.
♪♪
- The Sherman is incredibly
important when it comes in.
They get 300 of them
straight into Egypt
and they're kinda tested up
and made battle-ready.
At the time, it is the best
tank on the battlefield.
You know, it's got this
incredibly accurate gun.
It's pretty well-armored.
It's very easy to maintain.
This is a very good tank,
which is now entering battle
on the British side.
- Just like long-range bombers,
modern tanks, like the Sherman,
were now pushing men to the
limits of human endurance,
so how welcome would a pill
that could offset
these conditions be,
to those who served?
Jim visits an old friend
who might be able
to help him find out.
♪♪
- Okay, so Jim Clark
is a restorer
of wartime military vehicles
and he's got
a whole host of stuff.
He's got Jeeps; he's got trucks.
But he's also got
a Sherman tank.
♪♪
So Jim, one of the things
I'm trying to find out a bit is,
I mean, obviously you know,
when you're in a tank,
you're gonna get shot at
and that's quite traumatic,
but the other thing
I'm quite interested in
is just what it's like,
sort of existing
and operating
in these tanks 'cause
- Yeah.
- It's a confined space.
You know, man's not really
designed for this.
Ah!
- All right?
- We're in!
- Right.
♪♪
- It's not an environment
that is comfortable,
in any shape or form.
♪♪
The smell of the fumes
was immense.
Very quickly, you start
to kind of catch your throat.
Oh, dear, I gotta say,
the amount of dust
is incredible!
- The fan that cools the engine
- Yeah.
Draws the air in through
the crew compartment.
It gets drawn over you,
- so you get covered in it.
♪♪
- If I'm feeling
this amount of grit
going into my eyes
and up my nose,
just from going down
a short stretch of track
in the middle of winter
in England,
what's it gonna be like
in the desert?
It must've just been
absolutely impossible.
- "Tank men," wrote one veteran,
"fought their war
in an enclosed,
suffocating, noisy metal box,
fearful of being struck
and burned alive by an enemy
they could not see."
♪♪
- You really do get a feel
of how physically draining
it must be to just operate
one of these things.
♪♪
So, you can see, can't you,
the stress and strain
- Yeah.
- of doing that?
You know, quite apart
from the fact that you're,
almost on a daily basis,
been in battle.
- Yeah.
The toll of fightin'
all day long
and then no proper sleep,
no rest.
Um...
Even if you're sleeping
at night,
there's probably
shelling goin' on,
so you probably didn't have
much decent rest.
And this is just stuffed full
of highly explosive material.
- Yeah.
In the turret basket, I think
there's about 15 or rounds.
There's probably 20 or 30
on each side.
- Yeah, it's a good number.
- Yeah, a good number, yeah.
Then, there was .50-cal
rounds in the base.
Then, you got your
160 gallons of fuel.
Like a mobile bomb, basically.
♪♪
- At El Alamein,
the British
24th Armoured Tank Brigade
is given the job of punching
through German defenses.
As the Wallace memo makes clear,
on the eve of the attack,
each man is given a huge dose
of Benzedrine:
20 milligrams per day,
twice he amount recommended
to RAF pilots.
- I know that the
24th Armoured Brigade
were issued with Benzedrine
because he wanted them
to keep going.
You know, what he said was
the first bit of the battle
was gonna be the dogfight.
It was gonna be the
grinding, attritional battle,
and, for that grinding,
attritional battle,
he wanted his men to keep going.
- Unlike modern pills,
Benzedrine tablets in '42
have no slow-release coating.
The full dose
will hit all at once.
For some soldiers,
alertness and euphoria
will give way
to a false sense of power.
♪♪
In the coming days,
the men of the 24th will prove
exceedingly aggressive,
fatally so.
Because, for crewmen
of either side,
the use of amphetamine will do
more than make them more alert.
It may suppress a natural
reaction in combat:
fear.
- Fear is about
self-preservation.
You're scared because
you don't want to die.
If you take that away
and you sort of don't care
quite so much,
you're not quite so careful.
The problem of being
charged up on Benzedrine
is that your ability
to make rational decisions
and that normal preservation
instinct which kicks in
as a result of fear
might be absent
if you're absolutely
pumped on speed.
♪♪
- Even with their new Shermans,
hopped-up British soldiers
face an array
of lethal German anti-tank guns.
- What the Germans have
is the infamous 88-millimeter,
which is a dual-purpose
antiaircraft gun.
This is something that can hurl
a shell 24,000 feet,
vertically, into the air
and can also be used
as an anti-tank gun
on a horizontal position,
straight at something,
and this is firing
at 2,900 feet per second.
♪♪
- If their judgment was impaired
by high doses of Benzedrine,
what kind of fate awaited them?
Jim's visiting a military
explosives range
for a demonstration.
♪♪
Trevor Lawrence runs
the COTEC live-fire range
on Salisbury Plain,
where they test
all new ordinance
for the British military.
- Trevor Lawrence had been
there, seen that, done it.
I mean, you know, this is a guy
who's been clearing mines,
clearing IEDs, you know,
explosives, in Northern Ireland
during the, kind of,
height of the Troubles
but he also served in,
you know, Bosnia
during the civil war there;
and in Iraq,
so, you know, he knew a thing
or two about explosives.
So, Trevor, what we're
trying to replicate
is the first Sherman tanks.
They're arriving.
They're in action
at the Battle of Alamein
in Egypt in October 1942
and they're under attack
from German anti-tank guns,
either the 75-millimeter Pak 40,
or the 88-millimeter.
And what we want to do
is replicate
what it would be like being
in that tank,
if you were hit by one
of those shells.
- O-kay.
♪♪
I've arranged a metal framework.
- Yep.
- What we're gonna attach to that
is a sheet of armored steel
and that's the sort of steel
that you would've seen
on a Sherman tank.
Now, rather than actually firing
a hardened steel projectile
into it, what I'm going to do is
I'm going to attach an explosive
charge to the plate here.
- So, for all purposes, Trevor,
that is an 88-millimeter
anti-tank round?
- Absolutely.
As the shock wave runs
through the explosive,
where it hits the plate,
it will produce
the same sort of force
that you'd get from a kinetic
energy round striking the plate.
- Wow. Okay. And can we put
anything behind here,
so you can see, actually,
the effect of falling shrapnel?
♪♪
- Well, here comes the tank crew.
- Here they are,
and little do they know
the fate that awaits them.
We can put some dummies
close to it.
- These are our tank crew.
- Close in the tank crew,
but also to get a better idea
of what fragmentation we've got,
what we tend to use
is a sheet of aluminum
and the fragmentation
that's falling
will go through,
punch holes in that,
and it'll give us a good idea
of just how much
has been produced.
- Wow, that sounds amazing.
- At Alamein,
imperceptible desert ridges
often concealed German 88s.
If Benzedrine led British
tank crews to abandon caution
and charge recklessly
into hidden enemy guns,
the results would've
been devastating.
- Go ahead.
- Stand by.
- Three, two, one.
Firing.
- Whoa!
♪♪
♪♪
♪♪
Oh, my goodness, me.
Look at that!
- It does not look very well
for our driver, does it?
- No, it doesn't. Ouch.
♪♪
So, really interesting, when we
got there, we had a look at it.
You could see that it was just
this little kind of marble,
small, little kind of circle
where it had actually punched
all the way through,
but then, you look
on the reverse side.
Oh, my goodness, me.
So a huge bit of metal
has just disintegrated
and it's just shattered.
- There we go.
- Oh, my god!
- Right in the center
of the chest.
- And look at all these.
- But also, look at, see all
this other fragmentation.
- On the head.
- 'Cause, although it's
come off in one big scab,
it's also sent all these
other, smaller fragments out.
- Both of them had been
absolutely covered
with little splinter marks
all over,
each one of which could've
been entirely lethal.
That's just the...
- That's just the blast has just
smashed his chest in.
- Shrapnel melted
onto the aluminum,
and you can just imagine
your crew member,
behind these two,
all into me, into the shells.
- Oh, it would be
impossible to survive.
Absolutely impossible.
- I've interviewed so many
people that have been
in this situation,
that have been in tanks,
have served in tanks.
♪♪
What I never fully appreciated
was the pressure blast
from the force of a shell
like that hitting another
and penetrating and transferring
that huge force
into the confined space
of a tank.
If you're in an environment
like a tank,
that shrapnel that's falling
would've just pinged
all around here
and you think
about all that ordinance
we've just been talking about.
- Yeah.
You know, it's only got one
of those that's gotta penetrate
one of the propellant charges
on one of those shells
and it's you're in big trouble,
- Yeah.
- Aren't you?
- Having taken huge doses
of Benzedrine,
the 24th Armoured Brigade
sets out for battle.
♪♪
With new Sherman tanks
leading the way,
troops exhibit
hyper aggressive behavior
some historians
attribute to the drug.
♪♪
By battle's end,
the brigade suffers
80% casualties
and ceases to exist.
♪♪
- By the end of it,
they're absolutely shattered.
Where's the escape hatch?
Oh, there.
- There, yeah.
- Jesus.
- But you've got seconds
to do it. If you think
- Yeah.
- you may be on fire
and maybe your crew members
are also in agony
and you to save them
or save yourself.
- Yeah.
♪♪
Yeah, you know, it's...
There's protection here,
to a point, but,
I don't really wanna be
in a tank crew.
- No. It is sad.
- Yeah.
♪♪
- So, can you see if someone's...
If the medical officer
of the regiment said,
"Look, here you go.
Here's a Benzedrine pill.
This will keep you going,"
you'd be quite tempted
to take that?
- Yeah. I think, if it works,
I think I'd be well up for it.
♪♪
- On November 8, 1942,
a month after Alamein,
American GIs finally enter
ground combat in North Africa.
They carry with them packets
of Benzedrine.
After the British victory
at Alamein,
US General Dwight Eisenhower
orders some half-million tablets
for American troops.
♪♪
But, just as the Allies
are doubling down on speed,
the Nazis are
reconsidering its use.
Ironically, Hitler's
Reich health leader
has concerns
about the addictive nature
and dangerous side
effects of amphetamine
and, although German soldiers
will continue to use it
sporadically,
the drug is severely restricted,
especially for civilian use.
Still, Hitler's infatuation
with science and technology
remains strong.
By late '44,
with his navy in tatters,
the Fuehrer looks
to a bizarre wonder weapon,
that, with the help
of amphetamines,
might turn the tide.
♪♪
In the end,
Jim returns to Germany,
to visit the site of one of the
first Nazi concentration camps.
♪♪
- In November 1944,
some 40,000 men
are stuck in this camp.
- What's it designed for?
- 10,000?
- Okay, so four times more
than there should've been.
- Four times more.
♪♪
Germany had lost the war
- Of course.
- already and the sphere
of influence
of the German navy
was reduced to the Baltic Sea.
Everything else was controlled
by the British.
So these small submarines
were constructed,
mainly for espionage.
- In addition to espionage,
Hitler's minisubs
were also equipped
with single torpedoes,
designed to sink Allied ships
moving supplies and troops
across the English Channel.
- They were very small.
Only one or two soldiers
could sit in it
and they have to sit there
for 48 hours,
without sleeping, without
getting up, without anything,
so they needed a drug to keep
them awake for that time.
- God! It's just unimaginable,
isn't it?
So you need this drug to keep
you going and to keep,
but also presumably to keep
your spirits up as well.
- Yeah.
They were testing different
drugs and comparing it,
wanting to find out which drug
keeps the people awake
for the longest time
with the smallest side effects.
This is the secret report
on the experiments
and this gives the four
different substances:
A, B, C, D.
The first is cocaine,
in different doses.
Second is cocaine
in chewing gum.
Pervitin in a chewing gum.
- But 100 milligrams, I mean,
that's a huge dose!
- Yeah.
It's a huge dose, indeed.
The men must have been
completely stoned.
100 milligrams is really a lot.
- I mean, can you imagine it?
You know.
You're a young member
of the German navy,
you've been singled out to man
one of these submarines.
You're chewing on gum
that has been laced
with cocaine
and methamphetamines.
I mean, we're talking
crystal meth, here,
and you're chewing away
on this thing in this tiny,
tight little cockpit, and,
you know, you're high on speed.
I mean, it's just, it's insane.
I mean, it is absolutely insane.
- To test the stimulants,
the German navy decides
to force Sachsenhausen
prisoners to take the drugs
and then carry sacks of rocks
around the camp's
infamous shoe track.
- So this is the testing track.
It was.
- This one, here?
- This, here.
It was once
around the roll call area
and it was covered
with different materials.
So here you would have sand,
the next one is concrete,
small gravel.
And the reason for setting it up
was the testing
of artificial leather.
♪♪
Germany did not have leather;
they always imported leather
- Right.
- And, when they started the war,
nobody wanted
to sell them leather,
so they ordered companies
to develop artificial...
- Fake leather.
- Artificial leather, yeah.
- God, it's absolutely
fascinating.
I had no idea.
- And it's quite hard
to walk on here, isn't it?
- It is, yeah.
- If you have to march,
it's not so easy.
Sachsenhausen was designed
by an architect
and the architect wanted
to give a message
with the architecture
of the camp.
With the one tower
as the highest point,
every morning, the prisoners had
to stand on the roll call area,
being counted, and, up here,
there was a huge machine gun.
For the prisoners down there,
looking into the eye
of this machine gun up here,
the message was,
"You're completely in our hands.
You're completely helpless
and we can do whatever we want."
- I mean, it's doing exactly
what it's designed to do.
I mean, you can feel it,
even just standing up here.
- Yeah.
♪♪
- What a grim place.
♪♪
- After the minisubs fail
and his army falters,
Hitler, who may himself
have been addicted to drugs
by war's end,
takes his own life.
Luftwaffe commander and heroin
addict Hermann Goering
does the same.
But Benzedrine and Pervitin
live on.
- During the Second World War,
one of the things
that it certainly does do
is it familiarizes hundreds
of thousands of individuals
with a drug that perhaps they
otherwise wouldn't have used.
So it sort of normalizes
the use of that drug
and it sort of reinforces
its position as a useful tool.
♪♪
- By the 1950s,
amphetamines are being
marketed as a diet pill
and mood enhancer.
Bennie inhalers are offered
on airplane menus.
Celebrities,
ranging from Marilyn Monroe
to Jack Kerouac, are avid users.
Soon, millions
are abusing speed,
in what is now considered
America's first
prescription-drug epidemic.
One likely user is a young
combat vet from Massachusetts,
named John F. Kennedy.
- Picking this country of ours up
and sending it into the '60s.
- When I first embarked
on this investigation,
I was a bit scandalized
that so much speed was taken
during the Second World War
and how outrageous that was.
- World War II military leaders
saw amphetamines
as simply another
technological tool,
like rockets and radar,
tools that changed
the world forever.
- For us, in the 21st century,
drugs are bad,
amphetamines are bad.
Speed is a dodgy word.
You've got to see this
in the light of the 1930s
and the 1940s.
World War II takes place
over six years.
A lot is being expected
of the young men
of the major combatant nations,
and, is it any wonder,
in this life-and-death struggle
for the future of the world,
that people are going
to be looking at drugs
that can keep people awake,
that can keep morale improved?
It's absolutely
no wonder at all.
This program was made
possible in part by
the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting
and by contributions
to your PBS station
from viewers like you.
Thank you.
that German soldiers used
a form of methamphetamine
called Pervitin
in the Second World War.
- But have tales
of Nazis on speed...
obscured the other side
of the story?
- Wow!
That's amazing, isn't it?
- The massive use of stimulants
by British and American troops.
Did total war unleash
the world's first
pharmacological arms race?
♪♪
And, in the face
of industrial slaughter,
what role did drugs play
in combat?
♪♪
Now, one historian...
- My goodness, look.
There's the swastika.
- is on a quest to dig deeper...
- You got the machine guns there.
You got the tools.
So you just do this,
you just go...?
- Precisely.
- A cannon shell is just
gonna rip through.
- This soldier here
that can hardly walk.
- Yes.
- and learn the truth
behind World War speed.
- Stand by.
- Eight, seven, six...
- The amount of dust
was incredible!
- five, four...
- Oh, my goodness, me.
Look at that!
- three, two,
- Set, shoot. Fire One.
- One.
- Oh, my god!
♪♪
This program was made
possible in part by
the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting
and by contributions
to your PBS station
from viewers like you.
Thank you.
- December 1942.
A German bomber crew struggles
to keep their damaged
plane aloft.
♪♪
- Seven decades
after it went down,
this German
Heinkel He 115 bomber
is pulled
from a Norwegian fjord.
It's an amazing discovery.
The only aircraft
of its kind ever recovered,
from a time when England stood
alone against fascism in Europe.
The fjord's oxygen-poor water
has left the plane
remarkably intact
and the recovery team will soon
discover artifacts inside
in near-pristine condition,
including brandy,
caffeine-infused chocolate,
and speed.
- We're going to see
the remains of a Heinkel 115,
which is a float plane,
a sea plane,
that was used
by the German Navy.
And, not only did they pull up
this Heinkel 115,
they also found lots
of things on it,
including, it turns out,
a packet a Pervitin.
♪♪
For me, there's a massive
difference between just being
an armchair historian
and actually getting out
on the ground,
rolling up your sleeves,
and doing some proper
primary research.
♪♪
You can't really
understand a subject
unless you actually seen
what you're looking at for real,
you know, you've touched
those pieces of paper,
looked at the sites,
talked to other people
who really know
what they're talking about.
And it is amazing how
it actually then prompts you
to ask all sorts
of other questions
that you might not have thought
about in the first place.
- James Holland has written
nearly 30 books
about the Second World War.
He's an expert
on the blitzkrieg of 1940
and the Battle of Britain,
which will prove
pivotal chapters
in his quest to understand
how amphetamine use evolved
during the conflict.
- Could German
amphetamine packets
have survived the crash
and decades underwater?
If so, they may provide
unique insight
into the role speed played
during German bombing
missions over England.
- You know, I've seen
a few aircraft wrecks
that have been pulled
out of the water,
but this Heinkel 115 that's been
pulled up out of the fjord
was in incredible condition,
so good that you could still see
the paintbrush marks
on the tailplane.
So I'm looking at the bomb bay,
here, aren't I?
- Yeah. Yeah.
- Okay, but this was carrying
bombs when it was found?
- Yeah. Yeah.
- So where would they be?
- They was in the center section.
- And this is a camouflage
for going
over the dark North Sea.
- You know, you wouldn't
want it light, would you?
You look at that sea from above,
you can see how dark it is
all the time.
♪♪
- For German bomber crews,
night missions from Norway
involved a 12-hour round-trip
flight over the North Sea.
Raving spitfires and flak
over England, then,
surviving the long trip home.
♪♪
German victories make
the Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht
seem invincible.
Rumors circulate
of German soldiers and airmen
fueled by a super-drug
that makes them fearless,
energized, and able to press on
without need for rest
or recuperation.
Even Nazi dive-bombers
stir theories
about so-called Stuka-Tablets,
pills that enable fliers
to withstand G-force
plunges to target
no human being
could possibly survive.
♪♪
- This is the
Heinkel 115 elevator.
It was cut in two
when the plane crashed, so.
- Right.
- In the wing,
there was a dinghy.
- Yes.
- And, within the dinghy,
there was a rescue package.
- It's possible to look at it?
- Yes.
- Fantastic.
So, when I walked in and saw
the table full of objects
from this escape kit,
plus a few other little bits
and pieces they found,
I, you know,
I was absolutely staggered.
And, obviously, we've got
a brace of machine guns here.
These are 17s?
- MG 17s, yeah.
- You got the machine guns there;
you got the tools.
You got all this,
but this is the bit
that's really catching my eye.
- Matches.
- Yeah.
- Cigarettes?
- Yeah, it is.
- This is obviously chocolate.
This has a high caffeine
content, doesn't it?
- Yes.
- And this is the brandy.
- Yes, that's the brandy.
- I can't believe
you haven't tried it.
Okay, but there's one item here
that, to me, is missing.
- Yes, I guess we are
missing the Pervitin.
- Yes, where's that?
- Well, when it came up
and we tried to clean it,
it started to dissolve
and, when we looked back
into the box, it was...
There's nothing left, so,
it just vanished.
Well, I'm sorry, we have
only a photograph of it.
- The whole reason
for coming here
is because Pervitin
has been found on this plane
when it was brought up
from the fjord.
It was a little disappointing.
- Despite Jim's disappointment,
the Pervitin's location
on the plane
may be more important
than seeing the package itself.
- So this was in the...
This was in the wing?
What was really interesting
is it wasn't sort of
in the cockpit equivalent of the
glove compartment, you know.
It wasn't found right by
the pilot's seat
or something, you know.
It was actually found
in a pre-prepared
emergency escape pack.
That made me kind of think
that it wasn't used
in a kind of sort of casual way,
but in a quite pragmatic way.
- If the Pervitin pack
was kept out of reach,
it suggests the drug
wasn't meant
to keep men awake during flight,
but to keep them alive,
should their plane go down.
- So you've got the brandy,
to keep the cold away.
You've got some cigarettes
to keep you going;
chocolate with caffeine in it;
and, of course,
you've got the Pervitin.
We all know what that does.
That keeps you going
for another 12 hours or so,
while you're bobbing around
on the North Sea.
They were flying in winter,
so it's going to be bitterly,
bitterly cold.
The most important thing is
that they don't fall asleep
and die of hypothermia.
So what's gonna keep you awake?
Well, Pervitin's gonna do that.
- Jim's Norway stop has been
illuminating and frustrating,
all at the same time.
He decides to head south,
to a museum in Germany,
where you can still see and hold
Pervitin samples
from World War II.
- And I met
with Dr. Peter Steinkamp,
who's an expert in this.
You know, I just really wanted
to pick his brains
about what this stuff was,
how it came to be,
and to look at Pervitin packets
for the first time.
Wow.
That's amazing, isn't it?
- This was methamphetamine
created in the 1930s
by a German pharmacologist.
He called it Pervitin.
This is a version for injection
and this is the version
for piercing.
- And what's this say, here?
- "Inject slowly, not too fast."
Oh, goodness, me.
Imagine buying,
over the counter,
vials of stuff
to inject yourself,
you know, with a Class A drug.
I mean, it's just
absolutely extraordinary
and just so casual.
If I took one of those, how long
would I be completely wired for?
- Well, about two nights.
- So this came out in Germany,
what, in the late 1930s?
- Yes. In 1938, it was first
available in drugstores.
- So I could just walk in
and I could go,
"I'll have a packet
of 12 Pervitin, please"?
- Yeah, really.
- Wow!
That's amazing, isn't it?
♪♪
- By 1938, Pervitin manufacturer
Temmler Pharmaceutical of Berlin
had launched a PR campaign
modeled on Coca-Cola's
global marketing strategy.
♪♪
And, despite Hitler's
vehement anti-drug rhetoric,
many Nazis,
including the Fuehrer himself,
were heavy drug users.
Methamphetamines seemed
geared to the modern,
tech-embracing Reich
that was envisioned.
- The Nazi state is all about,
"If you work hard, if you
strive for a better Germany,
then you'll get
a better Germany.
Come on, get your backbone
into it and let's get working.
Let's make Nazi Germany,
the Third Reich,
let's make it
a thousand-year Reich.
Let's make it brilliant!"
You know, and they embraced
science and technology,
and pharmacology
is all tied in with that.
That's why it appeals.
So it's not much of a step,
is it,
from day-to-day domestic use
to being used
in the armed services?
- Yes, yes, you're right.
The officers said
to the medical officer,
"Please, now, give Pervitin
to our soldiers."
♪♪
- By May 1940,
German troops under the
influence of Pervitin
have already conquered Poland.
Now, Hitler's Army masses
for another attack,
against France.
♪♪
The British and French
armies facing them
outnumber the Germans in men,
artillery, and even tanks,
but the German plan
is audacious:
built on the use
of combined arms;
using air power
as moving artillery;
and what some will call
a new method of warfare,
which really wasn't new at all.
- The German way of war,
what has become known
as blitzkrieg,
has always been
traditionally depicted
as something kind of new.
It isn't.
It's an extension
of the way of war
that Germans have always
been practicing
and, before Germany
became Germany in 1871,
the Prussians before them.
And it's because they're stuck
in the middle of Europe.
They don't have those resources
of bauxite and copper
and iron ore
and, more latterly, oil,
and food, actually,
that you need to protract
a long, attritional war.
So what do you do?
Well, you get round that
by fighting your wars
with overwhelming force
at the point of impact,
where you first attack,
knocking your enemy off-balance,
surrounding them
and annihilating them,
and you do that
incredibly quickly.
- At this point in the war,
the German army is
outgunned and outnumbered.
To win, they'll have to move
swiftly, with no time for rest.
And, like the Luftwaffe,
the army also has
a secret weapon to help defeat
the military commanders'
oldest enemy:
sleep.
♪♪
- I mean, how much Pervitin
was used in 1940?
- During the war
against France in 1940,
there was a delivering
of 35 million pills
- Ha!
- Of Pervitin to the Wehrmacht.
- Wow. So, literally,
just in sort of 10, 12 weeks,
they're issuing 35 million
tablets of Pervitin?
- Yeah, yes.
- You know, all-in, there's only
about 3 million troops involved
in the whole thing.
- In the end,
the German army pulls off
what seemed impossible,
even to Hitler.
Wehrmacht tanks
and foot soldiers managed
to fight and march
for 10 days straight...
♪♪
Trapping the entire British army
on the beaches of Dunkirk.
♪♪
German troops move
an average of 22 miles a day,
under fire.
It's considered one
of the greatest feats
in military history.
- So, obviously,
Pervitin keeps you awake,
but what else does it do to you?
- When you're taking it
and you have to do a duty...
♪♪
You are focused on it.
There was no fear
and you don't think about
anything else in that moment.
- What other side effects
are there?
- I talked to some veterans
who used Pervitin
and they said,
after doing the duty,
they sometimes got frightened
- Oh.
- Because "We were in fear
that we could never,
ever, sleep again
and, when we could not sleep
anymore, we must die."
♪♪
- However the drug affects
individual soldiers,
the larger outcome is clear:
German troops,
fueled by methamphetamine,
crushed the combined arms
of Western Europe
in little over a week.
Nazi tactics and technology
seem unstoppable.
But did the Wehrmacht
truly need a stimulant
to achieve victory in 1940?
Was marching 22 miles
in a single day
an amazing pace
or has the blitzkrieg tale,
like the word itself,
been warped into legend
over time?
♪♪
Today, Jim's gathered a group
of fellow history fanatics
to put this question
to the test.
- The idea is that, rather...
- They start by comparing British
and German infantry gear,
to see if one was better
than the other.
- Much more. Just asking.
- Taff Gillingham has served
as a military consultant
for feature films and TV series.
- You then don't need to take
your eye off the target
until you've knocked him over.
- He's an expert on
Second World War paraphernalia.
- Well, Taff, you know,
we've got this all laid out.
We've got British here,
German here.
Presumably, this is
an ammunition pouch?
- That's right.
That's the ammunition pouch.
You've got three clips
in each of those pouches.
- I mean, they do love leather,
don't they, the Germans?
I mean, every bit of it is.
It's just leather,
leather, leather.
- The British had a simpler idea,
which was to carry
a cotton bandolier,
and then you just pull
the clips out,
ready to push into the rifle.
- Hm.
♪♪
- The British kitty
is actually pretty quiet
because it's all cotton,
it's canvas.
It doesn't make much noise
as you move around.
Whereas, the veterans
always had this story
that you could hear
the German Army coming
because they sounded
like a loose cutlery drawer
with all this stuff clinking
and clanking away
as the German... Exactly.
The gas mask tin
bouncing around.
♪♪
- I'll take this back.
- Next, they'll set out to see
just how hard it would've been
to cover 22 miles
while carrying a 60-pound
combat load,
with only coffee or tea
to keep you going.
That's quite heavy.
♪♪
- I can't believe that
they'd have walked a long way
with a kit like that.
- I mean, this is the reason
for doing this.
It's only when you actually
start using this practically
that you can understand how
people would operate with it
back in the day.
So the real point of this
entire experiment is,
after walking 20 miles
around here with all this kit,
if you've got a drug
that can keep you going,
can we understand why
they're using this in 1940?
- Okay. Let's do it.
- Let's do it.
♪♪
- My feet are... Oof.
♪♪
- How's that?
- That looks good.
- Feels better. Oh, post.
♪♪
Ooh!
That's my feet.
Now they hurt.
♪♪
♪♪
Ah!
We'll maybe leave that bit out.
- Two hours and seven miles in,
the group breaks for tea.
- It's heating up
pretty quick, isn't it?
- For many Allied soldiers,
caffeine was
the stimulant of choice.
Coffee was so critical
to American GI Joes
that, today, cup of Joe
is synonymous with the drink.
- All right, cheers.
- I've got my foot out.
- Peel your heel off.
Where is it?
- Just there.
- Wiggle your foot.
How much am I getting paid
for this is all I wanna know.
- So, because we're able
to take caffeine,
we're on these lovely,
delicious-looking chocolate,
caffeine-enhanced chocolate.
So, James, this should send us
around the next bit of the march
a bit quicker then, eh?
- Should do.
- Come on, let's go.
- Yeah.
♪♪
- They may not be in combat...
Hello, Woofit.
- but they are carrying
the same 60-pound load
that German and British soldiers
would've humped, back in 1940,
and it's proving no easy task.
- Where's the shortcut, then?
♪♪
- If it's not 100 yards,
I'm gonna collapse
in a pile, there.
Oh!
Oh. Oh, Ow.
My feet are broken.
♪♪
My ankles are broke.
So, I reckon that 20 miles is
achievable, but, day after day,
that's a very hard thing to ask
for a platoon of soldiers.
- Despite bruised ankles,
they've logged 14 miles
in just under 4 hours.
At this pace,
they'd have easily hit
the 22-mile mark
of the Wehrmacht.
- You know,
they're all trained up
for doing this kinda stuff,
so you have to think that
walking 22 miles a day,
over consecutive days,
for those guys,
really shouldn't have been
a massive problem without drugs.
I am not convinced that
the Germans needed it, at all.
♪♪
- Whether the Wehrmacht needed
Pervitin or not,
the Nazi victory in France
is a stunning one.
♪♪
By June 1940,
France has been brought
to its knees.
♪♪
The British army lies in tatters
and, soon,
London itself is ablaze.
♪♪
The English are desperate
to learn the source
of Germany's success...
♪♪
And, when a German plane goes
down in the south of England,
they find the answer.
Inside, they discover a packet
of an unknown substance
that holds the key
to the Nazis' boundless energy.
Lab analysis will soon
reveal the substance
is methamphetamine,
Germany's super-drug.
To find out more about the
British side of the story,
Jim's meeting pharmacology
historian Dr. James Pugh.
- So, what have you got here?
- So I brought some files along
which I thought you might be
interested in seeing.
- Mm-hmm.
- The first is a letter
to Winston Churchill,
in fact.
- Oh, really?
- And it's actually
from his physician,
Sir Charles Wilson,
letting Churchill know
that the British
have discovered that Germany
is making use of amphetamines
in a military context.
- Mm!
- And suggesting to him that,
perhaps, this is something
the British need to consider.
- I mean, this is a really
interesting line:
"In short, it was concluded
that the drug would be useful
to the majority of men
if it is desired
to keep them strenuously
and dangerously active
for 24 hours at a stretch."
- Germany has occupied France,
by this stage,
- Mm.
- So anything that the British
feel they can do
to gain an advantage
or to level
the playing field again
is something that
they need to consider
and I guess you could
characterize this
as maybe the beginning
of a chemical arms race,
I suppose.
One of the other ways
that the drug was used
is in its inhaler form.
- Gosh, look at that.
God, it's like a Vicks inhaler.
So you just do this,
you just go...?
- Yeah, I probably wouldn't do
that, at this point, but.
No, but I mean,
that's the process?
- Yeah.
- The Allied version of Pervitin
was called Benzedrine
and, like German speed,
it was already used by civilians
before the war began.
Both drugs make users
intensely alert,
flooding them
with a sense of euphoria.
With its added
methyl group molecule,
Pervitin races across
the blood-brain barrier
a bit faster than Benzedrine.
Otherwise, the two drugs
have virtually the same impact.
♪♪
During the battle of Britain,
exhausted Spitfire pilots
were getting Benzedrine,
unofficially,
from local pharmacies,
but Churchill seems to push
things to another level.
- So one of the very
interesting things is
that this is being sent
to Churchill
and what's important about that
is he's a man of science.
He's very interested
in novel developments
and new technologies and stuff
and so drugs kind of fit
that bill for him.
- Soon, the Royal Air Force
begins testing Benzedrine
under combat conditions.
They turn to a 30-year-old
flight surgeon,
named Roland Winfield,
to administer the drug
to British air crew
and record the reactions.
♪♪
By late 1941,
Allied bombers are hitting back.
♪♪
Long night missions
over Nazi Germany,
with a fatality rate
of more than 45%,
are a terrifying ordeal.
♪♪
- You know, that's one of those
things where, obviously,
so if that can keep you awake
and keep you alive,
then, you know, clearly,
that's a good thing.
- I suppose, on the other
side of it, too...
- Later, Jim and James
head out to explore
a British Lancaster bomber,
the same type of aircraft
in which Roland Winfield
conducted
the only known combat tests
of amphetamines during the war.
♪♪
- These bomb bays are pretty
impressive, aren't they?
- My goodness.
That's gigantic.
- They can take 6.5 tons.
- 6.5 tons?!
- Yeah.
And they can be adapted
to take a Grand Slam,
which is 10 tons.
- 10 tons.
- I mean, it is incredible,
the lift of this.
- Just absolutely overwhelmed
by the size of it.
This is gonna be tight,
I reckon, for you, James.
- I mean, look at it.
It's a tin can, isn't it?
- So there's no armor here
or anything like this.
- No. No.
- This is just thin.
- And, you know,
a cannon shell or a bullet's
just gonna rip through.
- Rip straight through.
- On that Lancaster,
you're just thinking,
"This is a piece of tin.
I'm gonna be shot at.
I'm gonna be scared.
If I need to escape quickly,"
you know,
it's just next to impossible.
There are very few concessions
to human comfort.
- Yeah, yeah.
- For me, this is designed
for one thing,
and one thing only, and that's
dropping large amounts of bombs.
Goodness, me, yeah.
Physically exhausting
and terrifying.
In the air war over Europe,
aviation technology
pushes men beyond the limits
of human endurance.
♪♪
- You know, I can understand
why you would take
a Benzedrine pill, you know?
- I think I can as well.
Just going past
the navigator's desk, here.
- Again, I mean,
look how cramped it is.
- It is. And, as you emerge
into the cockpit,
there's a little bit
more space here, I suppose,
until you try
and get in the seat.
Case... Oh, my goodness!
This is snug.
- Yeah, it really is, isn't it?
- Yeah, this is snug.
- So tell me about Winfield's
tests that he was doing.
- Yeah, he actually flies
with the crews.
He administers the drugs
in flight, you know;
he also administers placebos.
And then, yeah, he reports back
on the experiences
the crews have.
♪♪
- In all,
Winfield observed troops
who were given amphetamines
on 20 RAF missions.
♪♪
- I mean, just imagine
this, James.
You know, you're sitting here,
you're piloting this plane.
- We're over the lake now.
- You know, this is
unpressurized, this cabin.
- Yeah.
- You know, -45°, freezing cold.
♪♪
You've gotta watch out
for night fighters
and you've got lots
of flak coming up.
- Yeah, yeah.
- The whole thing is terrifying.
- So, after crews have dropped
their bombs,
they will experience what's
known as the post-adrenal crash.
So their bodies have been
flooded with adrenaline
for an extended period of time.
That adrenaline starts to leave
the body at that point
and they become
extremely fatigued.
This is one of the things
that Winfield concludes
and he recommends
in his reports,
is, if you take the drug
about an hour and a half
before you're going
to drop your bombs,
the drug will start
to sort of act
upon your consciousness
at that point.
♪♪
- Of all Winfield's findings,
perhaps the most influential
are his reports describing
how air crews high on speed
show increased aggression
under fire.
- One of the things
that he notes in his report
is an example of an attack,
which the air crews
actually dive down
to a very, very low height
and attack a flak
- Really, they start
shooting it up?
- Yeah, yeah.
Of course, Winfield is also
simultaneously concerned
by some of this, too.
Ultimately, when the RAF come
to think about this drug,
they're actually concerned
about those effects...
- Are you all right?
You get any of the baddies?
- where the crews will start
to lean on the drugs,
as opposed to using them
as a tool to help
manage their wakefulness.
♪♪
- But if the RAF sees these side
effects as a potential problem,
the British army sees them
as a benefit.
♪♪
Even more than keeping
troops awake,
British ground commanders
want a pill
that can make the men fearless.
♪♪
By 1942,
the Allies are losing
massive numbers of soldiers
to a byproduct
of industrial warfare:
shell shock,
known today as
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Over the course of the conflict,
as many as one in three
frontline soldiers
will be incapacitated by it.
- Oh, God, listen!
- Benzedrine, it is hoped,
might offer a solution.
For this hidden side
of the story,
Jim's traveling
to a small museum
connected to a hospital
that first treated thousands
of shell shock victims
during the previous World War.
♪♪
- Well, I suppose,
when we think of, well,
the concept of war neurosis,
shell shock,
it really goes back to the first
World War, doesn't it?
And is that the first time that
it starts to become recognized?
- I think the stress of combat
has always been recognized,
certainly from the
Crimean War onwards,
but what happens
in the first World War,
is that industry
has intensified killing power,
so large numbers
of soldiers, 60%,
are killed by shrapnel,
by artillery, by mortars.
♪♪
After the Battle of the Somme,
when there's been something
like 420,000 casualties,
a significant number of those,
maybe 50,000 to 60,000,
would be shell shock.
So it's not only
a medical problem,
it's also a military problem
because this is a war
of attrition
and, if you're losing
large numbers of men
to battle exhaustion,
to psychiatric breakdown,
and you're not able
to treat them,
then it's eroding
your fighting strength.
- So, in the treatment
of combat fatigue,
when do they start
looking at drugs?
When do they start looking
at pharmacology and Benzedrine?
- Well, Benzedrine has been
introduced to the UK in 1935,
but as the war
gets closer and closer,
senior doctors
and commanders recognize
that this could have
a major beneficial,
you know, use,
in all three services,
in keeping soldiers
awake, alert,
and boosting their morale
in times of stress,
so I think the British army used
Benzedrine to keep people awake,
but also to lift spirits.
- So Dr. Jones was
very interesting
about the use of Benzedrine,
not just as a wakey-wakey pill,
which is what is was
sometimes referred to,
but also one that would
improve morale,
that would give
those who took it
a sense of kind of well-being
and greater physical courage.
- Jim's Glenside visit
has given him critical insight.
By using the drug as a tool
to heighten aggression
and lift morale,
Britain is raising the stakes
in the pharmacological fight
against the Nazis,
who still primarily
see amphetamine
as a way to offset fatigue.
By 1942,
British troops in North Africa
are in desperate need
of a morale boost.
They've retreated
across 600 miles of desert,
chased by Germany's
renowned Africa Corps,
and are dug in around
a tiny trading post:
El Alamein.
But in October,
a feisty new commander,
who is likely familiar
with the RAF amphetamine
tests, arrives:
Bernard Montgomery.
He is ready
to go on the offensive.
- When Montgomery took over,
morale in British 8th Army
was at rock-bottom
and it was one of the things
he realized
that he had to turn around,
by the way he was talking.
- I want to impress on everyone
that the bad times are over.
- And, you know,
"There'll be no more retreats,"
you know,
"You're really well-equipped.
We're gonna smash the Germans
and the Italian forces,"
and trying to give them
a greater sense of self-belief.
- We can't stay here alive.
They'll never stay here dead.
- But if there's a pill
that could do part
of that job for you,
then it's gotta be worth taking.
♪♪
- It's always been
a bit of a mystery
whether Monty, himself, brought
Benzedrine to the desert
and whether he truly saw it
as a morale builder,
but Jim's recently
discovered a document
from Montgomery's
medical officer, QV Wallace,
which proves orders
for Benzedrine
came straight from the top.
- I've never before seen
any direct, written reference
in any official capacity,
to the mass use of Benzedrine,
but Brigadier Wallace's memo
absolutely knocks that
into touch
because there it is,
absolutely spelled out.
The troops that were involved
in the opening stages
of the Battle of Alamein
were given Benzedrine,
not just to keep them going,
not just to keep them awake,
but also to give them resolve,
to give them confidence,
to bolster their morale.
♪♪
- By late 1942,
the Americans still have not put
any boots on the ground
in the West,
but they do provide a new tank,
which will give the British
a technological edge
in battles to come.
♪♪
- The Sherman is incredibly
important when it comes in.
They get 300 of them
straight into Egypt
and they're kinda tested up
and made battle-ready.
At the time, it is the best
tank on the battlefield.
You know, it's got this
incredibly accurate gun.
It's pretty well-armored.
It's very easy to maintain.
This is a very good tank,
which is now entering battle
on the British side.
- Just like long-range bombers,
modern tanks, like the Sherman,
were now pushing men to the
limits of human endurance,
so how welcome would a pill
that could offset
these conditions be,
to those who served?
Jim visits an old friend
who might be able
to help him find out.
♪♪
- Okay, so Jim Clark
is a restorer
of wartime military vehicles
and he's got
a whole host of stuff.
He's got Jeeps; he's got trucks.
But he's also got
a Sherman tank.
♪♪
So Jim, one of the things
I'm trying to find out a bit is,
I mean, obviously you know,
when you're in a tank,
you're gonna get shot at
and that's quite traumatic,
but the other thing
I'm quite interested in
is just what it's like,
sort of existing
and operating
in these tanks 'cause
- Yeah.
- It's a confined space.
You know, man's not really
designed for this.
Ah!
- All right?
- We're in!
- Right.
♪♪
- It's not an environment
that is comfortable,
in any shape or form.
♪♪
The smell of the fumes
was immense.
Very quickly, you start
to kind of catch your throat.
Oh, dear, I gotta say,
the amount of dust
is incredible!
- The fan that cools the engine
- Yeah.
Draws the air in through
the crew compartment.
It gets drawn over you,
- so you get covered in it.
♪♪
- If I'm feeling
this amount of grit
going into my eyes
and up my nose,
just from going down
a short stretch of track
in the middle of winter
in England,
what's it gonna be like
in the desert?
It must've just been
absolutely impossible.
- "Tank men," wrote one veteran,
"fought their war
in an enclosed,
suffocating, noisy metal box,
fearful of being struck
and burned alive by an enemy
they could not see."
♪♪
- You really do get a feel
of how physically draining
it must be to just operate
one of these things.
♪♪
So, you can see, can't you,
the stress and strain
- Yeah.
- of doing that?
You know, quite apart
from the fact that you're,
almost on a daily basis,
been in battle.
- Yeah.
The toll of fightin'
all day long
and then no proper sleep,
no rest.
Um...
Even if you're sleeping
at night,
there's probably
shelling goin' on,
so you probably didn't have
much decent rest.
And this is just stuffed full
of highly explosive material.
- Yeah.
In the turret basket, I think
there's about 15 or rounds.
There's probably 20 or 30
on each side.
- Yeah, it's a good number.
- Yeah, a good number, yeah.
Then, there was .50-cal
rounds in the base.
Then, you got your
160 gallons of fuel.
Like a mobile bomb, basically.
♪♪
- At El Alamein,
the British
24th Armoured Tank Brigade
is given the job of punching
through German defenses.
As the Wallace memo makes clear,
on the eve of the attack,
each man is given a huge dose
of Benzedrine:
20 milligrams per day,
twice he amount recommended
to RAF pilots.
- I know that the
24th Armoured Brigade
were issued with Benzedrine
because he wanted them
to keep going.
You know, what he said was
the first bit of the battle
was gonna be the dogfight.
It was gonna be the
grinding, attritional battle,
and, for that grinding,
attritional battle,
he wanted his men to keep going.
- Unlike modern pills,
Benzedrine tablets in '42
have no slow-release coating.
The full dose
will hit all at once.
For some soldiers,
alertness and euphoria
will give way
to a false sense of power.
♪♪
In the coming days,
the men of the 24th will prove
exceedingly aggressive,
fatally so.
Because, for crewmen
of either side,
the use of amphetamine will do
more than make them more alert.
It may suppress a natural
reaction in combat:
fear.
- Fear is about
self-preservation.
You're scared because
you don't want to die.
If you take that away
and you sort of don't care
quite so much,
you're not quite so careful.
The problem of being
charged up on Benzedrine
is that your ability
to make rational decisions
and that normal preservation
instinct which kicks in
as a result of fear
might be absent
if you're absolutely
pumped on speed.
♪♪
- Even with their new Shermans,
hopped-up British soldiers
face an array
of lethal German anti-tank guns.
- What the Germans have
is the infamous 88-millimeter,
which is a dual-purpose
antiaircraft gun.
This is something that can hurl
a shell 24,000 feet,
vertically, into the air
and can also be used
as an anti-tank gun
on a horizontal position,
straight at something,
and this is firing
at 2,900 feet per second.
♪♪
- If their judgment was impaired
by high doses of Benzedrine,
what kind of fate awaited them?
Jim's visiting a military
explosives range
for a demonstration.
♪♪
Trevor Lawrence runs
the COTEC live-fire range
on Salisbury Plain,
where they test
all new ordinance
for the British military.
- Trevor Lawrence had been
there, seen that, done it.
I mean, you know, this is a guy
who's been clearing mines,
clearing IEDs, you know,
explosives, in Northern Ireland
during the, kind of,
height of the Troubles
but he also served in,
you know, Bosnia
during the civil war there;
and in Iraq,
so, you know, he knew a thing
or two about explosives.
So, Trevor, what we're
trying to replicate
is the first Sherman tanks.
They're arriving.
They're in action
at the Battle of Alamein
in Egypt in October 1942
and they're under attack
from German anti-tank guns,
either the 75-millimeter Pak 40,
or the 88-millimeter.
And what we want to do
is replicate
what it would be like being
in that tank,
if you were hit by one
of those shells.
- O-kay.
♪♪
I've arranged a metal framework.
- Yep.
- What we're gonna attach to that
is a sheet of armored steel
and that's the sort of steel
that you would've seen
on a Sherman tank.
Now, rather than actually firing
a hardened steel projectile
into it, what I'm going to do is
I'm going to attach an explosive
charge to the plate here.
- So, for all purposes, Trevor,
that is an 88-millimeter
anti-tank round?
- Absolutely.
As the shock wave runs
through the explosive,
where it hits the plate,
it will produce
the same sort of force
that you'd get from a kinetic
energy round striking the plate.
- Wow. Okay. And can we put
anything behind here,
so you can see, actually,
the effect of falling shrapnel?
♪♪
- Well, here comes the tank crew.
- Here they are,
and little do they know
the fate that awaits them.
We can put some dummies
close to it.
- These are our tank crew.
- Close in the tank crew,
but also to get a better idea
of what fragmentation we've got,
what we tend to use
is a sheet of aluminum
and the fragmentation
that's falling
will go through,
punch holes in that,
and it'll give us a good idea
of just how much
has been produced.
- Wow, that sounds amazing.
- At Alamein,
imperceptible desert ridges
often concealed German 88s.
If Benzedrine led British
tank crews to abandon caution
and charge recklessly
into hidden enemy guns,
the results would've
been devastating.
- Go ahead.
- Stand by.
- Three, two, one.
Firing.
- Whoa!
♪♪
♪♪
♪♪
Oh, my goodness, me.
Look at that!
- It does not look very well
for our driver, does it?
- No, it doesn't. Ouch.
♪♪
So, really interesting, when we
got there, we had a look at it.
You could see that it was just
this little kind of marble,
small, little kind of circle
where it had actually punched
all the way through,
but then, you look
on the reverse side.
Oh, my goodness, me.
So a huge bit of metal
has just disintegrated
and it's just shattered.
- There we go.
- Oh, my god!
- Right in the center
of the chest.
- And look at all these.
- But also, look at, see all
this other fragmentation.
- On the head.
- 'Cause, although it's
come off in one big scab,
it's also sent all these
other, smaller fragments out.
- Both of them had been
absolutely covered
with little splinter marks
all over,
each one of which could've
been entirely lethal.
That's just the...
- That's just the blast has just
smashed his chest in.
- Shrapnel melted
onto the aluminum,
and you can just imagine
your crew member,
behind these two,
all into me, into the shells.
- Oh, it would be
impossible to survive.
Absolutely impossible.
- I've interviewed so many
people that have been
in this situation,
that have been in tanks,
have served in tanks.
♪♪
What I never fully appreciated
was the pressure blast
from the force of a shell
like that hitting another
and penetrating and transferring
that huge force
into the confined space
of a tank.
If you're in an environment
like a tank,
that shrapnel that's falling
would've just pinged
all around here
and you think
about all that ordinance
we've just been talking about.
- Yeah.
You know, it's only got one
of those that's gotta penetrate
one of the propellant charges
on one of those shells
and it's you're in big trouble,
- Yeah.
- Aren't you?
- Having taken huge doses
of Benzedrine,
the 24th Armoured Brigade
sets out for battle.
♪♪
With new Sherman tanks
leading the way,
troops exhibit
hyper aggressive behavior
some historians
attribute to the drug.
♪♪
By battle's end,
the brigade suffers
80% casualties
and ceases to exist.
♪♪
- By the end of it,
they're absolutely shattered.
Where's the escape hatch?
Oh, there.
- There, yeah.
- Jesus.
- But you've got seconds
to do it. If you think
- Yeah.
- you may be on fire
and maybe your crew members
are also in agony
and you to save them
or save yourself.
- Yeah.
♪♪
Yeah, you know, it's...
There's protection here,
to a point, but,
I don't really wanna be
in a tank crew.
- No. It is sad.
- Yeah.
♪♪
- So, can you see if someone's...
If the medical officer
of the regiment said,
"Look, here you go.
Here's a Benzedrine pill.
This will keep you going,"
you'd be quite tempted
to take that?
- Yeah. I think, if it works,
I think I'd be well up for it.
♪♪
- On November 8, 1942,
a month after Alamein,
American GIs finally enter
ground combat in North Africa.
They carry with them packets
of Benzedrine.
After the British victory
at Alamein,
US General Dwight Eisenhower
orders some half-million tablets
for American troops.
♪♪
But, just as the Allies
are doubling down on speed,
the Nazis are
reconsidering its use.
Ironically, Hitler's
Reich health leader
has concerns
about the addictive nature
and dangerous side
effects of amphetamine
and, although German soldiers
will continue to use it
sporadically,
the drug is severely restricted,
especially for civilian use.
Still, Hitler's infatuation
with science and technology
remains strong.
By late '44,
with his navy in tatters,
the Fuehrer looks
to a bizarre wonder weapon,
that, with the help
of amphetamines,
might turn the tide.
♪♪
In the end,
Jim returns to Germany,
to visit the site of one of the
first Nazi concentration camps.
♪♪
- In November 1944,
some 40,000 men
are stuck in this camp.
- What's it designed for?
- 10,000?
- Okay, so four times more
than there should've been.
- Four times more.
♪♪
Germany had lost the war
- Of course.
- already and the sphere
of influence
of the German navy
was reduced to the Baltic Sea.
Everything else was controlled
by the British.
So these small submarines
were constructed,
mainly for espionage.
- In addition to espionage,
Hitler's minisubs
were also equipped
with single torpedoes,
designed to sink Allied ships
moving supplies and troops
across the English Channel.
- They were very small.
Only one or two soldiers
could sit in it
and they have to sit there
for 48 hours,
without sleeping, without
getting up, without anything,
so they needed a drug to keep
them awake for that time.
- God! It's just unimaginable,
isn't it?
So you need this drug to keep
you going and to keep,
but also presumably to keep
your spirits up as well.
- Yeah.
They were testing different
drugs and comparing it,
wanting to find out which drug
keeps the people awake
for the longest time
with the smallest side effects.
This is the secret report
on the experiments
and this gives the four
different substances:
A, B, C, D.
The first is cocaine,
in different doses.
Second is cocaine
in chewing gum.
Pervitin in a chewing gum.
- But 100 milligrams, I mean,
that's a huge dose!
- Yeah.
It's a huge dose, indeed.
The men must have been
completely stoned.
100 milligrams is really a lot.
- I mean, can you imagine it?
You know.
You're a young member
of the German navy,
you've been singled out to man
one of these submarines.
You're chewing on gum
that has been laced
with cocaine
and methamphetamines.
I mean, we're talking
crystal meth, here,
and you're chewing away
on this thing in this tiny,
tight little cockpit, and,
you know, you're high on speed.
I mean, it's just, it's insane.
I mean, it is absolutely insane.
- To test the stimulants,
the German navy decides
to force Sachsenhausen
prisoners to take the drugs
and then carry sacks of rocks
around the camp's
infamous shoe track.
- So this is the testing track.
It was.
- This one, here?
- This, here.
It was once
around the roll call area
and it was covered
with different materials.
So here you would have sand,
the next one is concrete,
small gravel.
And the reason for setting it up
was the testing
of artificial leather.
♪♪
Germany did not have leather;
they always imported leather
- Right.
- And, when they started the war,
nobody wanted
to sell them leather,
so they ordered companies
to develop artificial...
- Fake leather.
- Artificial leather, yeah.
- God, it's absolutely
fascinating.
I had no idea.
- And it's quite hard
to walk on here, isn't it?
- It is, yeah.
- If you have to march,
it's not so easy.
Sachsenhausen was designed
by an architect
and the architect wanted
to give a message
with the architecture
of the camp.
With the one tower
as the highest point,
every morning, the prisoners had
to stand on the roll call area,
being counted, and, up here,
there was a huge machine gun.
For the prisoners down there,
looking into the eye
of this machine gun up here,
the message was,
"You're completely in our hands.
You're completely helpless
and we can do whatever we want."
- I mean, it's doing exactly
what it's designed to do.
I mean, you can feel it,
even just standing up here.
- Yeah.
♪♪
- What a grim place.
♪♪
- After the minisubs fail
and his army falters,
Hitler, who may himself
have been addicted to drugs
by war's end,
takes his own life.
Luftwaffe commander and heroin
addict Hermann Goering
does the same.
But Benzedrine and Pervitin
live on.
- During the Second World War,
one of the things
that it certainly does do
is it familiarizes hundreds
of thousands of individuals
with a drug that perhaps they
otherwise wouldn't have used.
So it sort of normalizes
the use of that drug
and it sort of reinforces
its position as a useful tool.
♪♪
- By the 1950s,
amphetamines are being
marketed as a diet pill
and mood enhancer.
Bennie inhalers are offered
on airplane menus.
Celebrities,
ranging from Marilyn Monroe
to Jack Kerouac, are avid users.
Soon, millions
are abusing speed,
in what is now considered
America's first
prescription-drug epidemic.
One likely user is a young
combat vet from Massachusetts,
named John F. Kennedy.
- Picking this country of ours up
and sending it into the '60s.
- When I first embarked
on this investigation,
I was a bit scandalized
that so much speed was taken
during the Second World War
and how outrageous that was.
- World War II military leaders
saw amphetamines
as simply another
technological tool,
like rockets and radar,
tools that changed
the world forever.
- For us, in the 21st century,
drugs are bad,
amphetamines are bad.
Speed is a dodgy word.
You've got to see this
in the light of the 1930s
and the 1940s.
World War II takes place
over six years.
A lot is being expected
of the young men
of the major combatant nations,
and, is it any wonder,
in this life-and-death struggle
for the future of the world,
that people are going
to be looking at drugs
that can keep people awake,
that can keep morale improved?
It's absolutely
no wonder at all.
This program was made
possible in part by
the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting
and by contributions
to your PBS station
from viewers like you.
Thank you.