"- Hitler invited three young tank generals to his office, and they had a plan, which was the plan to go through the Ardennes Mountains. That was the victorious idea. So it's not the drugs, actually, t..."

"- The following is a conversation with Norman Ohler, author of Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich. A book that investigates what role psychoactive drugs, particularly stimulants such as methamphetamine..."

"Tell me the origin story of meth, methamphetamine, and Pervitin, its brand name drug version, in the context of Nazi Germany in the late 1930s. Let's start there. - I think you're right to ask about t..."

"- It's so funny that the echo 100 years later, Berlin had all these left-wing partiers, young people using drugs, and then Munich with the beer, and then that's where Hitler came out. So is that what ..."

"Nazi military that historians haven't looked at. It's so interesting that you can unlock those perspectives. And that's the underlying really, the foundation of our conversation today and of your work..."

"Maybe this is a good moment to also, since we're talking about historians, to address some of the criticism. So, Richard Evans was also a great historian, has been one of the bigger critics. He said t..."

"Pervitin. How did that come about? Take me to 1930s Nazi Germany. The Munich and the Berlin tension that we all laid out beautifully. How did Pervitin come into the picture? - Well, the Nazis managed ..."

"- Can you just briefly give a sense of, do you think this is genius or insanity on Hitler's part to think that he can take on probably what's perceived to be the most powerful military in the world, w..."

"um... It was over in six weeks. It took six weeks to defeat and occupy most of France. And the initial operation, three days, was, from a military perspective, successful. What else can we say about t..."

"to storm through the Ardennes Mountains and kind of cut off the British and French troops who were still, you know, in the north of Belgium trying to figure out what was going on. Suddenly, the German..."

"- So can you speak to the morphine? What kind of drug is morphine? - Morphine was developed in the 19th century by a German, a young chemist called Sertürner. A German, a young chemist called Sertürne..."

"- Okay, so let's go into the cocktail. It started with the vitamins. This is in '36. vitamins. This is in '36. - Right. I think it was pretty harmless in the beginning. Mm-hmm. Just the addiction to t..."

"serious? The injection and the kind of drugs he was taking? - This was a day in August of 1941. Germany had invaded the Soviet Union on June 22nd. So this is about six weeks into the campaign, which w..."

"- He did try cocaine. Why didn't he get into the cocaine? - He started cocaine after the bomb attack by Stauffenberg on July 20th, 1944. When this bomb went off, which actually killed a few people in ..."

"level from, from... What is it? You said '41 to '45. What were some behavioral changes or changes in decision making that we can trace in Hitler that could be attributed to drugs? Like, how did they c..."

"- Let's talk about another perspective on this whole story that you document in your book, 'The Bohemians.' The subtitle is, 'The Lovers Who Led Germany's Resistance Against the Nazis. So this is the ..."

"- What lessons can we learn from that about how to resist totalitarian regimes? Is there some deeper wisdom? - I just think it's admirable to be brave and not do things that you cannot really justify ..."

"- So is it still called Stoned Sapiens? - Yeah, it's called Stoned Sapiens. - Great title, great title. So what- what is this lens that you're looking at- at all of human history through? - I discusse..."

"- What about one of the great, if you can think of it that way, technologies that humans have developed is religion. Religion evolved different kinds. Do you think there's a connection between psyched..."

"and I've done ayahuasca, but I've never done LSD, acid, and you have quite a bit. So, maybe the big general question is what's LSD like? In the space of psychedelics, which funny enough, we haven't re..."

"- So because you mentioned the effect of LSD on you as a writer, that it at least changed the way you write. - Well, I mean, the book Tripped is a book where I come back with that story to my father, ..."

"- Can we go back to something we talked about in the beginning about Berlin? Is it'd be fascinating to learn more about this culture. Are you still connected? I'm sure you've been to some wild parties..."

"So you were both a fiction writer and a non-fiction writer. Are there books that had an influence on you? - Yeah, it's Ulysses by James Joyce. Ulysses is good, but only when you're in your early 20s, ..."