Documentary claims Nazi leader Hitler was meth addict

WASHINGTON — Adolf Hitler is remembered as many things: a genocidal warmonger, a hateful ideologue, a failed art student. But the phrase “drug addict” is usually not high among the list of epithets.

A documentary, to be aired this weekend by Britain’s Channel 4, digs into the Führer’s “hidden drug habit.” Based on details in a 47-page American military dossier compiled during the war, Hitler was taking a cocktail of 74 different drugs, including a form of what is now commonly known as crystal meth. He also took “barbiturate tranquilizers, morphine, bulls’ semen,” according to reports.

The revelations aren’t exactly new. Methamphetamines, which were pioneered in Germany at the end of the 19th century, were used by various armies during World War II as stimulants to aid fatigued soldiers. The drug was consumed in Germany as Pervitin, a pill Hitler took among his various medications.

The Nazi leader was supposedly injected with extracts from bull’s testicles to boost his libido — the Führer needed to cut a virile figure in public and, as reports suggest, keep up with Eva Braun, his much younger consort. Other medicines were aimed at combating a host of Hitler’s maladies, ranging from stomach cramps to symptoms related to a potential bipolar disorder.

He was apparently under the influence of methamphetamine when he held his last meeting with Italian dictator Benito Mussolini in July 1943 — a reportedly tense, one-sided affair with Hitler lecturing his counterpart, whose hold on power was about to unravel.

“Two tablets taken once eliminate the need to sleep for three to eight hours, and two doses of two tablets each are normally effective for 24 hours,” advised the Nazi military command, in a 1942 communique. The German invasions of Poland and France, says Der Spiegel, were driven by soldiers hooked on meth and copious amounts of alcohol.