this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2025
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Explanation: During WW2, the Nazi regime relied heavily on meth as a drug to keep its soldiers going during combat operations - most notably during the Fall of France, during which Nazi tankers hopped up on meth would fight for several days straight without sleep, putting the French defenders at a massive disadvantage.
The Allied powers would use amphetamines (especially for pilots as 'go pills') but not on the scale of the Nazis (with the Nazis producing and distributing more meth each year, than all of the Allies combined produced amphetamines for the entire war), and largely not fucking meth.
I really appreciate the detailed explanations you add to your posts for us non-history-buff readers. There's a very weird juxtaposition of learning actual history through the form of very silly image edits!
That's what I'm here for! A little historical trivia makes the world go 'round!
You rock 🤘
The methamphetamine pills issued to the troops also gained euphemistic nicknames like "Panzerschokolade" or "Fliegerschokolade", ("Tank chocolate" or "airman's chocolate") due to those branches of the military consuming them like candy.
I read a war diary of a German soldier on the Eastern front once which really went into detail. It was already haunting to read about it and I'm forever grateful I didn't have to fight in that war.
Don't worry, there is plenty of war potential ahead of us, i'm afraid...
But at least I won't be fighting for the fascist regime like I would have back then. Also, the Canadians and ANZACs would be on my side so there's no way we lose.
There was a Finnish medic who's whole unit got killed so he took all their meth at once and physically ran away from the Soviet army for a week without stopping
Just heard in the podcast 'Streitkräfte und Strategien', that the use of meth in the Wehrmacht is overblown today. while it was used, they figured out fast that it had negativ effects longterm.
Heaviest use was early in the war - with 35 million tablets distributed in the Battle for France - but heavy usage continued thereafter, with some 9 million tablets of meth being produced yearly, and experiments with 'superdrug' combinations of cocaine, meth, and oxy enduring into the very end months of the war.