When it comes to waging war, there's two things you must do
You got to bring your gun and your amphetamines too
In the Wehrmacht, we ain't got time for fatigue
Coz through the Ardennes we be bringing the blitzkrieg
Pervitin, it's like caffeine but way better
Thanks to Temmler, we can fight in any weather
Back in Germany, they sell it to our wives
Now for Hitler, we're quick to give our lives
Wanna know how we took Poland by 6 October?
Not a man in our grey ranks was close to sober
It's become a staple part of our inventory
But remember, it ain't no suppository
Pervitin, it's like caffeine but way better
Thanks to Temmler, we can fight in any weather
Back in Germany, they sell it to our wives
Now for Hitler, we're quick to give our lives
What need have we Aryans of sleep anyway?
Now that our invasion of Russia is underway
With Pervitin, what can really go bad?
Mother, I'll write you when we get to Stalingrad
As we've discussed in our previous video on methamphetamine-use by German soldiers
and civilians during the Second World War, it wasn't the sole reason for their early success,
and they didn't use it in every situation. What we didn't cover in that video is that
the Germans weren't alone. The soldiers of other belligerent nations — such as Japan, Britain,
America, and Finland — pepped themselves up with amphetamines and other drugs too. In this video,
we're going to discuss what they were putting in their pipes and smoking, so to speak.
Long story short — amphetamines were by far the most prevalent drugs used during the war.
Like the Germans with Pervitin, the Japanese were heavy into methamphetamines. In fact, as
we said in our previous video, it was a Japanese chemist by the name of Nagai Nagayoshi who first
synthesised the drug in 1893. Also like the Germans, the Japanese fed meth to their soldiers
mostly in a solid form, under the trade name Philopon or Hiropin, which was often passed around
as a "senryoku zokyo zai" or "drug to inspire the fighting spirits." Between 1939 and 1945,
it's estimated that around one billion Philopon pills were manufactured in Japan,
and these found their way into the civilian population too. Factory workers would eat them,
and many were sent to public dispensaries, but a lot of it ended up on the black market and in the
hands of criminal organisations like the Yakuza. By 1950, around 5% of Japanese people aged between
18 and 25 were taking meth, many straight to the vein. In 1951, it was banned under the Stimulant
Control Law, yet by 1954, some 1.5 million people, of Japan's 1954 population of 88 million,
were still meth-users. Back to the war, some Kamikaze pilots were injected with
liquid meth before they set to the skies, while others simply chased their Philopon pills with
sake — not to say that it was meth or alcohol were responsible for what these pilots did.
The British weren't so hard, however, opting for the amphetamine Benzedrine instead of
meth — basically a safer, less intense alternative. Funnily enough, the British,
spearheaded by Doctors Roland Winfield and Frederick Bartlett, started testing Benzedrine on
their troops after they discovered Pervitin in the pocket of a crashed German pilot in 1940. Mostly,
Benzedrine was used by the British Royal Air Force, which sanctioned it in tablet and
inhalant form in 1942. After this, British medical officers were allowed to dish it out like that one
dreadlocked guy at every rave, and pilots would gobble it up or inhale it before taking to the
skies, as well as shortly before reaching their targets. A few doses were also stowed in their
emergency bail out kits, in case they crash-landed and needed a pick-me-up to get back to base.
Ground troops and naval personnel were using it too. The men of the British 24th Armoured Tank
Brigade, for instance, were high on amphetamines when they smashed the Germans and Italians in the
Second Battle of El Alamein in 1942, dosing themselves with 20 milligrams at a time, as
opposed to the mere 10 milligrams British pilots were taking. The troops had Bernard Montgomery to
thanks for this, and the British general even conducted tests — such as competitive marches,
trench digging, and rifle shooting — to emulate how Benzedrine would benefit them in the field.
It's safe to say he was pleased with the results. As with aircraft, the drug was also placed in navy
life rafts to improve survivability in emergency situations. As per the British naval document
titled A Guide to the Preservation of Life at Sea after Shipwreck, Benzedrine helped to "lessen
feelings of fatigue and exhaustion, promote alertness, raise the spirits, and prolong the
will to 'hang on and live'." Throughout the war, the Royal Navy used a total of 28 million tablets
all on its own, while some 72 million Benzedrine tablets were issued to the British Armed Forces
overall. The British also supplied a further 80 million tablets to the face-munching Americans.
The Americans scored many of those millions while their Army Air Force was flying out of England,
out of where they supplied Benzedrine to other American military personnel operating in Africa,
Europe, and the Pacific. But that wasn't enough. Throughout the war, American medics supplied their
own troops with an additional 80 to 500 *million* American-made pills as well. In North Africa, for
instance, between 100,000 and 500,000 Benzedrine tablets were dished out under one single order
made by US general and future president Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1942, so the Yanks were almost
certainly cooked alongside their British comrades in that sandy theatre of war.
Notably, amphetamines did the rounds among US marines and soldiers in the
November 1943 invasion of Tarawa and the D-Day landings. There is also evidence of the Office
of Strategic Services including Benzedrine pills in their foreign agents' equipment,
alongside pills that could "knock someone out for six hours" and, in a separate bag, a cyanide pill,
in case an agent fell into enemy hands. All in all, it's estimated that 15% of all US soldiers
got on the Bennies in World War II, while some 16 million enlistees were at least exposed to
it. In the years after the war, Americans continued to use amphetamines quite heavily,
with some 3.5 billion tablets being manufactured each year by the late 1950s. During the Korean
war, they became standard military issue, and they ran rampant in the Vietnam War as well.
While Benzedrine was safer than meth, it wasn't safe,
and it wouldn't have been much fun coming off it during a war. As historian James Holland put it,
"[Benzedrine] stops you from sleeping, but it doesn’t stop you from feeling
fatigued. [...] Your body has no chance to recover from the fatigue it's suffering,
so there comes a point where you come off the drug and you just collapse, you can't function."
The Finns weren't the type to shy away from a bit of drugs either. While they had other
substances in their bloodstream prior to World War II, the Germans supplied them with mountains
of methamphetamine throughout their short-lived alliance, including some 850,000 Pervitin tablets
in 1941 alone. This was exactly the substance that Finnish soldier Aimo Koivunen was on when he skied
400 kilometres to escape Soviet forces in March 1944. But that's a story for another time.
While amphetamines were prevalent, they certainly weren't the only drugs going around.
Cocaine snuck its way in, but it was far more popular in the Great War,
when amphetamines weren't really a thing. Opiates such as heroin circulated too,
but they would have had almost the opposite effect to amphetamines and wouldn't have been much use
in exciting soldiers for battle. Certainly more than a joint or two was smoked during the war,
though cannabis was also trialled by the Psychological Warfare Branch of the US
Military Intelligence Service in October 1942, specifically for the purposes of interrogation.
The premise was that relaxed prisoners might be more likely to give up useful information.
But what do you think? Did you know the Japanese, British, Americans,
and Fins were taking amphetamines just like the Germans? Can you think of any other drugs
that were used during the war? Do you know of any crazy stories about drugged-up soldiers?
Should we ONLY share history through rap for now on? Please share your thoughts in the comments.