Norman Ohler - Connect Speakers Bureau

Norman Ohler

Author of Blitzed & Tripped

The Impact of Psychedelics on WWII

Norman Ohler is a New York Times bestselling author, novelist and screenwriter, best known for his non-fiction book “Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich“, an explosive account of the Nazi regime’s covert use of psychedelics and stimulants. It has been published in over 30 languages, and has been praised by the media worldwide.

He recently appeared with his new non-fiction book “Tripped – Nazi Germany, the CIA, and the Dawn of the Psychedelic Age“ on Joe Rogan’s Podcast which received over 1 Million views in its first ten days. It is based on extensive archival research on both sides of the Atlantic: a wild, unconventional postwar history with a personal angle, telling how microdoses of psychedelics are helping Norman’s mother who suffers from Alzheimer’s.

TESTIMONIALS:

“I was so glad to attend Norman’s talk. I did expect it to be entertaining given the intriguing subject,
but I also thought he delivered his findings and the story in a heartfelt, personal, and funny way.
I’d love to attend another talk again.”
– Zarah Ali Shapiro, How The Ligh tGets In, Hay-on-Wye

Normal Ohler’s keynote main stage talk at the MAPS Denver Psychedelic Science 2025 Conference was my favorite presentation.
I learned about the topic for the first time and found him riveting, humorous and vulnerable.
I was able to absorb the challenging material because of his comprehensive communication style.
– Jade Netanua Ullmann, Ulmann Family Foundation

“Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich” is an explosive true story which uncovers an untold aspect of what fuelled the Nazi war machine during World War II. Revealing the close relationship and hidden connections between the Nazis, and the early days of drug prohibition in America, the author shares how this secret history held back therapeutic research for decades and became the foundation of America’s unsuccessful War on Drugs.

A NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER

A fast-paced narrative that discovers a surprising perspective on World War II: Nazi Germany’s all-consuming reliance on drugs

The Nazi regime preached an ideology of physical, mental, and moral purity. But as Norman Ohler reveals in this gripping new history, the Third Reich was saturated with drugs. On the eve of World War II, Germany was a pharmaceutical powerhouse, and companies such as Merck and Bayer cooked up cocaine, opiates, and, most of all, methamphetamines, to be consumed by everyone from factory workers to housewives to millions of German soldiers. In fact, troops regularly took rations of a form of crystal meth—the elevated energy and feelings of invincibility associated with the high even help to explain certain German military victories.

Drugs seeped all the way up to the Nazi high command and, especially, to Hitler himself. Over the course of the war, Hitler became increasingly dependent on injections of a cocktail of drugs—including a form of heroin—administered by his personal doctor. While drugs alone cannot explain the Nazis’ toxic racial theories or the events of World War II, Ohler’s investigation makes an overwhelming case that, if drugs are not taken into account, our understanding of the Third Reich is fundamentally incomplete.

“An astonishing account that changes what we know about the Second World War.” – The Guardian

“A fascinating, most extraordinary revelation.“ – BBC World News

Berlin 1945. Following the fall of the Third Reich, drug use—long kept under control by the Nazis’ strict anti-drug laws—is rampant throughout the city. Split into four sectors, Berlin’s drug policies are being enforced under the individual jurisdictions of each allied power—the Soviet Union, Britain, France, and the US. In the American zone, Arthur J. Giuliani of the nascent Federal Bureau of Narcotics is tasked with learning about the Nazis’ anti-drug laws and bringing home anything that might prove “useful” to the United States.

Five years later, Harvard professor Dr. Henry Beecher began work with the US government to uncover the research behind the Nazis psychedelics program. Begun as an attempt to find a “truth serum” and experiment with mind control, the Nazi study initially involved mescaline, but quickly expanded to include LSD. Originally created for medical purposes by Swiss pharmaceutical Sandoz, the Nazis coopted the drug for their mind control military research—research that, following the war, the US was interested in acquiring. This research birthed MKUltra, the CIA’s notorious brainwashing and psychological torture program during the 1950s and 1960s, and ultimately shaped US drug policy regarding psychedelics for over half a century.

Based on extensive archival research on both sides of the Atlantic, Tripped is a wild, unconventional postwar history, a spiritual sequel to Norman Ohler’s New York Times bestseller Blitzed. Revealing the close relationship and hidden connections between the Nazis and the early days of drugs in America, Norman Ohler shares how this secret history held back therapeutic research of psychedelic drugs for decades and eventually became part of the foundation of America’s War on Drugs.