Books › Der totale Rausch
Der totale Rausch
292 pages
A frenetic, mind-bending descent into the chemically fueled hypocrisy and madness of a totalitarian regime.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like uncovering a massive, dark secret hidden in plain sight. It moves with a propulsive, almost feverish energy, mirroring the very stimulants it describes. The atmosphere is dread-soaked and surreal, plunging you into a claustrophobic world where ideological purity masks rampant, systemic intoxication. The prose is cinematic and breathless, reading more like a gripping psychological thriller than a dry historical text. You are pulled along on a horrifying descent into madness, watching a regime fueled by megalomania and methamphetamines spiral toward its inevitable collapse. It will absolutely delight fans of narrative nonfiction who crave stories that shatter their preconceived notions of history, offering a darkly fascinating, hyper-focused lens on the banality and hypocrisy of evil.
- Mood
- frenetic
- surreal
- dread-soaked
- claustrophobic
- Tone
- revelatory
- gripping
- darkly ironic
- journalistic
- Pace
- propulsive
- Themes
- hidden histories · hypocrisy of purity · systemic intoxication · descent into madness
- The writing
- Cinematic and highly narrative, blending rigorous archival research with the breathless pacing of a thriller.
- The arc
- Moves from shocking historical revelation to a surreal, horrifying immersion in systemic collapse and drug-induced megalomania.
- Who it's for
- Readers who devour narrative nonfiction that completely upends their understanding of familiar historical events through a dark, hyper-focused lens.
Content notes
- drug addiction
- substance abuse
- war violence
- fascism
- antisemitism
About the book
"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"--Provided by publisher.
Description from Open Library.
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