Blitzed

German writer Norman Ohler's astonishing account of methamphetamine addiction in the Third Reich changes what we know about the second world war .. Blitzed looks set to reframe the way certain aspects of the Third Reich will be viewed in the future

Rachel Cooke, Guardian

Very good and extremely interesting - a serious piece of scholarship very well-researched

Ian Kershaw author of Hitler and To Hell and Back

A huge contribution... remarkable

Antony Beevor, BBC RADIO 4

The picture he paints is both a powerful and an extreme one... gripping reading

Anna Katharina Schaffner, Times Literary Supplement

An audacious, compelling read

Stern

This book transforms the overall picture

Hans Mommsen

Enthralling

Mitteldeutsche Zeitung

Sensational

Daily Mail

Bursting with interesting facts

Vice

Remarkable... energetic... retells the history of the war through the prism of the pill... it has an uncanny ability to disturb

Roger Boyes, The Times

The most brilliant and fascinating book I have read in my entire life

Dan Snow

Norman Ohler has written an illuminating account of the gobsmacking extent to which military strategy in the Third Reich relied on drugs. ... What you'll learn: Never trust a coked-up Nazi

ShortList

A fascinating, most extraordinary revelation

BBC World News

The Nazis were all on drugs! So far, so sensationalist but German writer Norman Ohler's absorbing new non-fiction book, Blitzed, makes the convincing argument that the Nazis' use of chemical stimulants... played a crucial role in the successes, and failures, of the Third Reich

Esquire

Blitzed is making me rethink everything I've ever seen and read about WWII. It emotionally and technically makes sense of previously unexplainable aspects of that war. It makes me want to revisit other books on it with the hindsight of knowing these newly exposed truths. It was terrific!

Douglas Coupland

Norman Ohler has succeeded in a remarkable scoop, by studying in detail the notebooks of Hitler's personal doctor and demonstrating that Hitler was a far worse junkie than we had ever imagined. He has also unearthed the way that the German army did not march on its stomach, but on methamphetamine. The supposedly clean-living Nazis, who accused the Jews of corrupting German youth, were the real pushers. The book, written with delightful irony, is an eye-opener.

Antony Beevor, Guardian

A revelatory work that considers Hitler's career in a new light. 'Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich' is that rare sort of book whose remarkable insight focuses on a subject that's been overlooked, even disregarded by historians

The San Francisco Chronicle

Blitzed is a fascinating read that provides a new facet to our understanding of the Third Reich

Buzzfeed

It's as breezy and darkly humorous as its title. But don't be fooled by the gallows humor of chapter names like 'Sieg High' and 'High Hitler': This is a serious and original work of scholarship that dropped jaws around Europe when it was published there last year

Mashable

A juicier story would be hard to find

The Week

Delightfully nuts, in a 'Gravity's Rainbow' kind of way.

The New Yorker

Transforming meticulous research into compelling prose, Ohler delves into the little-known history of drug use in Nazi Germany

Entertainment Weekly

[A] fascinating, engrossing, often dark history of drug use in the Third Reich

The Washington Post

This heavily researched nonfiction book by a German journalist reports that the drug was widely taken by soldiers, all the way up the ranks to Hitler himself, who received injections of a drug cocktail that also included an opioid

Newsday