r/AskHistory • u/Main-Champion7524 • 1d ago
How ubiquitous REALLY was amphetamine use in WW2?
I ask this because in many documentaries and articles and videos in regards to history there is a lot of hyperbole for the sake of making an interesting point. You might see a documentary about how germanys invention of the assault rifle made a great impact on them winning the war. in reality 7/10 soldiers had a regular Kar98k the other 3 most likely had an MP40 and the STG44 was very very rare and likely would’ve been an interesting sight at the time.
I hear documentaries say soldiers were issue pervitin with their rations and to me this sounds like it would mean pretty much every soldier was on meth. Was this only during the beginning with the blitzkrieg? Was this also used later in the war. How often were these supplied in relation to other rations and the logistics of all that. How many were they issued and how often?
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u/Fantastic_Value1786 1d ago
Let me put it this way and you make your own conclusion, I'm pulling this out of memory but the entire yearly pervitin production, including civilian market, was for a staggering of 3 doses per enlisted soldier, meaning that you can give a soldier 3 pills every year.
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u/Lord0fHats 1d ago
I feel like that's not super useful because afaik, stimulants were not issued to all soldiers. The Royal Navy for example only issued stimulants to officers and they were only supposed to use it when needed. A truck driver in England is in the Army but he's not fighting in the Hurtgen Forest lines. It's useful to point out that none of the WWII armies had such extensive drug use policies that the entire army was on drugs, but most of any military force is not in active combat either. A lot of a modern military is administrative and logistic and they're not usually what people think of when they think of the army for better or worse.
I'd also note that pervitin was only one one of the many amphetamines used in the war. Aderall is also an amphetamine and was widely distributed among the US and UK forces, but Aderall has far milder effects than pervitin. The US Marine Corp and the Royal army also used Benzedrine for combat troops. I don't really know how many drugs were in use in the war but just citing pervitin vaguely is not a useful measure imo.
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u/Main-Champion7524 1d ago
Slight correction Adderall the brand name did not exist until the 90s and was an evolution of “Obetrol” which was an appetite drug which included both amphetamine and methamphetamine; used heavily by Elvis Presley.
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u/Peter34cph 1d ago
What's the actual difference between amphetamine and methamphetamine?
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u/Main-Champion7524 1d ago
Added methyl group. Allows it to cross blood brain barrier thanks to fat solubility. Makes meth more potent mg per mg and it lasts longer. The effects between the two are exactly the same though. Just that 10mg of meth is like 20mg of amphetamine. In fact the body metabolizes the methyl group eventually than your just left with amphetamine, meaning the latter half of the duration of your methamphetamine is actually just amphetamine.
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u/Peter34cph 1d ago
Is that similar to how opium is turned into heroin?
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u/Main-Champion7524 1d ago
No. Opium is just how we get the raw materials for morphine and therefore diacetylmorphine (heroin) it’s considered a semi synthetic opioid. Fentanyl is a fully synthetic opioid meaning it is completely made in a lab and has no naturally derived compound. Making it extremely easy to manufacture in very large quantities, which is why we’ve seen it essentially replace heroin.
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u/Fantastic_Value1786 1d ago
Still, the myth is that the Blitzkrieg was done through pervitin... and Hitler's will
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u/Main-Champion7524 1d ago
Ah so likely not as ubiquitous as is often implied. I’m sure they prioritized certain groups over others.
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1d ago
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u/Fantastic_Value1786 1d ago
Yes, but... Still, the myth is that the Blitzkrieg was done through pervitin... and Hitler's will
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u/Peter34cph 1d ago
That could mean that 20% of the army were combatant soldiers and they were in combat 50 days per year, and the remaining 80% of the army were supply/support/etc and were in combat 0 days per year.
Averages aren't always useful.
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u/Watchhistory 1d ago
What the US did provide the US soldier was cigarettes, in every standard ration pack.
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u/Lord0fHats 1d ago edited 1d ago
It's worth noting that 'amphetamine' is a broad category. It includes not just methamphetine or similar drugs, but also milder drugs like Adderall. While production, procurement, and distribution are easily tracked through records, tracing actual use is harder because different countries and branches of their militaries had different policies. The USN for example barely used any stimulants because of concerns about their medical complications. Meanwhile the Marine Corps in the second half of the war would distribute Benzedrine to combat troops to keep them alert and fighting such as at Tarawa. There are also different dosages used across the war, and different assessments of their usefulness. I don't know that anyone has yet produced a good solid broad study of drug use during the war that is widely accepted. It's a complex topic and it doesn't get as much attention as other facets of the war.
TLDR: It's really quite complicated and not as easy to assess as it's often made out to be. Broadly speaking, at least in terms of policy, troops were issued strong stimulants when it was deemed expedient or necessary for readiness. they were not high 24/7 though there's definitely the issue of addiction that I know had been written about in the context of the Wehrmacht and Pervitin. But there were also milder drugs commonly used across the armed forces. Adderall was pretty widely distributed and of course there's nicotine via cigarettes and alcohol. Give people access to drugs and at least some will begin using them recreationally but it's hard to make broad assessments of how prevalent hard drug use in combat really was and then apply it across the whole war because so many instances are situation specific in terms of policy.
There's a good r/askhistorians post that goes into more detail than I can here focused on Nazi Germany and with an interesting highlight about why shouldn't we include alcohol in the disccussion: WW2: How much meth was actually consumed by the German army? : r/AskHistorians.
In brief, all the armed forces of WWII used drugs, including combat stimulants of which many were amphetamines, but some of these drugs were milder than others and the strongest ones tended to be, officially, used most often in hard combat not 24/7 but policies varied across fronts and forces so it's really hard to generalize for the entire war.
EDIT: It's also worth noting that not all drugs were used for issues of fatigue or alertness. Especially in the US, and I'm vaguely recalling the Marine Corp on this one, it was more about the mood effects of the drugs. Drug tests early in the war were seen as encouraging not because it made the men they were testing Benzidrine on fight better but because they seemed to have higher morale and handled stress better. The science on this was actually really weak in terms of study during the war. It was basically 'we like their vibe on this stuff.'
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u/Main-Champion7524 1d ago
I think still to this day dextroamphetamine is used in long flight missions. Though it seems like it’s being phased out for modafnil.
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u/A_Queer_Owl 19h ago edited 15h ago
also worth noting that caffeine was also widely used. German rations included caffeine fortified chocolates.
also also worth noting that the US military STILL gives some soldiers amphetamines before operations.
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u/BottecchiaDude253 1d ago
I dont know how ubiquitous it was, but Aimo Koivonen certainly had an interesting war experience because of it
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u/CocktailChemist 1d ago
The book On Speed has an excellent overview of the subject.
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u/Main-Champion7524 23h ago
Currently on page 50. You weren’t wrong. Glad to finally have found a detailed account about the discovery of amphetamine and how they used to literally just try the drugs on themselves.
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u/CocktailChemist 23h ago edited 22h ago
If you like that part of the story you might enjoy PIHKAL, which partially chronicles Alexander Shulgin’s experiences developing phenethylamine-based psychedelics. The short version is that he was instrumental in making a new and successful pesticide and after that the company basically gave him a lab and told him to go find something interesting.
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u/Main-Champion7524 22h ago
Thanks so much for the recommendations I’ll read that one next. I’m interested generally in pharmacology so if you have any more recs I’m all ears.
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