It's long been known that German soldiers
used a form of methamphetamine called Pervitin
during the Second World War.
But have tales of Nazis on speed
diverted attention away from the other side of the story?
Wow, that's amazing, isn't it?
The widespread use of stimulants by British and American troops.
Did World War II unleash the world's first
pharmacological arms race?
And in the face of industrial slaughter,
what role did drugs play in combat?
Now, one historian...
My goodness, look, there's the swastika.
..is on a quest to dig deeper...
You've got the machine guns there. You've got the tools.
So you just, literally, just go... Precisely.
A cannon shell is just going to rip through.
This soldier here, they can hardly walk. Yes.
..to reveal the truth about World War Speed.
Stand by.
8, 7, 6...
The amount of dust was incredible!
..5, 4...
Oh, my goodness me, look at that!
3, 2, 1.
Shoot. Fire one.
Oh, my God.
BOMBER ENGINE DRONES
RADIO CRACKLES PILOT SPEAKS GERMAN
MAN REPLIES
December, 1942.
A German bomber crew struggle to keep their damaged plane aloft.
RADIO CONVERSATION CONTINUES
BOMBER ENGINE WHINES
Seven decades after it went down,
this German Heinkel He 115 bomber
was raised from a Norwegian fjord.
It was an amazing discovery -
the only aircraft of its kind ever recovered,
from a time when Britain stood alone
against fascism in Europe.
The fjord's oxygen-poor water
left the plane remarkably intact
and the recovery team discovered artefacts
in near-pristine condition...
..including brandy...
..caffeine-infused chocolate...
..and speed.
MAN CHATS ON NORWEGIAN RADIO
We're going to see the remains of a Heinkel 115,
which is a float plane, a seaplane,
that was used by the German Navy.
And not only did they pull up this Heinkel 115,
they also found lots of things on it,
including, it turns out, a packet of Pervitin.
For me, there is a massive difference between just being
an armchair historian and actually getting out on the ground,
rolling up your sleeves and doing some proper primary research.
ELECTRICITY CRACKLES
You can't really understand a subject
unless you've actually seen what you're looking at for real -
you know, touched those pieces of paper, looked at the sites...
..talked to other people who really know what they're talking about.
And it is amazing how it actually then prompts you
to ask all sorts of other questions
that you might not have thought about in the first place.
James Holland has written nearly 30 books about the Second World War.
He's an expert on the blitzkrieg of 1940 and the Battle of Britain,
both pivotal chapters in his quest to understand amphetamine use
during the conflict.
MAN CHATS ON NORWEGIAN RADIO
Did German amphetamine packets survive both the crash
and decades underwater?
If so, they could provide unique insight
into the role speed played
during German bombing missions over Britain.
You know, I've seen a few aircraft wrecks that have
been pulled out of the water, but this Heinkel 115
that's been pulled up out of the fjord was in incredible condition.
So good that you could still see the paintbrush marks
on the tailplane.
So, I'm looking at the bomb bay here, aren't I? Yeah, yeah.
OK, but this was carrying bombs when it was found? Yeah, yeah.
So where would they have been? They was in the centre section.
And this is the camouflage for going over the dark North Sea.
You know, you wouldn't want it light, would you?
You look at that sea from above,
you can see how dark it is all the time.
German bomber crews on night missions from Norway -
a 12-hour round trip over the North Sea -
faced the RAF and flak over the British Isles.
BOMBER ENGINE DRONES
German victories made the Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht seem invincible.
Rumours circulated of German soldiers and airmen
fuelled by a super drug that made them fearless
and able to press on without the need for rest or recuperation.
ENGINE WHINES
The performance of Nazi dive-bombers
led to theories about so-called Stuka tablets...
..pills that enabled pilots
to withstand impossible G-force dives to target.
HE MOUTHS
This is the Heinkel 115 elevator.
It was cut in two when the plane crashed.
Right.
In the wing, there was a dinghy. Yes.
And, within that dinghy, there was a rescue package.
Is it possible to look at it? Yes. Fantastic.
So, when I walked in and saw the table full of objects
from this escape kit, plus a few other little bits and pieces
they found, you know, I was absolutely staggered.
And, obviously, we've got a brace of machine guns here.
These are 17s?
MG 17s, yeah.
You've got the machine guns there, you've got the tools,
you've got all this,
but this is the bit that's really catching my eye.
Matches. Yeah.
Cigarettes. Yeah, it is.
And this is obviously chocolate.
This has a high caffeine content, doesn't it? Yes.
And this is the brandy?
Yes, that's the brandy.
I can't believe you haven't tried it.
OK, but there's one item here that, to me, is missing.
Yes, I guess you are missing the Pervitin.
Yes, where's that?
Well, when it came up and we tried to clean it,
it started to dissolve.
And when we looked back in the box,
it was just nothing left.
So, it just vanished.
Well, I'm sorry we have only a photograph of it.
The whole reason for coming here
is because Pervitin has been found on this plane
when it was brought up from the fjord.
It was a little disappointing.
Despite Jim's disappointment,
the Pervitin's location on the plane could well be more important
than seeing the package itself.
So, this was in the...
This was in the wing?
What was really interesting is that it wasn't, sort of,
in the cockpit equivalent of the glove compartment.
You know, it wasn't found right by the pilot's seat or something.
You know, it was actually found in a pre-prepared
emergency escape pack.
That made me kind of think that it wasn't used in a kind of,
sort of, casual way,
but in a quite pragmatic way.
If the Pervitin was kept out of reach,
it suggests the drug wasn't meant to keep men awake during flight,
but would help keep them alive should their plane go down.
So, you've got the brandy to keep the cold away.
You got some cigarettes to keep you going.
Chocolate with caffeine in it
and, of course, you've got the Pervitin.
We all know what that does - that keeps you going
for another 12 hours or so,
while you're bobbing around on the North Sea.
They were flying in winter,
so it's going to be bitterly, bitterly cold.
The most important thing is that they don't fall asleep
and die of hypothermia.
So, what's going to keep you awake?
Well, Pervitin's going to do that.
Jim's Norway stop has been illuminating and frustrating.
He heads south to a museum in Germany,
where you can still see Pervitin samples from World War II.
And I met with Dr Peter Steinkamp, who's an expert on this.
You know, I just really wanted to pick his brains about
what this stuff was, how it came to be,
and to look at Pervitin packets for the first time.
Wow. That's amazing, isn't it?
This was a methamphetamine
created in the 1930s
by a German pharmacologist.
He called it Pervitin.
This is a version for injection
and this is the version for pills.
And what does it say here?
Inject slowly,
not too fast.
JIM CHUCKLES
Goodness me.
Imagine buying, over the counter,
vials of stuff to inject yourself, you know, with a Class A drug.
I mean, it's just absolutely extraordinary
and just so casual.
If I took one of those, how long would I be completely wired for?
Well, about two nights.
So, this came out in Germany, what, in the late 1930s?
Yes, in 1938,
it was first available in tobacco stores.
So I could just walk in and I could go,
I'll have a packet of 12 Pervitin, please? Yeah, really. Wow!
That's amazing, isn't it?
By 1938,
Pervitin manufacturer, Temmler Pharmaceutical of Berlin,
had launched a PR campaign,
modelled on Coca-Cola's global marketing strategy.
HITLER ADDRESSING CROWD
And despite Hitler's vehement anti-drug rhetoric,
many Nazis, including the Fuhrer himself,
were heavy drug users. CROWD CHEERS
Methamphetamine seemed geared to the modern, tech-embracing Reich.
The Nazi state is all about,
"If you work hard, if you strive for a better Germany,
"then you'll get a better Germany.
"Come on, get your backbone into it and let's get working.
"Let's make Nazi Germany - the Third Reich -
"let's make it a thousand-year Reich.
"Let's make it brilliant!"
You know, and they embrace science and technology,
and pharmacology is all tied in with that
and that's why it appeals.
So, it's not much of a step,
is it, from day-to-day domestic use,
to being used in the armed services?
Yes. Yes, you're right.
The officials said to the medical officer,
"Please, now give Pervitin to our soldiers."
By May 1940,
German troops, under the influence of Pervitin,
had conquered Poland.
Hitler's army massed for another attack against France.
The British and French armies facing them
outnumbered the Germans in men, artillery, and tanks.
But the German plan was audacious -
using air power as moving artillery,
what some called a new method of warfare.
The German way of war, what has become known as blitzkrieg,
has always been traditionally depicted as something new. It isn't.
It's an extension of the way of war
that Germans have always been practising
and before Germany became Germany, in 1871,
the Prussians before them.
And it's because they're stuck in the middle of Europe.
They don't have those resources of bauxite and copper and iron ore
and, more latterly, oil -
and food, actually -
that you need to protract a long, attritional war.
So what do you do?
Well, you get round that by fighting your wars
with overwhelming force at the point of impact,
where you first attack, knocking your enemy off balance,
surrounding them and annihilating them.
And you do that incredibly quickly.
The German army was outgunned and outnumbered.
To win, they had to move swiftly.
And, like the Luftwaffe, the army also had a secret weapon
to help defeat their oldest enemy...
..sleep.
I mean, how much Pervitin was used in 1940?
During the war against France, in 1940,
there was a delivering of 35 million pills
of Pervitin to the Wehrmacht.
Wow. So, literally, just in sort of 10, 12 weeks,
they're issuing 35 million tablets of Pervitin?
Yeah, yes.
You know, all in, there's only about 3 million troops involved
in the whole thing.
In the end, the German army pulled off what seemed impossible,
even to Hitler.
Wehrmacht tanks and soldiers managed to fight and march
for ten days straight,
trapping the British Army on the beaches of Dunkirk.
German troops advanced an average of 22 miles a day, under fire.
GUNFIRE
It's considered one of the greatest feats in military history.
So, obviously, Pervitin keeps you awake,
but what else does it do to you?
When you are taking it and you have to do a duty...
..you are focused on it.
There was no fear.
You don't think about anything else in that moment.
What other side-effects are there?
I talked to some veterans who used Pervitin
and they said, after doing their duty,
they sometimes got frightened,
"Because we were in fear that we could never ever sleep again.
"And when we could not sleep any more, we must die."
However the drug affected individual soldiers,
the outcome was clear.
German troops, fuelled by methamphetamine,
crushed the combined arms of Western Europe in little over a week.
Nazi tactics and technology seemed unstoppable.
But did the Wehrmacht need a stimulant
to achieve victory in 1940?
Was marching 22 miles in a single day such an amazing pace?
Or had the blitzkrieg tale turned into legend?
Jim has gathered a group of fellow history fanatics
to put these questions to the test.
They start by comparing British and German infantry gear.
..is much more.
I'm just asking.
Taff Gillingham has served as a military consultant for film and TV.
You then don't need to take your eye off target
until you've knocked him over. So...
He's an expert on Second World War paraphernalia.
Well, Taff, you know, we've got this all laid out.
We've got British here, German here.
Presumably, this is an ammunition pouch? That's right.
That's the ammunition pouch.
You've got three clips in each of those pouches.
I mean, they do love leather, don't they, the Germans?
I mean, very bit of it is just leather, leather, leather.
The British had a simpler idea,
which was to carry a cotton bandolier,
then you just pull the clips out, really, to push into the rifle. Hmm.
The British kit is actually pretty quiet,
because it's all cotton, it's canvas,
it doesn't make much noise as you move around.
Whereas veterans always had this story that you could hear
the German army coming, because they sounded like a loose cutlery drawer,
with all this stuff clinking and clanking away as they...
German...
Exactly, the gas mask tin bouncing around.
Next, they set out to see how hard it would have been
to cover 22 miles carrying a 60lb combat load
with only coffee or tea to keep them going.
That's quite heavy.
I can't believe that they'd have walked a long way
with a kit like that. I mean, this is the reason for doing this.
It's only when you actually start using this practically
that you can understand how people would operate with it
back in the day.
So, the real point of this entire experiment is,
after walking 20 miles around here with all this kit,
if you've got a drug that can keep you going,
can we understand why they're using this in 1940?
OK. Let's do it. Let's do it.
My feet hurt.
How's that? That looks good.
Feels better.
Oh, post.
Oh!
That's my feet.
Now they hurt.
HE GROANS
HE GRUNTS
We'll maybe leave that bit out. THEY LAUGH
Two hours and seven miles in, the group break for tea.
That's heating up pretty quick, isn't it?
For many Allied soldiers,
caffeine was the stimulant of choice.
Coffee was so critical to American GI Joes that "a cup of Joe"
is still synonymous with the drink.
All right, cheers.
I've got my foot out. Put your heel up.
Where is it? Just there. Wiggle your foot.
How much am I getting paid for this? That's all I want to know.
So, because we're able to take caffeine,
we're on these lovely delicious-looking chocolate.
Caffeine-enhanced chocolate.
So, James, this should send us round
the next bit of the march a bit quicker then, eh? Should do.
All right, let's go.
They may not be in combat...
Hello, woofits! DOG BARKS
..but they are carrying the same 60lb load that
German and British soldiers would have humped, back in 1940.
It's no easy task.
Where's this short cut?
And if it's not 100 yards,
I'm going to collapse in a pile there.
HE GROANS
Oh. Oh!
My feet are broken.
My ankles are broke.
So, I reckon the 20 miles is achievable,
but day after day, that's a very hard thing to ask
for a platoon of soldiers.
Despite bruised ankles,
they log 14 miles in just under four hours.
At this pace, they would easily hit the 22-mile mark of the Wehrmacht.
You know, they were all trained up for doing this kind of stuff.
So you have to think that walking 22 miles a day
over consecutive days, for those guys,
really shouldn't have been a massive problem without drugs.
I am not convinced that the Germans needed it, at all.
Whether the Wehrmacht needed Pervitin or not,
by June 1940, France was on its knees...
..and the British army lay in tatters.
BOMBER DRONE
FAINT AIR-RAID SIREN
Soon, London was ablaze.
The British were desperate to understand the reasons
for Germany's success.
When a German plane went down in southern England,
they discovered an answer.
A packet of an unknown substance that held the key
to the Nazis' energy.
Lab analysis soon revealed the substance was methamphetamine.
To find out more about the British side of the story,
Jim meets pharmacology historian, Dr James Pugh.
So, what have you got here? So, I brought some files along
which I thought you might be interested in seeing. Mm-hm.
The first is a letter to Winston Churchill, in fact. Oh, really.
And it's actually from his physician, Sir Charles Wilson,
letting Churchill know that the British have discovered
that Germany is making use of amphetamines
in the military context... Mmm.
and suggesting to him that, perhaps, this is something
the British need to consider.
I mean, this is a really interesting line. "In short, it was concluded
"that the drug would be useful to the majority of men,
"if it is desired to keep them strenuously and dangerously active
"for 24 hours at a stretch."
Germany has occupied France by this stage... Mmm.
..so anything that the British feel they can do to gain an advantage
or to level the playing field again
is something that they need to consider.
And I guess you could characterise this as, maybe,
the beginning of a chemical arms race, I suppose.
One of the other ways that the drug was used is in its inhaler form.
Gosh, look at that.
God, it's like a Vicks inhaler. So, you just literally go...?
Yeah, I probably wouldn't do that at this point, but...
No, but I mean, that's the process? Yeah.
The Allied version of Pervitin was called Benzedrine.
Like German speed, it was already used by civilians
before the war started.
Both drugs make users intensely alert,
flooding them with a sense of euphoria.
With its added methyl group molecule,
Pervitin races across the blood-brain barrier
faster than Benzedrine.
Otherwise, the two drugs have virtually the same impact.
During the Battle of Britain,
exhausted Spitfire pilots were getting Benzedrine, unofficially,
from local pharmacies.
But Churchill seems to have pushed this to another level.
So, one of the very interesting things is that this is being
sent to Churchill and what's important about that
is he's a man of science, he's very interested in novel developments
in new technologies and stuff.
And so drugs kind of fit that bill for him.
Soon, the Royal Air Force was testing Benzedrine
under combat conditions.
They turned to a 30-year-old flight surgeon named Roland Winfield
to administer the drug to British aircrew and record the reactions.
By late 1941, Allied bombers hit back.
Long night missions over Nazi Germany,
with a fatality rate of more than 45%,
were a terrifying ordeal.
You know, that's one of those things where,
if that can keep you awake and keep you alive,
then clearly that's a good thing.
I suppose, on the other side of it, too,
if you think about the euphoric effects of the drug...
Jim and James set out to explore a Lancaster bomber -
the same type of aircraft in which Roland Winfield conducted
the only known combat tests of amphetamines during the war.
Well, these bomb bays are pretty impressive, aren't they?
My goodness. That's gigantic.
They can take 6.5 tonnes. And they can be... 6.5 tonnes?
Yep, and they can be adapted to take a Grand Slam,
which is ten tonnes. Ten tonnes?
I mean, it is incredible, the lift of this.
I'm just absolutely overwhelmed by the size of it.
This is going to be tight, I reckon, for you, James.
I mean, look at it.
It's a tin can, isn't it? So, there's no armour here or anything
like this? No. This is just thin. No. And you know, a cannon shell
or a bullet is just going to rip through. Rip straight through.
On that Lancaster, you are just thinking, this is a piece of tin.
I'm going be shot at, I'm going to be scared.
If I need to escape quickly, you know...
It's just next to impossible.
There is very few concessions to human comfort. Yeah, yeah.
And for me, this is designed for one thing and one thing only,
and that's dropping large amounts of bombs. Goodness me. Yeah.
This was physically exhausting and terrifying.
In the air war over Europe, aviation technology pushed men
beyond the limits of human endurance.
You know, I can understand why you would take a Benzedrine pill.
I think I can as well.
Just going past the navigator's desk here.
Yeah, again, I mean, look how cramped it is.
And as you emerge into the cockpit,
there's a little bit more space here, I suppose,
until you try and get in the seat.
Oh, my goodness!
This is snug!
Yeah, really is, isn't it? Yeah, this is snug.
So, tell me about Winfield's tests that he was doing.
Yeah, he actually flies with the crews.
He administers the drugs in-flight.
You know, he also administers placebos.
And then, yeah, he reports back on the experiences the crews have.
Winfield observed aircrew who were given amphetamines
on 20 RAF missions.
ARCHIVE: Half-an-hour to target, skip.
I mean, just imagine this, James.
You know, you're sitting here, you're piloting this plane.
You know, this is unpressurised, this cabin. Yeah.
You know, -45 degrees.
Freezing cold.
You've got to watch out for night fighters and you've got
lots of flak coming up. The whole thing is terrifying.
RADIO CHATTER GUNFIRE
So, after crews have dropped their bombs,
they will experience what's known as the post-adrenal crash.
So their bodies have been flooded with adrenaline
for an extended period of time.
That adrenaline starts to leave the body at that point
and they become extremely fatigued.
This is one of the things that Winfield concludes and
he recommends in his reports,
is if you take the drug about an hour and a half before
you're going to drop your bombs,
the drug will start to act upon your consciousness at that point.
Of all Winfield's findings, perhaps the most influential
were his reports describing how aircrews, high on speed,
showed increased aggression under fire.
One of the things that he notes in his report,
there's an example of an attack,
which the aircrews actually dive down to a very, very low height
and attack a flak site.
Really? They start shooting it up? Yeah, yeah.
Of course, Winfield is also simultaneously concerned
by some of this, too.
Ultimately, when the RAF come to think about this drug,
they're actually concerned about those effects...
Are you all right?
..where the crews will start to lean on the drugs,
as opposed to using them as a tool to help manage their wakefulness.
But if the RAF saw these side-effects as a potential problem,
the British army saw them as a benefit.
Even more than keeping troops awake,
British commanders wanted a pill that made men fearless.
By 1942,
the Allies had lost massive numbers of soldiers to shell shock...
..known today as post-traumatic stress disorder.
Over the course of the war,
as many as one in three front-line soldiers
were incapacitated by it.
Oh, God, listen!
Benzedrine, it was hoped, might offer a solution.
Jim travels to a small museum, connected to a hospital that treated
thousands of shellshock victims during the First World War.
Well, I suppose, when we think of the concept of war neurosis,
shellshock, it really goes back to the First World War, doesn't it?
And is that the first time that it starts to become recognised?
I think the stress of combat's always been recognised -
certainly from the Crimean War on onwards -
but what happens in the First World War
is that industry has intensified killing power.
So large numbers of soldiers, 60%, are killed by shrapnel,
by artillery, by mortars.
After the Battle of the Somme,
when there's been something like 420,000 casualties,
a significant number of those, maybe 50,000 to 60,000,
would be shellshock.
So it's not only a medical problem, it's also a military problem
because this is a war of attrition
and if you are losing large numbers of men
to battle exhaustion, to psychiatric breakdown,
and you're not able to treat them,
then its eroding your fighting strength.
So, in the treatment of combat fatigue,
when do they start looking at drugs?
When do they start looking at pharmacology and Benzedrine?
Well, Benzedrine has been introduced to the UK in 1935,
but as the war gets closer and closer,
senior doctors and commanders recognise
that this could have a major beneficial use
in all three services in keeping soldiers awake, alert
and boosting their morale in times of stress.
So I think the British Army use Benzedrine to keep people awake,
but also to lift spirits.
So, Dr Jones was very interesting about the use of Benzedrine,
not just as a wakey-wakey pill,
which is what it was sometimes referred to,
but also one that would improve morale,
that would give those who took it a sense of wellbeing
and greater physical courage.
Jim's Glenside visit gives him critical insight.
By using the drug as a tool to heighten aggression and lift morale,
Britain raised the stakes in the pharmacological fight
against the Nazis, who primarily saw amphetamine
as a way to offset fatigue.
By 1942, British troops in North Africa
were in desperate need of a morale boost.
They had retreated across 600 miles of desert,
chased by Germany's Africa Corps,
and were dug in around a tiny trading post, El Alamein.
But in October, a new commander,
possibly familiar with the RAF amphetamine tests, arrived.
Bernard Montgomery.
He was ready to go on the offensive.
When Montgomery took over,
morale in British Eighth Army was at rock-bottom.
And it was one of the things he realised
that he had to turn around.
By the way he was talking...
I want to impress on everyone that the bad times are over!
..and, you know, "There will be no more retreats,
"you're really well-equipped,
"we're going to smash the Germans and Italian forces."
And trying to give them a greater sense of self-belief.
If we can't stay here alive, then let us stay here dead!
But if there's a pill that could do part of that job for you,
then it's got to be worth taking.
It's always been a bit of a mystery whether Monty himself
brought Benzedrine to the desert
and whether he saw it as a morale builder.
But Jim has recently discovered a document
from Montgomery's medical officer, QV Wallace...
..proving orders for Benzedrine came straight from the top.
I've never before seen any direct written reference,
in any official capacity, to the mass use of Benzedrine.
But Brigadier Wallace's memo absolutely knocks that into touch
because there it is, absolutely spelled out.
The troops that were involved in the opening stages
of the battle of Alamein were given Benzedrine,
not just to keep them going, not just to keep them awake,
but also to give them resolve,
to give them confidence, to bolster morale.
By late 1942,
the Americans were not on the ground in the West.
But they had provided a new tank,
which gave the British a technological edge.
The Sherman is incredibly important when it comes in.
They get 300 of them straight into Egypt
and they're kind of tested out and made battle-ready.
At the time, it is the best tank on the battlefield.
You know, it's got this incredibly accurate gun.
It's pretty well-armoured. it's very easy to maintain.
This is a very good tank,
which is now entering battle on the British side.
Just like long-range bombers, tanks like the Sherman pushed men
to the limits of endurance.
So, how welcome would a pill that could offset these conditions be?
Jim visits an old friend, who might be able to help him find out.
OK, so, Jim Clark is a restorer of wartime military vehicles
and he's got a whole host of stuff.
He's got Jeeps, he's got trucks...
..but he's also got a Sherman tank.
So, Jim, one of the things I'm trying to find out a bit is,
obviously, you know when you're in a tank you're going to get shot at
and that's quite traumatic, but the other thing I'm quite interested in
is just what it's like existing and operating in these tanks.
Cos it's a confined space, you know, man's not really designed for this.
All right? We're in! Right.
ENGINE GRUMBLES
ENGINE ROARS
It's not an environment that is comfortable
in any shape or form.
The smell of the fumes was immense.
Very quickly, you start to catch your throat.
I mean, Jim, I've got to say, the amount of dust is incredible!
The fan that cools the engine... Yeah? ..draws the air in
through the crew compartment. It gets drawn over you.
So you get covered in it.
If I'm feeling this amount of grit going into my eyes and up my nose,
just from going down a short stretch of track
in the middle of winter in England,
what's it going to be like in the desert?
It must have just been absolutely impossible.
Tank men, wrote one veteran,
fought their war in an enclosed, suffocating, noisy metal box,
fearful of being struck and burned alive
by an enemy they could not see.
You really do get a feel of how physically draining it must be
to just operate one of these things.
So, you can see, can't you, that...?
The stress and strain of doing that. Yeah.
You know, quite apart from the fact that you're,
almost on a daily basis, in battle. Yeah.
The toll of fighting all day long and then no proper sleep, no rest.
Even if you were sleeping at night, there's probably shelling going on.
So you probably didn't have much decent rest.
And this is just stuffed full of highly explosive material. Yeah.
In the turret basket, I think there's about 15 or 20 rounds.
There's probably 20 or 30 on each side.
Yeah, so a good number. Yeah, a good number. Yeah.
Then there was 50-cal rounds in the base.
Then you've got your 160 gallons of fuel.
It's a mobile bomb, basically.
At El Alamein, the British 24th Armoured Tank Brigade
was tasked with punching through German defences.
As the Wallace memo makes clear,
on the eve of the attack,
each man was given a huge dose of Benzedrine...
..20mg per day,
twice the amount recommended to RAF pilots.
I know that the 24th Armoured Brigade were issued with Benzedrine
because he wanted them to keep going.
You know, what he said was
the first bit of the battle was going to be the dogfight.
It was going to be the grinding, attritional battle.
And for that grinding, attritional battle,
he wanted his men to keep going.
Unlike modern pills, Benzedrine tablets in 1942
had no slow-release coating.
The full dose hit immediately.
For some soldiers, alertness and euphoria
gave way to a false sense of power.
The men of the 24th proved exceedingly aggressive...
..fatally so.
For crewmen of either side,
the use of amphetamine could do more than make them alert.
It could also suppress a natural reaction in combat -
fear.
Fear is about self-preservation.
You're scared because you don't want to die.
If you take that away
and you sort of don't care quite so much,
you're not quite so careful.
The problem of being charged up on Benzedrine
is that your ability to make rational decisions
and that normal preservation instinct,
which kicks in as a result of fear, might be absent,
if you're absolutely pumped on speed.
Even with their new Shermans,
British soldiers faced an array of lethal German anti-tank guns.
What the Germans have is the infamous 88mm,
which is a dual-purpose anti-aircraft gun.
This is something that can hurl a shell 24,000 feet,
vertically, into the air
and can also be used as an anti-tank gun
on a horizontal position, straight at something.
And this is firing at 2,900 feet per second.
If their judgment was impaired by high doses of Benzedrine,
what fate awaited them?
Jim visits a military explosives range for a demonstration.
Trevor Lawrence runs the COTEC live-fire range
on Salisbury Plain,
where they test all new ordnance for the British Armed Forces.
Trevor Lawrence had been there, seen there, done it.
This is a guy who's been clearing mines, clearing IEDs,
explosives, in Northern Ireland during the height of the Troubles.
But he had also served in Bosnia, during the Civil War there
and in Iraq.
So, you know, he knew a thing or two about explosives.
So, Trevor, what we're trying to replicate
is the first Sherman tanks - they're arriving, they're in action
at the Battle of Alamein, in Egypt in October 1942,
and they're under attack from German anti-tank guns,
either the 75mm Pak 40 or the 88mm.
And what we want to do is replicate
what it would be like, being in that tank
if you were hit by one of those shells OK.
I've arranged a metal framework. Yep.
What we're going to attach to that is a sheet of armoured steel.
And that's the sort of steel that you would have seen
on a Sherman tank.
Now, rather than actually firing a hardened-steel projectile into it,
what I'm going to do is I'm going to attach
an explosive charge to the plate, here.
So, for our purposes, Trevor, that is an 88mm anti-tank round?
Absolutely.
As the shock wave runs through the explosive,
where it hits the plate, it will produce the same sort of force
that you'd get from a kinetic energy round striking the plate.
Wow. OK. And can we put anything behind here,
so you can see, actually, the effect of that spalling shrapnel?
Well, here comes the tank crew. Here they are,
and little do they know the fate that awaits them.
We can put some dummies close to it...
These are our tank crew. ..very close. The tank crew.
But also, to get a better idea of what fragmentation we've got,
what we tend to use is a sheet of aluminium... Mmm-hmm.
..and the fragmentation, the spalling, will go through,
punch holes in that and it'll give us a good idea
of just how much has been produced.
Wow, that sounds amazing.
At El Alamein, hard-to-see desert ridges
often concealed German 88s.
If Benzedrine led British tank crews to abandon caution
and charge recklessly into hidden enemy guns,
the results would have been devastating.
Stand by.
3...
..2...
..1...
..firing.
Whoa!
Oh, my goodness me, look at that.
It does not look very well for our driver, does it?
No, it doesn't.
Ouch.
Really interesting. When we got there, we had a look at it and
you could see it was just this little kind of marble -
small, little, circle -
where it had actually punched all the way through.
But then you look on the reverse side.
Oh, my goodness me.
So, a huge bit of metal has just disintegrated
and has just shattered.
There we go. Oh, my God.
Right in the centre of the chest.
And look at all these.
But also, look at all this other fragmentation. On the head...
Cos although it's come off in one big scab,
it's also sent all these other smaller fragments out.
Both of them have been absolutely covered
with little splinter marks all over,
each one of which could have been entirely lethal.
That's just the...
That's just the blast has just smashed his chest in.
Shrapnel melted onto the aluminium.
And you can just imagine, you're a crewmember behind these two...
..all into me, into the shells.
Oh, it would be impossible to survive.
Absolutely impossible.
I've interviewed so many people that have been in this situation,
that have been in tanks, have served in tanks.
What I never fully appreciated was the pressure blast
from the force of a shell like that hitting and penetrating
and transferring that huge force into the confined space of a tank.
If you're in an environment like a tank,
that shrapnel, that spalling,
would have just pinged all around here.
And you think about all that ordnance we've just
been talking about. Yeah.
You know, it's only got... One of those has got to penetrate
one of the propellant charges on one of those shelves...
..and you're in big trouble, aren't you? Yeah.
Having taken huge doses of Benzedrine,
the 24th Armoured Brigade set out for battle.
With new Sherman tanks leading the way,
troops exhibited hyperaggressive behaviour
that some historians now attribute to the drug.
By the battle's end, the brigade had suffered 80% casualties
and ceased to exist.
By the end of it, they're absolutely shattered.
So where's the escape hatch? Oh, there. There, yeah.
Jesus. But you've got seconds to do it.
You think, you may be on fire... Yeah.
..and maybe your crew members are also in agony
and you don't know whether to save them...
..or save yourself. Yeah.
Yeah. I... You know, it's...
There's protection here, to a point, but...
..I don't think I'd want to be in a tank crew. No.
It is sad. Yeah.
So, can you see if someone's...
If the medical officer of the regiment said,
"Look, here you go. Here's a Benzedrine pill.
"This'll keep you going,"
you'd be quite tempted to take that? Yeah.
I would. And I think if it worked, I think I'd be well up for it.
On the 8th of November 1942, a month after El Alamein,
American GIs finally entered ground combat in North Africa.
They carried with them packets of Benzedrine.
After the British victory at El Alamein,
US General Dwight Eisenhower ordered half a million tablets
for American troops.
But just as the Allies had increased their use of speed,
the Nazis were reconsidering.
Ironically, Hitler's Reich health leader had concerns
about amphetamine's addictive nature and dangerous side-effects.
Although German soldiers continued to use it sporadically,
the drug was severely restricted, especially for civilian use.
Still, Hitler's infatuation with science and technology
remained strong.
By late 1944, with his Navy in tatters,
the Fuhrer looked to a bizarre wonder weapon that,
with the help of amphetamines, could turn the tide.
Jim returns to Germany to visit the site
of one of the first Nazi concentration camps.
In November 1944, some 40,000 men are stuck in this camp.
What's it designed for?
10,000. OK. So, four times more than there should have been.
Four times more.
Germany had lost the war already. Of course.
And the sphere of influence
of the German Navy was reduced to the Baltic Sea.
Everything else was controlled by the British.
So these small submarines were constructed,
mainly for espionage.
In addition to espionage capabilities,
Hitler's mini-subs were equipped with torpedoes,
designed to sink Allied ships moving supplies and troops
across the English Channel.
They were very small. Only one or two soldiers
could sit in it and they had to sit there for 48 hours
without sleeping, without getting up, without anything,
so they needed a drug to keep them awake for that time.
It's just unimaginable, isn't it?
So you need to this drug to keep you going and to keep...
..but also, presumably, to keep your spirits up, as well? Yeah.
They were testing different drugs and comparing it,
wanting to find out which drug
keeps the people awake for the longest time
with the smallest side-effects.
This is the secret report on the experiments
and this gives the four different substances,
A, B, C, D.
The first is cocaine hydrochloride in different doses.
The second is cocaine in chewing gum
and then Pervitin in a chewing gum.
But 100 mg, that's a huge dose!
Yeah, it's a huge dose. Indeed.
The men must have been completely stoned.
100mg is really a lot.
I mean, can you imagine it?
You know, you're a young member of the German Navy,
you've been singled out to man one of these submarines,
you're chewing on gum that has been laced
with cocaine and methamphetamines.
I mean, we're talking crystal meth here.
And you're chewing away on this thing
in this tiny, tight little cockpit and you're high on speed.
I mean, it's just... It's insane.
I mean, it is absolutely insane.
To test the stimulants,
the German Navy decided to make Sachsenhausen prisoners
take the drugs and force them to carry sacks of rocks
around the camp's infamous shoe track.
So, this is the testing track. This one, here? This here.
It was once around the roll-call area.
and it was covered with different materials.
So, here, you would have sand.
The next one is concrete,
small gravel.
And the reason for setting it up
was the testing of artificial leather.
Germany did not have leather.
They always imported leather and when they started the war,
nobody wanted to sell them leather.
So they ordered companies to develop...
Fake leather? ..artificial leather, yeah.
Oh, God, it's absolutely fascinating. I had no idea.
And it's quite hard to walk on here, isn't it? It is, yeah.
If you have to march, it's not so easy.
Sachsenhausen was designed by an architect
and the architect wanted to give a message
with the architecture of the camp,
with the warden tower as the highest point.
Every morning, the prisoners had to stand on the roll-call area,
being counted and up here there was a huge machinegun.
For the prisoners down there,
looking into the eye of this machinegun, up here,
the message was,
"You're completely in our hands, you're completely helpless
"and we can do whatever we want."
I mean, it's doing exactly what it's designed to do.
I mean, you can feel it, even just standing up here. Yeah.
What a grim place.
After the mini-subs failed and his army faltered,
Hitler, who himself could well have been addicted to drugs by 1945,
took his own life.
Luftwaffe commander and heroin addict
Herman Goering followed suit.
But Benzedrine and Pervitin live on.
SHIP HORN BLASTS PEOPLE APPLAUD
During the Second World War,
one of the things that it certainly does do
is it familiarises hundreds of thousands of individuals
with a drug that, perhaps, they otherwise wouldn't have used.
So it sort of normalises the use of that drug
and it sort of reinforces its position as a useful tool.
By the 1950s,
amphetamines were being marketed as a diet pill and mood enhancer.
"Benny" inhalers were being offered on aeroplane menus.
Celebrities, ranging from Marilyn Monroe to Jack Kerouac,
were avid users.
Soon, millions were abusing speed in what is now considered
America's first prescription drug epidemic.
One likely user was a young combat vet from Massachusetts,
named John F. Kennedy.
KENNEDY: Picking this country of ours up
and sending it into the '60s. CHEERS
When I first embarked on this investigation,
I was a bit scandalised that so much speed was taken
during the Second World War and how outrageous that was.
World War II's military leaders
saw amphetamines as simply another technological tool
like rockets and radar -
tools that changed the world forever.
For us, in the 21st-century, drugs are bad,
amphetamines are bad, speed is a dodgy word.
You've got to see this in the light of the 1930s and the 1940s.
World War II takes place over six years.
A lot is being expected of the young men
of the major combatant nations
and is it any wonder, in this life-and-death struggle
for the future of the world, that people are going to be
looking at drugs that can keep people awake,
that can keep morale improved?
It's absolutely no wonder at all.