(Peter Andres’s Post from the TIME on 08 January 2020.)
Methamphetamine
Became a Key Part of Nazi Military Strategy: In The Art of War, Sun Tzu wrote
that speed is “the essence of war.” While he of course did not have
amphetamines in mind, he would no doubt have been impressed by their powerful
war-facilitating psychoactive effects.
Amphetamines—often
called “pep pills,” “go pills,” “uppers” or “speed”—are a group of synthetic
drugs that stimulate the central nervous system, reducing fatigue and appetite
and increasing wakefulness and a sense of well-being.
The
quintessential drug of the modern industrial age, amphetamines arrived
relatively late in the history of mind-altering substances—commercialized just
in time for mass consumption during World War II by the leading industrial
powers. That war was not only the most destructive war in human history but
also the most pharmacologically enhanced. It was literally sped up by speed.
Few drugs have received a bigger stimulus from war. As Lester Grinspoon and Peter Hedblom wrote in their classic 1975 study The Speed Culture, “World War II probably gave the greatest impetus to date to legal medically authorized as well as illicit black market abuse of these pills on a worldwide scale.”








