If you think Berlin runs on nothing but Club Mate and techno today, you should have seen it in 1938. Long before the chemically-enhanced weekends at Berghain&Sons, Berlin was the birthplace of a different kind of miracle: Pervitin.

Synthesized right here in Berlin at Temmler-Werke in Adlershof, Pervitin was methamphetamine marketed as a harmless pick-me-up. And it was available for everyone: Housekeepers used it to breeze through chores, students used it to cram for exams, and Berlin’s famous Hildebrand chocolates were even infused with it, 14mg of meth per box. Enough to run a small power plant.

Soon after the Nazi army recognised the potential. When the Wehrmacht rolled into France in 1940, they weren’t just motivated, they were wired. The military ordered 35 million doses of the stuff to keep soldiers marching for 72 hours without sleep. Behind the Nazi propaganda of Purity was a high-functioning drug culture that achieved some of the most astonishing victories in history, the Blitzkrieg, but paid for it with interest as the war progressed. Drugs can be many things, for different people in different scenarios. We explore all of this in my Chemical CIty tour

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