Norman Ohler: belief

Transcript context

…All these little events come together. It’s so interesting that for them it was just life, but now we look back at these critical moments in history that turned the tides of human civilization, right? So Hitler could have died there, and these characters, Göring, that became larger than life… …That influenced the lives and the deaths and the suffering of millions, all… First of all, it could have been stopped then, and whatever that means when you look back at history. But all those are just human beings developing their ideas, growing, developing groups, developing ideologies, and using drugs or drinking. I mean, that’s why I thought it’s interesting, for example, to examine Hitler’s drug use. When I announced that to a historian while I was doing research, he helped me a lot with methamphetamine and the army, a proper medicine historian from the University of Ulm. And then I said, “Now I’m interested in Hitler.” He said, “No, don’t. This is not interesting. This is not serious…” He said, “This is not serious history.” But it’s… You know, even Hitler was a person, you know? And if you understand, for example, the substance abuse of a person, of course you understand more about that person. And historians never had that idea before. Kershaw, for example, who is really a great… He’s very knowledgeable about national socialism. Like many British historians, they always know more about German history than the German historians, but Kershaw really does. I think he’s really good. But in his biography of Hitler, he just writes one sentence like, “And then he had a crazy doctor called Morell who gave him dubious medications and drugs,” and he stops there, and then he goes on to describe whatever. Yeah, we should say that Ian Kershaw is widely considered to be probably one of the greatest biographers of Hitler.…

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