In Tripped: Nazi Germany, the CIA, and the Dawn of the Psychedelic Age, Norman Ohler’s follow-up to Blitzed, a social history of drug use in Nazi Germany, he expands on the Nazi interest in psychoactive drugs such as mescaline for interrogation purposes, linking it to the discovery of LSD in wartime Switzerland and the social and political destiny of psychedelic drugs in general.
Tripped is divided into three sections: Medicine, Weapon and Narcotic. The book begins with the discovery of LSD’s properties at Sandoz in 1943 and the possibility that Nazi scientists had knowledge of it, and then investigates the impact of US secret service interest in weaponising psychedelics post war. Nazi investigations into ‘truth serums’, and other secret scientific enterprises, was a matter that the US army unit ALSOS was tasked with rooting out in the aftermath of the Second World War.
Ohler weaves a complex history of LSD involving US secret services agents, US drug control agency the FDA, employees of Sandoz, and the Nazi search for interrogation tools. The book covers some ground already known in general terms but contains three major historical revelations.
Most significantly of these is the close scientific relationship between Arthur Stoll, director of research at Sandoz, and the German chemist Richard Kuhn, who oversaw Nazi investigations into biochemical weapons during World War Two. The correspondence between Stoll and Kuhn was unbroken during the Nazi period. Secondly, the possibility, because of this special scientific relationship, that the Nazis experimenting with mescaline as an interrogation tool also had access to LSD. And thirdly, the obstruction by the FDA of LSD marketing by Sandoz because of US government agency interest in the drug, and the imperative not to alert the Soviets to an agent that might be used against them.
Some of Ohler’s research coincides with my own work, particularly the continued operations of Sandoz in Germany throughout the war and the moral compromises involved in both their manufacture and distribution of products there during the Nazi era. However, the close relationship of Stoll at Sandoz and the Nazi biochemist Richard Kuhn was entirely new to me.1 It is the details of this relationship that provides for speculation that the Nazis may have added LSD to their experiments at Dachau involving mescaline as an interrogation agent.
Ohler reveals that on November 20, 1943, six months after the LSD discovery at Sandoz, Kuhn wrote to Stoll thanking him for supplying him with Ergotamine, the precursor needed to manufacture LSD—it was enough to make about 2,500 strong doses. It is this and an intriguing reference to ‘other means’ employed besides mescaline in a report by Dr Kurt Plötner on his experiments at Dachau that enable Ohler to ask a series of provocative questions.2 ‘Was one of these “other means” LSD, making its way from Stoll to the concentration camp by way of Kuhn?’ And, ‘Did the Nazis try to make use of LSD, too?’ Ohler assembles a trail of telling evidence and readers will have to follow that and make their own mind up.
While the possibility that the Nazis had access to and used LSD is initially shocking, given its popular association with the psychedelic Sixties, the Nazis were already making use of mescaline, with effects very similar to those of LSD. What is ultimately and fundamentally shocking is the close cooperation of Stoll at Sandoz with Nazi scientist Kuhn.
Although the book treads familiar ground, such as the creation of the MK-ULTRA program and the mysterious death of Frank Olson, it is really about Ohler’s tireless archival research in Switzerland and the US for the truth about the origins and destiny of LSD. Ohler’s research reveals many more hidden aspects of LSD history other than the matters that I have emphasised. For example, the shabby treatment of Hofmann by Sandoz/Novartis at the end of his career and in retirement, by failing to properly acknowledge or to adequately reward him financially for his contributions to the company.
In the end, Tripped is also a very personal search when Ohler finally brings his tale to the present day, and he discusses the potential of LSD and psilocybin as therapeutic agents in respect of dementia. Ohler’s mother is suffering from the effects of Alzheimer’s, and he determines to experiment with it, with positive results. He finally clamours for a release of the legal restrictions on psychedelic drugs so that their therapeutic potential can be shared by all.
According to Ohler, our international drug laws, which have heretofore restricted investigations into the therapeutic potential of psychedelics, were initially based on those of the Nazi regime, adopted via the US occupation of post-war Germany. Nobody who thinks that they already know the full story of LSD can afford not read this book.
A matter I was personally interested in reviewing. See for example: “Arthur Stoll was in (an) intensive scientific correspondence with Richard Kuhn, which was not interrupted during the Nazi era, but strictly avoided the spread of the Nazi plague.” My translation. Gerhard Oberkofler (2001), Leopold Ruzicka (1887-1976): Schweizer Chemiker und Humanist aus Altösterreich, Studien-Verlag, p.69. Note also, ETH Zurich's University Archives at the ETH Library which contain the Historical School Board Archive with documentation on Richard Kuhn's chair. “A correspondence spanning thirty-four letters between Richard Kuhn and Arthur Stoll (1887 to 1971), a professor of chemistry at the University of Munich and Director of Sandoz AG Basel, from the years 1932 to 1957 is archived in the combined personal papers of Richard Willstätter and Arthur Stoll.” See: https://library.ethz.ch/en/locations-and-media/platforms/short-portraits/richard-kuhn-1900-1967.html
See Ohler, pages 65-66, 79 and 90. Details of the complex history of this report can be found in note 107, page 76 of Alfred W. McCoy, (2012). Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation (Critical Human Rights), University of Wisconsin Press. According to Ohler the original report retrieved from Dachau disappeared from storage, probably taken by US secret services and were not used at the Nuremberg Trials to conceal their content from the Russians. In common with other Nazi scientists Plötner was not prosecuted and recruited by the US, before returning to civilian life in Germany.