Dear maari,
From my long personal studies of German history, I can say for sure
that there is only one drug that would fit here: Mescaline.
Though the Gestapo and the SS regarded torture the main element of
interrogation and breaking a person's will, they were never very
interested in drugs that might help achieve those goals. They trusted
more in physical torture, and, to a much lesser degree, psychological
torture. However, causing brutal injuries to a victim's body always
remained the most important way of both questioning and torturing
(which was much the same) for SS and Gestapo till the last days of the
Third Reich.
There was only one exception, mescaline. This substance, derived from
the Mexican Peyotl cactus (Lophophora williamsii), was first isolated
and identified by German chemist Arthur Heffter in 1897. In 1919,
Ernst Spath, another German scientist, decoded the chemical structure
of the substance and was the first one to successfully synthesize it.
In 1927, the German chemist Kurt Beringer published an extensive study
of the effects of mescaline on the human mind, "Der Meskalinrausch".
Mescaline proved to be a psycho-drug, with effects comparable to those
of LSD, which was not discovered until many years later. It has a
paralyzing effect on the central nerve system, breathing becomes
difficult, the blood pressure drops. All senses are affected,
hallucinations haunt the victim. Also, divided consciousness might be
among the results, as well as the loss of sense of time and space,
extreme desorientation, sickness, headaches, slowdown of the heart
frequency, vomitus, and insomnia after the inebriation itself is over.
Though mescaline is not as strong a drug as LSD, there is a huge
danger of mind-shattering horror trips.
Those characteristics made mescaline quite promising for the Nazi
authorities; they hoped to develop a way to use the drug as an
efficient, reliable instrument of will-breaking psycho-torture and a
"truth drug".
Mescaline tests were conducted in the Dachau concentration camp during
World War II, on Jews, Gypsies, Russian prisoners of war and other
"inferior" persons. The head of those tests, Dr. Kurt Plotner,
achieved some successes: Among the wide variety of reactions the
victims displayed under the effect of mescaline, there was also the
willingness to reveal even most intimate secrets. However, Gestapo and
SS were not ready to accept mescaline as a substitute for their more
physical methods of interrogation. They went on to try hypnosis in
combination with the drug, but they apparently never felt confident
that they had found a way to assume command of their victim's mind. So
mescaline did not see actual "everyday duty" use for interrogation
etc.
Rarely injected, mescaline can be made into capsules, tablets, or a
liquid, but cannot be compressed into little pills. It is most
commonly ingested in capsule form.
I hope this answer is satisfying; if the movie scene mentioning the
drug you are referring to belongs to a feature film, you should keep
in mind that movies are often not sticking to historical fact, for
dramatic reasons. Nazis using some kind of dangerous psycho-torture
drug appear much more dangerous and wicked on the silver screen than a
bunch of Gestapo bullies torturing their victim by beating it almost
to death.
Sources:
Gifte.de: Meskalin (in German)
http://www.gifte.de/meskalin.htm
Junge Freiheit: Auch der Geheimdienst experimentierte mit LSD (in
German)
http://www.jf-archiv.de/archiv/29aa23.htm
University of Oxford, Department of Chemistry: Mescaline
http://www.chem.ox.ac.uk/mom/mescaline/mescaline.html
Freedom of Thought Foundation :The Search for the Manchurian Candidate
- World War II
http://www.azstarnet.com/~freetht/search_for_the_manchurian_candid.htm
Drugtext: Mescaline
http://www.drugtext.org/library/books/recreationaldrugs/mescaline.htm
Search terms used:
deutschen drogen folter weltkrieg
://www.google.de/search?q=deutschen+drogen+folter+weltkrieg&hl=de&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&newwindow=1&start=0&sa=N
drugs gestapo torture
://www.google.de/search?q=drugs+gestapo+torture&hl=de&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&newwindow=1&start=0&sa=N
mescaline dachau
://www.google.de/search?q=mescaline+dachau&hl=de&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&newwindow=1&start=0&sa=N
"Kurt Plotner"
://www.google.de/search?q=%22Kurt+Plotner%22&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=de&btnG=Google+Suche&meta=
"ernst späth" mescaline
://www.google.de/search?hl=de&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&newwindow=1&q=%22ernst+sp%C3%A4th%22+mescaline&meta=
meskalin experimente
://www.google.de/search?q=meskalin+experimente&hl=de&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&newwindow=1&start=0&sa=N
Hope this is what you wanted to know.
Best regards,
Scriptor |
Clarification of Answer by
scriptor-ga
on
18 Jul 2003 16:18 PDT
Dear maari,
Mescaline mainly alters the way reality is experienced and causes
hallucinations. Those hallucinations vary very much, heavily depending
on the mental status of the affected person. Normally, there are
experiences of moving lights and colors in abstract forms and
firework-like effects, but it is also common that objects and persons
seem to change their shapes. There are very different descriptions of
the mescaline effects, so almost every kind of hallucination seems to
be possible.
Though most of these hallucinations are harmless, entertaining,
enjoyable, and of course also heady, taking mescaline under stress or
in similar tense mental states (which will surely be true for a
concentration camp prisoner who is forced to be a guinea-pig for
medical experiments, with armed SS men close by), horror trips may be
the result, leading to extreme panic attacks with unpredictable
consequences. Sometimes, sleeping psychoses suddenly erupt during a
mescaline trip.
Here is a self-experiment description of mescaline trips under, by
Alexander Shulgin:
"(with 300 mg) I would have liked to, and was expecting to, have an
exciting visual day, but I seemed to be unable to escape
self-analysis. At the peak of the experience I was quite intoxicated
and hyper with energy, so that it was not hard to move around. I was
quite restless. But I spent most of the day in considerable agony,
attempting to break through without success. I learned a great deal
about myself and my inner workings. Everything almost was, but in the
final analysis, wasn't. I began to become aware of a point, a
brilliant white light, that seemed to be where God was entering, and
it was inconceivably wonderful to perceive it and to be close to it.
One wished for it to approach with all one's heart. I could see that
people would sit and meditate for hours on end just in the hope that
this little bit of light would contact them. I begged for it to
continue and come closer but it did not. It faded away not to return
in that particular guise the rest of the day. Listening to Mozart's
Requiem, there were magnificent heights of beauty and glory. The world
was so far away from God, and nothing was more important than getting
back in touch with Him. But I saw how we created the nuclear fiasco to
threaten the existence of the planet, as if it would be only through
the threat of complete annihilation that people might wake up and
begin to become concerned about each other. And so also with the
famines in Africa. Many similar scenes of joy and despair kept me in
balance. I ended up the experience in a very peaceful space, feeling
that though I had been through a lot, I had accomplished a great deal.
I felt wonderful, free, and clear.
(with 350 mg) Once I got through the nausea stage, I ventured
out-of-doors and I was aware of an intensification of color and a
considerable change in the texture of the cloth of my skirt and in the
concrete of the sidewalk, and in the flowers and leaves that were
handed me by an observer. I experienced the desire to laugh
hysterically at what I could only describe as the completely
ridiculous state of the entire world. Although I was afraid of motion,
I was persuaded to take a ride in a car. The driver turned on the
radio and suddenly the music 'The March of the Siamese Children' from
'The King and I' became the most perfect background music for the
parody of real life which was indeed the normal activity of Telegraph
Avenue on any Saturday morning. The perfectly ordinary people on their
perfectly ordinary errands were clearly the most cleverly contrived
set of characters all performing all manners of eccentric activities
for our particular hilarity and enjoyment. I felt that I was at the
same time both observing and performing in an outrageous moving
picture. I experienced one moment of transcendant happiness when,
while passing Epworth Hall, I looked out of the window of the car and
up at the building and I was suddenly in Italy looking up at a gay
apartment building with its shutters flung open in sunshine, and with
its window boxes with flowers. We stopped at a spot overlooking the
bay, but I found the view uninteresting and the sun uncomfortable. I
sat there on the seat of the car looking down at the ground, and the
earth became a mosaic of beautiful stones which had been placed in an
intricate design which soon all began to move in a serpentine manner.
Then I became aware that I was looking at the skin of a beautiful
snake--all the ground around me was this same huge creature and we
were all standing on the back of this gigantic and beautiful reptile.
The experience was very pleasing and I felt no revulsion. Just then,
another automobile stopped to look at the view and I experienced my
first real feeling of persecution and I wanted very much to leave.
(with 400 mg) During the initial phase of the intoxication (between 2
and 3 hours) everything seemed to have a humorous interpretation.
People's faces are in caricature, small cars seem to be chasing big
cars, and all cars coming towards me seem to have faces. This one is a
duchess moving in regal pomp, that one is a wizened old man running
away from someone. A remarkable effect of this drug is the extreme
empathy felt for all small things; a stone, a flower, an insect. I
believe that it would be impossible to harm anything--to commit an
overt harmful or painful act on anyone or anything is beyond one's
capabilities. One cannot pluck a flower--and even to walk upon a
gravel path requires one to pick his footing carefully, to avoid
hurting or disturbing the stones. I found the color perception to be
the most striking aspect of the experience. The slightest difference
of shade could be amplified to extreme contrast. Many subtle hues
became phosphorescent in intensity. Saturated colors were often
unchanged, but they were surrounded by cascades of new colors tumbling
over the edges.
(with 400 mg) It took a long time to come on and I was afraid that I
had done it wrong but my concerns were soon ended. The world soon
became transformed where objects glowed as if from an inner
illumination and my body sprang to life. The sense of my body, being
alive in my muscles and sinews, filled me with enormous joy. I watched
Ermina fill to brimming with animal spirit, her features tranformed,
her body cat-like in her graceful natural movement. I was stopped in
my tracks. The world seemed to hold its breath as the cat changed
again into the Goddess. As she shed her clothes, she shed her ego and
when the dance began, Ermina was no more. There was only the dance
without the slightest self-consconciousness. How can anything so
beautiful be chained and changed by other's expectations? I became
aware of myself in her and as we looked deeply into one another my
boundaries disappeared and I became her looking at me."
Source:
Erowid: Pihkal, a Chemical Love Story - Mescaline
http://www.erowid.org/library/books_online/pihkal/pihkal096.shtml
Mescaline does not cause physical pains, except temporary toxication
effects such as sickness etc. So this is not a factor of torture.
Regards,
Scriptor
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