Hear innovative bestselling writer Norman Ohler speak on his new book Blitzed. In this highly original text, Ohler investigates the murky, chaotic world of drug use in the Third Reich. Blitzed is the first book to present compelling evidence that the entire Nazi regime was a performance society permeated with drugs - cocaine, heroin, morphine and methamphetamines- the last of these being crucial to troops' resilience and partly explaining German victory in 1940.

Ohler is explicit that drugs cannot explain Third Reich ideology, but their promiscuous use impaired and confused decision-making, with drastic effects on Hitler and his entourage, who, as the war turned against Germany, took refuge in ever more poorly understood cocktails of stimulants. This chemical euphoria changes how we should think about the Nazi high command and its ability to understand the situation it found itself in by 1944-5.

Norman Ohler, born in 1970, is an award-winning German novelist. To research Blitzed, (which was published as Der Totale Rausch in Germany and became an instant bestseller) he unearthed new material from archives in Germany and the US, and spoke to eyewitnesses, military historians and doctors. He also wrote the world's first hypertext novel and is co-writer of the script for Wim Wenders' film Palermo Shooting.www.normanohler.com