When We Cease to Understand the World

Content Warning: This section of the guide describes and discusses the source text’s treatment of death by suicide, mental health conditions, antisemitic violence, pedophilia, and sexual assault.

This chapter opens with a discussion of the use of amphetamines, specifically Pervitin, by members of the German military, known as the Wehrmacht, during World War II. When Chief of the Luftwaffe High Command Hermann Göring was captured after the war, for example, he was carrying a suitcase full of Pervitin. Then, the essay describes how many Germans took their own lives toward the end of WWII, when it was clear the Nazis were going to lose the war. While some hung themselves, shot themselves, or slit their wrists, others took rat poison or made use of cyanide capsules. During a performance of the Berlin Philharmonic for Nazi elites on April 12, 1945, where the program included Nazi favorite Götterdämmerung, the last of Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle, members of the Hitler Youth distributed cyanide capsules to the audience. Many Nazi leaders, including Göring, Goebbels, and Hitler later died by these cyanide pills.

The chapter then discusses the route by which cyanide, known as Blausäure in German, was developed. Cyanide, or potassium cyanide, smells of almonds, although approximately 40 percent of people cannot smell it.