आर्यत्वाचा उन्माद...अमली पदार्थांनी भरून वाहणाऱ्या पुष्करणी व नद्या ...Breaking Bad in Hitler's Germany!

Adolf Hitler:

"I’m not doing politics any more. It repels me so much." 

"The higher a man rises the more he has to be able to abstain […] If a street-sweeper is unwilling to sacrifice his tobacco or his beer, then I think, ‘Very well, my good man, that’s precisely why you’re a street-sweeper and not one of the ruling personalities of the State!’"

Once a popular German song in Berlin cabarets:

Once not so very long ago
Sweet alcohol, that beast,
Brought warmth and sweetness to our lives,
But then the price increased.
And so cocaine and morphine
Berliners now select.
Let lightning flashes rage outside
We snort and we inject!

Norman Ohler, 2016 :

“...Outside of the military the addiction was also growing. In 1939 Pervitin fever was rife in the Third Reich, whether it was housewives going through the menopause who ‘wolfed down the stuff like sweets’, young mothers who took methamphetamine to ward off the baby blues, or widows who were looking for ‘Elite partners’ through the marriage bureau, and who took high doses to combat inhibitions during their first meeting. To help with childbirth, to fight seasickness, vertigo, hay fever, schizophrenia, anxiety neuroses, depressions, low drive, disturbances of the brain – wherever the Germans hurt, the blue, white and red tube was at the ready.

As coffee had hardly been available since the start of the war, methamphetamine was often added as a substitute to pep up ersatz versions of the drink. ‘Pervitin could, rather than being pumped into bomber pilots and bunker pioneers, be used deliberately for cerebral machinations in higher-education colleges,’ Gottfried Benn wrote of these times.‘It may sound deviant to some people, but it is only the natural continuation of an idea of humanity’s progress. Whether it is rhythm, drugs or modern autogenic training – it is the ancient human desire to overcome tensions that have become unbearable.’...”

“...(Erwin) Rommel didn’t halt. Too nimble to offer a target, he drove and drove and drove, taking advantage as Guderian had done of the excellent German logistics and becoming a kind of deadly joker, always playing high and wild, becoming unpredictable, uncontrollable, unstoppable. They admired him at headquarters: ‘I’d like to go right to the front like General Rommel. He’s the greatest daredevil, always in the first combat vehicle of his division!’ Even his superior, General Hoth, couldn’t issue him with orders, because by the time these written documents arrived on the battlefield, Rommel was already miles away and out of radio contact. He had no apparent sense of danger – a typical symptom of excessive methamphetamine consumption. Even in the middle of the night he stormed on and attacked solid positions while still in motion, firing all barrels like a sort of berserker, constantly catching his adversaries on the back foot...”

Ziya Us Salam, Frontline, March 2017:

“...On one hand, Aurangzeb Road in New Delhi has been renamed Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Road, and on the other, a road has been named after Dara Shikoh, the man he bested in the battle of succession after Shah Jahan’s reign in 1657.

Whichever way you look at it, Aurangzeb is very much a part of an ongoing debate. If in the 1980s and 1990s Muslims were derided as Babur ki aulad (Babur’s progeny), today a Shiv Sena leader calls Muslims Aurangzeb ki aulad. It seems Aurangzeb is the baggage from the past modern-day Muslims have to live with. “Well, one lesson we are constantly taught is that history is important because it shapes the present. In reality, it is the other way around: it is the demands and pressures arising out of the present which shape our image of the past especially at the popular level...”

पैगंबरवासी औरंगझेब, अफझल खान आणि शाहिस्ते खान यांच्या सारखच हिटलर मराठी लोकांच्या जीवनातून अजूनही जात नाहीत.

त्यांचं पुस्तक मराठीतलं बेस्ट सेलर, काही आधुनिक राजकीय पुढाऱ्यांकडून होणारे त्यांचे गौरवपूर्ण उल्लेख, त्यांच्या बरोबर अमेरिकेचे सध्याचे राष्ट्राध्यक्ष डोनाल्ड ट्रम्प यांची नेहमी होत असणारी तुलना, १९४७सालच्या आधी काही महत्वाच्या नेत्यांचे, संघटनांचे आणि त्यांचे प्रत्यक्ष/ अप्रत्यक्ष संबंध, कै इरावती कर्वेंबाबत कै. दुर्गाबाई भागवतांनी काढलेले खालील उद्गार:
 "...पण जेव्हा हा अभिमान परछळाचा पाया होतो, अभिमानाचे रुप अहंगंड घेतो, अस्मितेला असहिष्णुतेचे स्वरूप येते, तेव्हा मात्र हा अभिमान रास्त राहत नाहि. या अभिमानापोटी काही मंडळी इंग्लंडात न जाता जर्मनीला गेली. त्यावेळी हिटलरने आर्यस्तोम माजवले होते...पण आर्यत्वाची मोहिनी असणारे कित्येक जण जर्मनीत गेले. तिथल्या पदव्या त्यांनी घेतल्या. इरावतीबाई (व त्यांचे पतिराज) त्यांपैकीच होते. वास्तविक इरावतीबाईंनी एम. ए. चाच प्रबंध जर्मनीत थोडा बदल करून पीएच. डी. ला दिला… "
 ('आठवले तसे', १९९१/२०१४) ... अस कितीतरी!

नॉर्मन ओलार (Norman Ohler) यांचे 'ब्लिट्झड : ड्रग्स इन नाझी जर्मनी' (Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi German) हे पुस्तक २०१६ साली प्रसिद्ध झाले. त्याचे मोठ्या प्रमाणात सर्वत्र कौतुक झाले आहे. त्याचे काही भाग आणि त्याची परिक्षण वाचून बायार (Bayer) , म्यॅर्क (Merck) या महाकाय औषधे आणि रसायने बनवणाऱ्या कंपन्यांचा युद्धावरती - केमिकल शस्त्रे बनवून नव्हे- केवढा मोठा परिणाम होता हे जाणवत.  

हिटलर, इतर अनेक नाझी आणि मोठ्या प्रमाणात सामान्य जर्मन लोक, सैन्य  किती व्यसनी ('चरसी'/ 'गांजेकस') होते हे वाचून मन थक्क झाले आणि इतिहास हा कसा कायम इव्हॉल्व्ह होत रहातो याची जाणीव झाली. वाचून, पाहून कल्पिलेल्या युद्धकालीन जर्मनीतील प्रत्येक गोष्टीवर याचे सावट पडले. वाचलेला इतिहास, सिनेमा, डॉक्युमेंटरी थोडा का होईना बदललीय अस वाटू लागल.

मध्ययुगीन भारतात सुद्धा  अमली पदार्थाचा  वापर  असा झाला असेल का? ज्याला आपण टोकाचे धाडस, शौर्य म्हणतो ते काही प्रमाणात अफूच्या, गांजाच्या अमलाखाली झालेल्या कृती असतील का? त्यामुळे त्या कृतींचे महत्व कदाचित कमी होत नसेल पण सत्य काय आहे? (Wikipedia: Extensive textual and pictorial sources also show that poppy cultivation and opium consumption were widespread in Safavid Iran and Mughal India.)

थोर विद्वान आणि अभ्यासू कै. स अ जोगळेकरांनी त्यांच्या वाङ्मय शोभा मार्च १९५०च्या लेखात प्राचीन- 'आर्य' कालातील मद्यपानाबद्दल लिहले आहे:

सौजन्य: लेखक आणि वाङ्मय शोभा 

कै. अरुण कोलटकरांनी 'द्रोण', २००२ या त्यांच्या दीर्घ कवितेत रामायणातील लंकाविजया नंतरच्या जेत्यांच्या काल्पनिक ऑरजी (orgy) चे वर्णन केले आहे.

पण कै जोगळेकर आणि कोलटकर आज असते तर त्यांना समजले असतेकी आधुनिक आर्य-जर्मन लोक दारू बरोबरच अमली पदार्थांच्या आहारी किती गेले होते ते!

जोगळेकर म्हणतातकी शहराला वेढा पडलेला असताना महाभारतकालीन सर्वसाधारण नागरिकांना मद्यपानाची सक्त मनाई होती पण बर्लिनला रशियनांचा वेढा पडल्यावर हिटलर आणि मंडळींचे ड्रग थैमान जमेल तसे चालूच होते!

दुसय्रा महायुद्धावरील गाजलेल्या अनेक पुस्तकांचे लेखक सर अँटनी बीव्हर 'दी न्यू यॉर्क रिव्ह्यू ऑफ बुक्स', मार्च ९ २०१७ मध्ये लिहतात :

"At the core of Ohler’s book lie the fundamental paradox and shameless hypocrisy of Nazism. Its ideology demanded purity of body, blood, and mind. Adolf Hitler was portrayed as a vegetarian teetotaler who would allow nothing to corrupt him. Drugs were depicted as part of a Jewish plot to poison and weaken the nation—Jews were said to “play a supreme part” in the international drug trade—and yet nobody became more dependent on cocktails of drugs than Hitler, and no armed forces did more to enhance their troops’ performance than the Wehrmacht did by using a version of methamphetamine. Although Ohler’s book does not fundamentally change the history of the Third Reich, it is an account that makes us look at this densely studied period rather differently."

 "In pill form Pervitin was marketed as a general stimulant, equally useful for factory workers and housewives. It promised to overcome narcolepsy, depression, low energy levels, frigidity in women, and weak circulation. The assurance that it would increase performance attracted the Nazi Party’s approval, and amphetamine use was quietly omitted from any anti-drug propaganda. By 1938, large parts of the population were using Pervitin on an almost regular basis, including students preparing for exams, nurses on night duty, businessmen under pressure, and mothers dealing with the pressures of Kinder, Küche, Kirche (children, kitchen, church—to which the Nazis thought women should be relegated). Ohler quotes from letters written by the future Nobel laureate Heinrich Böll, then serving in the German army, begging his parents to send him more Pervitin. Its consumption came to be seen as entirely normal."

"Whether Hitler’s trembling hands were the result of Parkinson’s or the direct consequence of excessive drug use is impossible to say, but the deterioration in his appearance toward the end of 1944 shocked many who had not seen him since earlier in the year. By February 1945, supplies of Eukodal had begun to run out, and Hitler was soon suffering withdrawal symptoms as the end approached in the Führerbunker in Berlin. Albert Speer complained that history always emphasized terminal events, and thus overlooked the early achievements of Nazism. He could not have been more wrong. The ghastly and grotesque end of the Third Reich revealed its true basis of lies, hypocrisy, futile slaughter, and pointless cruelty."

Mr. Ramachandra Guha quotes the late Mr. J L Nehru in his book ‘Makers of Modern India’,  2010 thus:

“...’I have some knowledge of the way the Nazi movement developed  in Germany. It attracted by its superficial trappings and strict discipline considerable numbers of lower middle class young men and women who are normally not too intelligent and for whom life appeared to offer little to attract them. And so they drifted towards  the Nazi party because its policy and programme, such as they were, were simple, negative and did not require an active effort of the mind. The Nazi party brought Germany to ruin and I have little doubt that if these tendencies are allowed to spread and increase in India, they would do enormous injury to India. No doubt India would survive. But she would be grievously wounded and would take a long time to recover’. From a letter dated 17 January 1948...”

Little did Nehru know the role played by chemistry in the process!

श्री. ओलार पुस्तकात एका ठिकाणी म्हणतात:

"The Nazis had their own recipe for healing the people: they promised ideological salvation. For them there could be only one legitimate form of inebriation: the swastika."

ते झाल सुरवातीला पण नंतर सुद्धा, खालील चित्रात दाखवल्याप्रमाणे, स्वस्तिक व्यतिरिक्त गोष्टींनी 'हाय' (inebriate) झाल्यावर सुद्धा हिटलर किंवा त्यांच्या अनुयायांचे 'स्वस्तिक प्रेम' कमी झालेले दिसत नाही!

Artist: E. O. Plauen aka Erich Ohser (1903-1944)