Introduction
Norman Ohler (born 1970) is a German journalist, author and screenwriter.
Overview
Ohler was born in Zweibrücken, Germany in 1970 and attended journalism school in Hamburg, Germany.
In the fall of 2004, Ohler was invited by the German cultural association Goethe-Institut to act as writer-in-residence in Ramallah. There, Ohler wrote about the life of the Palestinians in the West Bank and published the last interview Yassir Arafat gave, shortly before his death. After his time in Ramallah, Ohler also worked as writer-in-residence in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
In September 2015, Ohler published his first nonfiction work, titled The Total Rush: Drugs In the Third Reich. In the book, Ohler researches what role psychoactive drugs, particularly stimulants such as methamphetamine, played in the military history of World War II, concluding that many of the German military and political leadership—especially Adolf Hitler—abused psychoactive drugs during the war. The book was praised by fellow war historians
- Antony Beevor: "A remarkable work of research"
- Ian Kershaw, a leading Hitler researcher, who described Ohler's book as, “a serious piece of scholarship”
- Dan Snow, British television presenter: "The most brilliant and fascinating book I have read in my entire life"
The title was later translated to English as Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany.
Books
Novels
- Die Quotenmaschine (1998)
- Mitte (2001)
- Ponte City (2003)
Non-fiction
- Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany (2016), ISBN 0241256992
- Norman Ohler: Der totale Rausch: Drogen im Dritten Reich. Kiepenheuer & Witsch : Köln, 2015, ISBN 978-3-462-04733-2; High Hitler Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Sept. 13, 2015; Wenn das der Führer wüsste… Die Zeit, Dec. 3, 2015
Film
- Palermo Shooting, screenwriter (2008)
- Festival de Canne: Palermo Shooting Cannes Film Festival, October 6, 2016
- Todd McCarthy (25 May 2008). "Review: 'Palermo Shooting'". Variety. Retrieved 6 October 2016.