“Speed” with similar effects but milder was used by all sides in WWII. It apparently didn’t have the bad press it has since earned.
I remember kids back in 1961-1962 dropping because of “Pep Pills”.
Yep. I did my first tour of duty in Germany in 1968. Even though it was almost 25 years after the war, we still had to pull a lot of guard duty.
First heard of Captagon from a sergeant who told us it'd help us get through the long boring nights guarding the motor pool (never mind why anyone would want to steal a big smoke-belching OD-green piece-of-junk deuce-and-a-half).
You could get Captagon over the counter from any German pharmacy. It was cheap, about the price of aspirin. I loved it. And not just for guard duty. Anytime you were sleepy and needed to stay awake, just pop a Captagon and you were good to go. While on Captagon you would be wide awake, but without the jitteriness of lots of coffee.
What I didn't know was that the Army was having lots of problems with the troops abusing the stuff, so it was trying to get German authorities to make it prescription only -- and it succeeded, much to my annoyance. Fortunately, around the same time, the Army also did away with guard duty for most of the units on that particular Army base, so I soon forgot all about it.