Axis involved in international drug trade

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Deleted member 1487

Today a lot of rogue nations like Iran and North Korea are involved in all sorts of illegal activities like drugs, arms sales, and currency counterfeiting, while intelligence agencies like the CIA are infamous since the 1950s for being involved with drugs, initially via the exiled KMT in Burma that resulted in 'Air America' all the way to today with the opium trade out of Afghanistan. What if the Axis, who were having all sorts of foreign exchange shortages by 1936 got involved in the drug trade and smuggling to raise money from 1936 on? I know that during the war the Germans got into counterfeiting the British Pound, so why not something like drugs? Heroin and Cocaine were invented by German pharmaceutical companies and things like MDMA were invented by Merck in 1912. They had access to the right climate for growing things like poppies. What are the risks and potential rewards to producing and smuggling drugs for raising money for rearmament? Potentially they could have access to the US mafia via contacts through Italy, so the US could be a market, same with China via Japan. What would the international fallout be if they are discovered?
 

matzeskatze

Without any great research;
Weapons and Counterfaiting are one thing. That could demage the nations standing and the international climate.
But drugs, esp. those that create addiction, Imo destroy the social fabric of society. And not just that of the reciving country. Because the illegal nature and humans being humans will see to it, that it also appears in your own country.
 

pattersonautobody

Who are the customers? Salvia is totally legal, but it is not popular. Drugs have to be cool for people to take them, not simply just addictive.
 

Intosh

wiking said:
That's interesting. I had no idea that happened or that they were making that colossal level of profits; $300 million in the 1930s was enough to buy 10 million tons of oil, which was significantly more than Germany required for her entire economy pre-war.
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First, you need customers and a market, and second you need dealers and I don't think 1940 US Mafia was very fond of drug dealing.
 

Deleted member 1487

Intosh said:
First, you need customers and a market, and second you need dealers and I don't think 1940 US Mafia was very fond of drug dealing.
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AFAIK they were involved in some way in the 1920s in the drug trade. If not the US then in France and Britain, as the early drug trade was biggest there (besides Germany, which the Nazis cracked down on heavily). Mexico had a major drug market in the 1920s-30s that could be moved into with pharmaceutical grade drugs. Of course South America too was an option. If the effects of MDMA were discovered a bit earlier that could have been an excellent drug for marketing, as it wasn't regulated until the 1960s.
 
LHB

LHB

pattersonautobody said:
Who are the customers? Salvia is totally legal, but it is not popular. Drugs have to be cool for people to take them, not simply just addictive.
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That's because Salvia makes you trip out for all of five minutes and leaves you with a throbbing headache for the next three hours. The low cost and legality doesn't mitigate the general suckiness of the trip.

Speaking more broadly one question that comes to mind is where are they going to be growing these poppies? One of the major problems the Axis had was limited resources and while I don't quite know enough on the agricultural side of things to comment it wouldn't surprise me if there would be problems with a lack of the necessary land for growing poppies.

There's also the problem that once the war starts it is going to be FAR more difficult to slip the product out and into prospective markets, especially if those markets are overseas.
 

Deleted member 1487

LHB said:
That's because Salvia makes you trip out for all of five minutes and leaves you with a throbbing headache for the next three hours. The low cost and legality doesn't mitigate the general suckiness of the trip.

Speaking more broadly one question that comes to mind is where are they going to be growing these poppies? One of the major problems the Axis had was limited resources and while I don't quite know enough on the agricultural side of things to comment it wouldn't surprise me if there would be problems with a lack of the necessary land for growing poppies.

There's also the problem that once the war starts it is going to be FAR more difficult to slip the product out and into prospective markets, especially if those markets are overseas.
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The issue in terms of the war would be that the Axis drops it once the fighting is on, because purchasing is virtually impossible at that point. Its a pre-war way of financing rearmament once the foreign exchange crisis hits.
 

Deleted member 1487

juanml82 said:
How illegal were drugs in the 1930s?
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Basically everything but booze was until LSD, Mescalin, and MDMA were discovered to have 'recreational' uses. Then in the 1950-60s they were made illegal. Heroin, Cocaine, Opium, and Cannabis were all restricted/illegal and were the primary drugs of the day.
 
LHB

LHB

juanml82 said:
How illegal were drugs in the 1930s?
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Not very. Pot had only recently been banned by the federal government and while it wasn't quite the age of cocaine in over the counter medicines that was the Gay 1890s it wasn't exactly that hard to get a hold of opium and cocaine.

wiking said:
The issue in terms of the war would be that the Axis drops it once the fighting is on, because purchasing is virtually impossible at that point. Its a pre-war way of financing rearmament once the foreign exchange crisis hits.
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That depends on who, specifically, is doing the growing.

If you're talking Japan then it wouldn't surprise me if they'd start cultivating in parts of occupied China and keep on going as long as they can get away with it. Getting lots of Chinese addicted to opium wouldn't hurt their war effort really and seeing as they tried some truly horrible stuff like porcelain bombs laden with bubonic plague fleas starting a drug epidemic to pacify the population seems like it would be no problem for them and could easily keep going during the war if the focus is on China and Southeast Asia.

If you're talking Germany and someone actually powerful is the patron of this operation it could be tricky to shut down. On the flip side I think it would also be possible for the Germans to employ a similar strategy but aimed it at Russia instead of China.
 

The Uchronian

wiking said:
Today a lot of rogue nations like Iran and North Korea are involved in all sorts of illegal activities like drugs, arms sales, and currency counterfeiting, while intelligence agencies like the CIA are infamous since the 1950s for being involved with drugs, initially via the exiled KMT in Burma that resulted in 'Air America' all the way to today with the opium trade out of Afghanistan. What if the Axis, who were having all sorts of foreign exchange shortages by 1936 got involved in the drug trade and smuggling to raise money from 1936 on? I know that during the war the Germans got into counterfeiting the British Pound, so why not something like drugs? Heroin and Cocaine were invented by German pharmaceutical companies and things like MDMA were invented by Merck in 1912. They had access to the right climate for growing things like poppies. What are the risks and potential rewards to producing and smuggling drugs for raising money for rearmament? Potentially they could have access to the US mafia via contacts through Italy, so the US could be a market, same with China via Japan. What would the international fallout be if they are discovered?
Click to expand...

Very well could be possible. To have the most profitable start, however, drugs would almost certainly have to be heavily restricted for the ordinary citizen in Axis nations.....(remember, this is the general environment in which most of the top cartels fllourished IOTL; just look at Mexico for an example). What happens afterwards, though, will depend on what's going on elsewhere.
 

Deleted member 1487

LHB said:
That depends on who, specifically, is doing the growing.

If you're talking Japan then it wouldn't surprise me if they'd start cultivating in parts of occupied China and keep on going as long as they can get away with it. Getting lots of Chinese addicted to opium wouldn't hurt their war effort really and seeing as they tried some truly horrible stuff like porcelain bombs laden with bubonic plague fleas starting a drug epidemic to pacify the population seems like it would be no problem for them and could easily keep going during the war if the focus is on China and Southeast Asia.

If you're talking Germany and someone actually powerful is the patron of this operation it could be tricky to shut down. On the flip side I think it would also be possible for the Germans to employ a similar strategy but aimed it at Russia instead of China.
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Apparently Japan was IOTL doing just all of this. They cultivated in Manchuko and were making $300 Million a year selling to China, which was a huge sum in the 1930s. The guy running the operation was charged as a Class A war criminal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naoki_Hoshino

The USSR is too tricky to get anything into due to the brutal NKVD, which prevented foreign intelligence from making contacts pre-war in their country.
 
LHB

LHB

wiking said:
Apparently Japan was IOTL doing just all of this. They cultivated in Manchuko and were making $300 Million a year selling to China, which was a huge sum in the 1930s. The guy running the operation was charged as a Class A war criminal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naoki_Hoshino

The USSR is too tricky to get anything into due to the brutal NKVD, which prevented foreign intelligence from making contacts pre-war in their country.
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Wow, I'll add that to the list of reasons why Imperial Japan was almost as terrible as Nazi Germany. At this point the only thing keeping them from being neck in neck is the lack of death camps.

What about getting France hooked? Even after France falls that can continue to reap benefits by helping keep the population pacified.
 

Deleted member 1487

LHB said:
Wow, I'll add that to the list of reasons why Imperial Japan was almost as terrible as Nazi Germany. At this point the only thing keeping them from being neck in neck is the lack of death camps.
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You need to read more about their crimes then, they were every bit as bad, just in different ways. Death Camps are no worse than vivisecting people and intentionally releasing weaponized plagues on people. Then there was the 'Three Alls' strategy...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Alls_Policy
And what they did in the DEI and Philippines.


LHB said:
What about getting France hooked? Even after France falls that can continue to reap benefits by helping keep the population pacified.
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Pre-war that would be hugely profitable, as there already was a substantial drug trade, but after the occupation there was little benefit given the cost of continuing the grow drugs; France was highly pacified until 1944 when suddenly the French decided to resist once invasion was imminent.
 

thaddeus

Donor
opium production possible in Macedonia (another reason to allow Bulgaria to occupy since they would be more reliable ally) and Hungary.

not sure where their market would be though? sure the Soviets kept control over their population but Bulgarians would have as good access as anyone and possible the Caucasus region might be a little more "wild west?"

Germany operated seaplane-based postal service, a good front to move drugs?

possible other enterprises for Axis crime family?

already selling or bartering weapons but possible to expand that to include rebel groups globally.

used auxiliary cruisers in pirate fleet.
 
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