The
Nazi government took a strong interest in promoting Germanic culture and music, which returned people to the folk culture of their remote ancestors while promoting the distribution of radio to transmit propaganda. The Nazi government had an obsession with controlling culture and promoting the culture it controlled. For this reason, the common people's tastes in music were much more secret. Many Germans used their new radios to listen to the
jazz music hated by Hitler but loved all over the world. In art, this attack came after
expressionism,
impressionism, and all forms of
modernism. Forms of music targeted included
jazz as well as the music of many of the more dissonant modern classical composers, including that of
Igor Stravinsky,
Paul Hindemith, and
Arnold Schoenberg. Hindemith was one of many composers who fled the Third Reich as a result of musical persecution (as well as racial persecution, since Hindemith's wife, was part Jewish). Modern composers who took a more conventional approach to music, however, were welcomed by the Third Reich;
Carl Orff and
Richard Strauss, for example, were able to stay in the country during the Nazi period. Also, a subtle factor of history makes gaining a reliable picture of the music of Germany more difficult than among the Allies. World War II in the English speaking world is usually remembered as a great triumph and the music is often performed with a sense of pride. Therefore, over time the collective consciousness of this period's music has become stronger. In Germany, World War II is generally seen as a shameful period; it would be difficult to imagine a band playing 'all the old favourites' of World War II in a public place. Popular music is tied with nostalgia and collective memory. Though a historian can find samples of music that were played on the radio or can collect soldiers' songs from a period, ranking the subjective meaning and value assigned to a song by the people of that period will be greatly impacted by those subjects' later opinion of that music. For example, it is known that many Germans enjoyed American jazz, and it is also known that Germans sang songs in Nazi sponsored events, but it would be difficult to determine the relative popularity of this music in the current context of shame concerning the war. Therefore, the best that can be understood about German Music during the war is the official Nazi government policy, the level of enforcement, and some notion of the diversity of other music listened to, but as the losers in the war German Music and
Nazi songs from World War II has not been assigned the high heroic status of American and British popular music. As the music itself goes, however, it is considered by many as being above the level of the latter, which is also true of Fascist Italian music of the time.
Approved and unapproved German music The Nazis were dedicated to the concept that German Culture was the greatest in history, but, as with all parts of art, Hitler took an interest in suppressing the work of all those he considered "unfit" while promoting certain composers as proper Germans. All musicians were required to join the
Reichsmusikkammer, or "Reich Music Chamber", part of the
Reich Chamber of Culture founded by
Joseph Goebbels in 1933. Membership required a so-called
Aryan certificate, meaning that Jewish musicians could no longer work. Along with exhibitions of "
degenerate art" (
entartete Kunst) the Nazi government identified certain music, composers and performers as
entartete Musik. Designation into this category was based upon the race, ethnicity, and political orientation of the composers and performers in question. The works of Jewish classical composers were banned, including those of
Gustav Mahler,
Felix Mendelssohn, Arnold Schoenberg,
George Gershwin and
Claude Debussy (who had a Jewish wife). The popular music of
Irving Berlin (also Jewish) was completely banned. In 1938 Nazi Germany passed an official law on Jazz music. Not surprisingly it deals with the racial nature of the music and makes laws based on racial theories. Jazz was "Negroid"; It posed a threat to European higher culture, and was therefore forbidden except in the case of scientific study.
Music permitted under the Nazis The
Reichsmusikkammer promoted
classical music by German composers such as
Beethoven and
Wagner, as well as Austrians such as
Mozart. Military music was also promoted, but lighter, non-political music was a source of escapism for many. The ''
, or "Request Concert for the Armed Forces", was a radio program broadcast from Berlin. The subject of a 1940 film, it consisted of live music requested by soldiers. Connecting the military to the home front and vice versa, contributed to the Volksgemeinschaft'', the Nazi concept of a "people's community". Degrees of censorship varied, and the Germans were likely more concerned with the war than styles of music. But as the war went poorly the objectives of the government moved from building a perfect German state to keeping the population in line, and the relative importance of morale-raising songs would have increased. Popular songs were officially encouraged during the war including: • "Berlin bleibt doch Berlin!" (Berlin is still Berlin) (words
Bruno Balz, music
Will Meisel) was popular with Joseph Goebbels near the
fall of Berlin. •
"Erika", a
marching song about a soldier who misses his fiancée, does not have political lyrics, but its composer,
Herms Niel, had joined the Nazi Party in 1934. Goebbels commissioned a swing band called "
Charlie and His Orchestra" which existed for supplying propaganda to British and American troops over the radio. Popular tunes were sung in English with Nazi propaganda. The musicians were competent (they were spoofing highly polished
Big Band music). As an example, the singers would twist a hit such as
Bob Hope's "
Thanks for the Memory" with a taunt to English-speaking soldiers about the
fall of Singapore, rhyming "Singapore" with "we don't go there anymore". ==Polish music==