Quote:
Originally Posted by jimbuna
Quote:
Originally Posted by moscowexile
I should think that hearing Vera Lynn warbling away "The White Cliffs of Dover" and "We'll Meet Again" whilst on U-Boot patrol would destroy the "total immersion" factor somewhat; likewise the playing of swing and jazz would have been "streng verboten", I should think, in the Kriegsmarine. The same goes as regards listening to Marlene Dietrich's songs: she had defected to the USA by the time WWII kicked off in Europe and was considered as a traitor by the Nazis after she had done the voice overs for Hollywood produced propaganda films against the Third Reich.
I am not expressing any fascist sympathies here, just thinking of historical accuracy.
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Some good points.......but who can honestly say what Kaleuns carried in their personal record collections.
Is it too far fetched to imagine some Germans listened to British and American radio broadcasts just as some British listened to German radio broadcasts.
I don't believe there were many Nazis in the Kriegsmarine (certainly less than in the other areas of the German forces) so I like to think some British music would have been listened to. http://www.psionguild.org/forums/ima...ies/pirate.gif
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I tend to agree with you there as regards the difference between what was forbidden and what actually happened in reality, especially in combat situations.
On the Eastern Front captured members of the SS and Waffen-SS were shot mostly on sight and their activities and possessions minutely analysed by the NKVD. I have seen archives here (Russia) where the NKVD has reported the SS and Wehrmacht troops as possessing US jazz and swing records that must have been brought from Western Europe into the Soviet Union; the NKVD considered such possessions as evidence of disaffection with the German fascist regime as the Nazis classed jazz as "entartete Musik" (degenerate music), as did Stalin and his party faithful: "Socialist Realism" was the name of the game back in the USSR of the 1930s and '40s.
For this reason I include a few "swing" records in my on board gramophone collection.
It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing!
Just love Glenn Miller!
PS
Even as a lad the lyrics of "Lili Marlene" always puzzled me: who was singing to whom?
A woman vocalist sings: "Underneath the lantern by the barrack gate, darling I remember the way you used to wait...".
The person that waited by the gate was Lili, surely, and not a pining soldier, because it was there that singer states that the person at the gate would whisper tenderly that she would be "my Lili of the Lamplight, my Lili Marlene".
So why does a woman sing the lyrics? Surely a woman should sing words that would run something like: "Underneath the lantern by the barrack gate, darling I remember the way I used to wait..." where "I would whisper tenderly that I would be your Lili of the Lamplight, your Lili Marlene"?
Just wondering, like.
