The Jazz War: Radio, Nazism and the Struggle for the Airwaves in World War II

During World War II, one kind of music embodied everything that was appealing about a democratic society as envisioned by the Allied powers-Jazz. Labeled ’degenerate’ by Hitler himself, jazz was adopted by the Allies to win the hearts and minds of the German public, but it was also used by the Nazi Minister for Propaganda, Josef Goebbels, to deliver a message of Nazi cultural superiority. When Goebbels co-opted young German musicians into ’Charlie and his Orchestra’ and broadcast their anti-Allied lyrics across the English Channel, Jazz took centre-stage in the propaganda war that accompanied the real war on the ground. The Jazz War is based on the largely unheard oral testimony of the musicians who played on German and British wartime radio broadcasts, and chronicles the evolving relationship between jazz music and the Axis and Allied war efforts. Studdert shows how Jazz simultaneously helped and hindered the Allied cause as Nazi soldiers secretly tuned in to British radio shows while London party-goers listened to European stations, leading them to be branded a ’fifth column’ by the British press. This book will appeal to students of the history of Jazz, broadcasting, cultural studies, and the history of World War II.