Joseph Goebbels's Nazi swing band

By at 10:43 pm Friday, Dec 9

Here's the amazing story (with 42 downloadable MP3s) of "Charlie and His Orchestra," a Nazi swing band commissioned by Joseph Goebbels. Charlie and His Orchestra recorded big band standards like "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen," "St Louis Blues," "Stardust," "Hold Tight" and many others. They're not half bad in a crazy, heavily accented, vitriolic and utterly reprehensible way.
Charlie and His Orchestra was led by Karl Schwendler, an English speaking German who broadcast Nazi-themed swing and big-band hits every night on the medium-wave and short-wave bands throughout the 1930s to Canada, the US and Britain. Leave it to Goebbels to take the music of The Andrews Sisters, Paul Whiteman and Irving Berlin and fill it with venomous rants against Jews, America and the British. The man took his propaganda seriously.
Link (via Neatorama)

Cory Doctorow

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