Jazz was banned from German broadcasting as soon as the Nazis came to power in 1933. Yet throughout World War II, American jazz and swing were core components of the Third Reich's propaganda. Jazz classics such as W.C. Handy's famous St. Louis Blues, their lyrics neatly tampered with, came over the airwaves, alongside the famous Germany Calling programmes directed at Britain and allied forces around the world.

The first in-depth look at German home service radio stations during WW2, this is a fascinating insight into how the Nazi war machine sought to shape public opinion at home and abroad. Based on original research and unlimited access of German archives, Radio Hitler is an important new addition to the literature surrounding Nazi Germany.

During World War II, jazz embodied everything that was appealing about a democratic society as envisioned by the Western Allied powers. Labelled `degenerate' by Hitler's cultural apparatus, jazz was adopted by the Allies to win the hearts and minds of the German public. It was also used by the Nazi Minister for Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, to deliver a message of Nazi cultural and military superiority. When Goebbels co-opted young German and foreign 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 World War II on the ground. The Jazz War is based on the largely unheard oral testimony of the personalities behind the German and British wartime radio broadcasts, and chronicles the evolving relationship between jazz music and the Axis and Allied war e orts. Studdert shows how jazz both helped and hindered the Allied cause as Nazi soldiers secretly tuned in to British radio shows while London party-goers danced the night away in demimonde `bottle parties', leading them to be branded a `menace' in Parliament. This book will appeal to students of the history of jazz, broadcasting, cultural studies, and the history of World War II.

This book tells the story of Nazi international broadcasting before and during the Second World War. Using archival material, it dissects the message that Germany's overt and covert propaganda stations broadcast to their audiences, as well as the lives and motivations of the broadcasters.

Examines the complicated history of a Jewish cultural organization supported by Nazi Germany

"A book of great importance; it surpasses all others in breadth and depth."--Commentary If the past century will be remembered for its tragic pairing of civilized achievement and organized destruction, at the heart of darkness may be found Hitler, Stalin, and the systems of domination they forged. Their lethal regimes murdered millions and fought a massive, deadly war. Yet their dictatorships took shape within formal constitutional structures and drew the support of the German and Russian people. In the first major historical work to analyze the two dictatorships together in depth, Richard Overy gives us an absorbing study of Hitler and Stalin, ranging from their private and public selves, their ascents to power and consolidation of absolute rule, to their waging of massive war and creation of far-flung empires of camps and prisons. The Nazi extermination camps and the vast Soviet Gulag represent the two dictatorships in their most inhuman form. Overy shows us the human and historical roots of these evils.