Swingtime for Hitler: Goebbels’s Jazzmen, Tokyo Rose, and Propaganda That Carries a Tune

By Scott Simon

"Swingtime for Hitler is strange and subversive, a story that makes us sway and then hate ourselves for swaying. If you think present day politics is at the apex of weirdness, you're wrong – history has us beat, as proven by this toe tapping treasure. No one delivers audio (and Nazis) with as much smooth style as Scott Simon.” –Ann Patchett, bestselling author Tom Lake, Bel Canto, The Dutch House

"Brilliant, intriguing, disturbing, thoughtful and thought provoking, I cannot find enough words to describe this mesmerizing audiobook. A timely reminder of the seductive and dangerous power of propaganda, these sounds and voices remind us of a disturbing past, while also revealing the dangers and challenges we face today when voices of totalitarianism are growing louder." –Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran, Read Dangerously, and other books

"Fascinating gripping and vivid.  An amazing piece of research, writing, history, and storytelling. Scott Simon’s audiobook combining war, culture, music, and swing is not just compelling, colorful, and bizarre. It is also searingly relevant to dark times today. Swingtime is a must-listen!” –Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of The World: A Family History of Humanity

In his long career as a journalist for National Public Radio and host of the popular Weekend Edition Saturday, Scott Simon has traveled the world, covering wars and political unrest. During that time, he grew familiar with the lies dictators and oppressive regimes tell to keep their citizens in check. Simon has become, in a way, an aficionado of propaganda. From Bosnia to Rwanda, he heard it all — or so he thought until he was introduced to the morbidly fascinating work of Charlie and His Orchestra.

Created by Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister for Propaganda, Charlie and His Orchestra was a band that played popular jazz and swing tunes rewritten with Nazi lyrics. They were regularly featured on a German radio show that reached airwaves in Britain and the US. The Reich hoped that the hateful messages of the songs would get through to faraway listeners and sway opinion in Hitler’s favor.

Simon’s story examines propaganda through the lens of his interest in this repugnant yet magnetic band. It examines the persuasive power of a new medium, radio, and how World War II played out for most people via spins of the dial. Simon also speaks to his own experience with propaganda, which he encountered many times in his decades as a reporter at NPR. More urgently, he addresses the hate speech we increasingly experience today. Propaganda is the blunt tool used by the intolerant and those who want to hold onto power at any cost. And unlike in Nazi Germany, it’s now in the hands of everybody. Anyone with a phone or social media account can reach millions with the aim to deceive and mislead. This fake news is old propaganda in a new guise. By comparison, Charlie and His Orchestra seem almost quaint. 

To experience this story most fully, Scribd encourages readers to choose the audio option of Swingtime for Hitler. Vintage sound clips from the band’s performances, coupled with Simon’s unparalleled voice and narrative skill, make this a tale that will stay in your mind — and ears — for a long time to come.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Everand Originals
• Release date: Sep 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9781094458328

Scott Simon

Scott Simon is an Emmy- and Peabody Award–winning writer and broadcaster. He is the host of NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday, which The Washington Post has called “the most literate, witty, moving, and just plain interesting news show on any dial.” He has reported from all fifty states, five continents, and ten wars, from El Salvador and Sarajevo to Afghanistan and Iraq. His nonfiction books include Unforgettable: A Son, a Mother, and the Lessons of a Lifetime; Home and Away: Memoirs of a Fan; Jackie Robinson and the Integration of Baseball; and Baby, We Were Meant for Each Other, about the joys of adoption. He is also the author of several novels, including Sunnyside Plaza and the upcoming Wins, Losses, Saves.

Book preview

Imagine a spring night, early World War II, in America or Britain, and the world is going to hell. Allied ships: sunk. France, Belgium, Holland: captured. The Philippines, Malaya, Singapore: conquered. Jews: forced to wear yellow star badges, dragged onto cattle cars, and taken away. Thousands of Allied soldiers and sailors: prisoners of war behind barbed wire. German and Japanese troops: on the move! American and British troops: under attack! Ships stocked with food and ammo for the Allies: sunk.

You might twist through the radio dial, searching for a little entertainment.

[scratchy dial sounds]

Radio waves skip over oceans and prairies. They slip into bedrooms and kitchens. You hear notes from a familiar swing tune. But just as you might expect Peggy Lee or The Andrews Sisters begin to sing, Why are the stars always winkin’ and blinkin’ above? there’s another voice:

Why are the ships always sinking and blinking at sea?

What makes the British start thinking of their cup of tea?

It’s now the season, the reason, it’s plain what it means:

German submarines!

What makes the sailors go crazy wherever they cruise?

What makes the market go down, what frightens the Jews?

What takes the kick from the chicken, the pork from the beans?

German submarines!

Listen, listen,

Can’t you hear the sound of never missin’?

Torpedoes, torpedoes,

Hitting at day, and hitting at night.

—Charlie and His Orchestra, Elmer’s Tune (lyrics begin at 1:05)

Introducing Charlie and His Orchestra. They were a swing band created by Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister for Propaganda, to play on radio shows beamed across the ocean at Britain and North America.

The Reich condemned jazz and swing as Jew and Negro music and degenerate culture. But Goebbels believed this forbidden music, performed by topflight swing musicians with lyrics rewritten to put Nazi venom and lies into rhyme, could sap the resolve of Britons and Americans. They used a new mass media to turn music that was tuneful, irreverent, and fun into something malevolent and mordacious.

And mesmerizing.

By the time I heard some of the rare recordings of Charlie, I had covered many conflicts around the world. I’d heard lots of pompous propaganda from authoritarian governments. Charlie was different. They didn’t sound like spiritless, bureaucratic voices but like buddies cutting up in a radio studio, swinging and mocking Winston Churchill for flashing his vaunted V for victory signal:

V stands for vanquished,

It’s the slogan of his land.

And he’ll fight until it’s finished,

And there’s no one left to stand.

He’ll keep the Red Flag flying,

Though hammers black and blue,

For he’s getting more than he bargained for,

That fat friend of the Jew!

—Charlie and His Orchestra, The Man with the Big Cigar (lyrics begin at 1:22)

There were japes and jeers about Churchill, FDR, bankers, and Jews — lots of swipes at Jews. But the songs didn’t gush over Adolf Hitler or even drop his name; whoever wrote the lyrics must have known that would sure drag down a song. In fact, it was hard to tell where the performers were, or who they were, or why they played those songs.

The lyrics were appalling, repellent, and hateful. But — if I may be permitted a but to all that — I’d listen to Charlie and His Orchestra and find myself tapping a toe, bouncing a knee, or even, God forgive, singing along with an occasional line. German submarines!

The songs hopped, bopped, and swung. Most propaganda I had heard from despotic states around the world, from Russia and China to Cuba and Ethiopia, was pedantic, polemical, and dreary, produced by ministry bureaucrats for their own delectation. The Great Helmsman makes a great announcement! Tractor production is up! Running dogs are on the run!

Propagandists could broadcast dull official edicts and decrees, knowing fearful people would tune in so they could repeat what they knew they should think and say. A captive audience, in all ways.

The Nazi propagandists behind Charlie and His Orchestra figured that to reach audiences across the seas, they had to deploy the same music whose bewitching pull made it verboten at home.

The Charlie story struck me so sharply because there was so much I recognized and cherished — jazz, blues, and swing — as part of Chicago’s gift to the world. It was, at once, appalling and oddly flattering to know that Nazis, who disparaged Jews, Blacks, queers, nonconformists, improvisers, and avant-gardists, had to bootleg the music they made if they hoped to get anyone to listen. Who would ever bop along to a Nazi beat?

We live in times when algorithmically directed Tweets, TikTok clips, A.I. engineered narratives, and deep-fake photos of the pope in a puffy coat compete for slivers of attention. Amorphous entities inhale our profiles and try to lure, fool, convince, or confuse us. Charlie and His Orchestra reminded me that radio, too, was once a shiny new invention, dazzling and risky. It was the first medium that could skip across oceans, quicker than sunshine, soar above mountains, and let millions of people around the world hear each other

Reviews for Swingtime for Hitler

[Barbara & Ed Fuller · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

An excellent book, but a hard read due to the content, not the author.