After the darkness and deprivations of the First World War, Weimar Germany came alive to the sounds of jazz and swing. By the mid-1930s, as the shadow of the swastika fell across the country, American-style jazz was all the rage. Naturally, though, given its association with blacks and Jews, the Nazis loathed jazz.
Fearful its ‘jungle’ rhythms and improvised breaks would undermine Aryan morals and discipline, Hitler launched a blitzkrieg against this ‘degenerate music’. His propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, ordered the banning of jazz from radio broadcasts in 1935. Later, when the United States entered the war, Goebbels outlawed the selling and playing of American jazz records. Swing was officially verboten.
Goebbels wasn't stupid, though. While officially condemning the music, he was quietly plotting to hijack its debauched appeal to…