Here's Mr. Churchill's latest song:
Don't know why I can't blockade the sky,
Stormy weather.
Since my ships and the German planes got together,
I'm beaten all the time...When I walked into Norway, the Germans came along and met me.
My hair has turned to gray now that the French are against me;
All I do is call my Royal Navy into action
To attack French ships in their peaceful bays...
"Charlie and his Orchestra (also referred to as the "Templin band" and "Bruno and His Swinging Tigers") were a Nazi-sponsored German propaganda swing band. Jazz music styles were seen by Nazi authorities as rebellious but, ironically, propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels conceived of using the style in shortwave radio broadcasts aimed at the United States and (particularly) the United Kingdom.What an interesting bit of history!British listeners heard the band every Wednesday and Saturday at about 9 pm. The importance of the band in the propaganda war was underscored by a BBC survey released after World War II, which indicated that 26.5 percent of all British listeners had at some point heard programmes from Germany. The German Propaganda Ministry also distributed their music on 78 rpm records to POW camps and occupied countries.
After the war the musicians reorganized under Fritz Brocksieper with the name Freddie Brocksieper, but were still recognized as "Goebbels' band". They played at US Armed Forces clubs in Stuttgart and Ludwigsburg. Conductor Lutz Templin became one of the founders of the ARD broadcast network. Schwedler (in varying accounts) either emigrated to the US in 1960, or became a businessman who retired at Tegernsee.
The purposes of the band were to encourage pro-Nazi sympathies, draw attention to World War II Allied losses, convince listeners that Great Britain was a pawn for American (and Jewish) interests and convey German dictator Adolf Hitler's messages in an entertaining form. The songs stressed how badly the war was going for the target audience, and how it would be only a matter of time until they would be defeated.
American swing and popular British songs were initially performed true to the originals until the second or third stanza, when pro-German lyrics and monologues would be introduced."