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This is fresh air, I'm Terry Gross, degenerate. That's what the Hitler regime called modern

art, and jazz. Jazz was especially hated because it was considered music by Jews and black

people, so the Third Reich outlawed jazz, but they also tried to use it as a weapon to

weaken British and American resolve. They took popular tunes, rewrote the lyrics to

belittle British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and American President Franklin Roosevelt,

and of course to demean black people and Jewish people. These songs were played on the radio,

broadcast to Britain and the U.S.

Scott Simon, the host of NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday, has a new audiobook about how the

Nazis repurposed jazz into propaganda. I love the title of Scott's audiobook Swing Time

for Hitler, which is of course a play on the Mel Brooks comic production number Spring

Time for Hitler from his musical The Producers. Scott was formerly an NPR reporter and reported

from war zones and heard propaganda in those contexts, but nothing like Nazi swing songs,

his new audiobook is available at skribbed.com. That's SCRIBD.com. Scott, welcome back to

Fresh Air. It's so good to talk to you. It's been a long time.

It's so good to talk to you. Yes, thank you so much, Jerry, so good to be with you.

I think we should start with a disclaimer about how offensive these songs are and why it's

important to hear them anyway. I'm going to let you do that.

I will, you know, and we had the advantage of having the legend Bill Curtis give voice to

...