Music : Stormtrooper Marches |
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Rating:  - * Original Third Reich Nazi Recordings ... It was nice to hear some of these pieces from a historical point of view; however, the quality of the recording was lacking and quite poor to be honest. It is too bad that current conditions prevented "us" from having better quality. Perhaps in the future this will not be the case and, for historical purposes, we will be able to listen to music from the past with out variances in volume and "scratchiness." Rating:  - * Side-stepping the censor ... As a Historian I have found that a great many films from the Third Reich era have had their sound tracks interfered with. This censorship involves turning the sound down whenever a song appears which the "guardians" of our thoughts don't like, Triumph of the Will is a good example. Likewise, compilations of archive footage will cut to another scene quickly to avoid the viewer hearing the song at any length. This CD has enabled me to hear the muted and truncated songs. Very useful. Rating:  - * Very good! ... These contain most of the titles from the old "Hammer" cassette tape series. Yes, the quality is not up to modern day standards, but what do you expect from recordings so old? An excellent value! Rating: - * General Patton Would Be Proud ... Very interesting recordings. Thanks to the digital revolution, us Baby Boomers and their children can now hear the music of another era, that will never be broadcast on public radio stations. My one complaint is that, perhaps, the sound quality could have been improved by using the original source tapes, if available. Rating: - * SA to the front! ... One of the most neglected subjects in regards the Third Reich is that of the SA, better known to history as the Stormtroopers or the Brownshirts. Armed with nothing more than their fists (and the occasional chair-leg or beer mug), these fight-loving brawlers, many of whom were veterans of the trenches of WWI, eventually bested their opposite numbers in the Communist Redfront and the Social Democratic Reichsbanner and won the streets of Germany's cities for Adolf Hitler's National Socialist Party. No sooner had they paved his way to power, however, than they were ruthlessly discarded, their revolutionary ideology and stubborn independence being too much for either Hitler or the German army to stomach. How would Nazi Germany have evolved if these truly socialist revolutionaries had their way we can only wonder, but you can tell a lot about a man by the type of music he favors, and "Stormtrooper Marches" is a fascinating listen. The album, compiled by Michael Kelly, packs 23 tunes comprising 1 hour 6.2 minutes of music, a mixture of choral renditions and instrumentals. There are some true classics here, including the anthemic "Horst Wessel Lied", the fiercely emotional "Du braune Kompanie" & "Volk und Gewehr" (People and Arms), and the exuberantly sentimental "Am Adolf Hitler Platz", "Wir Sind Die braunen Soldaten" (We Were the Brown Soldiers) and "Der Fuehrer Ruft SA -SA Voran!" (The Leader Shouts 'SA' - 'SA' to the front!). "Here Tremble the Rotten Bones" (Es zittern die Morschen Knochen) adds a playful note, as does "Heidemarie", but the solemn, funeral side is also well represented: "In Muenchen sind viele gefallen" is painfully grim, as is the "SA Totenmarsch" and the ancient farefell to fallen comrades, "Ich hatt' ein Kamerad" (from the early 19th century). One of my personal favorites, combining a sort of hopeless sentimentality with powerful imagery, "Als die Goldner Abendsonne" is also included. Finally, fans of the foot-stomping "Panzerwagen Lied" immortalized by Robert Shaw's tank crews in "The Battle of the Bulge" will enjoy the similar and quite authentic sound of the "Es pfelt von allen Daechern-SA" (It Whistles from all the Rooftops). In all, there are 15 choral and eight instrumental songs. Fans of 1920s - 1940s movies will recognize the exuberant, trumpet-laden instrumentals as the style of the day, and not merely Germany. I swear that you could exchange "Franz Seldte" with the soundtrack of Eroll Flynn's "Robin Hood" any day of the week. What surprised me, and may surprise other first-time listeners, is how little bellicosity and aggression exists in the songs or their lyrics. They are either gushingly sentimental, sad-but-solemn or out-and-out funny. In short, the very type of music a large group of men would prefer to sing while drinking lots and lots of beer (I dare you to listen to "Victory March of the Awakened Nation" without picturing rows of swaying half-drunken stormtroops, crammed elbow-to-elbow at a beer-hall table and pounding down Lowenbrau). I must say that this album, while very good, is inferior in my opinion to "Das Dritte Reich 1: SA", which is also available from Michael Kelly but not, apparently, on Amazon. That is a matter of my own personal taste, since I prefer lyrical songs to instrumentals and "Das Dritte Reich", while three songs shorter, has more chorals than instrumentals (I simply refuse to use the word "polka" when describing an SA song....you say "polka" and I'm looking for John Candy with an accordion). The SA is long extinct, and in comparison with its successor the SS, virtually forgotten. When one pictures "Brownshirts" the immediate image is of thugs bashing in a shop-owners' window -- and indeed this was no doubt often the case in the Germany of the 1920s. But "Stormtrooper Marches" presents us with the other side of the coin, the boisterous and rollicking spirit of a social revolution which drew the most extraordinary miscellany of thrill-seeking brawlers, embittered ex-soldiers, fervent nationalists, ardent communists, militant socialists and free-booting mercenaries, and set them out onto hard streets to fight for a revolution which was ultimately and cynically betrayed. |
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