America in WWII - (Page 70) A mission-critical responsibilities, which ranged from repeatedly testing new detection equipment to searching for downed aviators to charting minefields to destroying drifting mines to boarding, looting, and sinking cargo-bearing sampans. Despite Spadefish’s late entry into the war, danger abounded. She found herself challenged by mines, escorts, and, increasingly, by aircraft. Moreover, by early 1945, Japanese use of radar had grown, and some planes seemed to have magnetic detectors, making even submerged trips risky. Besides this, threats also came from closer at hand. One attack on a modest freighter was stymied by dysfunctional electric Mark 18 torpedoes. It took 10 shots to get a single confirmed explosion. The crew must have been terribly frustrat- BOOKS AND MEDIA ed by this return of a problem that had plagued American submariners earlier in the war. There were also problems with the electronic search technology, including mine-detection sonar, which frequently failed at the worst possible time. On top of it all, at least once the Spadefish was stalked by another US sub and attacked by US aircraft. I was not sure what to make of some incidents. When one Japan-bound freighter was sunk, the Allied Chinese crew was abandoned in rafts to near-certain death in the freezing weather, while a young Japanese officer was selected for comfortable prisoner-of-war status and given as much sugar as he could eat. Even some U-boats distributed food, blankets, and tobacco to enemy survivors earlier in the war, but the Spadefish extended no such courtesy to these Chinese survivors, one of whom was thrown back into the sea. The most remarkable features of the Spadefish book are the battle narratives and the lavish detail of life aboard the boat. Each attack comes off as a different experience at Moore’s hands. He also succeeds at turning an ocean of detail into a smooth narrative flow. Anyone with any interest in submarine warfare will find Spadefish rewarding. —Thomas Mullen Flemington, New Jersey A 78 RPM That Lovable Lili in World War II didn’t care much for anything German, for fair enough reasons, but there was one exception: the German ballad “Lili Marlene.” Perry Como Everyone everywhere loved “Lili Marlene,” and by war’s end, it was the most popular song in the world. The minor German poet Hans Leip created the character Lili Marlene in 1915, just before he left home to fight on the Russian front in World War I. Combining the names of his girlfriend, Lili, and another woman he admired, Marlene, Leip wrote a wishful poem in German about a soldier dreaming of Lili Marlene waiting faithfully for him to return from war. The work went unpublished for 22 years before it finally appeared in a book of Leip’s poetry. The German composer Norbert Schultz put the words to music, and in 1939 the German-born singer Lale Anderson made the first recording. A less-than-impressive 700 copies sold. The song’s fortunes soon improved. When the Nazis took Yugoslavia in 1941, the new director of Radio Belgrade played Anderson’s recording for a friend in Erwin “the Desert Fox” Rommel’s Africa Korps. The Fox himself heard the broadcast and immediately took to the tune. In characteristic Nazi fashion, he ordered it played every night, and the song became the station’s signature sign-off at 9:55 P.M. In no time, German soldiers all around the Mediterranean were singing it. Allied soldiers, too, heard the broadcasts and were just as captivated, though they often sang their own made-up English lyrics (some that could not be printed in a family publication, no doubt). MERICANS CAUGHT UP A Back in Germany, Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels ranted about banning the song because he didn’t like its characters and it wasn’t a march. Since the main characters were a soldier and a woman who remained Marlene Dietrich faithful to him, and the rhythm as Anderson performed it was a march, albeit a slow one, it seems what really bothered Goebbels was that Anderson associated with Jews and openly criticized the Nazis. With such helpful negative publicity, the song’s fate as a classic was all but sealed. Americans on the home front first heard “Lili Marlene” on April 29, 1943, when they went to the movies and saw The March of Time, the weekly Time magazine newsreel that was shown before feature films. They listened to the faceless March of Time Orchestra and Chorus accompany the apocryphally named vocalist Jack Smith. The following year, a few popular American singers recorded the tune. Perry Como, crooning English lyrics written by Tommy Connor in his trademark smooth baritone, enjoyed the most success. Meanwhile, the husky, testosterone-tinged voice of the German-born, Nazi-hating actress Marlene Dietrich spread the tune all over the states in radio performances and live shows. Over the decades, countless artists have offered their takes on “Lili Marlene” in dozens of languages. A box set from the small German label Bear Family Records collects enough interpretations of the song to sate the most obsessive musicologist. A mind-numbing 193 tracks fill seven CDs. A classic indeed. —Carl Zebrowski Managing editor of America in WWII 70 AMERICA IN WWII OCTOBER 2007
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.