Glenn Miller’s Propaganda Efforts During World War II
The year 1941 was the (recording) industry’s best since 1921, producing 130 million records. Certain that the declaration of war would curtail their most important supplies, Columbia and Decca stepped up production. In April 1942, a month after the manufacture of all radio receivers and phonographs for personal use was terminated by the War Production Board, the official production of records was fixed at the 1940 level of about 50 million units, and prices were frozen at the December 1941 levels. Columbia, Victor, and Decca again confronted the power of Petrillo (the leader of the musicians’ union) and the American Federation of Musicians. in 1942, Petrillo announced that the present contract with manufacturers would terminate on August 1, giving only a month’s period of grace. No union member would enter a recording studio until his demands were met.
The record companies still managed to sell 130 million records again in 1942, mostly by stockpiling records to prepare for the war rationing and the musicians’ strike. During the strike, all musicians except vocalists singing a cappella (unaccompanied by other instruments) were prohibited from recording, and Miller would have been blocked from recording too if he hadn’t joined the military; military-issued V-Discs were not covered by the strike and the rationing that governed the civilian music industry. Victor and Columbia became major producers for the V-Disc programs and Miller had already been recording with Victor through their subsidiary label, Bluebird. Miller’s joining the military actually opened up opportunities for him to continue working as a musician, while other bandleaders who remained civilians faced extremely difficult challenges.
One of the songs recorded by Miller’s Army Air Force Band, in 1943, is “Song of the Volga Boatmen.” The recording presents a superb example of arrangement. Starting from one of the most unswinging melodies, a Russian folk-song long associated in the western imagination with “heaviness,” the Miller band shows how a recently-invented American spirit of swing and energy and fun can turn even this melody into a dynamic piece, even switching from the minor key of the theme to a new major key theme. The brass counterpoint section is thrilling. This is propaganda at its finest: a wordless message (yet impossible to miss the point) explaining to American soldiers and civilians, as well as allies and enemies, how the United States would remake the world in its own image. Entertainment (the dominant institution of socialization in the U.S.) wins through seduction, promising to make the world fun once the armies are done marching.
Although Miller now fronted a military band, he did not eschew entertainment, as this recording and many others prove. Once in the military, Miller faced a new set of challenges. He had to find a way to put entertainment practices to the service of educative propaganda; as a public face and voice for the Allied efforts, Miller’s job was to convince people in allied countries to sacrifice for a common cause. (He also made broadcasts to the German forces in an effort to convince them to quit). Miller had to make clear to people what America stood for by presenting a band and a sound that would represent its declared values. Of course, in making his case for what America stood for, he selected some American values, rejected others, and invented some of his own.
When Glenn Miller applied for a role in the military, he was rejected at first by the Navy when he applied for a billet there, so he wrote a letter to Brigadier-General Charles D. Young of the Army explaining his reasons for wanting to join. I have reproduced Miller’s letter below:
Dear General Young: In your recent letter to me you mentioned the desirability of “streamlining” our present day military music. This subject touches upon a subject which is close to my heart and which I think I can speak with some authority. I wish you could read some of the many many letters that have come to me during the past months from our men in military service expressing their appreciation of our various army camps appearances and our USO broadcasts. I wish you could also read some of the newspaper reports of interviews with our service men now in Australia and other distant places, and their pleas that broadcasts from home include a generous share of music. These letters and reports all show that the interest of our boys lies definitely in modern, popular music, as played by an orchestra such as ours, rather than in the music to which their fathers listened twenty-five years ago, most of which is still being played by army bands just as was in World War days. That many requests for broadcasts, records, programs, dedications and arrangements are very pleasing to me but they leave me wishing that I might do something concrete in the way of setting up a plan that would enable our music to reach our service men here and abroad with some degree of regularity. I have a feeling that if this could be arranged it would help considerably to ease some of the difficulties of army life. For the past three or four years my orchestra has enjoyed phenomenal popularity until we have now reached a point where our weekly gross income ranges from 15,000 to 20,000. Needless to say, this has been and is most profitable to me personally but I am wondering if it would not be more in order at this time for me to be bending my efforts toward the continuance of this income if it could be devoted to USO purposes, the Army Relief Fund or some other approved purpose. If, by means of a series of benefit performances or other approved methods, even some part of this income could be maintained and used for the improvement of army morale I would be entirely willing to forego it for the duration. At the same time, by appropriate planning, programs could be regularly broadcast to the men in the service and I have an idea that such programs might put a little more spring into the feet of our marching men and a little more joy into their hearts. With these thoughts in mind I should like to go into the army if I could be placed in charge of a modernized army band. I feel that I could really do a job for the army in the field of modernized music. I am thirty-eight years of age and am in excellent physical condition. I have, of course, registered for the draft but have not been classified. Inasmuch as I have been married for twelve years, I would suppose that under present regulations I shall ultimately be placed in Class 3A. I mention this only because I want you to know that my suggestion stems from a sincere desire to do a real job for the army and that that desire is not actuated by any personal draft problem. I was born in Clarinda, Iowa and raised in Colorado. Both of my parents were also American born. I am a grammar school and high school graduate and also attended the University of Colorado for two years. My connection with music is not of recent origin. I have been playing and arranging music ever since my high school days. I hope you feel that there is a job I can do for the army. If so, I shall be grateful if you will have the proper person contact me and instruct me as to further procedure. With kind personal regards and appreciating your interest, I am,
Respectfully yours, Glenn Miller
A few days later, after going to Washington DC, Miller reached an agreement with the army and earned an appointment. Once in the military, Miller became part of a newly created unit. I have reproduced below a passage called “Purpose and Background of the Radio Unit” from a book The Glenn Miller Army Air Force Band Sustineo Alas I Sustain the Wings, by Edward F. Polic
The 2nd Army Air Forces Training Command Radio Unit was created 6 December 1943 by the Commanding General of the Army Air Forces Training Command – the Ground Crews, recruit Aviation Cadets, recruit Air WACs, inform the American public of the job that the Army Air Forces Training Command is doing to hasten “V” day and provide entertainment for the morale of soldiers here and abroad. The unit fulfilled these duties by preparing writing and performing, live radio programs, transcribed radio programs, special recordings, personal appearances.
The unit began to form about December 1942, but it took five months to acquire all the personnel (about 150!) for this huge undertaking. The spirit of Miller’s men, reports Polic, was always excellent. Many of the men came from Miller’s civilian band, and others were musicians from other top bands. Once assembled, the band performed a number of special functions for the military, including “selling bonds, recruiting WACs or persuading civilians to save kitchen fats and waste paper.” The U.S. Treasury Department also asked for Miller’s services and, as a result of Miller’s War Bond Drives, the Radio Unit sold an estimated $135 million in bonds! In one tremendous War Bond Rally at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York, the band netted $75 million! Miller’s schedule for the men was extremely demanding, running seven days a week, 12 to 18 hours a day, including rehearsals, post functions, travel, radio broadcast, recording, and public performance. Among their activities were “I Sustain the Wings” broadcasts, “Strings with Wings” broadcasts, Psychological Warfare Recordings, OWI Transcriptions, Home-Base Recordings for the Treasury Department, Cadet Mess performances, Graduation exercises, and whenever humanly possible, all military formations, orientation lectures and films, G.I. parties and numerous others. The OWI was the Office of War Information, which had a broadcasting station in England for the purpose of broadcasting propaganda material to the Axis soldiers. Miller was extremely ambitious, aiming to integrate entertainment and music into military life at every level. He wanted lyrics of popular songs to be distributed to every enlisted man, and he promoted “all means to encourage an 100% singing army.”
Another of Miller’s projects for the military was The American Band of the Allied Expeditionary Force. This band broadcast in secret to the Nazis. Among the songs they recorded, was “Long Ago and Far Away (Land Ist Es Her Und Weit Zuruck)” [Kern – Gershwin]. vocalist: Sgt. Johnny Desmond. Norman Leyden, arranger. Ira Gershwin, the lyricist of this tune and brother of composer George Gershwin, was Jewish. The Germans had murdered thousands of Jews in the two years preceding this broadcast, and the hatred that many ordinary Germans held for Jews was about the most hallucinatory hatred ever conceived for another people. Gershwin’s lyrics remind soldiers (in this case, German soldiers) of the homes and families they left behind. Did the Germans know that the lyricist was Jewish? Did they identify with the lyrics? Would they have identified with the lyrics if they had known that the lyricist was Jewish? Clearly, the intention of broadcasting this song, sung in German, to German soldiers, was to destroy their will to fight, to urge them to give up fighting in order to hasten the end of the war and be able to go home sooner. Miller’s band for these broadcasts, a total of six half-hour programs, was composed of 52 musicians, including a 20-piece string orchestra (that’s why I haven’t typed all their names above – my fingers get tired). Many Germans had long admired the Miller sound, as well as other American big band music, but it was banned in Germany. Those Germans who listened to it risked arrest or worse. Although this music was largely produced by African-Americans and Jewish-Americans, those Germans who listened to it apparently saw no contradiction in liking the music and simultaneously holding to their murderous beliefs about blacks and Jews. The Nazi leadership tried to warn Germans about the dangers of listening to this music, namely that it would lead to what they believed was the greatest calamity – race mixing.
The recording of “Long Ago and Far Away (Land Ist Es Her Und Weit Zuruck)” includes the string orchestra that Miller had assembled and brought together with his big band. He had always wanted strings and the army had the organizational might to get them for him. Some critics complain that once he got strings he used them too much and with little taste, but this recording shows that he could use them tastefully. Miller stuck to mostly standard repertoire (his old hits, standards, pop songs) and he generally avoided hot jazz, which raised an occasional complaint. One GI sent a letter to Metronome (a magazine devoted to jazz and swing) complaining about the Miller Army band’s lack of jazz. He writes: “No doubt it is one of the best service bands ever, but here is one lad who is eagerly awaiting a chance to hear a second service band now in England, the Navy band led by Sam Donahue. Then he hopes to get some real musical kicks instead of a repetition of arrangements that have been played and replayed, all in the same precise, spiritless manner that has characterized Miller bands since he first attained commercial success.” Miller had long responded to criticism of this sort from jazz critics by pointing out that he was an entertainer, not a jazz musician, and that his main interest had been making money and he should be judged on those grounds rather than on musical merits. But once in the military, Miller defended his music for the service using a different argument, claiming for it a higher purpose. In response to the letter above, he wrote to a friend:
We (the band) didn’t come here to set any fashion in music – we came merely to bring a much-needed touch of home to some lads who have been here a couple of years. These lads are doing a hell of a job – they have been starved for real, live American music, and they know and appreciate only those tunes that were popular before they left the States. For their sake, we play only the old tunes. You know enough about music to know that we would enjoy playing new tunes and plenty of them. I expect the “critic” who wrote the article expected to hear mainly new arrangements featuring a bunch of guys taking choruses a la Town Hall Concerts . . . This lad missed the boat completely on the conditions and our purpose for being here. I’m surprised that the Metronome editorial staff printed the things they did, because they should realize the needs over here, even though this “hot soldier” over here doesn’t seem to. While he listened for things which he opined were musically “wrong,” he failed to hear the most important sound that can possibly come out of such concerts – the sound of thousands of GIs reacting with an ear-splitting, almost hysterically happy yell after each number. That’s for us, Brother, even if it doesn’t happen to be for Metronome . . .
As part of the secret broadcasts to the Nazis, Miller included spoken words, translated by Ilse Weinberger. Miller and Ilse talk directly to people in German occupied territory. These broadcasts were made for Eisenhower’s Psychological Warfare Division and their purpose was to persuade the Germans to give up fighting and accept American hegemony.
On December 15, 1944, when Miller was flying from England to France in foggy weather to meet up with his band for their first concert in liberated Paris, his plane disappeared over the English Channel. He was never heard from again. On Christmas day, he was officially declared “missing in flight.” His band played on without him for the remainder of the war. On March 23, 1945, General Eisenhower awarded Miller the Bronze Star medal for meritorious service, which Eisenhower presented to Miller’s widow, Helen Miller.
