James Hughes rediscovers Michael Zwerin’s Swing Under the Nazis: Jazz as a Metaphor for Freedom, a book that Stanley Kubrick considered adapting to film:
In the skies over London, we learn that a Luftwaffe ace tuned into the BBC while crossing the Channel, hoping to catch a few bars of Glenn Miller before bombing the radio antenna. On the ground, when the Royal Air Force rained bombs on Vienna, a trombonist in a Nazi swing band “would stick his trombone out the window and play ‘St. Louis Blues‘ instead of hiding in the cellar.” (In order for that particular jazz standard to pass muster in Vienna, the title was first changed to “Sauerkraut.”) …
[But not] all accounts are as lighthearted. Zwerin mourns the Jewish musicians who clung to life by entertaining guards in concentration camps, and those on the run, like Eric Vogel, a Czech jazz trumpeter who soaked his valves in sulfuric acid when Nazis invaders began confiscating instruments. The acid served “to keep anyone from playing military marches on a jazz trumpet.”
The Dish 