Music Wars

On 16 January 1944, a music lover in occupied Paris could choose between eleven major musical events, with occupiers and occupied filling the same halls. Patrick Bade, a senior lecturer at Christie's Education, uses moments like this to show how music became a weapon of the Second World War, performed live or carried by radio, film and gramophone records, and used by every side for propaganda and morale. Classical music found new audiences everywhere, while Swing proved so irresistible that even the Nazis tried to harness it.

Yet the music that still carries the feeling of those years is the sentimental song of loss and separation: Vera Lynn singing We'll Meet Again, Zarah Leander, and Lili Marleen, the song that changed sides. It is a rich history for anyone curious about how culture and conflict shaped each other.