



Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2003 14:31:11 -0500

From: Sandy Smith <ssmith@ACEEE.ORG>

Subject: tango music and the siege of Stalingrad



Hi folks,

I just came across this snippet in a recent history of the siege of

Stalingrad. Apparently the Russian army would drag speakers up very

close to German lines and broadcast all sorts of things, including tango

music. (I've attached an exerpt).

Can you imagine what it would be like to be freezing, starving, and

looking at death only to hear the emotion of tango music, punctuated by

rockets?



Tango as propaganda?



"The main activity of the propaganda detachment was to prepare 20- to

30-minute programmes on a gramophone record, with music, poems, songs

and

propaganda. The programme was then played on a wind-up gramaphone, and



broadcast by the loudspeakers, either mounted on a van, or sometimes

pushed

forward on sledges with a wire running back. Most propaganda

broadcasts of

this sort immediately attracted German mortar fire, on the order of

officers

afraid that their men light listen. But during December, the response



became weaker owing to the shortage of munitions.



Different sound tricks were adopted, such as the 'monotonous ticking of

a

clock' followed by the claim that one German died every seven seconds

on the

Eastern Front. The 'crackling sound of the propaganda voice' then

intoned:

'Stalingrad, mass grave of Hitler's army!' and the deathly tango dance

music

would start up again across the empty frozen steppe. As an extra sonic



twist, the heart-stopping shriek of a real Katyusha rocket would

sometimes

follow from a 'Stalin organ' launcher.



from "Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-43" by Anthony Beevor





Sandy





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