Role of Music in World War II

Role Of Music In World War II

World War II was the first conflict to take place in the age of electronically mass distributed music. By 1940 96.2% of Northeastern urban households in the United States of America had radio. The lowest group to take up, Southern Rural families still had 1 radio for every two households. During the Nazi rule radio ownership in Germany rose from 4 to 16 million households. As the major powers entered war millions of citizens had home radio devices that did not exist in the First World War. Also during the pre-war period sound was introduced to cinema and musicals were very popular.

Therefore World War II was a unique situation for music and its relationship to warfare. Never before was it possible for not only single songs but also single recordings of songs to be so widely distributed to the population. Never before had the number of listeners to a single performance (a recording or broadcast production) been so high. And never before had states had so much power to determine not only what songs were performed and listened to, but to control the recordings not allowing local people to alter the songs in their own performances. Though local people still sang and produced songs, this form of music faced serious new competition from centralized electronic distributed music.