Before I start reading this book I had the vague idea that Nazis didn't like jazz and they had acted accordingly. It thus came as a surprise to realize that truth was a lot less straightforward than I had antecipated. Being jazz in the twenties and thirties a music created largely by black americans and often associated with cabaret life and to the margins of respectful bourgeois society, it was understandably loathed by the Nazis before and after their ascent to power in January 1933. To compound the problem, Nazis disliked jazz also on ideological grounds: a sizable proportion of white jazzmen, in Germany and elsewhere, were jewish and it was rather natural for the Nazis to extend their antisemitic paranoia to the "degenerate jewish-nigger music." Having said this, a few extra surprising factors were at work to prevent the complete formal ban on jazz in the Third Reich: one was the very nature of the Nazi dictatorship itself: contrary to what has become the general misconception afterwards, the fascist regime of Germany was not a strictly top-down affair: much effort was spent by the top Nazi hierarchy to promote public consensus around their policies and avoid arousing unnecessary hostility among sizable fractions of the population. In the other hand, a relatively high latitude for iniciative was given to middle and low level party and state servents to "work towards the fuhrer." This very nature of the regime accounts for erractic policies in diverse areas of public life being followed at different times, places, and decision levels, not only in the period before the outbreak of the War but even later. Besides these features of the Nazi regime, some characteristics intrinsic to jazz helps explain its survival in Germany under such extremely adverse conditions: first of all, jazz by the thirties and forties have become a popular dance music (the swing style) and, even more relevant, has permeated a lot of other dance music styles that were not, strictly speaking, jazz, so that the boundary of what was and what was not jazz had become somewhat murky; secondly, the hard core fans and players, always a tiny minority, were willing to go on listening and playing jazz even when that could imply risking their own physical integrity, and even their lifes. All these general factors explain that the history of jazz in the Third Reich is a notoriously more interesting affair than one would have expected: the official repulsion for the "jewish-nigger music" went hand-in-hand with the also very official promotion of a "German jazz" style by the top leadership, notably by Goebbels himself. The prohibition of jazz in German radio stations went in parallel with the radio diffusion of jazz music in the Wehrmacht radio stations and with swing orchestras touring the troops in occupied countries, in the front lines, and even in German proper. This far from consistent attitude of the Nazi authorities didn't prevent the harassement and persecution of jazz fans and musicians by several repressive bodies (Hitler's Youth, Gestapo, SS) and some of them, most notably the Hamburg Swingers, ended up spending time, or even losing their lives, in concentration camps. This book is an excellent place to get to know these and other facets of jazz in the Third Reich: not only the general policies but also the lives of the musicians and fans and their struggle to keep jazz alive in spite of all the formidable adversities build up by an unbelivably paranoid dictatorship. To sum up: this is a must read book to everyone interested in jazz, the Nazi regime, or both. ( )