Lili of the Lamplight and a song transcending the great ideological divide

BOOK REVIEW: Roberts Gerwarth reviews Lili Marlene: The Soldiers’ Song of World War II by Liel Leibovitz and Matthew Miller, …

BOOK REVIEW: Roberts Gerwarthreviews Lili Marlene: The Soldiers' Song of World War IIby Liel Leibovitz and Matthew Miller, W.W. Norton, 256pp, €21

ON THE evening of August 18th, 1941, in the midst of a war of unparalleled brutality, the German Africa Corps had its first encounter with a sentimental song broadcast by Nazi-controlled Radio Belgrade, a song that would soon become the most popular soldiers' tune of all times. It was called Lili Marlene, a love song of modest poetic quality:

"Underneath the lantern,
By the barrack gate,
Darling I remember
The way you used to wait . . .

Orders came for sailing,
Somewhere over there,
All confined to barracks
Was more than I could bear . . .

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Resting in our billets,
Just behind the lines,
Even tho were parted,
Your lips are close to mine . . .

My Lily of the Lamplight,
My own Lily Marlene."

The song, originally written and sung in German, soon transcended linguistic and ideological boundaries. Swiftly translated into almost 50 languages and publicly performed by stars such as Anne Shelton, Vera Lynn and Marlene Dietrich, Lili Marlene inspired Axis and Allied soldiers alike across war-torn Europe. The battle-hardened Yugoslav partisan leader Tito allegedly wept when he first heard the song, while Erwin Rommel, commander of the German expedition corps in Northern Africa, liked to listen to it every night.

How could this sentimental tune experience such remarkable success across the great divides created by the second World War? It is this question that Liel Leibovitz and Matthew Miller set out to answer in their heart-warming book Lili Marlene: The Soldiers' Song of World War II.

The unlikely global success story of Lili Marlene began on the eve of the first World War when Hans Leip, a schoolteacher drafted into the German army to fight the Russians on the eastern front, wrote a poem about love and loss in times of war. He combined the name of his girlfriend Lili with that of Marlene, a young nurse he encountered during his military service.

In the 1930s, the poem caught the attention of Norbert Schultze, a successful Nazi composer of politically inspired film scores and marches, who set it to music, creating a tune that was an uncanny mix of folk song, military march and children’s ditty. Recorded by Lale Andersen, an aspiring German starlet of the early Nazi period, Lili Marlene was first broadcast on November 9th, 1938, the eve of the infamous Kristallnacht, when synagogues all over Germany were set on fire. The song was not an immediate commercial success, selling a mere 700 copies.

Its fortunes changed dramatically in August 1941, when a broadcaster at German-controlled Radio Belgrade discovered Andersen’s song in a stack of abandoned records and decided to play it for the men of Rommel’s Africa Corps. As a result of popular demand and at Rommel’s explicit request, Lili Marlene was awarded the station’s prestigious daily closing night spot.

Blasted over loudspeakers across the frontlines, Lili Marlene soon became the favourite tune of soldiers on both sides, and Allied soldiers demanded their own English version, which was finally released in 1944. Lili Marlene: The Soldiers' Song of World War IItells this wonderful story with verve and compassion. The book offers a fascinating account of a tune that gave comfort to millions in one of history's darkest hours.

Robert Gerwarth teaches Modern European History at UCD and is director of UCD’s Centre for War Studies (www.warstudies.ie). His recent publications include The Bismarck Myth, published by Oxford University Press