The Kaiser Never Had a Chance...

After requesting any information on the equivalent of popular songs
of the German Empire's participation in The Great War of 1914-1918,
I have come to the conclusion that the Axis never had a chance against
the American fighting spirit in those days.  Evidently, there was
no German equivalent of "If He Can Fight Like He Can Love, Good Night
Germany!"; "We Don't Want the Bacon (what we want is a piece of the
Rhine)"; "Joan of Arc"; "Somewhere in France is the Lily";  "When the
Kaiser Does the Goose Step to a Good Old American Rag"; and of course
"Over There" and "Good-Bye Broadway,  Hello France!",  plus dozens
if not hundreds more that were real barn-burners and have never been
equaled both musically and lyrically since.

Just as the line in "When Alexander Takes His Ragtime Band to France"
states: "Old Hindenburg will know he has no chance;  when Alexander
takes his ragtime band to France".  After all,  what weapon could ever
be more powerful than American ragtime?

As you play your orchestrions, coin pianos, band organs and player
pianos, treasure those rolls from the WW1 era that feature those "high
adventure" rousing songs that no war before nor since ever inspired.
And I don't think it was that Wilhelm II was a particularly "evil"
enemy -- but with that moustache and eagled helmet/crown and cape he
was a "natural" for our sheet music illustrators to have a field day
with as a classic "villain".

It was the United States' first "big" foreign war, and the
horrendousness of warfare was evidently covered up by the huge
Tin Pan Alley songwriting mechanism, which turned the first year of
the conflict for America (1917) into a great adventure.  By comparison,
Germany, an old European nation comprising of many individual kingdoms
and states, knew altogether too well the tragedy of war, and if any
popular song should have been written, it should have been along the
lines of "If Serbia Started This Fight, Why the Hell are we Marching
to Belgium?"

I guess the popular spirit just wasn't behind the Kaiser's government.

Stephen Kent Goodman

 [ The WW1 songs from Tin Pan Alley seem just as silly as pre-war
 [ songs, whereas German songs of the era were much more serious.
 [ (But the songs out of Berlin about the Crazy Twenties are
 [ quite comparable to the zany 1920s American songs.)  -- Robbie