What Did Hitler Think About Jazz? | QI

This clip is from QI Series J, Episode 1, 'Jargon' with Stephen Fry, Alan Davies, Bill Bailey, Jimmy Carr and Victoria Coren-Mitchell.

[EebstertheGreat]

Mussolini actually hated pasta. Wheat in Italy is imported and was becoming increasingly expensive in the 1930s, so he actually started an anti-pasta campaign, claiming it made people weak and promoting domestically-grown rice in its place.

[LeornianCyng]

It's a shame the clip got cut when Victoria started speaking as it led to the set up to the March Hare question (which has been uploaded before years ago, I know. I’ve been watching QI and XL since the beginning)

[HerbertAckermans]

Here's an odd twist on the Jazz thing. Germany mounted slanted placed upward firing guns in several aircraft called "Schräge Musik". Schräge Musik was a colloquial term for music with odd timing, like Jazz.

[MrAdomus]

Spike Milligan was a Jazz trumpeter when he wasn't a Lance Bombadier and spent the majority of 1944-1947 playing Jazz across Europe and in his memoirs he mentioned that Jazz was well received in post-war Germany and Austria because it had been banned for so long by Hitler

[dittilio]

I love Bill's pen bent lid pipe. Very dignified.

[ragnarlodbrok]

"The more I hear about this guy the less I like him" -- Jimmy taking a leaf out of Norm Macdonald's book

[SimonDoer]

Also worth mentioning is that mussolinis granddaughter allessandra mussolini had a very brief career as a japanese city pop singer.

[VanWinger]

After Stephen's comments about defiance I thought about Casablanca and the role of music in setting the theme.

[melissah]

If you haven't watched the film Swing Kids, make sure that you do! It's about teens in 30s Germany who love swing and jazz and who go to underground jazz clubs. If you haven't seen it, you'll recoginze famous actors in their younger days.

[EdwardD-qp]

In Germany late 1930s, there was actually a resistance movement, called 'Swingjugend', young jazz and swing lovers, who opposed the Nazi government

[jeraldbaxter]

Jazz, like rock'n'roll, evolved into so many distinct sub styles that one might as well just say, "I like music." Everytime someone has tried to define the different types (with the obvious intent to assert their own preferences as superior), it has left me more confused than ever.

[maxsilva]

A bit disappointed that the association of jazz with Black folks wasn't mentioned as the reason for this hatred...

[teologen]

Mussolini actually loathed pasta and thought it made people lazy. He wanted people to eat risotto instead. I partly agree. I don’t hate pasta but I do prefer risotto and will always order that at an Italian restaurant if they serve it.

[oOPPHOo]

I once heard someone pretty far to right politically say "Jazz is a bastardization of the waltz" probably based on nothing more than the fact that it is music usually written in 3/4 [EDIT: I'm wrong about that], but by black people. He praised classical music for it's commitment to structure in comparison to jazz which he called structureless due to all its improv. No one had told him that classic music was no stranger to improv nor did he quite understand the amount of structure that actually goes into the rhythmic composition of jazz music.

I don't wanna fully compare this guy to Hitler, obviously, but they shared the common trait that they both let their toxic brand of "politics" dictate their taste in music... Don't do that, is my humble recommendation

[Historyfrekever]

I am going to guess it had something to do with many of the preformers’ shared skin colour. Their loss, jazz is great and chill.

[harryturner]

Thanks for supporting the question in the title

[lucone]

Franco didn't like the 1960s rock music either but The Beatles had two live concerts in Madrid and Barcelona in 1965. Later in 1969 The Beatles’ The Ballad of John and Yoko was axed because it referred to the couple’s wedding in Gibraltar at a time when Franco was claiming sovereignty over the Rock.

[lonestar]

this is the same episode with the March hare and the Aztecs

[ThinPicks]

In the desert conflict, Field Marshal Rommel was a secret jazz fan, he used to wake up at night and scream "Wes Montgomery"🤪

[bronson]

1:14 Hey, that's a Norm Macdonald joke