The Military Music & Bandsmen of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich 1933-1945

by Brian Matthews

We all know the stirring German military music that became one of the enduring memories of World War II but who were the soldiers behind this evocative music and from where did these famous marching songs originate? A question posed by writer and broadcaster Brian Matthews who after 6 years of in-depth research has produced an amazingly detailed book documenting the history of German military music from its creation in the Middle Ages to the Musikkorps of the modern Bundeswehr. In an exciting, photo-led book focusing on the years of the Third Reich, Matthews has painstakingly researched this overlooked area of German military history, resulting in a 20 chapter work that will appeal to the military music enthusiast and the Third Reich collector/historian. Early chapters detail the training of musicians in the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS, examines the lives of these musical soldiers, documents their instruments and illustrates their uniforms. Other chapters profile a famous SS-Musikmeister, chronicles the military composers, examines the Wehrmacht bands based on the British Channel Islands, traces the Lili Marleen story and looks at life on the German Home Front with its fledgling radio and recording industry, before reaching the dying days of the Reich and the fate of these musicians. The work comes up to date with the Old Comrades story and the post-war music of East Germany’s National Volksarmee and today’s military bands of a reunified Germany. The Military Music and Bandsmen of Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich is a lavishly illustrated, full-colour, 320-page, 1000-photograph, reference book, published to compliment Tomahawk Films’ world-famous range of Third Reich Music CDs.

320 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2002