Without any doubt the most popular song of the Second World War was Lili Marlene. Recorded by Danish cabaret artiste Lale Andersen in 1939 under the title Das Mädchen unter der Laterne (“The Girl under the Lantern”), the song sold a mere 700 copies on release and faded into obscurity.
There it might have remained had not a soldier, working for the German forces radio station in occupied Belgrade, been sent to scour Vienna for some records to broadcast to General Rommel’s Afrika Korps. One of the records he found in Vienna was Lale Andersen’s recording of Das Mädchen unter der Laterne, and it was first played over the air on 18th August 1941.
It became an instant favourite with Rommel’s men, and for the next three years Radio Belgrade played it almost every night at 9.57pm, as the closing record. It also became a huge hit throughout Nazi-occupied Europe and was soon picked up by the British Eighth Army in the desert. It also soon assumed its simple alternative song title, Lili Marlene (sometimes spelled Lili Marleen, Lilli Marlene etc).
In his memoir, British soldier Fitzroy Maclean describes the song’s effect in the spring of 1942 during the Western Desert Campaign: “Husky, sensuous, nostalgic, sugar-sweet, her voice seemed to reach out to you, as she lingered over the catchy tune…”
The next year, Maclean was parachuted into the Yugoslav guerrilla war, and the song once again played its part:
“Sometimes at night, before going to sleep, we would turn on our receiving set and listen to Radio Belgrade. For months now, the flower of the Afrika Korps had been languishing behind the barbed wire of Allied prison camps. But still, punctually at ten o’clock, came Lale Andersen singing their special song, with the same unvarying, heart-rending sweetness that we knew so well from the desert…Belgrade was still remote but, now that we ourselves were in Yugoslavia, it had acquired a new significance for us. It had become our ultimate goal, which Lili Marlene and her nostalgic little tune seemed somehow to symbolise. ‘When we get to Belgrade…’ we would say. And then we would switch off the wireless a little guiltily, for the Partisans, we knew, were shocked at the strange pleasure we got from listening to the singing of the German woman (sic) who was queening it in their capital.”
It’s not hard to imagine the Tommies, and Jerries alike, crowded round their “receiving sets”, smoking fags and dreaming of Lili Marlene…
