Forums

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
I remember singing , I must have been 7 or 8,

• Gentleman songsters off on a spree
  Damned from here to eternity
  God have mercy on such as we
  Baa! Baa! Baa!

when my mom said "Hanka, little fellow, looka at the rosters, year after year, the Whieenpoofs no let ina any I- talians!"

I turned crimson that day in more ways than one.

Your school's football cheers were the inspiration for Nazi propaganda:

According to Tom Reiss's biography of the Nazi-era author Esad Bey ("The Orientalist"), it was a Harvard alumnus, Ernst "Putzi" Hanfstaengl, who, when working as Hitler's press flack during his 1932 election campaign, taught Hitler the Harvard football song, which became the inspiration for the Nazis' "Seig Heil!" chant. On p. 263 of The Orientalist, Reiss quotes from Hanfstaengl's memoir:

• "I started playing some of the football marches I had picked up at Harvard. I explained to Hitler all the business about cheerleaders and marches, counter-marches and deliberate whipping up of hysterical enthusiasm. I told him about the thousands of spectators being made to roar "Harvard, Harvard, Harvard, rah, rah, rah!" in unison and of the hypnotic effect of this sort of thing. I played him some of the Sousa marches and then my own Falarah [Putzi's contribution to the Harvard cheerleading repertoire], to show how it could be done by adapting German tunes, and gave them all that buoyant beat so characteristic of American brass-band music. I had Hitler fairly shoulding with enthusiasm. "That is it, Hanfstaengl, that is what we need for the movement, marvelous," and he pranced up and down the room like a drum majorette. After that he had the S.A. band practicing the same thing. [...] Rah, rah, rah! became Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil! but that is the origin of it and I suppose I must take my share of the blame."

link

I feel I should tie this together with a wiiticism, but I cannot rise to the occasion.