Like the rock and roll rev­o­lu­tion of the 1950s, which shocked staid white audi­ences with trans­la­tions of black rhythm and blues, the pop­u­lar­i­ty of jazz caused all kinds of racial pan­ic and social anx­i­ety in the ear­ly part of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. Long before the rise of Euro­pean fas­cism, many Amer­i­can groups expressed extreme fear and agi­ta­tion over the rise of minor­i­ty cul­tur­al forms. But by World War II, jazz was intrin­si­cal­ly woven into the fab­ric of Amer­i­can major­i­ty cul­ture, albeit often in ver­sions scrubbed of blues under­tones. This was not, of course, the case in Nazi occu­pied Europe, where jazz was sup­pressed; like most forms of mod­ern art, it bore the stig­ma of impu­ri­ty, inno­va­tion, pas­sion… all qual­i­ties total­i­tar­i­ans frown on (even anti-fas­cist the­o­rist Theodor Adorno had a seri­ous beef with jazz).

And while it’s no great sur­prise that Nazis hat­ed jazz, it seems they expressed their dis­ap­proval in a very odd­ly spe­cif­ic way, at least in the rec­ol­lec­tion of Czech writer and dis­si­dent Josef Skvorecky.

On the occa­sion of Skvorecky’s death, J.J. Gould point­ed out in The Atlantic that the writer was him­self one of the char­ac­ters that so inter­est­ed Kubrick. An aspir­ing tenor sax­o­phone play­er liv­ing in Third Reich-occu­pied Czecho­slo­va­kia, Skvorecky had ample oppor­tu­ni­ty to expe­ri­ence the Nazis’ “con­trol-freak hatred of jazz.” In the intro to his short nov­el The Bass Sax­o­phone, he recounts from mem­o­ry a set of ten bizarre reg­u­la­tions issued by a Gauleit­er, a region­al Nazi offi­cial, that bound local dance orches­tras dur­ing the Czech occu­pa­tion.

1. Pieces in fox­trot rhythm (so-called swing) are not to exceed 20% of the reper­toires of light orches­tras and dance bands;
2. In this so-called jazz type reper­toire, pref­er­ence is to be giv­en to com­po­si­tions in a major key and to lyrics express­ing joy in life rather than Jew­ish­ly gloomy lyrics;
3. As to tem­po, pref­er­ence is also to be giv­en to brisk com­po­si­tions over slow ones (so-called blues); how­ev­er, the pace must not exceed a cer­tain degree of alle­gro, com­men­su­rate with the Aryan sense of dis­ci­pline and mod­er­a­tion. On no account will Negroid excess­es in tem­po (so-called hot jazz) or in solo per­for­mances (so-called breaks) be tol­er­at­ed;
4. So-called jazz com­po­si­tions may con­tain at most 10% syn­co­pa­tion; the remain­der must con­sist of a nat­ur­al lega­to move­ment devoid of the hys­ter­i­cal rhyth­mic revers­es char­ac­ter­is­tic of the bar­bar­ian races and con­ducive to dark instincts alien to the Ger­man peo­ple (so-called riffs);
5. Strict­ly pro­hib­it­ed is the use of instru­ments alien to the Ger­man spir­it (so-called cow­bells, flex­a­tone, brush­es, etc.) as well as all mutes which turn the noble sound of wind and brass instru­ments into a Jew­ish-Freema­son­ic yowl (so-called wa-wa, hat, etc.);
6. Also pro­hib­it­ed are so-called drum breaks longer than half a bar in four-quar­ter beat (except in styl­ized mil­i­tary march­es);
7. The dou­ble bass must be played sole­ly with the bow in so-called jazz com­po­si­tions;
8. Pluck­ing of the strings is pro­hib­it­ed, since it is dam­ag­ing to the instru­ment and detri­men­tal to Aryan musi­cal­i­ty; if a so-called pizzi­ca­to effect is absolute­ly desir­able for the char­ac­ter of the com­po­si­tion, strict care must be tak­en lest the string be allowed to pat­ter on the sor­dine, which is hence­forth for­bid­den;
9. Musi­cians are like­wise for­bid­den to make vocal impro­vi­sa­tions (so-called scat);
10. All light orches­tras and dance bands are advised to restrict the use of sax­o­phones of all keys and to sub­sti­tute for them the vio­lin-cel­lo, the vio­la or pos­si­bly a suit­able folk instru­ment.

As The Atlantic notes, “being a Nazi, this pub­lic ser­vant obvi­ous­ly did­n’t miss an oppor­tu­ni­ty to couch as many of these reg­u­la­tions as he could in racist or anti-Semit­ic terms.” This racial­ized fear and hatred was the source, after all, of the objec­tion. It’s almost impos­si­ble for me to imag­ine what kind of music this set of restric­tions could pos­si­bly pro­duce, but it most cer­tain­ly would not be any­thing peo­ple would want to dance to. And that was prob­a­bly the point.

For more on Josef Skvorecky’s life as a writer under Nazism and his escape from Czecho­slo­va­kia after the Sovi­et inva­sion, read his illu­mi­nat­ing Paris Review inter­view.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2013.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 16,000 Art­works the Nazis Cen­sored and Labeled “Degen­er­ate Art”: The Com­plete His­toric Inven­to­ry Is Now Online

Hear the Nazi’s Biz­zaro Pro­pa­gan­da Jazz Band, “Char­lie and His Orches­tra” (1940–1943)

How France Hid the Mona Lisa & Oth­er Lou­vre Mas­ter­pieces Dur­ing World War II

When the Nazis Declared War on Expres­sion­ist Art (1937)

Josh Jones is a writer, edi­tor, and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness