I'm afraid I couldn't find the video in question, but I dunno what goes on with YouTube sometimes.

But I think one should not be too quick to characterize music as "Nazi music."

From 1973 to '76, I worked as an announcer for a classical music station in Seattle. One late afternoon, while hosting "Sunset Symphony," the featured work was a Beethoven symphony. It was a Saturday, the office staff was off, and I was alone in the studio. I had the commercials all pulled for the next break (after the symphony), which would be the better part of an hour away, and I was sitting there with my feet propped up, with a cup of relatively fresh coffee in my hand, enjoying the music coming through the studio monitors (very hi-fi), when the telephone lit up (no ringer, in case the phone should ring when you have the mic open). "Good afternoon, KXA. Don Firth speaking."

My ear was blasted by a volley of mixed German and heavily accented English, very loud, very angry, and totally incomprehensible. When the caller finally ran out of steam, I was able to determine that what the irate caller was on about was that I was playing "Nazi music!" Not only that, earlier in the day, Harald Gierke hosted his program, "The Continental Hour," on which he played classical and folk music from the European continent, including (being German himself) some German music. Harald, whom I knew well, was passionately anti-fascist, anti-Nazi. He played a lot of dances, accordion music, and frequent excerpts from Engelbert Humperdinck's (no, not the singer) opera, Hansel und Gretel ("Evening Prayer"—sung by two children lost in the woods as night is falling—is one of the most touching pieces of music ever written). Nevertheless, the caller raged about all that "Nazi music" that Harald had played earlier in the day. I didn't hear Harald's program, but knowing him, I knew that simply wasn't the case. And that I was now playing Beethoven was just more than he could stand!

Anyway—it seems that Beethoven was one of Hitler's favorite composers, as was Richard Wagner. This caller could not be pacified. I didn't have the heart to tell him that tomorrow's (Sunday) opera excerpts program would feature arias and incidental music from Wagner's Die Meistersinger.

Wagner was a bit of a shit and an anti-Semite to boot, but despite that, he wrote some monumentally magnificent music. And he died six years before Hitler was born. And Beethoven (who died 66 years before Hitler was born) was a surly SOB, but then he was a professional musician and a composer who discovered that he was going deaf, so under circumstances like that, wouldn't you tend to be a bit cranky too?

But "Nazi music?" I don't really think so.

Don Firth