This Ain't Rock 'n' Roll: Pop Music, the Swastika, and the Third Reich

OVER THE LAST SEVEN DECADES, some of rock ’n’ roll’s most celebrated musicians have flirted with the imagery and theater of the Third Reich. From Keith Moon and Vivian Stanshall donning Nazi uniforms and terrorizing Jewish neighborhoods to Siouxsie Sioux and Sid Vicious brandishing swastikas in the pomp of punk, generations of performers have associated themselves in troubling ways with the aesthetics, mass hysteria, and even ideology of Nazism. Whether by shock factor, stupidity, or a crass attempt at subversion, rock ‘n’ roll has indulged these associations—whimsically, carelessly, occasionally malevolently—in a way not accepted by any other artform. But how accountable should fans, the media, and the music industry be for what has often seemed a sleazy fascination with the eroticized perversions of a fascist regime? 

In This Ain’t Rock ‘n’ Roll, award-winning music historian Daniel Rachel navigates these turbulent waters with extraordinary delicacy and care, asking us to look anew at the artists that have defined us, inspired us, and given us joy—and consider why so many have been drawn to the imagery of a movement responsible for the twentieth century’s worst atrocities. Alongside a sensitive history of the Holocaust and an examination of the place it holds in our cultural consciousness, Rachel asks essential questions of actions often overlooked or underplayed, while neither casting sweeping judgement nor offering easy answers. In doing so, he asks us to reassess the history of rock ’n’ roll, and sheds new light on the grim echoes of the Third Reich in popular culture—and the legacy of twentieth (and twenty-first)-century history as it defines us today.