World Notes WEST GERMANY

The swinging sounds of Tommy Dorsey and Glenn Miller were banned in Nazi Germany as Allied decadence, but Hitler's henchmen were less punctilious when it came to propaganda. West German Jazz Historian Rainer Lotz this week releases his second album titled German Propaganda Jazz. The music was recorded in the 1940s by Charlie and His Orchestra, a 14-member swing band organized by Joseph Goebbels' Ministry of Propaganda to spread the Nazi message via radio to Allied citizens and occupied Europe.

Among the band's estimated 200 titles, all in English: a version of Stormy Weather that describes British ships "sinking all the time." According to Drummer Freddie Brocksieper, 75, the players joined the band for purely practical reasons. Says he: "No jazz musician could be a believing Nazi. It was completely against the grain. We played to save our lives."