I play quite a lot of WW2 flight sims and was wondering if anyone could point to some popular songs from the era, for all major nations participating: UK, USA, Germany, Italy, Soviet Union, Japan, Finland.
Ideally I would love to see some Spotify or YouTube playlists for all the nations. I know I would put them on whenever I get in the game :)
For the IJN, some popular songs were:
The Naval March (for whatever reason, they played this song everywhere. My relatives from Taiwan know this song by heart).
Fusouka although this was a bit older...
This is mostly geared towards America, but some time back I wrote up a quick look at the popular music of the time.
Big Band, Swing, Boogie-Woogie music was the popular stuff of the times.
The Andrews Sisters were a pretty big act from the time, with their best known hit probably being the 'Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy from Company B'.
Glenn Miller was another superstar act from the era, and actually joined up during the war, with the military using him for morale tours, leading the Army Air Force Band. Bing Cosby would have been another popular act for the time, and Kay Kyser too.
That's really a tiny slice of the acts you would be hearing at the time. A few other examples would include Al Jolson, Sinatra, Marlene Dietrich (especially popular being a vocal anti-Nazi German), and of course, Bob Hope, although he might be better known for his comedy than his singing. Many of them not only would be heard by the troops in recordings though, but would also perform for them live via the USO. It didn't matter where you were stationed -North Africa, the UK, Australia, or stuck in the United States, the USO was taking big name performers all over the place to entertain the troops.
Of course, everyone had different tastes, so this hardly account for everyone, but its a good start
From assorted RAF/FAA memoirs some particular titles are mentioned; Pilot Officer "Razz" Berry at Hornchurch was fond of 'Sweet Violetta' and the slightly risqué 'She Had to Go and Lose It at the Astor', at Duxford 'Three Little Fishes' was popular with 242 Squadron, and 235 Squadron's collection included 'September Song' by Walter Huston and 'Summertime'. From the contemporaneous account of 66 Squadron, Ten Fighter Boys: "We had in the mess at that time a large radiogram with quite a few records, most of them belonging to Bogle. This used to be playing nearly all day; the C.O.'s favourite was Dorothy Lamour singing 'These Foolish Things'". Bob Doe recalled "We had a gramophone. I remember a swing version of Martha. (...) The only one I remember is that one. I’m sure there were others."
Classical music was also popular; Denis Barnham, while being ferried with his Spitfire to Malta on USS Wasp, was impressed by the music library of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert (later that year, Schubert's 'Unfinished Symphony' was playing on the ship's speakers when it was hit by Japanese torpedoes). There's an anecdote in The Desert Air War: "... I asked a pilot to take the pressure regulator valve in his Spit. However, the pilots had a gramophone record which had priority over everything else (I think it was a Rachmaninoff concerto)." Eric "Winkle" Brown, later an extraordinary test pilot, said of another member of his squadron: "his main interest in life seemed to be classical music. I clashed with him there, being a swing fan. He had the only gramophone in the squadron, and used to put up with a lot of abuse from me in his amiable way. He would put on my wild music and laugh at my jitterbugging antics."
I'm afraid I haven't got much for other air forces, though Hans-Joachim Marseille, the "Star of Africa", was a somewhat unconventional Luftwaffe ace who was fond of American jazz, apparently 'Rumba Azul' was his favourite and played by the other pilots after his death.