20 Anthems Born From War, Riots And Real Tragedy

Francis Scott Key wrote the first verses of what would become “The Star-Spangled Banner” on a sheet of letter paper while detained aboard an American truce ship in Chesapeake Bay. He’d been inspired after watching more than 1,500 shells and rockets rain down on Fort McHenry for 25 hours. The words were later set to music composed by John Stafford Smith, and in 1931, the song became the US national anthem.

In 1945, “We Shall Overcome” began taking shape on the picket line during a strike by nearly 1,000 Black workers against the American Tobacco Company in Charleston. A woman named Lucille Simmons took an old hymn composed by Charles Tindley, slowed its tempo, and reworked the words into “We Will Overcome.” From there, the song began its evolution into a major civil rights anthem. Later, Pete Seeger and Guy Carawan changed “will” to “shall.” Just one little word change, and the version we know today was born.

Billie Holiday made “Strange Fruit” famous, but it was actually written by a New York teacher named Abel Meeropol. In 1937, Meeropol wrote a poem called “Bitter Fruit,” later retitled “Strange Fruit,” under the pen name Lewis Allan. He was inspired by a photograph of the 1930 lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, Indiana. The song eventually reached Holiday, but her label, Columbia Records, refused to record it. She finally recorded it for the independent label Commodore in April 1939. Hard to believe such an important recording almost didn’t happen.

In April 1792, France declared war on Austria. Days later, Strasbourg’s mayor asked Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle, an army engineer, to write a war song. The result, “La Marseillaise,” was written in one night and distributed among volunteers who marched from Marseille to Paris in July 1792. One night of writing, and he ended up with France’s future national anthem! The song did not officially become France’s national anthem until 1795. Ironically, its composer, a royalist constitutionalist, was imprisoned during the Terror.

A 19th-century story holds that Lafayette ordered “Yankee Doodle” played at the British surrender at Yorktown on October 19, 1781. Funny enough, British officers had written the song around 1755—originally as a song about dandies, or “macaronis,” not pasta. When British soldiers started singing it in 1775 to ridicule colonial militiamen, the Continentals took it up as their own and began singing it to celebrate their victories over the British!

In February 1862, The Atlantic Monthly printed the famous lyrics to “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” which Julia Ward Howe had written overnight at the Willard Hotel in November 1861. James Freeman Clarke had suggested that she write new lyrics to “John Brown’s Body,” a song Union troops were already singing in army camps near Washington. The song used a camp-meeting tune credited to William Steffe, so Howe wrote only the new words. One overnight writing session, and those words are still being sung more than 160 years later.

“Lili Marleen” became an unusual wartime favorite among soldiers fighting on opposite sides of WWII. Hans Leip wrote the original poem in 1915, and it was turned into a song by Norbert Schultze in 1938 and sung by Lale Andersen. From 1941 onward, it became a favorite among both British and German troops, and an English version was produced. A military radio station broadcast the song every night to troops in Europe and North Africa during the war. Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, who disliked sad songs, made unsuccessful attempts to ban its broadcast for being too gloomy. When even soldiers on opposing sides agree on a song, you know it has to be good!

“Katyusha,” written by Matvey Blanter and Mikhail Isakovsky in 1938, is a woman’s love song to a soldier away from home. After Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, it became such a favorite among Soviet troops that they named the new BM-13 rocket launcher “Katyusha” in July of that year. Going from love song to rocket launcher nickname is certainly a turn! Its melody was also adapted by Italian partisans for their anthem, Fischia il vento—a different song from the much more famous “Bella Ciao,” which didn’t become widely known until after the war.

BBC Radio Londres used the whistling from “Le Chant des Partisans” as a signal to open broadcasts to occupied France. Whistling was chosen to avoid the German jamming of the station. Anna Marly wrote the melody during her London exile in the winter of 1942. By May 1943, Joseph Kessel and Maurice Druon had written French lyrics for the tune, which the RAF printed on paper leaflets and dropped onto the Maquis fighters below.

“It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” was written in January 1912 by Jack Judge and Harry Williams as a novelty tune about an Irish migrant who is homesick, but it was a Daily Mail article that made it a classic war march. Days after witnessing soldiers from the Connaught Rangers singing the song as they marched through Boulogne in August 1914, correspondent George Curnock wrote about their performance, and the song spread across Britain.

“Die Moorsoldaten” was written in August 1933 by prisoners in the Börgermoor camp. After enduring several violent confrontations with the SS guards, miner Johann Esser, actor Wolfgang Langhoff, and clerk Rudi Goguel wrote the song secretly. It was sung at a camp event by an inmate choir, only to be prohibited by the guards just days later. Released prisoners spread the song, and in 1935, Hanns Eisler arranged a modified version during his exile.

In 1870, at the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, German troops who came from different principalities marched to war, singing the song “Die Wacht am Rhein.” Written by the Swabian merchant Max Schneckenburger in 1840 after French Prime Minister Adolphe Thiers stated that France’s border should be the Rhine, the song outlasted the incident and was given music in 1854 by Karl Wilhelm. Singing “Die Wacht am Rhein” fostered a sense of unity among the men.

Thomas Wharton boasted that he had “sung a king out of three kingdoms.” The English politician’s nonsensical satire, known as “Lillibullero,” mocked Catholic Lord Deputy Richard Talbot. Written circa 1687 to a tune associated with Henry Purcell, it was sung by Protestant soldiers when William of Orange landed in 1688 and was credited with helping to undo King James II’s support. (The chorus is made-up nonsense intended to mimic how the English supposed the Irish spoke.)

After Hitler crushed the German trade unions in 1933, Socialists and Communists were encouraged to unite in the antifascist struggle. In exile, Bertolt Brecht and Hanns Eisler composed “Einheitsfrontlied” in 1934. The song was first performed in 1935 in Strasbourg by a choir of 3,000 workers. It was sung during the Spanish Civil War by volunteers of the International Brigade; in 1937, Ernst Busch recorded the song in Barcelona.

Belgium’s national anthem, “La Brabançonne,” has somewhat softened lyrics these days, but its original version was much more openly anti-Dutch. Its creator, actor and writer Louis-Alexandre Dechet, wrote the lyrics under the pseudonym “Jenneval” amid the fighting of the 1830 Belgian uprising. An opera performance had sparked riots in Brussels on August 25, 1830, which led to a revolt against Dutch rule. François Van Campenhout set Dechet’s lyrics to music. Tragically, Dechet didn’t get to see much of what his anthem became, as he died fighting Dutch troops near Lier in October 1830, just weeks after writing it.

While popularized by Pete Seeger, the song “Solidarity Forever” wasn’t written by him. The song was written by Ralph Chaplin, a union organizer who was present during the violent Paint Creek-Cabin Creek strike in West Virginia in 1912-1914. Chaplin completed the lyrics on January 15, 1915, in Chicago. His song, written for the Industrial Workers of the World and set to the melody of “John Brown’s Body,” would become the labor movement’s best-known anthem.

“Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” wasn’t really a song asking for charity, but a message of confrontation. It’s sung from the perspective of a proud veteran who had helped build America’s railroads and skyscrapers, only to find himself out of work during the Great Depression. And he certainly wasn’t alone: nearly 13 million Americans, a quarter of the workforce, were unemployed by 1932. Written by lyricist Yip Harburg and composer Jay Gorney for the revue Americana, the song reached number one with Bing Crosby’s 1932 recording. Definitely hits differently once you know who’s supposed to be asking for that dime.

Inspired by a bugle-call motif, “Over There,” recorded by artists such as Enrico Caruso and Nora Bayes, helped rally recruits and enthusiasm for Liberty Bonds after the U.S. declared war on Germany. Fittingly enough, George M. Cohan wrote the song on the very morning the U.S. entered the war, April 6, 1917, during a train ride from New Rochelle to New York. Talk about perfect timing for a song! Cohan himself, however, was a 38-year-old Broadway performer and never served overseas.

During the siege of Leningrad, “The Sacred War” was broadcast every day. It was written after Nazi Germany started Operation Barbarossa on June 22, 1941. Two days later, a poem written by Vasily Lebedev-Kumach was published in Soviet newspapers. Within two days of this, Alexander Alexandrov composed the music. The Red Army Choir premiered it on June 26, 1941, at a Moscow railway station, where troops were being loaded onto trains headed for the front.

In 1914, 21-year-old Ivor Novello and American lyricist Lena Guilbert Ford didn’t write a battle march, but instead created the gentle family ballad “‘Till the Boys Come Home,” better known by its refrain, “Keep the Home Fires Burning.” The sheet music sold over one million copies after the song’s release in October 1914. Tragically, the song’s message would become painfully personal for Ford. Her home in London’s Maida Vale was bombed by a German Zeppelin on March 7, 1918, killing Ford and her son. It’s a heartbreaking ending for someone who wrote about keeping the home fires burning until loved ones returned from war.

This content was created with the help of AI.