National anthems as propaganda

Ukraine's Glory: eagerly awaits its cue in the wings of this theatre of war

When I studied German in the German town of Schwäbisch Hall in 1989, I studied, as part of the course work, the German national anthem. Many non-Germans could cite one line of it, which is now no longer sung: Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles. Germany, Germany, over everything. It’s often construed as sending a message of German superiority, over other nations of the world, and it was sung with gusto during the Nazi regime. It’s no longer used, in order to avoid its being read with misapprehension, but the line doesn’t actually mean that (unless you’re a Nazi, of course).

The melody of the present Deutschlandlied dates back to Haydn’s Kaiserhymne of 1797, written, not for Germany but for Austria-Hungary. The words, by Hoffmann von Fallersleben, date from 1841. Only in 1922 was it adopted as Germany’s national anthem, ousting the imperial anthem (Heil dir im Siegerkranz), which had not been used entirely universally in Germany in the period following its unification in 1871 (owing to its melody, associated with the British national anthem).

The rest of the story is not exactly history but a series of chess moves to establish some kind of unity over today’s reunified Germany. It can be construed as a Weimar Republic equivalent of “Pick yourself up, take a deep breath, dust yourself off, and start all over again.” It was adopted in the time following World War I, which, it can be argued, was a catastrophe that was impelled by the Franco-Prussian War of 1871, and therein lie the clues as to why Germany is over everything.

The Franco-Prussian War was a war that brought together a unified German military force against France. France is regarded as the victim of that war, which was declared, supposedly, on the strength of a provocative telegram known to history as the Ems Telegram. The dispatch was manipulated by Otto von Bismarck, Prussia’s Chancellor, who brandished it as a pretext for the war. Hostilities were soon over and, in the aftermath, Prussia bound its allies together to form the new German Empire. It was proclaimed as the second such empire, after the first, over which Charlemagne, Charles the Great or Karl der Grosse, had reigned a thousand years previously. (I’m given to wonder why unification was deemed so necessary in lands that had lived happily apart for an entire millennium. Perhaps the necessity was Berlin’s alone.)

The numbering was no accident: just as Charlemagne had unified European peoples under larger nation states, so Bismarck united the German-speaking peoples under a single nation state. What Bismarck could not have known was that he was setting a precedent for what Adolf Hitler would embrace as Lebensraum only 50 years later. The aim in that line of the German national anthem was to urge the new nation to adopt Germany as its identity, and as being a greater entity over and above their previously nominally independent localities.

There is a sinister adjunct to this tale. The electric telegraph, as it would ultimately come into widespread operation in 1865, was invented by the American Samuel Morse. It was a product of great ingenuity, and it had a great influence on ordinary people. Such as people who conduct wars and flick Vs. The anachronistic links between Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony (five in Roman numerals being represented by the letter V, and which uses as its opening theme a repeated motif of three short notes, followed by a long note or, in Morse code, dit-dit-dit-dash), and the Morse code itself (in which dit-dit-dit-dash represents the letter V), and also the letter V as a sign of victory (which gained popularity during World War II) leaves one in doubt as to which might have possibly influenced which others.

The symphony dates from 1806, so wasn’t influenced by Morse or Churchill. Morse wrote his code in 1865, but would hardly have been greatly influenced by a symphony. Churchill popularised the victory sign in 1942, and was probably influenced by Morse. The fact that the symphony used a appropriately similar-sounding motif was perhaps handy, and James Blades then recorded it on a drum for war-time broadcasts to the world by the BBC.

But the V sign itself is first attested to in around the year 1900 (whether used nefariously or positively). Legend has it that it dates to 1415, and the Battle of Agincourt. The main objection to the Agincourt theory is that that is not attested. In fact most of what happened at Agincourt is so unattested that one might almost question whether the battle indeed ever took place. A prime source for popular knowledge of the battle is Shakespeare’s play Henry V, which, although categorised among his histories as a dramatic account of real events, can be read as pure comedy and actually devotes about 15 minutes of the 2½-hour play to the battle itself; intriguingly, it nowhere makes any reference whatsoever to the English long bows, which are supposed to have so thoroughly decimated the French forces there. And the reason for that is that, even if it is questionable whether Shakespeare was forbidden to do so or whether he simply did not know that fact, the lacuna points to it still, 200 years later, being regarded as a closely held state secret. What secured one English victory could only secure a second if the long bow’s use were not publicly revealed. And, telegram, V sign, symphony and long bow taken together, that might in fact be the most plausible of all of them. (Personally, I think Beethoven was a time traveller and lost his hearing as a side-effect.)

Let us get back to hard, established, indisputable fact. The Ems Telegram was a written message received by wireless telegraphy. In what was perceived as an age of Progress, vaunted high and wide as the emancipation of man from the drudgery of agrarian life. It ultimately led to the drudgery of industrial life, for some, admittedly, but, proclaimed as an age of opportunity by those who benefited from it, Progress became the watchword of the Victorian era. In Progress, as in emancipation, lay truth. And, as a product of electrical and mechanical precision, there was no doubting the veracity of the Ems Telegram. The idea that political mendacity would use this wonder of engineering to, itself, engineer a war was, at the time, outlandish and, we now know, true.

Historians question why it was that (a) Joseph Goebbels was appointed by the German government in 1933 as its Propaganda Minister, and that (b) the German public failed to realise, at least at first, that that meant that every word he uttered in his public capacity was, unsurprisingly, therefore, propaganda. Because he didn’t wink or give any special indication when he was speaking as to whether what he said was him propping up some propaganda or actually sincere (akin to he only tells the truth when he says he’s lying): “The Jews are our enemy, and that’s no propaganda.” Does that mean it is propaganda? Maybe it was commonly interpreted to mean “He’s on our side and you don’t tell propaganda to your own people.” They may as well have named him the Minister of Public Gullibility.

But Joseph Goebbels, his wife and five children are all dead, and there are no such things as ministers of propaganda any more. Believe me, they’re all gone. Poof! Like smoke in the wind.

Like smoke and the mirror, more like. Like national anthems, in a way. They are ultimate propaganda. They speak of glory and eternity and God and … did I mention glory? What is glory?

There is a verb to glory, which means to take unwarranted pride in something, something that others despise, who say of people who glory that they are glorying. The proclamation of Glory to Ukraine was something that, before the war in that place, I’d never heard. Upon first hearing it, it shocked me: it is arrogant, it is bold, it is vain; it is … a rallying, clarion call to Ukrainians. It has a ring to it and, if it’s worked, boy, has it worked. After a slight hesitation, it received the Graham Vincent stamp of approval.

But I never said it or wrote it. Not yet. What I wrote, to officials in Ukraine, even, was that I wish Ukraine first and foremost survival. After that, I wish it victory. Then will come winning the peace. And then, if it does that, it will have its glory, and then I shall say it and write it. It won’t come, whether they proclaim it now or wait till then, by willing it. Because glory cannot be propagandised.

It needs to be earned, and, quite aside from those who fight in their country’s name and who have indeed earned and deserved their own glory, Ukraine is herself only in the first stage of earning it as a nation: stage 1 – win the war. After stage 2 – win the peace – it may perhaps proclaim its glory. But glory cannot be willed. Nor can it be self-proclaimed: it is a virtue and attribute that is accorded by others, as it has been accorded to the heroes of Ukraine. Each of them individually. But, for the nation itself, Glory waits eagerly in the wings of this theatre of war, and has its ears cocked for the cue to make its entrance.

The words to Ukraine’s state anthem, first penned in 1862, have flashed, in their form according to the State Anthem Act of 2003, across TV screens aplenty in the past year or so.

Ukraine’s freedom has not yet perished, nor has her glory,

Upon us, fellow Ukrainians, fate shall smile once more.

Our enemies will vanish like dew in the sun,

And we too shall rule, brothers, in a free land of our own.

We’ll lay down our souls and bodies to attain our freedom,

And we’ll show, that we, brothers, are of Cossack descent.

Brothers, stand together in a bloody fight, from the Sian to the Don

We will not allow others to rule in our native land.

The Black Sea will smile and grandfather Dnipro will rejoice,

For in our Ukraine fortune shall flourish again.

Our persistence and our sincere toils will be rewarded,

And freedom’s song will resound throughout all of Ukraine.

Echoing off the Carpathians, and rumbling across the steppes,

Ukraine’s fame and glory will be known among all nations.

Chubynsky, who wrote the poem that inspired the anthem, couldn’t have known the struggle that his fatherland would undergo in the years 2022 to … whenever it ends. And yet, the words seem prophetic. Ukrainian nationalism was hardly embraced in the Soviet period, and, now, the genocidal evidence shows in what frenzy Russia wants to put it to bed for ever. The words could have been commissioned specially for this war.

Russia’s own national anthem is the same as the USSR’s. It is in its industrial capacity as a non-starter, the hopeless lot of its people and its recycled national anthem that Russia best emulates the state of the state to which Putin wants to return it. It’s a great tune, stirring and mighty, thick with emotion, like a good borscht should be. Vladimir Putin thinks so too (not so sure about the borscht analogy) and mourned its demise in the aftermath of the USSR’s break-up. He really liked its tune and its words, so he brought it back and kicked Yeltsin’s replacement anthem into touch. Whether it’s musically superior to Boris’s interloper, more widely favoured, or simply better propaganda, it is what it is. And the fact that it is at all tells us, in 2023, that Putin sets great store by national anthems.

Whether the Ukrainians’ state anthem got up his nose enough to provoke this war is questionable. But the mindless fervour with which he has prosecuted it is enough to raise the possibility as a cogent reason (more cogent than that Beethoven was a time-traveller, at least). But as cogent as any other. As cogent as the Ems Telegram having been faked. Or that the Battle of Agincourt was a state secret. Or even that Beethoven wrote his fifth knowing it would serve the side of justice, in a War of the World that I, let alone he, could not have imagined.

Clip: The Russian national anthem. Note how important ordinary workers and children are to this idealistic composite film of accompaniment. Of leaders we see but one: Vladimir Lenin.

Clip: The imperial anthem of Austria-Hungary, which uses the tune Kaiserhymne, later adopted by Germany as the Deutschlandlied. The images here are replete in imperial splendour. Can you spot the steel worker? (Trick question.)

Clip: Ukraine’s state anthem. Listen out for the Beethovenesque dit-dit-dit-dash of the trumpets. Not a bomb in sight. Not a dry eye in the house.

Which, if any, contains propaganda?

Clip below: For the curious, here’s George Shearing and Nat Cole with Pick Yourself Up. It quotes Kipling, so this could actually be propaganda.