History Main / MusicToInvadePolandTo

* Music/{{Madness}}, quite strangely, have been accused of being (depending on the source) Nazis, members of the right-wing National Front, or just fascists in general, in no small part because they ended up having quite a skinhead (as in National Front / BNP) following during the 1980s. This is in spite of the fact that they wrote anti-racist songs like "Embarrassment", which is explicitly about the sax player Lee Thompson's anger over negative reactions by some of his older relatives to his sister being pregnant by a black man, and "Waiting for the Ghost Train", which was a massive TakeThat against apartheid. The extreme-right-wing element probably latched onto them as they were the only major TwoTone group to have an all-white line-up.

* The genre of PowerMetal is also MusicToInvadePolandTo. The PowerMetal band Music/BlindGuardian, for instance, are fantasy geeks that make bombastic, Teutonic-sounding HeavyMithril. Unsurprisingly, they are accused of Nazism. The band, or at least vocalist/songwriter Hansi Kürsch, is reportedly a left-leaning liberal. They don't talk about politics much, though.

* The Enclave, a fascist [[TheRemnant remnant]] of the pre-war US Government uses various patriotic American ditties such as “Yankee Doodle”, “Battle Hymn of the Republic”, “Stars and Stripes Forever”, “America (the beautiful)”, Dixie”, the Marine Corps Hymn and modified, sped up versions of “The Washington Post” and “Hail to the Chief” as music to invade the Capital Wasteland to.

** Industrial act Music/{{Laibach}} very deliberately invoked this trope and made dramatic, Germanic-sounding, martial music. They pushed the nationalism angle further by ''issuing passports'' and claiming to have formed their own state. They're Slovenes. Laibach is the German name of Slovenia's capital (Ljubljana), but their shtick is to [[TrollingCreator troll]] to make Fascists look stupid. And "Tanz Mit Laibach" states that they dance with [[Film/TheGreatDictator Ado Hinkel]] rather than UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler.

* Generally averted with Islamist extremist groups, given that many of them reject ''all'' instrumental music as un-Islamic (in fact, the Taliban has killed people simply for listening to music). Instead, they usually make do with [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasheed nasheeds]] (a cappella religious chants). There have, however, been examples of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jihadism_and_hip_hop jihadi hip-hop songs]], although hip-hop music is still very far removed from what typically constitutes this trope.

** Laibach turned this on a classic Music/{{Queen}} song with their cover of "One Vision", titled [[https://youtu.be/ZZAD7W3M4zc "Geburt einer Nation"]]. The original song is generally held to have been either about [[UsefulNotes/CivilRightsMovement Martin Luther King, Jr.]] or inspired by Queen's Live Aid performance, while Laibach's version translates it into German and gives it a far more martial feel but keeps virtually all of the lyrics word-for-word. Suddenly, lines like "one flesh, one bone, one true religion" [[https://mookidmusic.com/2016/09/06/gebert-einer-nation-how-laibach-turned-queens-one-vision-into-a-totalitarian-anthem-without-changing-freddies-lyrics/ don't sound so uplifting.]]

* [[https://youtu.be/kjUVjbEG1Ro Combine Harvester]], a track from the ''VideoGame/HalfLife2'' soundtrack that sadly doesn't appear in the game. It combines this trope with alien sounds and serves (or rather, would have served) as the theme for the Combine, which has similarities to both Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia.

** Prior to the invasion of the Ukraine, this could be seen and heard a lot on YouTube as backing music dubbed on to triumphal marches by the modern Russian Army, or to stock footage of Russian Army field exercises. [[SarcasmMode For some reason these vids are hard to locate today]]. (October 2022)

* A minor sadness in 2022, on top of all the other things, is that stirring Russian military songs such as ''V'Put!''[[note]]Into Battle[[/note]] and ''Svyaschennaya Voina'' [[note]]"the Sacred War", referenced above with link[[/note]], although they celebrate the USSR's great achievement of defeating Nazi Germany and are as justified as a war song can get, just can't be played now without, at the least, a sour taste of black irony and cynicism. Current events have tainted them. These are, in fact, Music To Invade The Ukraine To.

** Inverted in "The God Complex". One of the alien characters mentions that their planetary anthem is entitled "Glory to (Insert Name Here)" - Music to ''be'' invaded to. It's their [[PlanetOfHats hat]] - surrender immediately in the face of military oppressors, because then the oppression won't be too bad, and they can slyly end up running things their way in the aftermath.

Actual military music from the Third Reich tends to be banal and uninspiring (e.g. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JDkdc246QQ Der Panzerlied (SFW)]], a chirpy little ditty featured in ''Film/BattleOfTheBulge''), and was more often than not intended to be sung while... you know, actually invading Poland...

* ''After'' having invaded Poland from the East and having been invaded himself by the guys who had invaded Poland from the West, Stalin ordered a song for the Great Patriotic War to be written. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2N366xn6V4 Listen yourself.]] Like the Imperial March from ''Franchise/StarWars'', this one is somewhat atypical in that it's in a minor key, though it uses major chords in the chorus.

* A minor sadness in 2022, on top of all the other things, is that stirring Russian military songs such as ''V'Put!''[[note]]Into Battle[[/note]] and ''Svyaschennaya Voina'' [[note]]the Sacred War[[/note]], although they celebrate the USSR's great achievement of defeating Nazi Germany and are as justified as a war song can get, just can't be played now without, at the least, a sour taste of black irony and cynicism. Current events have tainted them. These are, in fact, Music To Invade The Ukraine To.

* A minor sadness in 2022, on top of all the other things, is that stirring Russian military songs such as ''V'Put!''[[note]]Into Battle[[/note]] and 'Svyaschennaya Voina'' [[note]]the Sacred War[[/note]], although they celebrate the USSR's great achievement of defeating Nazi Germany and are as justified as a war song can get, just can't be played now without, at the least, a sour taste of black irony and cynicism. Current events have tainted them. These are, in fact, Music To Invade The Ukraine To.

Incidentally, German music earlier came under attack during the anti-German hysteria of UsefulNotes/WorldWarI. A generation before it became "Music to Invade Poland To", German music was denounced as "Music to Invade Belgium To". The hymn tune ''Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken" very suddenly needed to be set to a new tune, as it used ''Deutschland Über Alles'' - a stirring theme, but not one held appropriate for British churches after August 1914.

Incidentally, German music earlier came under attack during the anti-German hysteria of UsefulNotes/WorldWarI. A generation before it became "Music to Invade Poland To", German music was denounced as "Music to Invade Belgium To".

* Later on, UsefulNotes/NapoleonBonaparte would march his Grande Armee into Russia to the rousing strains of "[[https://youtu.be/qB1kp9adYYE La Victoire est a nous]]". Listen to it, and then try and say you don't want to be a world-conqueror.

* The 2014 film ''{{Film/Fury}}'' does this in the conventional sense, with an SS battalion singing ''Marschiert in Feindesland'' on the march. The trope is ironic at this point as Germany is on its last legs and the Allies are steadily pushing deeper and deeper into the country.

* In ''Film/{{Cabaret}}'', a bright young Aryan stands up in a cafe and begins singing "Tomorrow Belongs To Me" as a portent of the age to come. (And, until you realize the UnfortunateImplications you see him as an alternative to the decadence & perversion of the cabaret lifestyle.)

---> '''Mr. Smithers:''' [[WeShouldGetAnotherTape I'm sorry, Sir. I must have taped over that.]]

* In the soundtracks composed by Masato Nakamura for the first two ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog'' games, all of Dr. Eggman's boss themes and the Wing Fortress theme fit this trope, as to be expected from a world-conquering MadScientist who even made his own [[Franchise/StarWars Death Star]].

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* Music/{{Kraftwerk}} got their share of this too, mainly for their cold, modernist, inhuman aesthetic. And for being German.