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'Goodbye Blue Sky' - Pink Floyd -

'Goodbye Blue Sky' is the seventh track on Pink Floyd's 1979 seminal rock-opera concept album 'The Wall,' and handles a popular theme in English music with grace: the blitzkrieg pitted against London by Hitler's Luftwaffe.

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'Corporal Clegg' - Pink Floyd -

More than 10 years before the release of 'The Wall,' Pink Floyd were already concerning themselves with wartime themes. 'Corporal Clegg,' a single from their 1968 record 'A Saucerful of Secrets,' tells the story of a soldier who has lost his leg in World War II. According to songwriter Roger Waters, the song was inspired by his father's death in 1944.

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'Aces High' - Iron Maiden -

English classic metal band Iron Maiden released their career-defining track 'Aces High' in 1984. The narrative song is told from the point of view of a Royal Air Force pilot fighting for his life during the Battle of London, famous for being the world's first conflict event fought entirely in the air.

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'I've Known No War' - The Who -

'I've Known No War,' released by The Who in 1982, poignantly touched on the anxieties of post-bomb Cold War society. Speaking in a sarcastic tone, songwriter Pete Townshend describes the end of the Second World War and the naïve believe that those growing up after will "never know war."

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'Dance Me to the End of Love' - Leonard Cohen -

While nothing more than a haunting love song on first listen, Leonard Cohen's masterful 'Dance Me to the End of Love' (1984) is in fact a death march inspired by a peculiarity present in most WWII death camps: a captive prisoner orchestra (pictured), often forced to perform near gas chambers, playing in their fellow prisoners, knowing they were playing them in to death.

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'Red Sector A' - Rush -

Prog rock pioneers Rush released 'Red Sector A' in 1984. The song was partially inspired by bassist Geddy Lee's mother's experiences of the Holocaust, but was left vague enough that the imagery could be applicable to "any similar prison camp scenario."

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'The White Cliffs of Dover' - Vera Lynn -

English singer Vera Lynn was one of the champions of Allied military morale during the war. Many of her songs were penned in support of the young men fighting overseas, and elicited comforting portraits of bravery, victory, and homecoming. One of her most popular songs, 'The White Cliffs of Dover,' released in 1942, helped those involved in the war look towards a day when peace would return to Allied nations.

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'We'll Meet Again' - Vera Lynn -

Another wartime classic sung by Vera Lynn, 1939's 'We'll Meet Again' pulled at the heartstrings of both soldiers and the loved ones back home whom they were fighting for.

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'Angel of Death' - Slayer -

The first track off Slayer's third studio album, 1986's 'Reign in Blood,' 'Angel of Death' recounts with speed and fury the inhumane and unspeakable atrocities committed by Josef Mengele, the Nazi doctor of the same nickname. The song's subject matter and explicit lyrics garnered intense criticism and controversy, but the band has always fought back against claims of Nazi sympathy and/or racism.

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'The War' - Angels & Airwaves -

Tom DeLonge, of Blink-182 fame, released 'The War' in 2006 with his side project Angels & Airwaves. This anti-war song heavily referenced and frequently described the 1944 Battle of Normandy.

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'PT-109' - Jimmy Dean -

Country music star Jimmy Dean wrote a song in 1962 chronicling then-president John F. Kennedy's incredible story of luck on the PT-109 boat during WWII. Kennedy and his crewmembers had their boat destroyed off the coast of a small uninhabited island in the Solomon Archipelago, and were stranded for two days before being discovered and rescued by two indigenous Melanesian islanders.

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'Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition’ - Frank Loesser -

Penned by Frank Loesser in 1942, 'Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition’ was a celebrated patriotic song that gained popularity in the wake of Pearl Harbor. The phrase "praise the lord and pass the ammunition" was first proclaimed by Chaplain Howell Forgy, who was present during the blinding madness of the attack.

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'The Ballad of Rodger Young' - Frank Loesser -

Written during the last year of the war, Frank Loesser's patriotic 'Ballad of Rodger Young' (1945) recounted the true story of Private Rodger Young, an American enlisted army soldier who received worldwide recognition and a posthumous Medal of Honor after rushing a Japanese turret nest in 1943. Private Young helped his troop escape the Japanese ambush, but lost his life in the process.

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'30 Seconds Over Tokyo' - Pere Ubu -

Written and performed by the early American punk band Pere Ubu, '30 Seconds Over Tokyo' (1975) recounts the events of 1942's Doolittle Raid, the first time the United States inflicted damage upon the Japanese mainland. The air raid claimed the lives of 50 soldiers and civilians, and injured around 400.

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'1944' - Jamala -

Ukrainian singer Jamala secured the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest first prize trophy with her moving song of remembrance, '1944.' The song recounts the events of the mass deportation and cultural cleansing of Crimean Tatars, blanketly accused of collaborating with Hitler, at the hands of Stalin.

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'Enola Gay' - Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark -

Named after the B-29 Superfortress bomber that dropped the "Little Boy" nuclear bomb on the densely populated Japanese city of Hiroshima, OMD's song 'Enola Gay' (1980) managed to become at once an anti-war song criticizing the use of such destructive equipment, as well as an early queer anthem filled with joyful innuendo.

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'Roads to Moscow' - Al Stewart -

Scottish singer Al Stewart's 1973 narrative song 'Roads to Moscow' tells the story of the 1941 German invasion of Russia through the eyes of a young Russian soldier. The song covers the last three years of the war, ending with the narrator being arrested in Russia upon his return to the war for suspected, but unfounded, collaboration with the Nazis.

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'Ten German Bombers' -

As grim a children's song as they come, 'Ten German Bombers' was a popular song used to foster patriotism and a sense of security in both children and their parents. Sung to the tune of 'She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain,' the simple repetition of just a few lines, counting down from 10 to zero, simply reflects the RAF shooting down 10 German bombers one by one.

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'Sullivan' - Caroline's Spine -

American rock band Caroline's Spine's 1997 debut single 'Sullivan' tells the tragic and true story of the Sullivan brothers, who were five of 687 lives lost aboard the USS Juneau in 1942. The song is told from the point of view of the mother of the Sullivans, and her correspondence with both her sons and the United States military itself.

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'Lili Marlene' - Lale Andersen -

'Lili Marlene,' most famously sung by German singer Lale Andersen in 1939, was a fascinating anomaly of the Second World War. The song, popularized through the German Radio Belgrade broadcast, became a song of romantic solace for both Axis and Allied troops. Lale Andersen was even commissioned for an English version of the song, which was then covered in German by American star Marlene Dietrich for use in a demoralizing campaign undertaken by the US Office of Strategic Services.

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'Souviens-toi du jour' - Mylène Farmer -

Mylène Farmer's 1999 single 'Souviens-toi du jour,' or 'Remember the Day' in English, is inspired by and based off Italian author Primo Levi's book 'If This is a Man,' which describes the unimaginably horrid conditions of Nazi concentration camps.

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'In the Aeroplane Over the Sea' - Neutral Milk Hotel -

One of the most accessibly infectious yet opaquely perplexing records of the 20th century, Neutral Milk Hotel's 1998 masterpiece 'In the Aeroplane Over the Sea' is a surreal record of youth, memory, and loss. Dreamlike images of blitzkriegs, burning cities, and the memory of Anne Frank set the scene for large swaths of the album. Songwriter Jeff Mangum claims to have read Anne Frank's 'Diary of a Young Girl' during the months leading up to the penning of 'Aeroplane,' an experience that caused him to cry almost nonstop for three days, and led to vivid recurring dreams of traveling back in time to save Frank and her family from the Nazis.

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'Alyosha' - Eduard Kolmanovsky -

Written by Eduard Kolmanovsky and Konstantin Vanshenkin (pictured), a Soviet team of composer and poet, 'Alyosha' is written in praise of the 36-foot (11-meter) tall concrete monument of the same name, built in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. The monument stands as a reminder of the Soviet lives lost while fighting in Bulgaria during World War II.

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'Annelies' - James Whitbourn -

Written by English composer James Whitbourn, 'Annelies' is a choral piece telling the life story of Anne Frank over the course of an hour and nine minutes, split into 14 parts. The full piece premiered in April 2005, and was performed by the Choir of Clare College Cambridge and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

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'The Beauty That Still Remains' - Marcus Paus -

With its title taken from a famous passage of Anne Frank's diary, Marcus Paus' choral composition 'The Beauty That Still Remains' is one of many powerful and evocative classical pieces inspired by World War II. The piece was commissioned by the government of Norway in 2015 to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the end of the war.

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'Terezín: The Music' -

An incredible artifact of life inside the Theresienstadt (or Terezín) Ghetto, 'Terezín: The Music' consists of classical and orchestral pieces of music written by famous Jewish composers such as Pavel Hass and Hans Krása. All of the pieces were written within the Terezín Ghetto as their authors awaited deportation; all but one of the featured composers met their doom in Auschwitz.

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'Chant des Partisans' -

The song in everyone's heads during the Nazi occupation of France was 'Chant des Partisans,' recorded in England and broadcast into the country by the BBC. It became the chant of the French resistance movement and was even named the country's unofficial national anthem for a short time.

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'Erika' - Herms Niel -

Written by Nazi party member Herms Niel during the 1930s, 'Erika' became the unofficial march of the Nazi Army and the most popular song amongst Germans in World War II. The song itself has no explicitly fascist undertones, but Niel, its author, was himself an enthusiastic member of the German fascist sphere.

Sources: (History Hit) (Classical-Music.com) (Military.com)

See also: Unsolved mysteries of World War II

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