When David Bowie fantasised about being Hitler

The catalyst for This Ain’t Rock ‘n’ Roll was a conversation Rachel often has with his friend the musician Billy Bragg, on whether music can save the world. Rachel turned to thinking about the musicians in the concentration camps whose lives were saved, literally, by their instruments. But that topic had been more than covered. What he discovered had not been written about, however, was the shocking prevalence of the swastika and Nazi imagery in pop music.

“It was totally ignored subject matter,” says Rachel. Was he shocked that a seven to eight-decade history of Nazism in music had been largely permitted? Yes and no, “because as a child and as a fan of music, I’ve shared the joke in a lot of places”, he says.

As a child who was into punk pioneers the Sex Pistols among other rock ‘n’ roll of the era, Rachel loved the track Belsen Was a Gas and would “happily sing along” and think it “funny” that Sid Vicious wore a T-shirt brandishing the image of a swastika. Until his mother, who worked briefly for the Board of Deputies, asked him to watch a VHS tape labelled “Holocaust film footage”.

I don’t want to be the Simon Wiesenthal of rock n’ roll, but the extent of the artists involved in flirtation with the Third Reich is unbelievable

To young Rachel, the hour-long compilation of atrocities committed during the Shoah, from which he also discovered the meaning of Belsen, was so terrible it almost felt “unbelievable. The film caused some kind of explosion in my mind,” he says.

There is irony in the fact the swastika was introduced to punk by Jewish music manager Malcolm McLaren, who was raised by his grandmother in Stoke Newington and who had a bar mitzvah. “It is strange to get your head around,” Rachel says.

Over the past three years, Rachel researched the “entire history” of the Third Reich, immersing himself in Holocaust literature and films, “endlessly” re-reading Mein Kampf, the works of Hitler’s close ally and friend Albert Speer, and survivors’ accounts.

He also undertook a ten-day tour of Poland, visiting the death camps and Anne Frank’s grave at Bergen-Belsen. “I burst into tears. My head went swimming in a kind of a horror, it was a depth I’d never gone to before.”

To try and keep his sanity, he began writing a journal in Poland. “I’d drive 300 miles, spend the day at a camp, then go back to a hotel and write up my experience, to try and understand what I was seeing.”

It was at the camps that he learnt the inaccuracy of the Pistols’ lyrics; there were no gas chambers at Belsen, and he mentions this in our interview.

The number of rock and pop stars who have associated themselves with Nazism over the decades is unsettling. They include Keith Moon of the Who and Vivian Stanshall of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band  who, in 1970, donned Nazi uniforms before going round Golders Green, demanding German bread from a Jewish bakery; John Lennon who as a schoolboy collected Nazi badges and medals; and David Bowie who his Thin White Duke era in 1977 declared he “would have been a bloody good Hitler”; Siouxsie Sioux of Siouxsie and the Banshees who wore a Nazi armband several times in 1976 (although she later wore the Star of David and the band released the song “Israel” as “an atonement”) and Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones. Rachel sees examples of Nazism in the music industry as divisible into three categories: those who supported those beliefs, those who appropriated the aesthetics without clear political alignment, and those who actively opposed fascist ideas.

“I don’t want to be the Simon Wiesenthal of rock ‘n’ roll,” he says of the Holocaust survivor-turned Nazi-hunter. “But the extent of the artists involved in flirtation with the Third Reich is unbelievable. I could draw a line in rock ’n’ roll from the anti-fascism of Woody Guthrie in the 1940s to the disgrace of Kanye West in 2025, and virtually every year has incidents. I also was not prepared for the blind rejection of responsibility.”

The guiding principle of his book is that if musician uses the swastika in any way, they are deploying an antisemitic symbol. “And it’s all over the history of rock ’n’ roll, and continues to be. That is shocking.”

That “rejection of responsibility” extended throughout the industry. When Carlos Dengler, the bassist from American indie-rock band Interpol, sported what resembled an SS uniform in live shows, it was not properly called out by the music press. Dengler himself wrote in Tablet magazine in 2023, a decade after he had left the band, that his choice of attire was a response to his father who would play a cassette of Nazi songs while marching round the dinner table and whose own father was an actual Nazi.

“It got to a point in the 2000s when somebody looking as fascistic as he did on stage was largely just mocked and used as a tool for humour,” Rachel says, “and the music press, along with fans and the artists themselves, have allowed this to happen over decades without accountability. No artist is an island. So whenever somebody uses Nazi imagery or flirts with Third Reich regalia of any sort, it’s gone through many potentials of being closed down.”

Remarkably, it’s still happening to this day. In 2023, a member of Twice – one of the most globally successful K-pop groups – wore a T-shirt featuring an image of Pistols bassist Sid Vicious wearing a swastika logo. Chaeyoung apologised, but only after she had posted a photo of herself wearing it to her 8.6 million followers on Instagram. She then removed it.

Rachel recognises the fascination with Nazi symbolism. When visiting Polish concentration camps, he found himself rummaging through SS security cards and swastika armbands on shop counters. There were giant flags, too. “There’s an idiocy in rock ‘n’ roll, and that idiocy extends to the artists that say, ‘we hanged the flag at a gig,’” he says.

Strangely enough, he and his girlfriend had inherited the Nazi scabbard and belt that had resided in her parents’ house. Eventually, they offered them to the Imperial War Museum, “because it felt wrong” to have them at home.

“Let’s say I understand why people have Nazi memorabilia collections, whether it’s Chris Stein from Blondie, who’s Jewish, or John Lennon,” he says. “But the difference is, if you chose to keep that private, or if you put it into the public domain.”

He sheds some light on the allure of the black SS uniform designed by Karl Diebitsch and Walter Heck in 1932 (and produced by Hugo Boss) with power, menace and sexuality in mind, to assert authority and fear across Germany.

“I think all those elements are recognised by the pop and rock stars who identify with their uniforms. That’s what Lemmy [of Motörhead] talked about, that’s what Bryan Ferry talked about, that’s what Bowie talked about. There’s this endless line of stars that identify with that.”

What also troubles Rachel is the fact that antisemitic symbolism has been allowed in music more than any other artform, whereas other forms of discrimination have been rightly stamped out or at least called out.

“Rock ‘n’ roll has always fought societal and political injustices in incredible ways, and in the last five to ten years has focused on racism, according to the colour of somebody’s skin, and misogyny and sexism. But there’s no acceptance of antisemitism with that. It needs to be up there.”

He cites the fact that in the most recent box set of Lennon’s Some Time in New York City, the song Woman Is the Nigger of the World was omitted, while the Rolling Stones no longer perform Brown Sugar, over criticism that its lyrics could be racist – a decision made by Mick Jagger. “I applaud him wholeheartedly for that. And yet, in so many areas of reproduction of rock ‘n’ roll, the swastika remains. Anything that concerns Nazism is free passage, it seems to me.”

Does that perhaps parallel the feeling among many in the Jewish community that selective outrage abides – that all lives matter except for Jewish ones? Rachel pauses, circumspect. “If there’s a parallel in what I’ve written, I’d be really pleased, but it’s for the reader to draw their own conclusions.”

Although he does make his position clear in the book clear, when he writes that “victims of the Holocaust do not need symbols of Nazism neutralised”, they want to ensure the crimes are neither forgotten nor repeated.

“The idea that a Holocaust survivor or their family should have to witness swastikas or people dressed up in Nazi uniforms on the streets of Britain, because it’s fun for that person, is abhorrent. As was seeing Keith Moon at Finchley Road underground station getting hold of a microphone and suggesting all the Jews get on the train to be gassed, a vignette which was then reproduced in his biographies. And even if you’re not a Holocaust survivor, if you’ve got any sense of compassion whatsoever about humanity.”

Naturally, when Rachel embarked on the book, he was trepidatious at what he might uncover about his favourite artists. So, as a Beatles fan, he was pleased that Lennon’s “obsession with Nazism” was, in the main, private. However, the discovery that another childhood favourite, Adam Ant, had written a song about Ilse Koch, a sadistic guard at Buchenwald concentration camp, was “really hard”. So too was the discovery of Madonna and Lady Gaga “flirting with the symbolism” of the film Night Porter, in which a camp survivor rekindled a relationship with a former SS guard (Dirk Bogarde). “It’s that look with the peak cap and braces over a bare chest, and Madonna and Lady Gaga did that, because they’re divorcing theatrical spectacle from the atrocity. It’s uncomfortable that popular culture does that. I’m not comfortable with it and I don’t think anybody should be.”

The idea that a Holocaust survivor should have to witness swastikas on the streets of Britain because it’s fun for someone is abhorrent 

For this title, Rachel requested comment from numerous artists he’d spoken to for his previous books, yet, he says, responses only came from those on “the right side of history” – anti-fascists who had fought racism and who understood the significance of the Holocaust. But from anyone who had toyed with Nazism or made indiscreet comments, “there was silence”.

That antisemitism has recently spread to university campuses, Rachel sees as a parallel to the impact of Nazism in rock ‘n’ roll on young people, because music plays such an important part in forming their identity. It’s why it needs eradicating. “The influence of what artists do and say has enormous reverberations. There have to be checks.”

He was dismayed to see his youngest daughter sporting a Joy Division tote bag she had been given, and is amazed so few people know the band is named after the concentration camp brothels. “I asked if she knew what it meant and of course she didn’t. So I told her, and she was utterly shocked.”

Rachel is pleased to be raising awareness of the Holocaust and Nazism in a rock ‘n’ roll title, because “it’s not a conversation that exists in music books”. He is also keen for the Jewish community to discover it.

“If younger readers see the connection, I’ll be pleased, because it’s an enormous failing of rock ’n’ roll. And I don’t say that lightly, because I’m one of rock ’n’ rolls greatest fans. I am writing about artists I love.”

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This Ain’t Rock n Roll: Pop Music, the Swastika and the Third Reich by Daniel Rachel is published by White Rabbit