Lili Marleen, sung here in English and German by Marlene Dietrich, was one of the most popular songs of World War ll. It was a German marching song, quickly appropriated by all the nations that fought in that war. By 1943, Lili Maleen was being sung in America, England, Russia, Italy, among other nations. It is the song of a solider led through blood and slaughter by a memory of the girl he left behind as she stood bathed in lamplight. In English, at the café De Paris in 1954 In German. Take note of the flowering hands and fingers.
go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you;
may your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!"
--Samuel Adams