Fact #182908

Noel Coward records his ironic song Don't Let's Be Beastly To The Germans for HMV Records in London, England, UK, Europe. The song will become a personal favourit of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill who, according to Coward, asked him to play it seven times in one evening. Nevertheless, after listeners who didn't perceive the irony wrote to the BBC complaining that the song was pro-German, it was banned from airplay. (The Germans, however, got the point, and placed Coward on a list of Britons to be assassinated in the event of an invasion). After the War, Coward will explain that he had written the song "as a satire directed against a small minority of excessive humanitarians who, in my opinion, were taking a rather too tolerant view of our enemies".