In 1918, near the end of World War I, Israel Beilin penned a patriotic song while serving in the army at Camp Upton in N.Y. But, there were so many patriotic songs coming out at the time that the composer filed the piece away in his scrap heap.
Two decades later, the composer, whose name was Americanized to Irving Berlin, was approached by radio star Kate Smith, who wanted a new song to sing for a special 1938 Armistice Day radio show.
Berlin tried several different songs and then remembered his “God Bless America,” filed away in an old trunk.
However, the world had changed in many ways in the two decades from 1918 to 1938. For one, after World War I, Americans were enthusiastic and patriotic. They were proud of their war efforts and their “boys” who went “over there.”
Now, in the 1930s, Americans were adamantly opposed to participating in another European War. So Berlin himself dusted off his old song and made several changes to make it a “peace song.”
The original stated: “Stand beside her and guide her to the right with a light from above.” Initially, “to the right” had not been a political statement. But, it had become so, and Berlin said: “For obvious reasons, I changed the phrase to ‘Through the night with a light from above.’”
More significantly, Berlin added an ominous preamble to his song, which included his own prayer for non-intervention in the war:
“While the storm clouds gather far across the sea
Let us swear allegiance to a land that’s free
Let us all be grateful that we’re far from there
As we raise our voices in a solemn prayer.”
The song was sung this way by Kate Smith every performance from the fall of 1938 into the early months of 1939. Yet, Berlin copyrighted the song in February 1939, changing the words “grateful that we’re far from there” to “grateful for a land so fair.”
What caused the composer to shift from an isolationist viewpoint to the song as we sing it today? A chilling twist of fate is that “God Bless America’s” premiere occurred one day after Kristallnacht, Germany’s Night of Broken Glass! On November 9-10, the Nazi’s SA paramilitary forces and civilians carried out a pogrom, attacking Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues. This violent attack was America’s first view of the brutality of the Nazi regime, shifting American public opinion about intervention.
For Berlin, “God Bless America” could no longer be a peace song. He changed its words and began to lead it at rallies in support of American involvement in the escalating conflict in Europe.
“God Bless America” is the quintessential Jewish War Veterans’ song. As Irving Berlin’s daughter, Mary Ellin Barrett, wrote in her memoirs, “It wasn’t ‘God Bless America, land that we love.’ It was ‘God bless America, land that I love.’ It was an incredibly personal statement that my father was making, that anybody singing that song makes as they sing it. And I understood that that song was his ‘thank you’ to the country that had taken him in. It was the song of the [Russian Jewish] immigrant boy who made good.”
This Veteran’s Day, may we honor those who served and swear allegiance to continue the fight for a land that’s free.
