Is it true that the melody of the song “Chung-Chang” is borrowed from the anthem of the SS division “Dead head”?

On the Internet you can find a statement that composer Vladimir Shainsky stole music for a popular children's song, and its original is a Nazi anthem. We checked whether such posts are true.

According to the publications, it was not so long ago that it turned out that the melody of the Chung-Chang children's song from the cartoon “Light” (1970) completely coincides with the marching anthem of the 3rd SS Panzer “Dead Head”. In evidence, these readers are invited to listen to the second work. Since Vladimir Shainsky is considered officially the creator of music for the song, it is assumed that he appropriated the melody. At the same time, some sources clarify that the Nazi anthem was written by Mikhail Mikhalkov, the native brother of the co -author of the words of the anthem of the USSR Sergey Mikhalkov, who secretly served in the troops of the Third Reich.

This statement was especially popular at YouTube (one of the videos about the alleged plagiarism was watched 358,000 times), this information was also actively divided into X, Facebook, "VKontakte","Classmates", On some cognitive sites and musical sites Portals. 

How told In an interview, the co-author of Shainsky, the poet Yuri Entin, composed the composer very quickly, but the name of the island took two months to select the names of the island. For more than half a century, there were no noticeable doubts about Shainsky’s authorship-moreover, the composer himself in 2006 himself I was going sue the Italian group OZZ, which is in its composition 01In his opinion, she copied the melody from the Soviet children's song.

At the same time, the anthem of the divisions from viral publications is not like style stylistics - at least in the chorus. Not a military man is heard there march, and some kind of circus, comic motive. The words in this song were words even more expressive. According to Decoding The text posted on the network, the lyrical hero sings: “My rod is not old and not small”, “My rod, girl, come to me // please sit down”, “Officers and soldiers drink shnaps and many tomatoes.”

Marches and other music used by the SS "Dead Head", released on CD. In the collection you can find a dozen compositions that sounded in this unit during the Second World War. Among them There is Serious and relative Funny Melodies, but not a single vulgar song, at least a little compositionally reminiscent of a viral march.

Where did this strange composition come from - the twin of the Soviet hitter? The allegations that this was how the camping march of the tank division of the Third Reich sounded, it was no coincidence that it began appear On the Internet only at the turn of the 2000s and 2010s. In 2008, the screens was released comedy "Hitler Kaput!" With Pavel Derevyanko and Anna Semenovich in the main roles. Not all critics took it favorably - in Russian society it turned out polemic About how ethical in the entertaining picture to touch the sensitive topics related to the Second World War (for example, the topics of concentration camps). In the first episode The film German soldiers lead Partizan Rabinovich performed by Mikhail Galustyan to shoot to the music of that alleged march of the Divine Head of the Division. And, unlike the case with the OZZ group, the creators of the film did not hide the real author: in the final credits it is explicitly said that this is a parody arrangement of the performer Sanchez The song “Chung-Changa” behind the authorship of Shainsky.

Thus, not Vladimir Shainsky used the melody of the German march when creating the Soviet children's song, but, on the contrary, the comic camping song was written half a century after the end of the Second World War based on his hitter.

As for the history of Mikhail Mikhalkov, who often accompanies the statements of plagiarism, it is much more confusing and is completely based on his own evidence. In the 1990s, the Second World War veteran and writer Mikhalkov published book “In the mazes of mortal risk”, where he spoke about his adventures in the German rear during the war years. The ideal knowledge of the German language supposedly for a long time helped him to impersonate Nazi officers, to recognize valuable intelligence and even marry the daughter of a Swiss millionaire. In particular, Mikhalkov claimed, he killed the captain of the SS Division “Dead Head”, and then appropriated his uniform. Having unexpectedly for himself the commander of a tank company, the Soviet military allegedly wrote a camping song for tankers with the words “where Hitler is, there is victory” - and the SS men rushed it famously. After the war, Mikhalkov spent several years in a Soviet prison, where, however, he mined the information useful for the USSR authorities from communication with other prisoners. Autobiography and late interview Mikhalkova (he died in 2006) on this subject they are full of fantastic details, and many of them do not join each other. It is not possible to check the facts about the German adventures of Mikhalkov, including the story of the anthem, although, for example, in a photograph that is often accompanied publications About him, in fact depicts the navigannnfuhrer Helmut Schreiber. But it is obvious that after a parody song from the movie "Hitler Caput!" She healed on the network with her life and began to grow with legends, they intertwined with a bike told by the brother of the co -author of the Soviet anthem.

Photo on the cover: Frame from the M/f “Kupa” studio “Soyuzmultfilm”

Not true

What do our verdicts mean?