The "Horst-Wessel-Lied" (German: [hɔʁst ˈvɛsl̩ liːt] ⓘ), also known by its incipit "Die Fahne hoch" ('The Flag Raised High'), was the anthem of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) from 1930 to 1945.

The lyrics to "Horst-Wessel-Lied" were written in 1929 by Sturmführer Horst Wessel, the commander of the Nazi paramilitary "Brownshirts" (Sturmabteilung or "SA") in the Friedrichshain district of Berlin.

Wessel wrote songs for the SA in conscious imitation of the Communist paramilitary, the Red Front Fighters' League, to provoke them into attacking his troops, and to keep up the spirits of his men.

[2][11] Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Gauleiter and owner and editor of the newspaper Der Angriff (The Attack), had made several attempts to create Nazi martyrs for propaganda purposes, the first being an SA man named Hans-Georg Kütemeyer, whose body was pulled out of a canal the morning after he attended a speech by Hitler at the Sportpalast.

[4] Wessel himself had undergone an operation at St. Joseph's Hospital which stopped his internal bleeding, but the surgeons had been unable to remove the bullet in his cerebellum.

The following year, a regulation required the right arm be extended and raised in the "Nazi salute" when the (identical) first and fourth verses were sung.

who wrote a jazz version of the song was forced to leave Germany, and when Martha Dodd, the daughter of William E. Dodd, at the time the US ambassador to Germany, played a recording of an unusual arrangement of the song at her birthday party at the Ambassador's residence in 1933, a young Nazi who was a liaison between the German Foreign Ministry and Hitler's Chancellery, turned off the record player, announcing "This is not the sort of music to be played for mixed gatherings and in a flippant manner.

[23][better source needed] The words to the "Horst Wessel Song" were published in September 1929 in the Nazi Party's Berlin newspaper, Der Angriff ('The Attack') which Joseph Goebbels owned and ran.

The Nazi SA, also known as the "brown shirts" and the Communist Red Front fought each other in violent street confrontations, which grew into almost open warfare after 1930.

The "reactionaries" were the conservative political parties and the liberal democratic German government of the Weimar Republic period, which made several unsuccessful attempts to suppress the SA.

It could either mean Kameraden, die von Rotfront und Reaktion erschossen wurden ("Our comrades who were shot dead by the Red Front and Reactionaries") or Kameraden, welche die Erschießung von Rotfront und Reaktion durchführten ("Our comrades who have shot the Red Front and Reactionaries dead").

In spite of this obvious syntactic problem, which was mentioned by Victor Klemperer in his LTI – Lingua Tertii Imperii, the line was never changed.

The following line Marschier'n im Geist in unser'n Reihen mit (March in spirit within our ranks) however indicates that the aforementioned comrades are deceased, advocating the first interpretation.

Horst Wessel fiel, doch tausend neu erstehen Es braust das Fahnenlied voran dem braunen Heere SA bereit, den Weg ihm nachzugehen

Horst Wessel fell, but thousands newly arise The anthem roars ahead of the brown army The storm-divisions are ready to follow his path.

The flags are lowered before the dead who still live The storm-division swears, his hand clenched into a fist, That the day will come for revenge, no forgiveness, When Heil and Sieg will ring through the fatherland.

In 1936, the German music critic Alfred Weidemann published an article, in which he identified the melody of a song composed in 1865 by Peter Cornelius as the "Urmelodie" (source-melody).

[30] Instead of referring to martyrs of the party, it identifies Britain's war dead as those marching in spirit against the "red front and massed ranks of reaction".

[31] Comrades, the voices of the dead battalions, Of those who fell, that Britain might be great, 𝄆 Join in our song, for they still march in spirit with us, And urge us on to gain the fascist state!

𝄇 In modern Croatia, members of various far-right movements consider the adaptation written by Jan Zadravec, called "Hrvatski Stijeg" (The Croatian Banner), to be their unofficial anthem.

𝄆 Kad brat uz brata opet svoje branit stade, nek pamti se, da mi smo bili tu!

𝄆 I hrabro srce kada bije krv ne štedi, jer za svoj rod i život vrijedi dat'!

Στον κόσμο αυτό εμείς θα δείξουμε πώς μένει το θάρρος άπαρτο και φρούριο η τιμή!

The victory day is coming gallantly, Out with the Kolkhozes, Stalin and his GPU, The hooked-cross over the Kremlin shall shine brightly And our black ranks shall pass through Moscow The fascist Lapua Movement and its successor Patriotic People's Movement of Finland sang a song to the tune of Horst Wessel Lied, translated by Otto Al’Antila:[43] Luo lippujen!

Nyt, veljet rintamaan, mi valheen vuolteet sulkee ja voittoon vie tai urhon kuolemaan!

Der Stahlhelm, or "The Steel Helmet", was a nationalist veterans' organisation closely aligned with the German National People's Party.

The Communist Party of Germany substituted completely new lyrics: Ernst Thälmann ruft uns auf die Barrikaden!

Wilhelm Frick was the Interior Minister, Baldur von Schirach was the Hitler Youth leader and Heinrich Himmler was head of the SS and police.

Vielleicht verdient als Bonze morgen er Millionen, Doch das geht uns 'nen braunen Scheißdreck an!

The most notable English-language parody[50] was written by Oliver Wallace to a similar melody and titled "Der Fuehrer's Face" for the 1942 Donald Duck cartoon of the same name.