This might be old news, but read this tonight and found it very interesting 
It's just copy/paste from
http://www.wolfhoffmann.com/html/faq.html
but hell, it's great stuff
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Question: What's the story behind the intro to ``Fast as a Shark"?
Answer: Here it is. We had this song ``Fast as a Shark" recorded and wanted to do a little intro for it. So I came up with the idea of taking a silly old traditional song and putting it in front of it as a contrast.
We were recording at Dieter Dierk's studio at the time, so we went and asked his mother if she maybe had an old record with children's songs for us to borrow. Shure enough, she had just the perfect one that Dieter used to sing as a child as a matter of fact which made it even more funny and'valuable' for us.
We picked this particular spot out of all the tunes on the record, simply because it had no real lyrics, just heidi, heido.... (The song is called ' Ein Heller und ein Batzen'.) That way we would not have to explain what the lyrics meant, no hidden meaning and all that and it would not sound real GERMAN, just silly, at least that's what we thought at the time...
Now, about that whole Nazi thing and them using that song when they invaded France or Poland, let me just say this, whether they actually did or not or whether it was just used in later movies, I really don't know. But I know to a lot of people it apparently sounds like it, like a typical Nazi song and it caused a lot of controversy for us at the time. So out of a funny little idea we created somewhat of a monster. I must have talked about that in interviews a thousand times, but something like that is like fighting against a windmill, it just keeps coming back (and here I am again talking about it!).
It's just copy/paste from
http://www.wolfhoffmann.com/html/faq.html
but hell, it's great stuff
------------------------------
Question: What's the story behind the intro to ``Fast as a Shark"?
Answer: Here it is. We had this song ``Fast as a Shark" recorded and wanted to do a little intro for it. So I came up with the idea of taking a silly old traditional song and putting it in front of it as a contrast.
We were recording at Dieter Dierk's studio at the time, so we went and asked his mother if she maybe had an old record with children's songs for us to borrow. Shure enough, she had just the perfect one that Dieter used to sing as a child as a matter of fact which made it even more funny and'valuable' for us.
We picked this particular spot out of all the tunes on the record, simply because it had no real lyrics, just heidi, heido.... (The song is called ' Ein Heller und ein Batzen'.) That way we would not have to explain what the lyrics meant, no hidden meaning and all that and it would not sound real GERMAN, just silly, at least that's what we thought at the time...
Now, about that whole Nazi thing and them using that song when they invaded France or Poland, let me just say this, whether they actually did or not or whether it was just used in later movies, I really don't know. But I know to a lot of people it apparently sounds like it, like a typical Nazi song and it caused a lot of controversy for us at the time. So out of a funny little idea we created somewhat of a monster. I must have talked about that in interviews a thousand times, but something like that is like fighting against a windmill, it just keeps coming back (and here I am again talking about it!).
Both especially bitter losses too because of the bands U.D.O was playing with - Raven the first time and Saxon the second! Aaaarrrggghhh!