Disney’s WWII Propaganda
April 7, 2005 at 4:43 pm
World War II is one thing. Propaganda is another, although closely intervened with the former. Disney is a whole other thing, one should think at least. But Disney did a lot of really cliché propaganda flicks during the war, including most of their leading characters at the time. Also uncle Scrootch (Dagobert Duck for the german readers) was introduced at that era, as the cruel and (axis-) money-loving uncle to Donald.
Anyway, the 2 most popular (while still not really popular at all) warflicks I will review here. They aren’t, at least to my knowledge, anywhere available on the www, at least not hosted on a free site. You can get them thru various file sharing tools though, like Kazaa (Lite), EDonkey and others. So without much further ado, down to the reviews of the 2 shortmovies…
Just to make it clear from the beginning: I despise everything the nazis did in World War II. I did not, do not, and will never be attracted to anti-semitism or war in general. But neither do I like war-propaganda, from which source it may ever roam. All I want to try with this post is inform you about the propaganda the US made in the war - and how much they sometimes disturbed and clichéd their enemies to strenghten the loathe for those people in the own population.
“Der Fuehrer’s Face”
               
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This one starts out with german soldiers walking the field making military music. They walk the now-forbidden scissor-stride (don’t know the exact english word for it, but you get the point from the pictures. They walk with their legs streched out, not bending their knees). Also everything in the landscape is swastika-shaped. Trees, windmills, bushes, fences, even houses. The “song” they sing is “Der Fuehrers Face”. Lyrics go like this:
“When der Fuehrer says, he is the masterrace When Herr Göbbel says, we own the world in space Is he not a super-man? Is this nazi-land so good? Then the camera pans over to a little house in the land. Inside good-old Donald Duck is sleeping in his pyjamas, doing the Hitler greet asleep as the troops walk by. After greeting Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito, Donald puts on his brown uniform (at least now we realize he’s in the german army) and dunks a coffee-bean into a cup of water to make it taste like coffee-something. Together with a breeze of “Aroma of Bacon & Eggs” and a stone-hard piece of bread that makes up his breakfast. When the soldiers walk by his door, one steps in and suddenly makes him read from the book “Mein Kampf”. All the chapel soldiers walk in and take him outside with them - only to hit him and make him hold up one of the large instruments they are playing. The scene then fades into the shot of a smoking industry building, and a narrator speaks the following lines: “Workers of nazi-land When the Fuehrer says, we never will be slaves Donald has to work at the assembly line in this building, assembling bullet shells. The various bullets fly by him faster and faster, always more. When he secretly mumbles something not-so-good against the Fuehrer, guns and bayonets come out from everywhere, yelling at him “Schweinehund, Heil Hitler”. After some more incidents like this, and a short vacation (that means, a background of the alps gets dropped behind him and he gets to do some gym workout for the Fuehrer) Donald freaks out completely. Suddenly the whole movie turns into a LSD-like horrortrip, with swastikas, bullets and Hitler-lookalikes flying around everywhere and the theme music going completely crazy! After the horrortrip reaches climax, Donald wakes up in his bed again, this time in his stars-and-stripes pyjamas. Spotting a human shadow with one arm up on the wall, he quickly rises to do the Hitler greet, only to realize at last that the shadows is not a nazi, but a miniature of the statue of liberty standing in his window. But it’s got one scene still left, a comic-ish picture of Hitler with the theme song “Der Fuehrer’s Face” playing. A few rotten tomatoes get thrown and mashed at him, and “The End” appears onscreen. |
“Spirit of ‘43″
           
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Spirit of ‘43 starts out with a bell ringing the sweet sound of payday, and blowing little steam-powerered dollar signs into the air. The narrator voice tells us:
“Yes, payday. Millions of dollars pouring into the hands of american workers. Though in the mind of the average worker live 2 separate personalities. One, the thrifty. The thrifty is manifested through Uncle Scrootch, who made his first appearance in this movie. The spendthrift type is manifested through someone who looks like Donalds cousin, but could really be anyone in chic clothes. He tells Donald to spend his money for some dates in the girls club, or other good stuff. The thrifty tells him he has got some better deeds. We hear the narrator again speaking: “Important deeds too. Every american should pay his or her income tax gladly and proudly. This year, thanks to Hitler and Hirohito, taxes are higher than ever before. Will you have enough money on hands to meet your payments when they fall due?” The spendthrifty personality tells Donald “we can take care of that later, forget about it now”. Uncle Scrootch insists Donald to “not forget about our fighting men, do ye?” which he replies “No sir!”. So Donald is torn between those 2 suggestions, spending the dough because it is his, or saving it for income taxes. After a short brawl between the 2 personalities for Donald, they both get kicked away to either side. Then the narrator asks: “Now, what are you going to do? Of course Donalds option is clear: He saves for taxes. Maybe he heard the narrator, too, telling us: “For it is your taxes, my taxes, our taxes that run the factories. American factories, working day and night. Factories making guns, machine guns, anti-tank guns, long range guns, guns, guns, all kinds of guns - to blast the aggressors from the seas! Taxes for american factories working full blast making planes, bombers, dive-bombers, flying fortresses, interceptors to stop the birds of prey that fly by night. Taxes to bury the axis! Taxes to keep them flying! This is our fight, the fight for freedom. |
Closing comment: In war, every side does cruel things. Not all nazis were the flesh-eating berzerkers the propaganda displayed them like. And not every ally soldier was hospitable to german civilians. World War II had to be fought, at least from an allied point of view - Hitler had to be stopped. But the ones to suffered probably the most in the war were all the children, old and women in their bunkers, or working on the streets of even at Flaks in the last stage of the war. And now, to not let this end up in an endless rant, and to have a nice quote to think about, the very last sentence of this very long post:
“The only one who wins in war, is death himself.”
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