Der Fuehrer's Face

This is such a great propaganda piece! Donald Duck is a worker (well, slave really) in Nutzi land, which basically is nazi Germany. There's a fantastic piece when Donald is working in a factory in a way that reminds us of Chaplin in Modern Times. Throughout the film a really catchy song is playing that is making fun of Hitler.

In the end it turns to be all a dream and Donald is waking up in the USA. He turns patriotic while stating he's so glad to be a citizen in the United States. Oh well, it's propaganda, people!

Propaganda so well made, it should be hailed (no pun intended) for it, as the movie makes fun of Hitler and his gang in an effective, but also hilarious way. 8/10!

Curiosity brought me to this Disney cartoon since of all the things you probably don't expect to see in them is a reference to Hitler in the title. Within a few seconds that list of "things you don't expect in a Disney cartoon" got a brand new #1 as I saw the sight of Donald Duck wearing the swastika and living in Nazi Germany! Yes this film is a piece of propaganda based around a Mel Brooks-esque song which spoofs the Nazi party anthem. The plot sees Donald living in Germany, working in an ammunition factory and struggling with the demands from his bosses, the limited rations and other conditions.

Watching this film years later is an odd experience because it is a very basic and crude affair if you watch it today; it blasts stereotypes and uses nationalistic and racist caricatures in its animations while all the time the visual humor is very much limited to "look at these suckers" style humor (which is reconfirmed at the end). However it isn't really possible to watch it without the context that this is a propaganda film and this is not only to be expected but is actually the whole point. In this regard it does work and I did find parts of it funny and quite imaginative while the song itself is very good. I can understand why Disney kept it out of circulation for so long, since it could have damaged Donald as a character to be seen dressed as a Nazi (albeit to make a point).

The thing that surprised me the most is reading that it won the Academy Award that year for best animated short – I am now really curious as to what the other nominees were because I struggle with the idea that this was the best the year had to offer. Of course voting is always political in these things and I guess there is no more worthy political cause to vote with at the Oscars than defeating Nazism – but for sure this is why the short won, not just off the quality.

In World War II, a marching band playing "Der Fuehrer's Face" passes by Donald Duck's house. He awakes, has a poor breakfast with stale bread. Then he goes to an army factory where he works in the production of ammunition brainwashed by the Nazi propaganda. Donald Duck has a nervous breakdown with the stressed situation but when he awakes, he finds that he had a nightmare and he actually lives in United States of America.

The historical cartoon "Der Fuehrer's Face" is an effective and caustic propaganda in times of war. Despite being dated in 2009, the despair of Donald Duck is still a hilarious fun against the Nazism and tyranny of Hitler. My vote is six.

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During the 1940's, Disney was putting out quite a few of war propaganda films. This Academy Award Winning Donald Duck short is an incredible piece of animation that id, genuinely, really good.

It mocks the Nazi party, by showing Donald Duck struggling to fit in and work for the Nazi with their low food source and the hours and hours of hard work they enforce upon others. There's even a line in which a Nazi announces that they're going to work for 48 hours a day (really clever line).

It's genuinely really funny and clever, as well as being beautifully animated and extremely effective with it's anti-Nazi message.

It's also a cartoon that I feel everyone should experience based on how purely weird and surreal it is seeing Donald Duck being a Nazi. Watching Donald salute a picture of Adolf Hitler after walking through his swastika filled home is wonderfully weird and surreal. It's messed up seeing such an iconically wacky and classic cartoon character suddenly hate Jews so much.

Great short

In this marvelously surreal and funny short, Donald Duck is a subject of Nazi Germany, forced to make munitions for the Reich. He has to endure abysmal food rations (wooden bread, Aroma of Bacon and Eggs, and coffee brewed from a single bean), superhuman workloads, 30 seconds of forced calisthenics for his "vacation", and an unrelenting barrage of Hitler portraits which he must hail unfailingly - or else! It's all too much for Donald, who has a nervous breakdown, and the film disintegrates into a bizarre phantasmagoria of dancing missiles and stomping boots. Thankfully, it was all just a bad dream, and Donald is relieved to see that the hailing shadow on the wall is cast by his Statue of Liberty on the window sill. As he kisses it he proclaims, wearing his star-spangled jammies, "Am I glad to be a citizen of the United States of America." This cartoon, perhaps the most savagely satirical Disney ever made, was a sensation in its day, winning the Oscar and spawning a hit song. After the war, however, it was shelved and kept out of public circulation - and not without reason. Now it has been released on DVD as part of the excellent Walt Disney Treasures collection, "Walt Disney on the Front Lines", for discerning film buffs to enjoy. Many will find it disquieting to see a beloved American icon wearing a brownshirt uniform with swastika armband, hailing pictures of Hitler, and goose stepping to work; but then, Donald doesn't seem too thrilled about it, either. In no way does this cartoon promote Nazism. Instead, it punctures its pretensions of superiority by reducing its brutality to absurd slapstick, turning its Ubermensch into buffoonish caricatures. (Bear in mind that at the time of this cartoon the true extent of Hitler's inhumanity was unknown to the Allied countries.) As Mel Brooks has noted, the best way to deal with monsters like Hitler is to laugh at them. So go ahead and laugh, laugh, right at Der Fuehrer's Face.