Der Fuehrer's Face

The first time I saw screen caps of this short cartoon, I didn't know what to think. Then I saw it, and realized how clever those guys at Disney are.

I won't really give anything away (it's about Donald Duck working for the Nazis, and in true Disney style, comes to a cute ending), but you should just see it yourself. It's a superb example of how bad the Nazi soldiers were treated and overworked mixed with comedy. About finding it, you can download it off a few internet joke sites (someone of an IMDb thread for this movie posted a link from steak and cheese DOT COM), and it was recently released as part of a Disney box set of War-time shorts commemorating the WWII era. It's also available in a lot of college libraries, in a 16mm print.

My rating: 10/10 (a pretty good cartoon poking fun at the WWII political state).

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

WWII-era filmmakers used two broad approaches when attempting to discredit Adolf Hitler and Germany in general. The first, and least interesting in my view, was to treat them with the utmost seriousness, painting the Nazis are perverted, sadistic and evil baby-killers, and the like. Secondly, there was the comedic approach, by which Hitler was belittled through having entire audiences laughing in his face. 'The Great Dictator (1940)' and 'To Be or Not to Be (1942)' accomplish this hilariously well, but what about the younger demographics? To help communicate the evils of Nazism to children, the Walt Disney cartoon 'Der Fuhrer's Face (1942)' tosses Donald Duck (voiced by Clarence Nash) amid Hitler's militaristic regime, where he slaves away for "48 hours a day" in a munitions factory, continually bombarded with the swastika symbol and the phrase "heil Hitler!" At the end of the cartoon, after a surreal montage of Nazi (or "Nutzi," as the film says) oppression, Donald wakes up in America, thankfully sighing "am I glad to be a citizen of the United States of America."

Despite winning an Oscar in 1943 for Best Short Subject Cartoon, 'Der Fuehrer's Face' was rarely seen following the end of the war. As the atrocities of Hitler's "Final Solution" came to light, the Nazi badge quickly became something, not to be merely ridiculed, but to be loathed. Nevertheless, the sheer audacity of Jack Kinney's cartoon has to be seen to be believed. There's hardly a frame in which the swastika is not visible in one form or another, and Donald is ludicrously forced to bark "Heil Hitler" whenever he comes across a photograph of the Fuhrer. The cartoon's climax is a dizzyingly-surreal montage in which anthropomorphised Nazi machinery relentlessly beats Donald into submission. It's all a little disconcerting, as was its intention, but it's also a lot of fun. Also featured is Oliver Wallace's song "Der Fuehrer's Face," which was covered by Spike Jones and His City Slickers with great success. Indeed, the name of this cartoon was changed from "Donald Duck in Nutzi Land" to capitalise on the song's popularity.

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.

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!