Der Fuehrer's Face

Hilarious!

i don't find this cartoon hard to apritiate at all. actually i thought it was really funny and every time i watch it it gets better. even by todays standards its great.

I am doing a paper on this film, as well as other anti-Nazi films Disney created during WWII. If anyone has any suggestions on where to find helpful information (i.e. the actual films) that would be most helpful. Thanks

Der Fuehrer's Face is an interesting cartoon. I say "interesting" because it's hard to call it a "great" cartoon, by today's standards. But more on that later. Der Fuehrer's Face was produced by Disney for the American World War II effort. It is shamelessly a propaganda film (I don't say that as a bad thing, either). The short opens with members of the Axis powers singing, "Der Feuhrer's Face". It is also probably this short part of the cartoon that has made it so inaccessible and difficult to find over the years. It contains extremely stereotypical caricatures of Germans, Italians, and particularly of a Japanese soldier. Again, I state this only as fact and not as a criticism of Disney. The country was at war and their mindframes were very different. No doubt Disney is concerned about their image and would prefer people not to see this cartoon because of the stereotypes in it. Donald is forced to wake up by being stabbed by the bayonnette on the German soldiers gun. He secretly opens a safe where he hides his coffee and breakfast (the idea being that he isn't supposed to have these things in Germany). After eating painfully hard toast, he's off to work at the munitions factory. He is called a "volunteer" and is even given a brief "vacation" by the Feuhrer, which consists of a backdrop of a mountainside. His job is to screw the caps on the tops of bombs and shells. Often, these are interspersed with pictures of Hitler that Donald is required to salute and yell, "Heil Hitler!" to. Eventually the work gets to be just too much and Donald spins into a nightmare. He wakes up and sees the shadow of the Statue of Liberty on his wall (he has a small replica in his window sill). He rejoices at being in the good old USA. This short won the Academy Award for best short in 1943. As I noted before, this is an "interesting" cartoon. I can see why it garners the attention it does and I can appreciate that it is extremely well made. However, the sentiments expressed and the world in which it was produced are very different from today and I think that makes it more difficult to appreciate. Because Disney, like all large compnaies, is concerned about its reputation, the chances of you seeing this cartoon are slim to none. If you stumble across it or an opportunity to see it, jump on it.