MP13 | American wartime animation (part 3: information)

Posted on by Claude Lau

Despite — or perhaps because — wartime being a time of tension and uncertainty, the American animation industry consolidated its forces towards the Second World War effort. Animation was used as a medium to portray war, to instruct, and to disseminate messages. This is the third and final part of the series.

In the previous part I looked at wartime animation as propaganda, mainly sending anti-Nazi messages and satirizing Hitler. This section deals with films carrying more specific calls to action, aimed at the home front in the United States during the Second World War.

Informative and educational animations were high in demand, some for the purpose of training troops, and others for civilians at home. The example we saw in class is the black and white Looney Tunes: Point Rationing of Foods (1943). It was commissioned by the Office of War Information, produced in collaboration with UPA, directed by Chuck Jones. It sought to inform Americans on the wartime rationing system. As an informative film, it uses a very graphic, modern style, and, its many use of holds make it somewhat more a graphic reel rather than a fully animated film.

While in the throes of aiding the WWII Allies, the US also had presidential elections, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt was up for re-election. Hell-Bent for Election (1944) was made for his election campaign, sponsored by the United Auto Workers and directed by Chuck Jones. It is UPA’s first major success, displaying its stylish graphic aesthetic and dynamic camera angles.


Victory Through Air Power (1943) was not shown in class, but I had seen it referenced in many histories and biographies of Walt Disney or his eponymous studio. It was based on the book of the same name by Alexander de Seversky, an aviation expert and strategist. A 70 minute feature film, it came about when Disney read de Seversky’s book and felt compelled to disseminate his theories on air bombing strategies, and how this would lead to the Allies’ victory. The film was apparently even shown to and approved of by Roosevelt.

As a bookend I’d like to bring up Brotherhood of Man (1945), directed by Bobe Cannon and John Hubley. In the wake of WWII, which for America was a commercially successful war and saw society more unified than ever to support the war effort, there was continued enthusiasm for societal cooperation in America, much like during the wartime. Previously overlooked sectors of society like women and ethnical minorities, now had unprecedented contribution and standing in the workforce. The short serves as an educational video against racial prejudice in post-War America.

To summarize, this three-part series aimed to look at animation as a vehicle for the American war effort in WWII, as well as a way through which to illustrate society and important historical events in America in relation to the war.  

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MP12 | American wartime animation (part 2: the art of propaganda)

Posted on by Claude Lau

Despite — or perhaps because — wartime being a time of tension and uncertainty, the American animation industry consolidated its forces towards the Second World War effort. Animation was used as a medium to portray war, to instruct, and to disseminate messages. This is the second of a three part series.

Anti-Nazi Germany propaganda was created to clearly delineate the enemy. Much of these parody  the leader of the Nazi Party, Adolf Hitler, in the many satirical incarnations of him in animation film.

Der Fuhrer’s Face (1942) propaganda film starring Donald Duck aimed at a younger audience, but was also encouragement for Americans to buy war bonds. I posit that it took inspiration from two of cinema mogul Charlie Chaplin’s films: Modern Times (1936) portrays Chaplin’s Tramp character in an unforgiving industrial production factory, and Donald Duck undergoes a similar sequence of struggling to keep pace with a relentless assembly line. Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (1940) is a dedicated satire of Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler.

Blitz Wolf (1942) directed by Tex Avery, made for MGM. It uses Walt Disney’s Three Little Pigs as an analog for guarding against the looming threat of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany’s expansion.

https://vimeo.com/63467857

It is interesting to compare the different humor and narrative structures used in Der Fuhrer’s Face and Blitz Wolf, though both were released in the same year for the same cause. They are perhaps characterized by each different studio’s approach to animation. Der Fuhrer uses the same eponymous song, which follows Disney’s vision for music and sound being a driving element of animation. Blitz Wolf is noticeably more slapstick, and uses gags with extreme cartoon physics, as well as more innuendo jokes such as a released German bomb pausing to read the page of an Esquire magazine. Notably, Der Fuhrer won Bliz Wolf at the Academy awards. 

Disney’s short film Education for Death: The Making of the Nazi (1943) is, in comparison a much darker and more somber, yet more nuanced view of Nazi Germany. The film shows the gradual indoctrination of Hans, a young German boy growing up under the rule of the Nazi party, who is brainwashed in cheering for Hitler (who is, for good measure, satirized as a barmy knight) and becoming a soldier, and presumably ‘cannon-fodder’, to die a horrible death.

Reason and Emotion (1943), also produced by Disney, draws the analogy of reason and emotion being two entities inside each person’s mind (perhaps a precursor concept to the 2015 film Inside Out, but I digress), in order to illustrate what the film calls the ‘Nazi German brain’ where emotion has been manipulated by Hitler to take the helm. It also encourages the audience not to be victims of fear-mongering. Although a somewhat outdated portrayal of how the human mind works, it is a valiant attempt at making American audiences understand why Hitler’s doctrine is so affective in Germany.

MP11 | American wartime animation (part 1: the cautioning)

Posted on by Claude Lau

Despite — or perhaps because — wartime being a time of tension and uncertainty, the American animation industry consolidated its forces towards the Second World War effort. Animation was used as a medium to portray war, to instruct, and to disseminate messages. This is the first part of a three-part series.

Although Peace on Earth (1939) was not a film made for the war effort, it was released two months after WWII started in Europe, and its portrayal of war I find interesting and important enough to include as a forward to animations that are more strictly propaganda in nature.

It is an anti-war, pacifist film produced by by the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer company. It was presumably made during the collapse of international relations between the Allied and Axis Powers in the late 30’s, but definitely before the United States joined WWII.

Peace takes place in a hypothetical post-apocalyptic earth, where humans have wiped each other out while waging war, and woodland animals have taken over and are now re-telling the stories of humans’ wars. The film seems to be cautioning against war with the hindsight of WWI, which was the largest scale war known to humankind at its end in 1918, and was even then called ‘the war to end all wars’. It certainly depicts war as brutal: the battlefield sequences are very realistic and well made, in stark contrast to the joyful cartoon animals.

https://vimeo.com/194223614

Interestingly this film was remade after WWII with a different scenario, and even more brutal war scenes showing more technically advanced weapons than Peace on Earth, in light of the many innovations in weaponry in the actual war, including the nuclear bomb.

The rest of the series will dive into the many types of animation made during the war effort.