Analyzing a WWII Propaganda Cartoon - Education For Death
Watch the video below (click the image) for a good example of WWII animated propaganda.
Education for Death. 1943. Walt Disney Productions. Distributed by RKO Radio Pictures. Public Domain.
Education for Death. 1943. Walt Disney Productions. Distributed by RKO Radio Pictures. Public Domain.
Analysis
Education for Death was a very serious film that Disney produced. This cartoon was based on a best selling book Education for Death written by Gregor Ziemer . The film shows how a young boy in Nazi Germany is indoctrinated and brain washed at an early age and learns to follow and not think outside of what the government tells him. This short is both educational but also provides comedic relief by mocking Hitler. The film is both shocking in its content and despairing in its ending.
The film begins with the narrator asking how Nazis are born and developed. The story takes the audience to the child’s academic beginning in kindergarten. Child stories are often adapted to meet the state's needs so, characters and plot lines are often changed. In the story, the wicked witch is known as democracy, while sleeping beauty is Germany and the knight that saves her is played by Hitler. The cartoon depicts this story in a rather short fashion but also depicts the two main characters (Hitler and Germany) ridiculously. On a more serious note, the cartoon next shows the child and his schoolmates in a class giving the infamous Heil Hitler salute repeatedly. However, the young boy becomes sick and the narrator informs the audience that unless the child becomes better again he will be taken away, being denounced unfit and will never be heard from again. However, he does recover and returns to school where he gives his daily pledge to fight, obey, and die for his Fuehrer. The boy answers a question incorrectly and is publicly humiliated. The lesson that the young boy learns later is that weakness is not to be tolerated and that the world belongs to the strong and brutal. The next few scenes show a book burning demonstration and other famous works being burned that are declared illegal by the state. Icons such as the Holy Bible are replaced with Mein Kampf and an image of the crucifix is replaced with a sword that has the Nazi swastika on it. Fast-forwarding a few years, the boy is older and is marching first as a teenage Hitler youth and then eventually as a soldier. The narrator ends the cartoon with the words, “His education is complete, his education for death” as a vast German army fades into a cemetery with crosses over thousands of graves.
The film begins with the narrator asking how Nazis are born and developed. The story takes the audience to the child’s academic beginning in kindergarten. Child stories are often adapted to meet the state's needs so, characters and plot lines are often changed. In the story, the wicked witch is known as democracy, while sleeping beauty is Germany and the knight that saves her is played by Hitler. The cartoon depicts this story in a rather short fashion but also depicts the two main characters (Hitler and Germany) ridiculously. On a more serious note, the cartoon next shows the child and his schoolmates in a class giving the infamous Heil Hitler salute repeatedly. However, the young boy becomes sick and the narrator informs the audience that unless the child becomes better again he will be taken away, being denounced unfit and will never be heard from again. However, he does recover and returns to school where he gives his daily pledge to fight, obey, and die for his Fuehrer. The boy answers a question incorrectly and is publicly humiliated. The lesson that the young boy learns later is that weakness is not to be tolerated and that the world belongs to the strong and brutal. The next few scenes show a book burning demonstration and other famous works being burned that are declared illegal by the state. Icons such as the Holy Bible are replaced with Mein Kampf and an image of the crucifix is replaced with a sword that has the Nazi swastika on it. Fast-forwarding a few years, the boy is older and is marching first as a teenage Hitler youth and then eventually as a soldier. The narrator ends the cartoon with the words, “His education is complete, his education for death” as a vast German army fades into a cemetery with crosses over thousands of graves.