Wikipedia-derived facts: This anti-Nazi propaganda film won the 1943 Academy Award for Animated Short Film, and was the only Donald Duck cartoon to win an Oscar.

It seems sort of surreal to watch it now.

h/t: Tyler Soverns

Grant Brissey covered everything from hard news and technology, to music, film, and visual arts during his time working for The Stranger. Grant's work has also appeared at Geekwire, and in Billboard,...

17 replies on “Der Fuehrer’s Face”

  1. My German grandmother loves this song. She sings it with my Dad and my uncle every year when we get together for the holidays and have a few drinks.

  9. I like how the main point of the video is to make fun of personality cult and totalitarism while at the same time this cartoon was being made we were saving uncle Iosef’s moustache with the lend-lease program. The things one has to do.

  10. Looking at this cartoon, it makes me wonder if Donald Duck was only upset at German National Socialism because he had to work hard and lived in what we would call measly conditions, not to mention rationed food and coffee. The cartoon doesn’t delve into whether he really believed in the philosophy of Nazism at all. For all we know after work he and his other friends participated in book burnings and readings of Mein Kampf at the Beir Garden. At the end I was wondering does he only love the Flag and Lady Liberty because he can rest better? Just a thought………….

  11. I’m playing Medal of Honor: Rising Sun right now (I know, I’m about a decade behind on my video gaming. It’s cheaper this way.) and while I enjoy it greatly, I have trouble talking about it. With the European theater MoH games I could say “I killed a hundred Nazis” last night and not feel bad at all. Like all good people, I feel a Nazi is better to kill than a cockroach. But I don’t have a good vocabulary word for the virtual Japanese soldiers. You can identify the Germans by their political affiliation, but calling the Japanese “Imperialists” sounds far to generic.

    Of course this ignores the genuine truth of the average Nazi soldier, who probably was less racist than your average Teabagger, but it is only a video game.

  12. @11: the average German soldier in the Wehrmacht, maybe. “Nazi Soldiers” were the SS, and a bunch of totally despicable sub-humans.

  13. Glad they stuck that one in the archives. Some things shouldn’t be cutsyfied.

    Surprised everyone missed the parallels between the fantasy of the 3rd Reich and Disneyland with Walt as the Fatherland figure. It is not a good sign when guys with “Vision” start creating the “World of Tomorrow”.

  14. Jesus, Spike Jones’s “Der Führer’s Face” meets Donaldismus! There’s a Donald Duck cult among +/- 40-year-old German academics, of the awesome type, especially DD as drawn by Carl Barks and translated by Dr. Erika Fuchs.

  15. There was also a lot of Superman cartoon propaganda that is so weird to watch today. Talk about racism against the Japanese! There’s one that I saw where Lois Lane goes on about the wicked “Japs”.

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