In Disney’s 1942 ‘In Der Fuhrer’s face’ [See link below] Donald Duck is seen to be living in the totalitarian German State in which he faces unsatisfactory food rations and then a gruelling work regime in a munitions factory where he subsequently has a nervous breakdown, not a typical Disney occurrence. In the opening scenes a German military band marches though a swastika-centric world singing the rhetoric’s of their fuhrer, Hitler. The bands comprising of particular interest cohort consisting, for one, of a racial derogative Japanese tuba player whose character adheres to American racial stereotyping of the time.
During WW2 the American government would intern an estimated 110,000 citizens of Japanese ancestry purely because they were deemed enemies of the state due to the racial ethnicity. The next band member, of interest, is a rather effeminate Herman Goering depicted as quite the mincing machine, a typical depiction during WW2, where Allied propaganda aimed to give the impression that the German High Command were weak and womanlike. The last member of the band to be shown is that of Benito Mussolini depicted as a small bald drummer, which perhaps isn’t too far from a true depiction. In the closing scenes we see Donald awake from his nightmare, draped in the star and stripes, typical of every propaganda film of the time, to see Lady Liberty standing in the window encouraging him to proclaim, ‘Boy am I glad to be a citizen of the United States of America.’
As well as being a rather endearing rendition ably performed by Donald and some character who did not stand the test time, the film does however show the rather forgotten contribution Disney had in propaganda production with its ever lovable characters during the Second World War. Covering everything from recruitment, war bond drives, income tax and Christmas greeting cards Disney did what it does best in contribution to the war effort. With the War costing around $300 billion the American government, in part, depended on contribution of the American people through war bonds and taxes, which Disney helped to facilitate.
For more on Donald Duck’s contribution to the propaganda war see,
and for more on Disney’s role in WW2 see,
Sources
Disney, ‘In Der Fuhrer’s Face’, (1942) <https://archive.org/details/DerFuehrersFace>
David Lesjak, ‘Disney to the Front’, American in WWII, <http://www.americainwwii.com/galleries/disney-to-the-front/>
Historic Happenings 