one of my interests lies quite heavily in world war ii propaganda cartoons i think
they're so fascinating to study i've seen quite a few of them i've seen several from disney
and education for death the 1943 film is definitely one of the most
disturbing and perhaps accurate and while it is propaganda against germany and arguably racist
in some points it's when does propaganda become racism it's a very fine line this isn't racist but
well maybe it is i don't know propaganda is a very different thing of its own but this one focuses
not just on hitler but on the gen public in germany at the time and the actual subtitle
is the making of the nazi and it's all about the hitler youth and how once a young boy joins the
hitler young and they're basically being bred um raised and bred to fight for germany and we all
know how that ended up for a lot of soldiers and it's a pretty emotional thing when you're
watching it because yes this was the enemy but these are young boys and there's some really
disturbing actually animation of these boys who are maybe about eight or nine in the history
young and doing heil hitler and we know that when they grow up they're going to have a certain fate
there's this beautiful um mini montage of these little boys marching this is quite near the end
but they're marching and then they are kind of older men old teenagers marching and then they're
kitted out in their soldier uniform marching with their guns over their shoulders and it's
a beautiful transition to watch on screen but in real life that's obviously a pretty powerful thing
that's not very pleasant and this really makes you think that soldiers who went out to fight for
either side were once just young innocent children who had not yet been indoctrinated into the hitler
young and i feel like that's pretty powerful this particularly follows the character of hans
who we meet as a baby and at the birth of this baby the parents are given a copy of my camp um
and
well there's a hint that they're meant to be producing a lot more children to join the hitler
young and to go and fight for the fatherland and we see hans growing up from a young boy
and i'm not going to say how the story ends but it's called education for death the main point is
while the germans and this is where the racism question comes in are they saying that it's just
the nazis who are this way inclined or is it the general public as well it's a very fine line but
we watch hans growing up and while to the nazis hans is being prepared to fight for his country
to the onlooker hans is being indoctrinated within the history youngin to go and fight to the death
and it's a little bit emotional when you think of it like that i think it's really clever that
they gave us this character of houns who we can then follow from basically being a baby
um he is a pure aryan if you like and we follow him through the hitler youth to being um old
enough to go and fight and it's quite emotional i think it works very well i don't know what the
general public would have thought for this at the time because on the one hand it's kind of saying
the germans are breeding their young children to go and do this and they will eventually die
in the war kind of saying we're better than the germans we will kill them all but at the same time
you're kind of saying i'm going to go and kill that child one day and that's that's not a
positive message at all so i'm not sure really what the message the film was trying to give
i feel like you know mostly with disney propaganda for the war it was all about hitler
being a bad person and you know we must fight well they i'm not american but they must fight
against nazi germany and defeat her hitler but with this one it kind of like to me it's like
they're saying look at what is happening to these children look at what these idiots are doing to
their youth and in doctrine and indoctrinating them this war needs to stop so for me i perceive
it quite differently to a lot of other disney cartoons from the time and indeed other 1940s
propaganda animations it's really interesting i will say the um there are animated portraits and
one of hitler is creepy the one of goring is creepy the one of goebbels is probably one of
the most terrifying things that i have ever seen it is a very powerful short it's about 10 minutes
and it basically encapsulates everything you will learn about the second world war
in a child-friendly way i say child friendly it's probably not child friendly but by that i mean
you don't see people getting lynched and there are no concentration camps it's it's kind of you
know it's a nasty thing but it doesn't necessarily show it um blunt force it's everything you'd learn
in the first year of secondary school studying the second world war but encapsulated within 10
minutes and it works very well the characters are all speaking german in this i speak some german so
i could understand some of what they were saying but i think to the younger audience or to anybody
who's never studied germany german at the time that inability to understand and perceive what
these characters were saying is going to add an extra element of fear because we fear the unknown
and i just think it's done it very brilliantly it's absolutely fascinating to watch today
i imagine it would have been very emotive very moving and very powerful propaganda
at the time in 1943. i kind of feel like the donald duck one is still my favorite
but education for death is nevertheless pretty awesome