Walt Disney’s “The Making of the Nazi” (1943)

In 1943, Walt Disney produced a 10-minute animation purporting to document the process by which German children were turned into “perfect little Nazis”. The aim was to demonstrate to the American populace how the Nazis were indoctrinating their sons with the aim of creating an army totally loyal to Hitler. The resulting soldiers are good for nothing but “marching and heiling”, according to the narrator. Anti-Catholicism, book burnings and goose-stepping are all featured. There is even a purported Nazi cartoon; a very strange version of Sleeping Beauty featuring Hitler as the prince and ‘Germany’, dressed up as a Valkyrie with a beer tankard, as the princess. The finished product is a surreal, amusing yet disturbing combination of fact and fiction.

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