Awkward, this one, very much so. It’s one of the most iconic of Disney’s wartime shorts to be sure, but that doesn’t facilitate a guaranteed 4; as there are much better shorts one could watch, even war themed ones. There is only so long one can suffer watching Donald screw the tops on munitions while saluting his beloved leader and while the Disney crew do an excellent job with the material given, it’s going to be hampered by the lackluster story, or do I mean lack of one.

I suppose the question is did it deserve its Oscar, well to me no, out of the nominations for that year* I feel that Avery should really have received it, but that’s the way it goes. Although one can’t dismiss the fact that this is as high quality technically as anything that has come out of the mouse house, the point is that they made shorts that are more fun to watch and have better writing.

SPOILER AHEAD

Very much a product of its time, but of course most of the directors and producers of theatrical shorts had no idea that we would be watching their products some sixty-plus years after they were made. Essentially Inkwolf is right, the short was made to make American’s feel superior and happier with their lot, as Donald hugging and kissing his statute of Liberty as the iris closes out.

END SPOILER

One final note, this film, is nowhere near as depressing nightmarish as Disney’s other predominate short film – Education for Death – How that really is one dark piece of work.

*From what I can gather, the Oscar system for shorts at the time was one of self nomination; the corporations (Disney, MGM, etc) would put forward which short they felt was most likely to win the oscar that year. this is similar to the system these days where companies submit episodes of their series to be look over for the Emmy awards and usually making the wrong choices.

I've always enjoyed World War II propaganda (from all sides of the war) and this one REALLY annoyed Hitler, or so it's been claimed, so it was a success.

Probably the high point of the film is Spike Jones's famous song, which has been fleshed-out by a verse or two not up to the original standards. (Unlike Lupercal, I did find the German band marching through Donald's house rather amusing...or as amusing as I find any old Disney sight gag, anyway.)

But the vision of nightmarish German life was quite obviously invented to make Americans feel that they were better off than the enemy, in a time of hard work, sacrifice and rationing.

Spoilers ahead...

With less racism, less repetition, and enough plot for the entire short, this might have become a classic. But there's only so long you can be interested in Donald screwing on the tops of shells at bayonet-point, and when they milk that as far as they can go, the cartoon devolves into a surrealistic heffalumps-and-woozles scene full of toothed bombs.

And the best ending they could come up with was Donald waking up in star-spangled PJ's in the good ol' USA, and kissing the Statue of Liberty's butt with joy...

Still...two and a half points for the song and the band!

It's curious. Wheareas Warner were pushing the envelope and writing 'for adults' in the late 30's while Disney was being sweet and family-oriented (and of course continued to be so long afterwards), when it comes to wartime shorts Disney could do a Jeckyll and Hyde.

Warner's shorts of the era were generally patriotic but still fundamentally whacky and screwball. But Disney were capable of pulling out something like 'Der Fuehrer's Face', which is not only more blatantly racist, but in some ways is downright nightmarish, with Donald's dream of working on a Nazi munitions line.

The production qualities are as high as you would expect, but Warner (and MGM, especially under Tex Avery) had done a lot of catching up in the past several years. Whereas the latter were still funny for all sorts of reasons which had nothing to do with war, Disney take a quite serious, uber-patriotic stance here, and the result, especially with Donald Duck in the lead role, is as disturbing as it is funny. The 'funny'; set pieces with Axis personalities and German marching bands aren't funny at all. The whole thing is more like Dante than Chaplin.

Certainly not a bad film really, and I give a lot of leeway for wartime sentiments, but for my money Avery's 'Blitz Wolf' is the better short, and if one of the two was going to get the Oscar, it should have been Avery's.

Mind you I think Freleng/Pierce's 'Ding Dog Daddy' is better than either of them, but as I said in my review, I think it only became ironically classic and poignant in hindsight. Warner might release it one day.