User Reviews

Is this the scariest Disney wartime cartoon? Of the very few I've seen, it is.

The tone of most of the cartoon is pretty grim. How many others can you name that prominently feature a book-burning?

A boy is born to a German family. Much of the film is in German (!) -- high quality German too, by the way -- with English voice-over. A name must be chosen for the boy, once the parents have proven their Aryan ancestry, naturally. The chosen name can't be on the proscribed list, those Old Testament prophets so offensive to Aryans.

There is a comic interlude where Germany's saviour, Hitler in silver armour, rescues Germany from the evil witch, Democracy. Germany is personified by an unusually stout Brünnhilde from Wagner's Ring cycle, who sings the words "Heil Hitler" to the tune of the Valkyries' cries of "Heiaha" from Act III of "Die Walküre". This is an opportunity as well to parody that famous Nazi painting -- by whom I don't recall -- of Der Führer wearing a glorious suit of shining steel as did the chivalric heroes of yore. (The one where Hitler looks like an extra from Boorman's "Excalibur".)

We see the boy being indoctrinated into cruelty by his teacher at school. Then the boy happens to fall sick. That's not allowed in Nazi Germany; a German "soldat" does not get sick. That scene is very well animated. It reminded me of the endearing Darling family in "Peter Pan" (1953), not coincidentally directed by Clyde Geronimi too.

Eventually the boy does become a "soldat", one of a long line of interchangeable soldier faces, much like the row of gleaming boots in "Battleship Potemkin".

The soldiers march neatly in line over the brow of the hill, where they perform their final designated service to the Führer, by turning into a row of crosses.

Nothing terribly funny about this one, folks. For that, you'd need Donald Duck remakng Charlie Chaplin in "Der Fuehrer's Face" (1943).

Short animation flick follows the early years of 'Hans', who has the bad luck of being born in Hitler Germany. He's brainwashed into becoming a nazi, and ultimately dies at the battlefield, as thousands of his fellow Germans did.

With first viewing you think Disney's thought on nazi-Germany (which is portrayed as a fat, ugly and gullible woman) is a bit too simplistic and one-dimensional, but in the end, when you think of it, it's more of a sad story about the young kid than one of hatred towards the nazi's.

The animations are amazing and the content (with what we know how) grim, dark and scary. Hard to rate this, but I'll give it a 7/10. Be sure to catch this if you can.

While most of Disney's cartoons are funny, this one was quite serious. It tells of how a boy named Hans is abducted into the Nazi way of life starting from kindergarten when he learns the familiar story of Sleeping Beauty only he learns the Nazi version of it where the wicked witch is democracy and Sleeping Beauty is German. I bet you can probably guess who the prince is. Later Hans is taught that the weak don't deserve to live and that Germans are the master race. I think Walt Disney depicts the evils of Nazism quite well in this short. The outside world was probably quite shocked about this when they saw it. An innocent child being brought up to be a Nazi who says nothing but what others want him to say, to think only the way others want him to think, and to do only what others want him to do. To top it all off, having to support Der Fueher (Hitler) and dying in battle just for him. Isn't that pathetic? The narrator says "By now Hans has completed his education. His education for death!" He was right about that too. This is quite a touching story and I think that everyone should get the chance to see it. Unfortunately this short is not "politically correct" enough to be aired on the Disney Channel or Toon Disney. I hope that one day Disney will show these rare cartoons on TV. You're probably wondering where I saw this cartoon. Well, I own a video of rare Disney shorts that I got from a collector.

Forget anything you may have come to expect from Disney if and when you see this short. There is nothing cute here. The animation is excellent, is very grim and stark and very chilling. It is the most deathly serious animated short I have seen produced by a studio based in the United States. The only one I've ever seen that may match it is Balance, a German short made almost fifty years later. Education For Death is a short you won't easily forget once you've seen it and it's a shame that The Mouse hasn't seen fit to release it on a DVD along with things like Victory Through Air Power, Der Fuehrer's Face, Reason and Emotion, New Spirit and other works Disney made as a part of the war effort during World War II. An excellent production that deserves to be in print and seen. Most highly recommended.

It spells out the moral message in an entertaining and sometimes amusing way, with just about the right balance.

The narrative follows the path of little Hans, born to a sympathetically drawn normal German family whose Aryan ancestry the state has validated.

In school the children are told a story about a fox chasing and eating a rabbit. And the uniformed teacher with the massive jaw and gravelly voice asks what they think of the characters in the fairy tale. Hans opts for feeling sorry for the poor hare. He's excoriated and sent to the corner until eventually he yields to pressure from his peers and his authority figures and becomes a true Nazi, "educated for death."

The scenes are vivid and clever. There are sly hints of The Ride of the Valkyries from Wagner. The caricatured portraits of Hitler, Goering, and Goebbels are funny as hell, as well done as anything by any current political cartoonist.

And the narration is perfectly correct in arguing that learning begins at birth -- not just in Nazi Germany but everywhere. That's why our boy babies wear blue and girl babies wear pink.

In this dark Disney short (directed by the same guy who did Lady and the Tramp and Peter Pan) we see a young German couple take their newborn baby to be registered as one of 'Hitler's Children'. They have to prove their ethnic origin all the way back to their great-grandparents to authenticate the child's pure Aryan blood. One of Hitler's biggest mistakes is the fact that blue eyes/blonde hair is a recessive gene and is 3 out of 4 times dominated by dark eyes/hair.

The parents must choose a name for the child but can only take what is not already chosen from 'the list'. They choose Hans, which ends up being okay. Soon the child is in school and is taught warped versions of typical values. Hans is told of a fox hunting a rabbit. He takes sympathy on the poor rabbit and is ridiculed and tormented by his teacher and classmates. The lesson of 'only the strong survive' is brutally hammered into him.

And when Hans gets sick his parents are warned to cease all 'mollycoddling' and he better get well quickly. Hitler's children do no get sick and those who do are taken away and never heard from again.

More and more evil lesson and hailing the Fuehrer follow. Soon Hans is a grown man, marching in line with all the other soldiers. Neither of them are individuals. They are robots believing what Hitler wants them to believe. Doing what Hitler wants them to do. Saying what Hitler wants them to say. None of them know joy, happiness or laughter.

And soon Hans is dead. Sympathy is felt for the child within who died a long time ago.

It's alarming when you consider that this may feel far-fetched yet in today's society we are still reared and duped by lying world leaders. We still believe nonsense we read in tabloids and fear and xenophobia still overpower common sense.

A very chilling cartoon.

An interesting Disney animation adaptation of a book by American author Gregor Ziemer, who lived in Germany for several years before WWII. It details the life of a young boy named Hans, from his registration as a baby, through his education as one of Hitler's Youth, to a fully grown stormtrooper. Very serious stuff.

However...the seriousness of the piece is balanced (?) by the usual ultra-goofy portrayals of Hitler and his cronies that was popular at the time. We see a Nazi version of a fairy tale, with Hitler slaying the evil democracy witch and waking/rescuing Germany, in the form of a morbidly obese woman. It's a goofy, yet somewhat adult, scene shoehorned into the serious story of Hans, most likely for the benefit of American soldiers watching.

This is beautifully animated, with some striking imagery, but I wonder who this was really aimed at. Kids would laugh at the Hitler scene, not really understanding it, and miss the overall point, I think. I guess adults would've felt about it like I do now, though with a thick schmeer of wartime fervor on top. I know it was probably pretty much verboten at Disney then to show Hitler as a serious character, or even with a realistic look, but adding that scene for laughs took away from the rest of it. I dunno...it's a weird experience that has me thinking all over the place about it.

Hard to rate something like this, so I'll give it a 6, which means 'above average' on my scale, mostly due to the animations and scenes involving Hans.

Come on it's about the nazi people during the world war and then a boy named Hans gets abducted by this awful people called the nazis leaded by that good for nothing ice cream named Hitler.

Simply put, this is perhaps the most effective political-propaganda short I've seen, particularly since it was made by Disney.

There is some of the good Disney comedy in there (a hilarious retelling of the classic Sleeping Beauty tale, only this time to fit the Nazi teachings; and some *clever* re-paintings of Hitler and others), but overall it's a grim and depressing short. It subtly represents the true cruelty of the Nazi, how they treated their soldiers, and especially how they made the parents raise the children who were to become soldiers. It all comes to the inevitable, and again, frightening ending.

Highly recommended if you're curious about the Wartime shorts, or as an example if you are doing a report of Political Propaganda.

My rating: 10/10.

This propaganda short directed by Clyde Geronimi for Walt Disney productions remains very impressive today.If it has been made for children,they must have had bad dreams in the night.

It begins with a curious treatment of "sleeping beauty" (which was transferred to the screen in 1959) :a beautiful prince (guess who) kills the wicked witch (democracy) ,wakes the princess (Germany) from her slumber and breaks the spell.

Then at school you are taught that ,like in the nature,only the strong survives .

When you are a young man,your only role is to become a strong soldier ,to be just a part of a machine .In the last pictures,the soldiers look like robots marching on to war.

This cartoon is not legend:it is fact .Just have a look at a sequence of one of Leni Riefenstahl's movies .

I'll keep it simple. This is a portrayal of one of the cutest children in all of Disney as he is educated to hate and death by Nazi propaganda. Effectively bone chilling, this hateful cartoon served its purpose to motivate Americans to consider their moral superiority gleaned from a free education system.

This is a Disney cartoon made during the war years, though it's not the usual Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck style cartoon. Instead, Disney and other American cartoon studios made cartoons for propaganda purposes. The idea was to educate the public about why we are fighting as well as what life would be like if you lived with the enemy--the loss of freedom, the loss of free will and loss of democratic law. Some may see them today as heavy-handed or jingoistic, but the cause was just and they were very useful positive propaganda. If you hate these wartime films, then just get over it or don't watch them--but they are an important part of our history and I am glad that Disney has finally agreed to release them once again.

This film is about a fictitious child born and raised in Nazi Germany. How the child is indoctrinated from an early age to devalue sympathy and see his leader as his hero are chronicled in this film very effectively. Essentially, the story you see is true as Germany was raising their children this way and it gave insight for the viewers to understand the Nazi mind. Through excellent production values and storytelling, the message is put across successfully.

I believe that part of what this short attempts to do is explain how citizens of such a modern and advanced nation as Germany could come to support a brutal and ultimately self-destructive regime. It began with a terrifying defeat, and when the nation was vulnerable, a strong leader arose to defend it against those 'enemies' who stood for the destruction of their values and their way of life. It followed that this strong leader demanded unquestioning support, even as he trampled the very things--tolerance, openness, individualism, creativity--that made the nation unique and prosperous. Those who opposed him were enemies deserving of nothing but their destruction. The parallels to current times are ignored at our own peril.

Just want to make clear my rating is based on color, animation and the cohesiveness of the story. I without a doubt find it very disturbing that Disney would use the very same tactics in this cartoon to indoctrinate us (against Germans) as the cartoon clearly depicts the Germans used on their children (against Americans) ...

Watching this film for the first time, I was completely unprepared as to just how scary and graphic this film was going to be. I can see why this film is still banned and not allowed to be shown on television- it shows all Germans as horrible, hateful beasts, which isn't true. The scene in which the Bible changes into a copy of Mein Kamph and the crucifix changes into a sword and a swastika is especially frightening. It is an interesting film, however, it should only be viewed by older people, as it would frighten young children. If you manage to find a copy, see it; but be forewarned: make sure the toddlers are out of the room.

When I first heard of the extensive line of Disney animated films that were banned in the U.S., I became overwellingly interrested. Knowing how Disney always plays off like the wholesome image, it was nice to see some faulties they made. Alas, I first saw "De Fueher's Face (1943)" and I was stunned that this was ever made! Donald Duck, supporting a Swastika armband, shouting "Heil Hitler!" and claiming to be a Nazi??? That was shocking news! Ultimately, I thought the film was pro-Nazi (there are of course, one of the many rumor of Walt Disney was that he was a Nazi supporter during the war). Thus, after you see the short, you realize it's making fun of Hitler's reich and that it's actually Allied propaganda (mostly for the good ol' USA). "De Fueher's Face", nevertheless, was comical and I couldn't count the number of times I've laughed so hard. This, however, isn't a comedy, but very dramatic and tragic.

The short, "Education for Death", based off the novel "Education for Death: The Making of a Nazi" (which is unsurprisingly out-of-print, even though Hitler's "Mein Kampf" is still a best seller) is a dramatic look at the dealing with Nazi Germany and formification of a 'Good Nazi' (and that's "good" meaning a Ayran filled with Hate and prejudice). While it's very politically incorrect if watched now a days, back then, it was pretty much Americans' only look through the eyes of a Hitler follower

The film loosely travels along the lines of the famous anti-war epic, "All Quiet on the Western Front (1930" by which instead of the First World War, it's somewhere near the second. The story starts off with a German mother and father, regestering their newborn baby boy to the fascist government of Germany. They name him Hans. There is then a little segment that's really meant to lighten the tone of the film which some slapstick comedy, involving a Nazi 'retelling' of "Sleeping Beauty", in which Democracy represents the wicked witch, Germany represents Sleeping Beauty and...of all people...Adolf Hitler, as Prince Charming. In the twisted and hilarious short, sleeping beauty is an overweight Germanic opera singer and Hitler is shown as a skimpy, snorting wannabe, who struggles trying to get the fat woman up onto his horse. We then cut back to the main story. Hans is now 7 years old and is apart of the Hitler Youth. At one point, he becomes sick and his mother is unable to tender and cuddle him because the state strictly forbids making future soldiers weak and emotional. After Hans gets better, he returns to class to which the subject is 'weaker species'. The teacher, a 'Brown-shirt' Nazi, draws a little cartoon on the chalkboard about a little cottontail Rabbit who runs away from a hungry Fox. It doesn't take a genius to know that the Rabbit represents "Jews" and the Fox is an "Aryan Race". Hans, not understanding the point, feels sorry for the rabbit. The teacher throws a fit and punishes Hans for disobdience. Hans' anger becomes rabid and feels pure hatred towards the rabbit. Immediately following is a series of shots, involving Hans with a Nazi book burning rally, the destruction of a Catholic church (smart move, knowing that if it was a Synagog, this film would never had seen the light of day) finally ending with the Hitler Youth, "Marching and Heiling, Marching and Heiling!". The youth then transform into teenagers, marching and heiling. Eventually, Hans becomes a full grown up SS Stormtrooper, in which he is ready for battle. The eerie final shot in the film shows the troops marching off in the distance, but then they all fade into tombstones, marking from miles and miles. "And now his Education is complete. His Education for Death"

This is a shocking and disturbing film that I recommend showing in History classrooms, in a form of the history of propangada or wartime efforts for victory. To an interresting extent, the entire cartoon (I don't like calling it that, because it's much more than a cartoon) is entirely spoken in German, with the exception of the Narrator. It's kind of sad in the end, but true none the less. Of course, the basic point of the film is not very acurate: The Third Reich ruled Germany for only 12 years (1933-1945), so little Hans would only be 12, or 11, by the time the rule ended. But again, the film was made DURING THE WAR! Also, in the regestration scene, the parents show identification showing that their ancestors were "pure Aryan", whatever that means. Still I recommend it. I wish Disney would stop being so uptight and just release the classic film they had during and after the war, instead of fearing protest for racial or offensive content. It is, after all, history in animation.

Like many other animations from the 40s, this is a true reflection of what seems to be a lost art of deco animation. I love the time period, and its a shame that many of today's animations, or cartoons, don't seem to have the heart that these old cartoons did. As far as the content, yes it's evil, yes it's Nazi, blah blah, and no, I'm not as shocked as many who view this seem to be. Frankly, I get tired of the automated, conditioned response we're taught to have in this country. "The holocaust was bad." "Nazism was evil." "The terrorists we're Saudis" "Liberals hate America" "Republicans are Jesus freaks" It's all the same crap, do you let people think for you? If this we're truly Armageddon, then you'd be f_cked, as would most Americans, because they would be waiting for someone to tell them what to do, and how to think.

Not the faint of heart or younger children, Education for Death is a classic example of how Disney can be dark. One of the World War II-eta propaganda cartoons that was made at the time, as Warner Bros, Famous Pictures, and Disney did those, Education for Death is one that stands out. As most of them had popular cartoon character informing people to do something (be it the seven dwarves or Bugs Bunny telling people to buy U. S. War Bonds), or being more comedic (like Daffy Duck nailing Adolf Hitler with a mallet, or Popeye fighting opposing forces with the strength he gains from eating spinach), Education for Death goes a whole new level, as there are no cartoon animals talking about war bonds or rationing rubber or food, and there is only one scene that can be seen as comedic, as this short tells a cold, hard truth so dark, when this was finally released on home media via the Walt Disney Treasures series, it has an intro from Leonard Martin warning viewers that this is not going to be sunshine and rainbows which cannot be skipped or even fast forwarded.

Adapted from a story from the book of the same name by Gregor Zeimer, Education for Death tells the story Hans, a young child in Nazi Germany, and the education he gets, showing the grim life of how children are taught to. Disney does not sugarcoat this one, as there is no Mickey, Donald, or any other cartoon animal to be seen, and the only comedic scene we get is a retelling of Sleeping Beauty with Hitler as a brave knight while Sleeping Beauty is a Valkyrie representing Germany. Other than that, this film is dark on the account of its accuracy to what was going on at the time. Only the narrator speaks English, as the characters are only speaking German, and it gets dark most of the time, with the end being the darkest scene as it shows the results of Han's education.