Éducation à la mort

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.

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.

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).