Education for Death: The Making of the Nazi (1943)

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Watch something else. There are very few redeeming qualities to this film.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Rated NR(probably would be PG if not banned) Quebec Rating:G Canadian Home Video Rating:G(should be PG)Education for Death is one of the many World War II Nazi propaganda films.While most of them at the time featured famous cartoon characters such as Bugs Bunny or Mickey Mouse, this doesn't really feature any famous cartoon characters.It was released by Disney however.The film is 10min long and is basically about a young German boy and how he becomes a Nazi.There is one funny scene in this film where it shows the sleeping beauty fairy tale and portrays Hitler as the prince, however the princess is really fat and Hitler has a hard time carrying her.Its the only humorous scene in an otherwise very serious and dramatic cartoon.The film starts off with a husband and wife registering their newborn baby.It then shows the boy in school learning to love Hitler and hate the weak.It then shows how the young boy becomes a Nazi full of hatred which eventually leads to his death as well as the death of plenty of other Nazi soldiers.Since this is propaganda, most of the film is very unrealistic.First of all,Hitler's reign of power was not that long and the film shows the kid turning into a Nazi over presumably a 20 year period of time.Anyway Education for Death is a powerful and disturbing cartoon with one funny moment.If you can find it, watch it.

Whenever you think of Disney, you think of sweetness, syrup on sugar and other senemental stuff. Not so with this short nor any of the other shorts that were featured on "Disney's on the Front Lines"."Education for Death" deals with a child named Hans, whom is pure Aryan, growing up on Nazi idealogy. When he shows sympathy, he is immediately punished. Later, he grows up into a Nazi soldier and becomes as brutal and heartless as the rest of his fellow classmates. No happy ending follows either, which is a relief, since most of Disney movies end happily ever after.Watch for the fairy tale scene with Hitler rescuing a fat girl depicting Germany. That scene is priceless.

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.

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.