Victory Through Air Power (1943)

Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

Wow! Such a good movie.

Let's be realistic.

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

Victory Through Air Power (1943)*** (out of 4) With WWII going full strength, everyone in Hollywood did what they could to bring attention and information to the screen and that includes Disney. This animated feature is pretty entertaining in its own right as we learn about the history of aviation and then go into details on how planes are playing a major role in the war.If you've seen any of the documentaries from this era then you're really not going to learn anything new here. The "Why We Fight" series pretty much covered this stuff in much greater detail but of course the one difference is that this film is animated. The Disney crew really did a terrific job with the animation as it's up to their usual high standards. Fans of Disney will certainly enjoy the animation but WWII buffs will also like the way the documentary shows the bombings at Pearl Harbor and the animated maps on the various issues America faces going up against Japan and Germany.

It's hard to endorse a film about a war involving such blood, sacrifice, and hatred when it comes to us in the form of a cartoon. Elmer Fudd is the proper subject of a cartoon, and Mickey Mouse, and The Flintstones.Yet this is probably the most famous cartoon to come out of World War II, made by the Disney people in a style, about a subject, far different from "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." There is no newsreel footage at all, and virtually no still photographs. The whole thing is a cartoon. And the cartoons are both informative and reasonably accurate. A Stuka looks like a Stuka, not like a generic "airplane." Even a lesser known airplane like the Japanese G-4 "Betty" looks like what it's supposed to be.And our chief source of information, aside from Art Baker's narration, is Alexander P. de Seversky, aviation expert, industrialist, and military strategist. It was his company, Republic, that gave us the P-47 Thunderolt.Here, the live interludes, are lectures from Seversky outlining his thesis in his Russian accent, which goes something like, "Trow avay da bettleships and built airoplens instead." He doesn't argue that air power is an important means of winning the war. To him, it seems to be the ONLY way. His presentation is very simple and clear but in case you don't get his point, the cartoons spell it out for you in lurid color. A chimpanzee would get it.Of course this was released in 1943, a year during which the major turning points of the war began -- new Allied anti-submarine defenses, Stalingrad, the fall of Italy, and a tremendous outpouring of American military equipment. Seversky's logic points up the importance of air power but, without a crystal ball and without access to classified information, he made claims that weren't true.Just a few examples, because he doesn't make that many mistakes. The British and French troops weren't successfully evacuated from Dunkirk because the RAF ruled the skies. The Nazis weren't building ever bigger and more potent submarines. The RAF and USAAF attacks on factories were good at tearing up cities but not at destroying the ability to produce weapons or at breaking the will of the victims. He proudly describes the terrific hammering of a city like Köln without mentioning that our own losses in attacks like these were so appalling that they needed to be temporarily suspended. The guy is full of belief and passion, though, so much so that one wouldn't want to argue with him.He's certainly right about one thing. The longer your supply lines, the less secure your position. It was illustrated in the battles between Rommel and the British in North Africa. Each army would drive the other back until its supplies were unsteady, then they in turn would be driven back to their source. In 1943, Japan's empire covered a vast amount of territory. Seversky examines each possible approach to reaching Japan and rules all of them out. Island hopping? Nope. Too many islands to conquer one by one. Meanwhile Japan would be siphoning off the necessary materials of war from its own conquered territory.But it was that approach that we finally used successfully, once we realized that we could skip many of the stronghold and leave them to "wither on the vine." The two B-29s that dropped the big ones and ended the war took off from Tinian Island, one of the Ryuku chain, that we had reached by island hopping. And the Japanese never did continue siphoning off enough war materials because our own submarines (that is, the USN, not the USAAF) made the sea routs impassable to shipping.I don't mean to be too harsh on Seversky. It's certainly no fault of his that he didn't predict thermonuclear bombs and jet engines. Perhaps his presentation was flawed but his reasoning sound. In 1943, even if you knew about our losses over France, Germany, and Romania, would it have been wise to publicize them? The film is almost like a peek into the past and almost renders our current problems minuscule.

I just watched this feature last night from my copy of "Disney Treasures: On the Front Lines," which is an excellent set with many cartoon shorts, educational films, and propaganda films that are unusual of Disney, but nonetheless retain the same feel as the ordinary Disney short. Being a pacifist, I think that all people should try to understand warfare for what it is, but try to avoid jumping into war until it is absolutely necessary. WWII was indeed a necessary war to fight, and the film, though not specifically aimed to do so, makes this point very clear. First, before getting directly into the battles, the film educates us on the history of flight. With cartoon humour and sight gags it comes off very entertaining. Then, the film is turned over to Alexander de Seversky, author of the book on which the film is based. De Seversky makes a valid point that the war should be fought with an enlarged military air force as opposed to naval and land based tactics. He is made to be very informative and enjoyable to watch against the animated maps and diagrams created by Disney's finest animators.Eerily, there is a link to the 9/11 happening in the idea de Seversky expresses that air power removes the lines between civilians and soldiers and puts the lives of any of us at risk. It is fortunate that he had not lived to see this sad day.

When I was about 13 years old around 1978, our school teacher had our class watch a 16mm print of the first part of Disney's "Victory Through Air Power", which is all in animation and is about the history of aviation. I loved it. In the decades since, I'd always clearly remembered the comical shot of an early WWI fighter plane pilot using a machine gun before the technology to synchronize machine guns with propellers had been developed.When I became interested in Disney animation several years ago, I hoped to find a copy of that one. But I learned that it had never been released on any videotape or videodisc format, and that my only glimmer of hope of ever seeing it again was to buy a 16mm film projector and find an old 16mm print, and probably pay a lot for it. More than any other, this title had me seriously thinking about doing that.It's been some time since I've kept up with new DVD releases. I was shopping at Costco today and stumbled across some of Disney's "Treasures Limited Edition" tins. I already had some of those, but I noticed that these were titles I hadn't seen before. I tossed the Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck titles into my cart, passed on one that was about Tomorrow Land, and dug through to make sure I hadn't missed any. I could hardly believe my eyes when I picked up one that said "On the Front Lines" and "The War Years". My first thought was to wonder if it included that aviation history I had seen in 1978. I turned it over and yes, it said it included not only the aviation history part I had seen then, but the entire film!Somewhat in a daze, I went straight to the checkout line, then straight home, then straight to the DVD player. Even my wife watched it with me, I guess because she could see how excited I was about it. I loved it in 1978 on 16mm, and I loved it again in 2004 on DVD. It's at once an interesting history, attractive animation, and fun entertainment. I was also interested to see the realism in animation of planes I had learned about over the years.The live action part was also very interesting and well worth watching, if a little on the tedious side at times, especially for my wife. It's certainly very interesting to consider how this movie may have changed the course of the war, or more precisely, this movie may have brought enough attention to the book that inspired it, and to that book's brilliant and prophetic author, to have changed the course of the war.It was so interesting, I plan to watch it again soon -- though my wife probably won't.I'm struggling to articulate how it feels to suddenly stumble across this title on a very well-made DVD, after not seeing it at all for 26 years and having more or less given up any serious hope of ever seeing it again. It's still almost a little hard to believe.When I looked up this DVD title on the web, I was a little startled to find that I had bought it on the very day it was released! (May 18th, 2004)It looks like Disney has let the earlier "Treasures Limited Edition" tins go out of print, and undoubtedly they will do the same with "On the Front Lines". If you have any interest at all in aviation history, and/or in WWII, and/or in rare Disney animation gems, then "On the Front Lines" is a must-have, just for Victory Through Air Power. (I haven't even watched most of the shorts on the DVD yet.)