Pretty Good

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

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.

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'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.

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.