Der Fuehrer's Face
About Der Fuehrer's Face
Donald Duck dreams he is stuck in Nutziland. A band of Axis caricatures — Tojo, Göring, Goebbels, Mussolini, and Himmler — bayonets him out of bed. Breakfast is bread cut with a saw, coffee from a single bean, and a spray that smells like bacon and eggs. On the shell line he has to salute every Hitler face that passes, until the pace breaks him. He wakes in stars-and-stripes pajamas, kisses a tiny Statue of Liberty, and a tomato splatters a picture of Hitler into the words “The End.”
Cast & crew
More about Der Fuehrer's Face
Jack Kinney directed. Joe Grant and Dick Huemer wrote it. Walt Disney produced it, and RKO released it on January 1, 1943. Working titles were Donald Duck in Nutziland and A Nightmare in Nutziland. The short was made to help sell war bonds.
Themes
Background
Disney turned out war-bond and training films in 1942 and 1943. This one puts Donald inside a caricature of Nazi Germany instead of in an American camp.
In film history
After the war Disney kept the short out of general release because Donald is shown, however unwillingly, in Nazi dress. The first official home-video issue was the Walt Disney Treasures set Walt Disney on the Front Lines, out May 18, 2004.
Making
Oliver Wallace wrote the theme for the short. Spike Jones recorded it in September 1942 on RCA Victor’s Bluebird label, and the record reached number 3 on the U.S. chart before the cartoon opened. The film took the song’s title.
Reviews
The 1994 animators’ poll The 50 Greatest Cartoons ranked the short 22nd. The Academy had already given it the animated-short Oscar at the 15th Awards.
Audiences
The Spike Jones record was the public’s first meeting with the material. It hit number 3 in the United States in 1942, months before RKO opened the cartoon.
Music
Oliver Wallace composed the song “Der Fuehrer’s Face.” Spike Jones’s September 1942 Bluebird record of it reached number 3 on the U.S. chart, and the cartoon was renamed to match.
Preservation
Disney withheld the short from general circulation after 1943. It returned on the Walt Disney Treasures DVD Walt Disney on the Front Lines, released May 18, 2004. A copy is also on the Internet Archive.
Notes
- Clarence Nash voices Donald. Cliff Edwards sings the lead Nazi vocal. Charles Judels is an off-screen Nazi.
- The breakdown reuses animation from the pink-elephants sequence in Dumbo (1941).
- It is the only Donald Duck short to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. Eight other Donald shorts were nominated over the years.
- A 1994 poll of people in animation, The 50 Greatest Cartoons, placed it at number 22.
- In 2010 a court in Kamchatka put an upload on Russia’s extremist-materials list and gave the uploader a suspended six-month sentence. Another Russian court reversed that in July 2016, treating the film as a caricature of Nazism.
Awards
- Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film, 15th Academy Awards
Scenes
- The Axis band — Tojo, Göring, Goebbels, Mussolini, Himmler — marches Donald out of bed.
- He saws a loaf of bread and flavors one coffee bean.
- Shells of every size pass, and each Hitler portrait wants a salute.
- A tomato hits Hitler’s face and the splatter spells “The End.”
Also available
- Internet Archive (DerFuehrersFace)
- Walt Disney Treasures: Walt Disney on the Front Lines (DVD, May 18, 2004)
Quotes
Am I glad to be a citizen of the United States of America!