Donald Duck: Der Fuehrer's Face (1942) (S)

Synopsis
Donald Duck has a nightmare that he lives in Germany slaving under the Nazi regime.
An oom-pah band – composed of Axis powers leaders Joseph Goebbels on the trombone, Heinrich Himmler on the snare drum, Hideki Tojo on the sousaphone, Hermann Goering on the piccolo and Benito Mussolini on the bass drum – marches while singing the virtues of the Nazi doctrine. They are in a caricature of a German town, where the trees, windmill blades, fences, telephone poles and clouds are all shaped like swastikas, while the houses resemble Adolf Hitler's face.

Donald Duck, apparently a German citizen in this world, is awoken by his pickelhaube-wearing alarm clock at 4 a.m. He smashes the clock with his fist. His cuckoo clock chimes with a Hitler-esque bird, only for Donald to throw a shoe at it. The rooster outside does the Nazi salute and crows "Heil Hitler". Passing by Donald's house, the band members poke him out of bed with a bayonet. Donald faces and salutes the portraits of Hitler, Hirohito, and Benito Mussolini, then tries to go back to bed, only for someone to splash him with water while yelling angrily in German.

Donald goes to make breakfast. Because of wartime rationing, it consists of bread that's so stale and hard it resembles wood (and must be cut with a saw), coffee brewed from a single hoarded coffee bean, and a bacon-and-egg-flavored breath spray. The band shoves a copy of Mein Kampf in front of him for a moment of reading, then marches into his house and escorts him to a factory, with Donald now carrying the bass drum and Goering kicking him.

Directed
Jack Kinney

Story
Joe Grant
Dick Huemer

Produced
Walt Disney

Starring
Clarence Nash
Cliff Edwards
Charles Judels

Music
Oliver Wallace

Animation
Bob Carlson
Les Clark
Bill Justice
Milt Neil
Charles Nichols
John Sibley

Layouts
Don DaGradi
Andy Engman

Color process Technicolor

Distributed
RKO Radio Pictures

Release date
January 1, 1943

Running time
8 minutes

Country
United States

Language
English