The Rhetoric of Der Fuehrer’s Face
On January 1st, 1943, Disney released a short-animated film titled Der Fuehrer’s Face. The film follows Donald Duck as he works in a German factory making missiles for the Nazis. While this seems odd at first glance, the cartoon gives a subtle yet powerful impression of terror, fear, and overall absurdity in Nazi Germany. Der Fuehrer’s Face uses powerful rhetoric and elements of Kairos in order to reveal the hellish, fearful, and horrifying conditions of Nazi Germany in a frivolous way to propagandize the American public in supporting the United States against Germany in World War II. The use of a popular cartoon character like Donald Duck not only makes it easier to undermine Nazi Germany’s image of strength, but also immortalizes it in the minds of the viewers. As a recipient of the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film, Der Fuehrer’s Face surely impacts minds young and old alike with the standard cartoon flare, but also with a more subtle and important message about patriotism.
To understand the message of Der Fuehrer’s Face, the audience should also understand the historical context of the cartoon. In 1943, the year that Disney released the cartoon, the United States fights Germany and the other Axis Powers. Having entered the war late, the United States needed to garner support to help fund the war effort. This era saw an unprecedented amount of patriotism that helped the United States defeat its enemies. The United States used propaganda as a powerful tool during this time to convince the American public to contribute to the war effort whether it involved buying war bonds, working in a factory to build war machines, or enlisting in the military itself. American propaganda either involved making the United States look strong or their enemies looking weak. This prompts the audience to believe that the United States has the toughness to overcome any obstacle while also making the enemy less intimidating. Whether propaganda uses a picture of a strong woman flexing her muscles or a picture of a Japanese solider with distorted and almost racist-like proportions, wartime propaganda tries to convince people to support the mother country and to hate the adversary.
At first glance, it may seem that Der Fuehrer’s Face depicts Donald Duck as a Nazi. He works in a Nazi factory, salutes pictures of Hitler, and has Nazi paraphernalia in his home. However, the true themes of this short film seek to tear down the image of a Nazi dystopia and persuade the audience towards the American Dream. The short film starts off with a band marching through a small Germantown playing a song about saluting the Fuehrer. The band consists of Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler, Hideki Tojo, Benito Mussolini, and Hermann Göring, all prominent leaders in the Axis Powers. Der Fuehrer’s Face portrays them as cartoonish; they all have exaggerated bodily features and act in a preposterous manner. Not only does this contradict the idea of Aryan superiority, but it uses their own propaganda tactics against them. Many works of propaganda revolving around demeaning a race of people use these conditions to make those people seem subhuman. By reversing this back against the Nazi leaders, it appears as if they are subhuman while preaching their own racial superiority; Der Fuehrer’s Face does not hold back on pointing out irony. Once he arrives at work, Nazi soldiers continue to yell and scream at Donald while he works on the assembly line. This eventually drives him insane and he wishes that it would all go away. At the end of the film, Donald wakes up in his bed still traumatized from his nightmare; he initially starts the Hitler salute but then realizes it was all a dream. He then looks at a small statue of liberty and says, “God bless America”. This wraps up the message of Der Fuehrer’s Face; living in Nazi Germany under the wrath of Hitler would force someone to endure the grueling conditions of their evil dictatorship while the United States offers people opportunity and hope. The use of exaggerated caricatures fits well with the representation of the Nazis to make them look foolish but also more diabolic. It then culminates in Donald waking up from his dream building up the idea that the United States can prevent ordinary Americans from ever having to endure that misery.
Der Fuehrer’s Face helps to set the precedent for using humor to help convey a more powerful message. Just as Der Fuehrer’s Face employs wit and banter to criticize the Nazi’s, the film Jojo Rabbit adopts a similar approach to condemn Hitler and his ideology. The film follows Jojo, a ten-year-old boy, and his imaginary version of Hitler navigating through life in Germany near the end of World War II. Since the on-screen Hitler comes from the perspective of a young child, he plays more of a comedic role than a malicious one. Instead of inspiring Jojo with hate speech, they joke around together. Hitler still tries to force the Nazi attitudes towards Jewish people towards Jojo, but instead of making it serious like Hitler’s speeches, the movie realizes this through short comedic banter. For example, at dinner one night, when Jojo sees his imaginary version of Hitler, he has a unicorn head on his plate instead of actual food. In another scene after having a conversion with Jojo, Hitler says he has to go and simply jumps out of the window instead of using the door. In both of these instances Taika Watiti, who directs the film and plays the role of Hitler himself, uses child-like humor the same way that Der Fuehrer’s Face does in order to make Hitler look stupid. By making Hitler look unintelligent, it makes his hateful ideology also appear simpleminded. Both mediums also critique the “Heil Hitler” salute in similar ways. In Der Fuehrer’s Face, the cartoon literally opens with a song about saluting Hitler; the band marches through a small town where everything, including bushes and trees, have the shape of a swastika. Even a rooster yells out “Heil Hitler”. Once Donald arrives to work at the factory, the guards force him at gunpoint to salute every picture of Hitler. While Donald works at the assembly line putting together artillery shells, a picture of Hitler starts to appear with each shell forcing Donald to say “Heil Hitler” fifteen times in a row. In Jojo Rabbit, the SS knocks on Jojo’s door in order to search the house for Jews. Jojo must great all six officers with “Heil Hitler” and they respond the same way as they all enter his house. In total, the characters utter the phrase “Heil Hitler” over thirty times in less than a minute. Both of these films demonstrate the absurdity of the ritual by overemphasizing it. They use logos to undermine the credibility in actually saying it, reducing the phrase to more of a formal greeting than actually stating subservience to the Fuehrer. Both works use the same rhetoric in order to get the audience to understand the fallacies of Nazi ideology; by reducing its protocols to repetitive jokes it cripples the effectiveness of its hateful rhetoric.
Since its initial debut, Der Fuehrer’s Face stands as a civic artifact that sets the precedent for using goofy content in order to convey its rhetoric. The wacky depictions of Nazis attempt to make them look scary while also making them look idiotic. This seeks to inspire Americans to fight their enemy while also making them look like an easy fight. Der Fuehrer’s Face’s use of humor and wit to castigate the Nazis sets a precedent for other works, like Jojo Rabbit, to do the same. In order to reach an audience, using out-of-the-box methods like a Donald Duck cartoon can have a greater impact than just saying negative things about the enemy. The cartoony elements of this film display the dreadfulness of Nazis in a simple way that even children can understand. Overall, Der Fuehrer’s Face uses unique methods of rhetoric in order to inspire audiences of all ages; its controversial appearance
