A must watch: Rare Disney movie shows Daffy Duck in a Nazi nightmare
Donald Duck is cleared of extremism in Russia and removed from a banned list after officials finally realised the 1943 Walt Disney cartoon was actually an anti-Nazi film
- Court ordered removal of an cartoon starring Donald Duck from banned list
- Video from 1943 featured Donald in a nightmare setting in Nazi Germany
- It served as a warning to how horrendous life could be under Hitler
- Despite its anti-Nazi propaganda, was deemed irrelevant in Russia where publishing any Nazi symbol – such as the swastika in the cartoon – is illegal
- A man was given suspended sentence for uploading cartoon but court later realised their blunder and cartoon has now been removed from banned list
Donald Duck has been cleared of extremism in Russia after a court ordered the removal of an Oscar-winning wartime cartoon from a banned list.
The eight-minute ‘Der Fuehrer’s Face’, made in 1943, featured Donald Duck in a nightmare setting, working at a munitions factory in Nazi Germany.
It served as a warning to how controlling and horrendous life could be under Hitler, before Donald snapped out of his terrifying dream and was proud to be a citizen of the United States.
Despite its anti-Nazi propaganda, that was deemed irrelevant in Vladimir Putin’s country where publishing any Nazi symbol – such as the swastika in the cartoon – is regarded as illegal.
A must watch- Rare Disney movie shows Daffy Duck in a Nazi nightmare “AkademiPortal” from Akademi Portal on Vimeo.
In 2012, a local resident in Kamchatka, in the east of Siberia, uploaded the cartoon and was hit and he was given a suspended sentence for ‘inciting racial hatred’ by the city court in regional capital Petropavlovsk Kamchatsky.
Later prosecutors realised the blunder and went back to court to admit Donald Duck was starring in a wartime propaganda film that was anti-Nazi.
They told the judge the cartoon portrays Nazism in caricature form and was mocking and satirical in nature, so cannot be viewed as ‘extremist.’
The cartoon will now be removed from a list of 3,700 banned items.
The list came into effect in 2002, two years after Putin was first elected to the Kremlin.
The film’s director Jack Kinney won an Academy Award for best animated short cartoon in 1943.
Within six months of the US entering the War, the Disney Company played a crucial role in making propaganda films to help the Allied effort.
