Doing Their Bit.

Even though you may not be familiar with most of the 325 animated works discussed, the authors of Doing Their Bit: Wartime Animated Short Films 1939-1945 make the films come alive in their detailed descriptions. This is a carefully researched work by Michael S. Shull and David E. Wilt who saw almost all of the 290 theatrical cartoon shorts and features described along with 35 more films that were made for our fighting men and were not shown to the public. Probably the hardest task in researching this text was finding prints to screen, as most of the films haven't been in circulation since the war ended and they were never shown on TV.

The main focus of this book is a lively discussion of the content of each film. It also provides enough informative background material to give the reader a brief, but fairly good idea about how the cartoon studios depicted WWI and reflected political and current events during the years leading up to WWII. In the early 1930s it appears caricatures of Mussolini and Hitler were mainly included because they were famous people. They were not yet hated by most Americans.

Showing them as villains came in the late 1930s, after Mussolini invaded Ethiopia in 1935 and Hitler invaded Poland in September 1939. Hatred of Hitler intensified with the crushing defeat of France in 1940. The authors also point out the few cartoons that include brief references to the war in Spain and to the Japanese who had invaded China before the start of WWII.

The chapters that present an overview of cartoons made during the war are more detailed as there are more films that refer to the events of the period. Showing Donald Duck, Daffy and other stars trying to do their part for the war effort in cartoons that depicted our armed forces was a common occurrence. Other shorts related to the interests of civilians at home. There were cartoons made about shortages, rationing, bond drives, victory gardens and other issues of the day.

The overview addresses the racist depictions of the Japanese during the war. The authors found that the first of many blatantly ugly anti-Japanese cartoons was Popeye's Blunder Below, released Feb. 13, 1942. Superman was also quick to take on our enemy in the Pacific in The Japoteurs and The Eleventh Hour, also released in 1942. Another film from 1942, Destruction Inc., has the Man of Steel taking on evil German spies.

The authors acknowledge that racist images of black Americans were made throughout the war. They note that images of blacks in war cartoons showing them as soldiers or in civil defense roles "were diminished by stereotypes used for quick gags" and that the first positive images of blacks in war films were in live-action features from 1943 (Bataan from M.G.M. and Crash Dive from 20th Century-Fox). In their Appendix B they list how frequently different negative images appear. They found 42 cartoons with images of the Japanese, 40 with images of blacks, 45 with images of Hitler, 13 with images of Mussolini, 34 with miscellaneous Nazi/Fascist images and 10 with Japanese leaders.

While the overview gives a good general picture of what WWII animation was like, the real strength of the book is in the detailed filmography of 325 works that in some way reflect the thoughts and concerns of the American people about war and peace. This section begins with films from 1939 to 1941. It includes war allegories that can be seen as cautionary warnings and other films that refer to pacifism, spies, Nazis, neutrality, our fighting forces, the draft, the League of Nations, patriotism, the invasion of several countries by Germany and dozens of other topics.