Finally, the public can judge these propaganda works for itself. All images © Disney. All rights reserved.

Walt Disney Treasures: On the Front Lines includes every Disney propaganda film made for public exhibition during World War II. Each film has been beautifully restored and these historic works are completely uncensored and uncut according to Dave Bossert, who oversaw the project. The collection consists of 32 shorts, the feature Victory Through Air Power, excerpts from training films (not made for public exhibition), outtakes and other material. The two-disc set also includes informative interviews with Joe Grant, John Hench and Roy Disney about life and work at the studio during the war years. Leonard Maltin does a fine job introducing the collection.

After screening everything, I asked Bossert why the studio hadn’t shown some of these films to the public since the close of the war. He didn’t have a simple answer. In the past people suggested Walt didn’t want to be seen as a producer of propaganda and anyway; the films were dated as the war was over. Bossert thinks the suppression of these films in recent years was based on false assumptions by people who probably never saw any of them. After the war the films were placed in the studio’s archive and it became difficult to screen any of them. You need to get signed approvals to get any of them shown.

Bossert assumes the works languished because nobody knew how great they were. Instead, people probably thought they were full of embarrassing racial stereotypes, crude jokes and other offensive moments. Amazingly, the only offensive images are caricatures of Hitler and other enemy leaders and one very brief image of a Japanese soldier (tame compared to WWII caricatures from Warner Bros.). There isn’t any rude or crude humor or poor production values that could tarnish the image of a studio known for its high standards.

The DVD set includes everything, from lighthearted works that were shown to improve our country’s morale, to hard-hitting messages that explain who our enemy was and why they must be defeated. If you have seen vicious, nasty propaganda cartoons from other studios, you too might assume these long suppressed Disney works are more of the same. What separates these films from the work of other studios is the degree of sophistication and the constant high regard for production and entertainment values.

Dave Bossert doggedly pursued getting the uncensored and uncut historic works released on home video.

The Animated Shorts
The DVD begins with a series of often brilliant general entertainment cartoons that have wartime themes. Only one, Donald in Commando Duck, depicts him in enemy lands. The others depict Donald getting drafted, going AWOL, as a soldier on a super-long hike, manning a home-defense lookout for the enemy and in other situations that are perfect vehicles for his fine comic performances. There are also fine performances in this section by Pluto, Goofy and Donald’s nephews. These films must have kept audiences laughing long enough to forget the serious events of the day. They are still wonderful.

The next section contains educational shorts that have important messages imbedded in them. The oldest are four shorts made to promote the sale of war bonds in Canada. The Thrifty Pig (1941) stars the Three Little Pigs as the heroes and The Big Bad Wolf as you know who. The Seven Wise Dwarfs (1941) has Snow White’s co-stars investing in the fight to save democracy. Donald’s Decision (1942) is about his decision to invest in the war effort (it recycles footage from two Donald Duck cartoons from 1938, Donald’s Better Self and Self Control). The final film made for Canada is All Together (1942), a joyful parade of Disney characters with Mickey, in his only appearance in war propaganda, conducting his orchestra on a moving bandwagon (footage based on The Band Concert, 1935). Other stars in the parade include Dumbo and the Dwarfs from Snow White.