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{{trope}}
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The term '''wartime cartoon''' refers primarily to cartoons made or released during World War II, during [[The Golden Age of Animation]], and having some specific reference to the war effort. Many wartimes are explicit propaganda, while others make humorous jabs at conditions on the home front such as gasoline rationing. While some wartimes have remained popular as period pieces, [[Values Dissonance|many of these are now considered controversial]] due to the caricatural depictions of Germans and (especially) Japanese (see [[Those Wacky Nazis]] and [[Yellow Peril]]).
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== Straight examples ==
=== Disney ===
* Possibly the ultimate classic example would be [[Classic Disney Shorts|Disney]]'s ''[[Der Fuehrer's Face|Donald Duck in Nutzi Land]]'', in which Donald dreams he's a factory worker in a surreal, nightmarish version of Nazi Germany. This cartoon was the source of the song "Der Fuehrer's Face" (which the short was later renamed after), famously recorded by Spike Jones and his City Slickers:
{{quote|
** [[Harry Turtledove]]'s Worldwar series included an alternate version of "Der Fuehrer's Face" directed at the Fleetlord of the alien invasion.
* Disney had an entire series of shorts devoted to the war effort beginning with ''Donald Gets Drafted'', along with the feature-length animated documentary ''Victory Through Air Power''.
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* Disney's first wartime cartoons were actually made before the US joined the war: public service announcements for the government of Canada.
* Disney also made Industrial training and technical films like ''Four Methods of Flush Rivetting'' for Lockheed Aircraft Co.
* Disney also maintained a five man staff solely to create insignia for every US or Allied unit that requested one. Units as diverse as the Flying Tigers, HMS Illustrious, and the Free French Pilots of the RAF all received Disney insignia, as did about half of the submarines of the US Pacific Fleet. Pugnacious Donald Duck, Disney's "designated draftee" showed up most often, appearing in 216 insignia. Mickey, by contrast, served mainly on the home front.
=== Famous Studios ===
* Similarly, [[Famous Studios]] did four war-themed [[Superman Theatrical Cartoons|Superman shorts]] — the rather racist "Japoteurs" (rarely included in compilations), the somewhat less offensive "The Eleventh Hour", and two where Superman battled the Nazis.
** Bizarrely, it was one of the Nazi battles that featured the most dehumanizing racial caricatures in any of these shorts, the target here of course being...blacks. In "Jungle Drums", a couple of Nazis have tricked the superstitious natives of [[Darkest Africa]] into doing their bidding. In their capacity as gods/high priests/whatever, the Nazis wear Klan-like outfits, presumably to emphasize their bad-guy racism. The effect is rather spoiled by the fact that the "natives" are portrayed as positively demonic, inhuman forces of mindless menace, obviously played more for fear/loathing than the ostensible "villains", a couple of insipidly mean-spirited Germans.
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=== Tex Avery ===
* At MGM, [[Tex Avery]] made a cartoon called ''[[Blitz Wolf]]'' involving the three little pigs as soldiers and the big bad wolf as Hitler. The same man played the "smart little pig" both here and in Disney's "Three Little Pigs" short.
** Of especially hilarious note is the disclaimer given at the beginning, which states that the wolf's depiction is non-fictitious and purely intentional...while the tires depicted in it are, in fact, completely bogus.
** Fred Quimby [[Executive Meddling|reportedly ordered]] Tex Avery to never make another short like Blitz Wolf during the duration, because there was no way to know who was going to win the war. This also might explain the conspicuous lack of MGM wartime cartoons, at least compared to other studios.
* Avery's ''[[Red Hot Riding Hood]]'' and variants had servicemen as a primary market — in ''Swing Shift Cinderella'' the fairy godmother uses her magic wand to turn a pumpkin into an estate wagon, the Wolf grabs the wand and turns a bathtub into an open roadster and speeds off, and she chases after him, [[Rule of Three|turning a garbage can into a Jeep]]. Oh, and the reason the fairy godmother's magic wears off at midnight? [[Title Drop|Cinderella's shift at Lockheed starts at that hour]].
* [[Tex Avery]] was fond of using meat rationing as a theme in otherwise non-war-related cartoons — ''Jerky Turkey'', ''Big Heel-Watha'', and ''What's Buzzin', Buzzard?''
* Tex also took a jab at the draft in the 1944 MGM cartoon "Batty Baseball". One early scene shows most of the baseball players are
=== Tom & Jerry ===
* "The Yankee Doodle Mouse" was the closest ''[[Tom and Jerry]]'' ever came to having a World War II-themed short. In it, Tom and Jerry fight a war-style battle in a basement with plenty of WWII references.
* In "The Lonesome Mouse", we see Jerry paint a Hitler mustache and comb-over on a picture of Tom and then spit at it.
=== MGM Oneshots ===
* Two of the [[MGM Oneshot Cartoons]] are explicit wartime cartoons: "War Dogs" and "The Stork's Holiday". "Innertube Antics" plot is also a nod to the strict rationing of rubber during the war years.
* [[Barney Bear]] had at least two wartime shorts; "The Rookie Bear", where he is drafted into the army, and "Barney Bear's Victory Garden" which has Barney prepare a victory garden. One gag had him get the soil ready by making a huge portrait of Hitler so that it gets bombed by passing B-19s. Another scene depicts Mussolini as an eggplant.
=== Warner Brothers ===
Lots of [[Looney Tunes]] cartoons from that era had subtle jokes in them reflecting home-front conditions, even ones that don't overtly address the war. Gas rationing "A" cards were common, as were jokes about scrap metal collections, victory gardens, civil defense drills (someone yelling "Put out that light!"), and general shortages of rubber, butter and meat. Some of the gags ever persisted well after the end of WWII itself.
* In one Elmer Fudd cartoon, a tiny flea carries with him a set of ration stamps, and diligently tears them off before biting into Elmer's pet dog. Said flea also takes refuge in a "Hair Raid Shelter".
* The 1943 Bugs Bunny cartoon ''Falling Hare'', in which Bugs battles a gremlin which is seeking to sabotage the war effort, culminating in an imminent plane crash which halts inches above the ground because the plane — due to having a low-priority gas ration sticker — has run out of fuel.
* In 1942's ''A Tale of Two Kitties'': A pair of cats try to get at Tweety (this being one of his earliest shorts, he isn't named yet) in his nest. In their final attempt, one puts on a crude pair of wooden wings and tries to fly up to the nest. Tweety puts on an "Air Raid Warden" helmet and calls in a sighting of an "unidentified object". Spotlights immediately light up the sky and anti-aircraft guns shoot the cat down.
* ''[[Little Red Riding Rabbit]]'' is a wartime retelling of the classic nursery story in which Grandma never appears, because she's off working the swing shift at Lockheed.
* ''Daffy The Commando'' had him bamboozling a pair of Nazi soldiers, and culminated in Daffy hitting Hitler over the head with a mallet, upon which Der Fuhrer gave an indignant shout of "SCHULTZ!"
* Characters that fall down or take a long slide often will use the phrase "Was that/Is this trip really necessary?", a common slogan used to encourage the war effort by
** Another instance of this happened in "Nasty Quacks," when Daffy packs up and leaves a man's house, then comes back to tell him that the government doesn't want anyone to do any non-essential
* The Bugs Bunny cartoon ''Super-Rabbit'' (a parody of the Fleischer ''[[Superman]]'' cartoons) ends with Bugs going into a phonebooth and changing into "a '''real''' superman" — a Marine. He then promptly marches off to war. The actual [[Semper Fi|United States Marines]] were so flattered by this that they actually made Bugs a Marine. He was eventually promoted to Master Sergeant.
* Friz Freleng's ''Herr Meets Hare'', in which Bugs leads [[Those Wacky Nazis|Herman Goering]] through a [[Humiliation Conga]]. Notable for being the first time Bugs is depicted tunneling underground as a mode of transportation, and the first time he says [[Wrong Turn At Albuquerque|"I knew I should have taken a left turn at Albuquerque"]] and was the inspiration for the Brunhilde opera sequence that would later be seen in Chuck Jones's magnum opus (among many), ''[[What's Opera, Doc?]]''
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* One example that seems quite edgy in retrospect — ''Draftee Daffy'' has fair-weather patriot Daffy Duck dodging "the little man from the draft board", who it turns out will literally follow him to [[Fire and Brimstone Hell|Hell]] to serve the notice. Related to the above, at one point Daffy tries to escape by buying a plane ticket only to be met with "Is this trip REALLY necessary?"
* Though made primarily to teach military men how not to act like complete idiots when on leave, ''[[Private Snafu]]'' should be listed here as an example of a war-toon made for the military. It was produced by Warner Brothers, and the earlier toons were written by Dr. Seuss (the dialogue in some is of the silly-rhyming style he'd later use in his children's books). Chuck Jones directed a bunch of them, this was his and Seuss' collaboration before ''How The Grinch Stole Christmas''. Unlike the Looney Tunes cartoons made for general audiences, the Private Snafu cartoons made for the military included a lot more risque gags, mostly involving women in various stages of undress (mostly bras, panties, and stockings, but there were times where the women shown were topless) and uses of the words, "hell" and "damn" ([[Values Dissonance|which, back then were considered shocking]]).
** Aside from what not to do when on leave, one cartoon shows why you should use mosquito netting when posted in the tropics. Another, why having your mail censored is a necessary frustration.
** Famously, a Private Snafu cartoon late in the war about the importance of not blabbering too much about military matters when on leave was later pulled when the joke (Snafu telling his date all about a secret new bomb that could level an island) came a little too close to describing the then-underway [[The Deadliest Mushroom|Manhattan Project]].
* One Merrie Melodies cartoon, "Foney Fables", poked fun at rationing with a parody of "Old Mother Hubbard" — she goes to fetch her poor dog a bone and opens one door of her cupboard to show that nothing's in it...but the dog opens the other door to reveal a huge cache of food, then turns her in for hoarding. Another gag has a goose that usually lays golden eggs contributing to a scrap metal pile by laying aluminum ones instead. Yet another parodies "The Grasshopper and The Ant" with the ant chiding the grasshopper's laziness until the grasshopper reveals he's done his part as well by buying War Bonds.
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* [[Friz Freleng]]'s ''Fifth Column Mouse'' (1943) was an allegorical tale of the start of World War II. A cat (Hitler) convinces one of the mice (Neville Chamberlain) that he will not eat them if they treat him as their master. After the cat turns on them, they build a robot dog which chases him out of the house.
* [[Frank Tashlin]]'s ''Brother Brat'', centered around Porky Pig babysitting a surly, violent infant while his mother is at work in a defense plant and opens with a stirring vignette saluting women working such roles. Tashlin's cinematic style is shown to great effect. Has aired on television a few times (mostly on the Ted Turner-owned networks like TBS and [[Cartoon Network]]), with the ending of baby Percy imitating [[Winston Churchill]] removed (probably because the censors balked at the image of a baby holding a cigar, yet the mother asking Porky if he wanted the Japs to get blown off the face of the Earth [[Getting Crap Past the Radar|was not edited at all]]).
* ''The Fighting 69th 1/2'', released in early 1941, featured a battle between red ants and black ants that was an allegory of [[World War
* There were also several rather controversial shorts produced that you'll
** The banned 1943 short ''[[Coal Black and De Sebben Dwarfs]]'' gets a special double-mention. Not only do the racist stereotypes make showing it unlikely, but there's plenty of other wartime gags included. A group of killers named "Murder Inc." advertise that they will rub out anybody for $1.00, midgets are [[Stealth Pun|half-price]], and Japs are free. When the evil queen is introduced, we see she's a hoarder of sugar, coffee, and tires (all of which were rationed during World War II), the prince's fancy roadster has wheels cobbled from old shoes in lieu of tires, and the heroic dwarfs are in the Army.
* Interestingly, the only cartoon that actually featured [[Bugs Bunny]] directly in the Army didn't debut until after WWII — 1952's ''Forward March Hare'' wherein Bugs mistakenly gets a conscription letter meant for his neighbor.
* Similarly, in ''One Meat Brawl'', a groundhog emerges from his hole on Groundhog Day and is immediately fired on by a pack of hunters. Retreating to safety, he blames it on "meat shortages". The cartoon debuted post-WWII (1947), but rationing was sill fresh enough in the public mind to be played as a gag.
* Frank Tashlin's ''Plane Daffy'' stars the duck in a squadron of carrier pigeons. As the resident woman-hater, he's sent out to deliver an important message without being seduced by Nazi spy [[Mata Hari|Hatta Mari]], who's managed to claim 28 of the previous pigeons.
* ''[[Any Bonds Today?]]'' was a 1942 [[Propaganda Piece|propaganda film]] commissioned by the United States Department of the Treasury to Warner Bros., featuring Bugs, Elmer and Porky singing and dancing to promote war bonds. It would later be [[Overshadowed by Controversy]], and is known more for its [[Values Dissonance]] in the form of Bugs Bunny donning blackface.
=== [[Walter Lantz]] ===▼
▲== Walter Lantz ==
* Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B
* 21$ A Day (Once A Month)
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=== Columbia Cartoons ===
* Screen Gems made several wartime shorts, most notably "Song of Victory", which features an allegory of how [[World War
=== Others ===
* ''Momotarou's Divine Sea Warriors'' is a '''Japanese''' animated film from the war period, featuring cute characters based on Japanese mythology invading East Asia and killing Allies — proving that both sides played this game.
* Though (allegedly) not cartoons, several ''[[Three Stooges]]'' shorts had wartime themes, the most cringe-worthy of which (''The Yolk's on Me'') used actual Japanese-American internees bused from a "relocation center" (aka internment camp) to play the "bad guys". Though rarely seen today, it was still in the TV rotation as late as the early 1970s.
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* [[The Simpsons (animation)|Itchy & Scratchy]] did a wartime cartoon where they [[Enemy Mine|team up]] (briefly) to kill Hitler. After chopping Hitler's head off, Itchy does the same to Scratchy.▼
▲=== Modern-day homages and parodies: ===
▲* [[The Simpsons|Itchy & Scratchy]] did a wartime cartoon where they [[Enemy Mine|team up]] (briefly) to kill Hitler. After chopping Hitler's head off, Itchy does the same to Scratchy.
* An "X-Presidents" cartoon on ''[[Saturday Night Live]]'' parodied these, as the titular former president superheroes tried to get [[SpongeBob SquarePants]] to make a cartoon supporting the war in Iraq. Spongebob wasn't interested, and things turned ugly.
* ''[[South Park]]'' paid [[Homage]] to wartime cartoons in "Osama bin Laden Has Farty Pants", where Cartman bamboozles Osama bin Laden a la Bugs Bunny while the other boys escape from the terrorist leader's lair.
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* ''[[Freedom Force]]'', being a big tribute to comics of the era, naturally has this in spades.
* ''[[City of Heroes]]'' likewise has quite a few tributes. Much of the [[Backstory]] involves the major heroes and villains fighting in WWII, and the trailer includes a hero throwing a Nazi tank.
* [[Histeria
* ''[[Epic Mickey]]'', while not being an homage per se, draws quite a bit of its imagery from this kind of cartoons. And by "a bit", we mean ''an entire race of [[Non-Player Character|NPCs]]''.
* A chilling moment from the movie ''[[The Rocketeer (film)|The Rocketeer]]'' had Howard Hughes show Cliff Secord a Nazi propaganda cartoon showing squadrons of [[Stupid Jetpack Hitler|jetpack-wearing Nazis]] as the vanguard of an invasion force against America. Especially chilling considering that the movie was a Disney Studios production!
* [[Casey and Andy]] has [http://galactanet.com/comic/view.php?strip=532 this].
* North Korean animation [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujtp-70zQME follows this Trope], only in the modern day and the enemy is the United States. Propaganda surely knows no country.
* The Armenian-made ''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_zSwwofx4E Kill Dim]'' cartoons are a modern example pertaining to the Nagorno-Karabakh War (caution: they're likely to offend you if you're from Azerbaijan).
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[[Category:Military and Warfare Tropes]]
[[Category:The Golden Age of Animation]]
[[Category:The Forties]]
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