Best movie of this year hands down!

From my favorite movies..

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

It spells out the moral message in an entertaining and sometimes amusing way, with just about the right balance.The narrative follows the path of little Hans, born to a sympathetically drawn normal German family whose Aryan ancestry the state has validated.In school the children are told a story about a fox chasing and eating a rabbit. And the uniformed teacher with the massive jaw and gravelly voice asks what they think of the characters in the fairy tale. Hans opts for feeling sorry for the poor hare. He's excoriated and sent to the corner until eventually he yields to pressure from his peers and his authority figures and becomes a true Nazi, "educated for death."The scenes are vivid and clever. There are sly hints of The Ride of the Valkyries from Wagner. The caricatured portraits of Hitler, Goering, and Goebbels are funny as hell, as well done as anything by any current political cartoonist.And the narration is perfectly correct in arguing that learning begins at birth -- not just in Nazi Germany but everywhere. That's why our boy babies wear blue and girl babies wear pink.

I believe that part of what this short attempts to do is explain how citizens of such a modern and advanced nation as Germany could come to support a brutal and ultimately self-destructive regime. It began with a terrifying defeat, and when the nation was vulnerable, a strong leader arose to defend it against those 'enemies' who stood for the destruction of their values and their way of life. It followed that this strong leader demanded unquestioning support, even as he trampled the very things--tolerance, openness, individualism, creativity--that made the nation unique and prosperous. Those who opposed him were enemies deserving of nothing but their destruction. The parallels to current times are ignored at our own peril.

Forget anything you may have come to expect from Disney if and when you see this short. There is nothing cute here. The animation is excellent, is very grim and stark and very chilling. It is the most deathly serious animated short I have seen produced by a studio based in the United States. The only one I've ever seen that may match it is Balance, a German short made almost fifty years later. Education For Death is a short you won't easily forget once you've seen it and it's a shame that The Mouse hasn't seen fit to release it on a DVD along with things like Victory Through Air Power, Der Fuehrer's Face, Reason and Emotion, New Spirit and other works Disney made as a part of the war effort during World War II. An excellent production that deserves to be in print and seen. Most highly recommended.

I'll keep it simple. This is a portrayal of one of the cutest children in all of Disney as he is educated to hate and death by Nazi propaganda. Effectively bone chilling, this hateful cartoon served its purpose to motivate Americans to consider their moral superiority gleaned from a free education system.