DisneyQuest #8: Victory Through Air Power

from disneymovieslist.com

1943, 70 mins., Rated G

This was a very interesting (though not entirely surprising) film. I think the summary on the YouTube page where I watched it sums it up pretty well:

“This is a unique film in Disney Production’s history. This film is essentially a propaganda film selling Major Alexander de Seversky’s theories about the practical uses of long range strategic bombing. Using a combination of animation humorously telling about the development of air warfare, the film switches to the Major illustrating his ideas could win the war for the allies.”

I wonder what differentiates something like this, which is definitely propaganda, from the war films of today, like The Hurt Locker, which are seen as commentaries which propagate political opinions, but not as “propaganda”, per se. I think the difference lies in documentary-style presentation versus dramatization. Victory Through Air Power has an educational feel to it, and capitalizes on the fear of a nation at war to sell a particular war tactic. It seems rather like an attempt to go over the heads of the military bigwigs who failed to see reason, to convince the masses of what needs to be done. When the war effort is being felt so dramatically on the home front as it was in WWII, swaying public opinion must have gone a long way in influencing political action – much more than it would today, even in the age of connectivity in which we live (Government Shut-Down, anyone?).

I haven’t done any fact-checking, but I did pay pretty close attention to the WWII unit in history class, and a lot of this information was new to me. As has been known to happen in propaganda films, there might have been some fudging of facts in order to make a point. This may well have been intentional, or could have been a result of limited civilian access to details of battle information. But I think probably the former.

That said, it was still very cool to see the (albeit, animated) early history of aviation. And the film does make a very good point that the pressure of war accelerated aviation innovation exponentially. If the World Wars had not occurred, we certainly would not have reached the moon a mere 24 years later.

There is one particularly striking moment that I want to point out. I don’t really have much to say about it, I just thought it was very well-done and poignant and whatnot. Early in the film, building up to the use of planes as weapons, we learn about the historic flight Charles Rolls (of Rolls-Royce) made across the English Channel. During the animation, which shows a small plane struggling through lightning, dropping pamphlets over a field, then returning to England, a voiceover reads a statement from him regarding the flight, “Departing from England, the flight across the Channel was quite uneventful. Reaching the other side, and being recognized, dropped greetings. And, without stopping, returned home safely, without mishap.”

Later, during the discussion of WWII, the narrator announces that “today, the historic flight of C.S. Rolls is repeated daily, by Rolls-Royce-powered pursuit and bomber planes”. The voiceover then repeats Rolls’ quote, while the animation shows bombers traversing the channel, bombing everything in sight, then going back the way they came. The narrator follows that up by letting us know that  “in one single night, the bomb load dropped on Cologne was twenty times greater than the total amount used in the last war by the United States.”

It’s a very harsh comparison and helps put the real importance of this problem into perspective, despite how goofy some of the film is. It reminds you that this film was released two years before the end of the war, and that these bombings were very real horrors that were killing civilians every day.

Overall, I think this is a nice little film. Accompanied by a disclaimer regarding a handful of factual inaccuracies, it could be the type of thing a high school history teacher could screen when there’s a sub or something. I would be curious to see something in this style updated for the tools of war we are developing today.

Up next, to lighten the mood a little…The Three Caballeros!