Hi Folks! Welcome back to SNAFUBAR. We’re getting animated today! We are touching on a topic that’s close to home, or rather, close to the name of our podcast. Today, we are getting into the Private SNAFU series, a top secret animated series funded by the military during World War II. Your eyes are not deceiving you, this was a real, top secret project funded by the military. And the strange part is, many famous names in animation like Mel Blanc and Theodore Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, were a part of it. Join us as we explore the history behind the comical and strange Private SNAFU series.
SNAFUBAR is hosted by Sara Hart, Chair of the Department of Applied Humanities at Cal Poly Humboldt. We have a guest host today, Liam Salcuni, who teaches history classes at Cal Poly Humboldt. SNAFUBAR is regularly co-hosted by Jeff Crane who is an Environmental Historian and Dean of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at Cal Poly Humboldt.
Research and writing for the show is done by Liam Salcuni and Roman Sotomayor
SNAFUBAR is produced by Abigail Smithson and brought to you by the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at Cal Poly Humboldt.
Works Cited:
CenSoc WWII Army Enlistment Dataset Codebook, 2023.
Classified Cartoons: Private SNAFU
Christopher Klein, When Dr. Seuss Went to War,” 2016.
David Vergun, “First Peacetime Draft Enacted Just Before World War II,” 2020.
Mark David Kaufman, “Ignorant Armies: Private SNAFU Goes to War,” 2015.
Phillip Knell, “Suess on Film,” 2016.
Peter Zablocki, “Private SNAFU,” 2025.
National Parks Service, “The American Homefront and the Buildup to World War II: The Selective Service Act and the Arsenal of Democracy.”The National WWII Museum: New Orleans, “Training the American GI.”
US Army Heritage and Education Center, “World War II Core Area.”
Paul Dickson, “OCTOBER 16, 1940—UNCLE SAM’S GOT YOUR NUMBER, GUYS,” 2020.
Susan Thompson, “Communicating and training through film: an Army Signal Corps innovation,” 2022.
[Music]
>> Dwight Eisenhower (Archival Audio): You are about to embark upon the great crusade.
>>JFK (Archival Audio): The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it.
>> Douglas MacArthur (Archival Audio): Only the dead have seen the end of war.
>> Dwight Eisenhower (Archival Audio): We will accept nothing less than full victory.
[Music]
>> Sarah Hart: You're listening to SNAFUBAR, at Cal Poly Humboldt.
>> Liam Salcuni: All right, folks. We're getting animated today. We are touching on a topic that's close to home, or rather close to the name of our podcast. Today, we're getting into the Private Snafu series, a top-secret animated series funded by the military during World War II. There's a lot to unpack here. Before the United States entered into World War II, the country was on high alert. Nazi Germany and Japan unleashed a violent fury across Europe and Asia. In response to this, the United States initiated a peacetime draft. Many of the men lacked a formal education, and the military needed new ways to instruct the recruits. Thus, an animated series titled Private Snafu was born.
>> Sara Hart: Wow, yes, and we have a lot in store today, folks. The series was a mashup. The Private Snafu series was a mashup between Warner Brothers Studios and the US Army. The project was overseen by Academy Award-winning director Frank Capra, written by Dr. Seuss, and voiced by Mel Blanc, the man behind the voice of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck.
>> Liam Salcuni: I mean, that's just only naming a few.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah.
>> Liam Salcuni: I'm your host, Liam Salcuni, lecturer with the history department at Cal Poly Humboldt.
>> Sara Hart: And I am Sara Hart, chair of the Applied Humanities Department, also at Cal Poly Humboldt.
>> Liam Salcuni: So, in order to get to the Private Snafu project, we need to introduce the first peacetime draft. And to orient you listeners, I'm going to get into some background history on the start of World War II.
>> Sara Hart: Okay, let's do it.
>> Liam Salcuni: September 1, 1939, a day that lives in infamy for millions of people across the world. Nazi Germany, under the command of Adolf Hitler, mobilizes a massive military invasion of Poland. This was known as the Blitzkrieg strategy, which literally means "lightning war." This was a wartime doctrine of Nazi Germany that deployed a massive tanks, motorized vehicles, and aircraft to crush through enemy defenses and overwhelm opponents on all fronts. The world had never seen a mobilized military force move with such precision, speed, and ferocity. To the world's terror, the Blitzkrieg worked. The invasion of Poland in 1939 marked the beginning of the European theater of World War II. It was very much not the beginning of the war, though. There was a lot happening between China and Japan on the other side of the world. During the 1930s, Japan, like Germany, sought to exert control over neighboring countries for the purpose of economic gain. What is more, both Japan and Germany envisioned themselves as hegemonic leaders, Japan of the Asiatic and Germany of the European world.
>> Sara Hart: Right, and there we see nationalism sort of shrouded in myth, rearing its ugly head once more. You could also argue that Italy's expansionist tendencies in Ethiopia were driven by a similar ahistorical nationalist mythology. I mean, Mussolini really saw himself at times as reviving the Roman Empire.
>> Liam Salcuni: Totally. During the 1930s, Japan began annexing territory in Manchuria and then started creeping into territory across the East Coast of mainland China. Eventually, this aggressive expansion would lead to the atrocities at Nanjing, another day that lives in infamy in China and around the world. It was this expansion into China by Japan that marked the beginning of global hostilities, and so the beginning of World War II.
>> Sara Hart: Right, we don't usually think of that.
>> Liam Salcuni: That's kind of like the beginning there. That's, you know, that pops off a huge international fiasco. One thing was certain: the balance of power across the world was changing. The allied powers of World War I, like Britain and France, were not as strong as they had been. And also during the 1930s, there was a terrible economic, you know, depression or crash.
>> Sara Hart: That's right, the Great Depression.
>> Liam Salcuni: Right. And this leaves the allies in a weakened state. Enter the policies of appeasement, essentially promoting a non-interventionist strategy mainly toward Hitler's Nazi Germany, who had been annexing places across Europe like the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia under the auspices that Germany required more land for "ethnic Germans."
>> Sara Hart: Appeasement. And this, Liam, this is in part because times were tough everywhere, right? You know, the world couldn't afford another war.
>> Liam Salcuni: Right.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah. So the United States is across the pond, seeing this all unfold. Britain and France did not intervene in Hitler's plans to annex more territory before the outbreak of the war. And now Hitler and the Nazis have launched a massive military invasion of Poland. And Japan is waging a violent war against China with sites set on expanding across Southeast Asia.
>> Liam Salcuni: Yeah, it's a lot. It's a nightmare. It's not looking good for the world right now. And to make matters worse, much worse -- how could it get any worse? Seven months after Poland surrendered to Nazi forces, Germany then turns its offensive west towards France. And, you know, France, this crucial ally during the First World War, fell to Nazi Germany in just 44 days.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah. I mean, that's worse. Like, it can always get worse.
>> Liam Salcuni: It's getting worse, like that is definitely getting worse. That is for sure.
>> Sara Hart: Right? So much for the Maginot Line. They were so proud of that, and rightfully so, right? Listeners, if you're not remembering what that is, this was nearly 300-mile border line of, like, interlocking fortresses, tons of concrete, tons of heavy artillery, really a very impressive engineering feat. And it sort of ran the line between Germany and France. It was built in the '30s. It was meant to protect France against Germany. And, you know, the Nazis just totally bypassed it.
>> Liam Salcuni: Correct. The Maginot Line only ran the line where Germany and France met. It stopped at the Belgian border. So the Germans just went around it, and they did so deploying that terrifying Blitzkrieg strategy.
>> Sara Hart: What was that? Lightning war.
>> Liam Salcuni: Lightning war.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah, so it's important to note here too that wherever the Nazis occupied, the persecution of Jewish people, gay and lesbian populations, Romani people, political opponents, all this followed. You know, so there's a lot of terror, a lot of fear in all the places that they moved through. The terror that Adolf Hitler and the Nazis unleashed across Europe was only the beginning. Some feared that the Nazis were just really hellbent on global domination and on their way to a neighborhood near you.
>> Liam Salcuni: Right. And so the Nazis went around this Maginot Line and made it to France through Belgium. When they paraded through the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, that really hit hard.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah. Imagistically, right? Symbolically.
>> Liam Salcuni: Symbolically, and photographs are going to circulate. It seemed clear from that point that the United States needed to be ready to mobilize military forces. Or in other words, the US needed to be prepared for a fight. Although still operating as a neutral country, the United States began preparing for possible involvement in the conflict because this is -- it turns into initially this steady growth, and now it's Poland, it's France, and it's growing.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah, and really, it's these series of events that led the United States to pass the Selective Service and Training Act of 1940, the first peacetime draft in US history.
>> Liam Salcuni: Yeah. We're getting closer.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah, here we go.
>> Liam Salcuni: So, you know, there have been other drafts in US history. There's, like, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War. There's World War I, but this draft was different. But this was the first peacetime draft. The US isn't at war yet.
>> Sara Hart: Yet.
>> Liam Salcuni: The world was at war. Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan are engaged in a violent military campaign across Europe and Asia. France has fallen to the Nazis. Throughout 1940, Britain was bombarded and shelled by the Luftwaffe.
>> Sara Hart: Luftwaffe, German Air Force, folks, you're referring to the Battle of Britain here.
>> Liam Salcuni: Battle of Britain, Chronicles of Narnia, yes.
>> Sara Hart: This is not the Chronicles of Narnia.
>> Liam Salcuni: Well, no, that's right. That's one of the books.
>> Sara Hart: Oh, that's how the kids -- that's how it starts, is the kids are in their uncle's house or something because of it. They get sent out to the country. That's right.
>> Liam Salcuni: See, I keep it relevant out here, folks.
>> Sara Hart: C.S. Lewis. Okay, where were we?
>> Liam Salcuni: So, right, Battle of Britain, things are still not looking good, getting worse to say the least, right?
>> Sara Hart: Yes, things not looking good. That's where we were. So the United States needed to be ready to support their allies abroad because, in terms of a standing army, the United States really was not ready. Liam, how large do you think the US Army was in 1939?
>> Liam Salcuni: Five hundred thousand.
>> Sara Hart: In 1939, the US Army had only 174,000 active duty soldiers, not a lot of people.
>> Liam Salcuni: It's tiny.
>> Sara Hart: It's tiny.
>> Liam Salcuni: What?
>> Sara Hart: I mean, right, comparatively. So I mean, right now, we're at about 2.8 million. So 174,000, this is smaller than Portugal's standing army of the time.
>> Liam Salcuni: Wow.
>> Sara Hart: Portugal's small.
>> Liam Salcuni: That is a small place. But that is -- that is a tiny duty force. Yikes. So the US, right, needs to solve this. They need to draft. And the Selective Training and Service Act is the solution. After Congress passed the act, all men between the ages of 21 to 35 had to register. After Pearl Harbor, this was changed, and men between the ages of 18 to 64 were required to register for the draft.
>> Sara Hart: Sixty-four.
>> Liam Salcuni: When I'm 64.
>> Sara Hart: Will you still draft me?
>> Liam Salcuni: When I'm 64. There you go. Yeah, right. So initially, men from all different backgrounds from all across the country poured into registration booths, right? So the first part of this is you got to register. Many were unemployed and lacked a formal education. Remember, the US is still very much at what will end up being the tail end of the depression. And employed, educated or not, all were called to register. The first registration date was set for October 16, 1940. Men between the appropriate ages could register between 7 AM and 9 PM.
>> Sara Hart: Oh, nice, big open window. Okay. So how was this information delivered to the American people? This seems like a potentially chaotic situation.
>> Liam Salcuni: It kind of was, but a great question too. People were glued to their radios during this time, right? Very, very popular. You know, I've even seen blueprints of certain house, living rooms, and houses that are remodeled to accommodate a big old radio for the family to sit around instead of the fireplace with a hearth. Just the radio replaced the hearth, I don't know. That's another episode topic. But people were glued to their radios. Stations across the country kept potential recruits informed about where and when to register. There were also newspapers keeping track of this information, making it available for potential recruits. It was pretty chaotic. But through the chaos, FDR addressed the nation across these radio stations, in houses across America. "On this day, more than 16 million young Americans are reviving the 300-year-old American custom of the muster."
>> Sara Hart: The muster.
>> Liam Salcuni: Said FDR. "On this day, we Americans proclaim the vitality of our history, the singleness of our will, and the unity of our nation."
>> Sara Hart: Oh, he was so good at that singleness of will and unity of whatnots. So this is sort of like phase one of the peacetime draft. People got to register.
>> Liam Salcuni: Yep. Author Paul Dickinson writes, "The registration form itself was simple, with 12 boxes to be filled in by examiners who asked a dozen basic questions. An examiner then eyeballed each registrant to determine whether his build was slender, medium, or stout."
>> Sara Hart: Slender, medium, or stout, right? So after you registered, you still had to get drafted, and for this, a lottery system was in place.
>> Liam Salcuni: Don't want to win this lottery.
>> Sara Hart: No, all registered men were grouped into number categories between 1 and 7,836.
>> Liam Salcuni: There you go.
>> Sara Hart: Random. Pieces of paper containing group numbers were rolled up and put into tiny little capsules where they were transferred to a giant fish bowl-looking thing. The capsules were stirred with a wooden spoon.
>> Liam Salcuni: Very important here. It's like stone soup. You know, it's very important.
>> Sara Hart: And then pulled out by the Secretary of War, who was then Henry Stimson. If your group number was read aloud, for example, 267, then every man assigned to that group had to report for service.
>> Liam Salcuni: Man, imagine that anticipation.
>> Sara Hart: I know, right?
>> Liam Salcuni: And it's like being -- it's on the radio. Not everyone, you know, who is drafted or who was drafted actually made the cut. A hundred thousand men were turned away during the first year of this draft for illiteracy. Of the first one million draftees, 30,000 of them were turned away for syphilis. Malnutrition was a problem too, with almost 130,000 men unfit for service from diet-related disabilities such as lack of teeth or poor vision.
>> Sara Hart: Right, and this is where you get enriched wheat flour from.
>> Liam Salcuni: Yeah. It definitely keeps that practice going. I think it started a little bit earlier, but, you know, during this, it's evident that they need these minerals.
>> Sara Hart: Okay, thiamin, niacin, iron. Things like that.
>> Liam Salcuni: Thiamin, niacin, iron. Oh, my.
>> Sara Hart: Oh, my. The effects of the depression were really still being felt in the United States, right? Poor nutrition, high rates of illiteracy, and lack of jobs, these side effects of widespread need, they were just everywhere.
>> Liam Salcuni: So if you made the cut, you were sent to Fort Bragg, Fort Devens, Camp Edwards, or other military bases across the country for basic training or boot camp. A piece published by the Army War College writes, "A typical inductee into the Army arrived at the induction center via train or bus and was immediately hurried into a line. Over the first days, the recruit's hair was cut very short. He was issued several duffel bags' worth of equipment and sent through seemingly unending medical examinations. Finally, the soldier was able to retire to the barracks, his new home for the coming weeks. The barracks was at the center of the new soldier's life. A soldier had almost no personal space, only a bunk, a foot locker, and maybe a shelf for a few photographs.
>> Sara Hart: Home sweet home. Yeah. Okay, so also this is a time when the military was segregated in the United States. We might note, Black Americans trained, ate, and slept in separate facilities. And looking back now, you know, we can't help but ask, what was the United States preparing to fight for? To destroy tyranny abroad, we knew that. Americans knew that. And all the same, injustice and oppression continued in our own ranks. And it's really something to think about. Yeah, its own episode.
>> Liam Salcuni: Definitely a whole episode on its own. So the end of the year 1940, and the draft is happening. And things ramped up about a year later, after the Pearl Harbor attacks on December 7, 1941. A wave of patriotism swept through the country. A year after the attack, four million people volunteered for the armed forces. From bustling cities to the heartland of rural America, the effects of conscripted and voluntary service were being felt. Women needed to fill jobs of men who volunteered in the factory or the shipyard.
>> Sara Hart: Right, Rosie the Riveter.
>> Liam Salcuni: Exactly. There's another episode idea entirely in its own. The men who were drafted or volunteered for service came from nearly every town in America, many of them having never left their home states. They entered the military at a time when traditional notions of masculinity were under strain. The Great Depression had left millions of American men unemployed and unable to fulfill the widely held expectation of being economic providers for their families. In this way, military service offered a sense of purpose and structure for these men.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah, and potential upward mobility, like survivability.
>> Liam Salcuni: Yeah, social.
>> Sara Hart: Okay. So right, only registering for the draft, but actually being drafted and serving was seen, as it's still seen today, as an incredibly honorable duty to give your life to something larger than yourself. It was more than just pulling individual selves out of the depressive state that the time had put them in economically. Towns across the US really celebrated this culture and celebrated the departure of their new recruits.
>> Liam Salcuni: Yeah, and this is a practice that you still see today in some small towns, and remembering the people who -- from smaller areas who went and served. But again, not everyone was conscripted. People with certain levels of training could have their draft order deferred. If you worked in a shipyard, in a factory, or in agriculture, you could postpone your draft order. Initially, men with dependents, i.e., families, could be exempted. Men in college could defer their draft order through the end of the academic year. After that, they would be eligible for the draft. But over time, there were shortages of men in these professions, and women increasingly found themselves working in industrial or agricultural fields.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah, and that had huge effects for generations, really. Yeah. America's men were going to war en masse and with enthusiasm. Some high-profile Americans, like actor Jimmy Stewart, took a steep pay cut to serve. After graduating from Harvard University, John F. Kennedy registered before his deferment expired. He failed multiple physical exams, but was finally admitted into the Navy.
>> Liam Salcuni: Stewart was quite the celebrity back in the day.
>> Sara Hart: Oh, yeah.
>> Liam Salcuni: And, you know, this really highlights too that the draft included Americans from all sorts of backgrounds.
>> Sara Hart: And I imagine that the all sorts of backgrounds piece, that posed its own challenges in terms of training. I mean, everyone's coming in with their own level of preparation, and those levels really varied like a lot.
>> Liam Salcuni: You're right. The armed forces had their work cut out for them. Most men who were drafted in the first round were between the ages of 18 to 30 years old with no military experience whatsoever. Not only did new recruits have to adjust to the structure, discipline, and lifestyle in military training camps, but you also had a laundry list of tasks and responsibilities.
>> Sara Hart: So many chores.
>> Liam Salcuni: So many chores.
>> Sara Hart: There's a war going on, not just any war, a world war that was being fought on two fronts in Europe and the Pacific. America needed to make ordinary men into soldiers, and there were a variety of educational resources used to do this.
>> Liam Salcuni: Right, you've got to make the man into the soldier. That's right. There, you know, in terms of these educational resources, the armed forces used manuals, pamphlets, and lectures to communicate this information to the new recruits.
>> Sara Hart: But it only went so far, right? And we can kind of see why, like, okay, you pulled you off the farm. We pulled you out of your life, and here you are.
>> Liam Salcuni: Or if you're drafted, you know, part of it too is the, you know, it's like why we fight or what is this about?
>> Sara Hart: Yeah.
>> Liam Salcuni: Why, you know.
>> Sara Hart: Oh, they will have things to say about this. We're going to have things to say about that, folks. Okay. So, according to the Army's World War II enlistment records, many new recruits were not formally educated. A quote from the National World War II Museum paints a pretty broad picture here. And this is an extended quote. Bear with me here. It's a good one. Some good history. "After the nation was at war, standards for induction into the military were relaxed, and rejection rates dropped to 29% for the duration," which is still pretty high.
>> Liam Salcuni: That is pretty high.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah, so [inaudible]. "Of those accepted for military service, 70% had dropped out of school, 500,000 had less than a fourth-grade education, and 4.4 million had less than an eighth-grade education. One army psychiatrist estimated the mental age of the average soldier to be between 13 and 14 years of age. On the other end of the spectrum were the college graduates who made up only 3% of the army's ranks." That's your National World War II Museum there, folks.
>> Liam Salcuni: Yeah. The long-lasting impacts of the economic depression appear again. We don't want to jump to conclusions about these men that fit into these statistics.
>> Sara Hart: Except that they were really suffering and had some serious, like, nutritional deficits, and worked real hard to stay alive for a great many years.
>> Liam Salcuni: Right. Millions of Americans during the Great Depression needed work. Finding a job became almost impossible. Pursuing an education, that's not a priority. When you have small children, a family to feed, with many people dropping out of school to pursue job opportunities, right? People are leaving schools to pursue jobs. Hundreds of thousands of Americans relocated further west in pursuit of agricultural jobs. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck is based off of this.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah, that's a great book. I like me some Steinbeck. And not only were people leaving schools to pursue work, but schools simply, you know, a lot of the time, just couldn't operate. Over the course of the depression, 20,000 schools closed their doors. And this has a huge impact on national education levels, and it is part of the reason why the military utilized films as educational tools. We're inching, inching closer to our topic, listeners.
>> Liam Salcuni: We're getting closer. It's all relevant, though.
>> Sara Hart: This is all -- this is solid background for where we're getting to. You know, it really is how we get to the topic for the day. This is where Private Snafu comes into play, together with the many government agencies that utilized Hollywood and filmmaking to help educate the troops.
>> Liam Salcuni: Hi, folks. You're listening to SNAFUBAR, a podcast about American military mishaps and national myths. I'm Liam Salcuni, your host today and lecturer with the history department at Cal Poly Humboldt. And I'm joined by Sara Hart, chair of the Applied Humanities Department, also at Cal Poly Humboldt. In this episode, we're exploring the personification of Snafu itself, Private Snafu.
>> Sara Hart: Private Snafu. All right.
>> Liam Salcuni: In 1942, the military wanted to modify its training, communication, and instruction protocol to deal with the influx of new recruits. And thus, the First Motion Picture Unit was born. Located in Sunny Culver City, California, the production, writing, animation, and story development was a top-secret classified project developed in Hal Roach Studios. Culver City boasts the nickname The Heart of Screenland, being a major Hollywood production hub since 1915. Films like The Wizard of Oz and Citizen Kane came out of Culver City. The location earned the nickname Fort Roach as the war went on.
>> Sara Hart: Okay. So that's some good background there, Culver City. Okay. So the military goes to Hollywood or, you know, really nearby, and there's a really good reason for all this. The military saw the need to adapt modes of instruction for its new recruits. Hollywood was good at storytelling, animation, and above all, appealing to audiences through memorable mass communication techniques. So it makes all kinds of sense that the military wanted to implement educational training videos produced by Hollywood, not only for troop instruction on proper etiquette, but also to boost morale for the war effort and draw in more recruits. And the Private Snafu project, which ran a total of 27 episodes, each of them very short films, was just one of a dozen film projects the military utilized during the war. Over the course of the war, the First Motion Picture Unit produced over 400 films.
>> Liam Salcuni: Four hundred films. That's right. One of the first -- or the first film being Winning Your Wings, made in 1942, starring Jimmy Stewart. Produced in collaboration with Warner Brothers Studios, the film encouraged young men to enlist in the Air Force. Shortly after its release, the military drew in 150,000 new volunteers.
>> Sara Hart: Whoa, so you could say that this military Hollywood mashup worked.
>> Liam Salcuni: Totally. And Jimmy Stewart's a well-known celebrity. Stewart's not the only household name among the ranks of actors that took part in the project. Ronald Reagan was a part of the First Motion Picture Unit.
>> Sara Hart: Oh, here's Ronnie.
>> Liam Salcuni: Here's Ronnie.
>> Sara Hart: That's better. That's way more Jack Nicholson and way less Johnny Carson, is what we got going on there. Way more shining, way less Johnny Carson, and the intonation.
>> Liam Salcuni: Well, Reaganomics.
>> Sara Hart: Well, a little more shining.
>> Liam Salcuni: That's a shining.
>> Sara Hart: The shining city on the hill.
>> Liam Salcuni: Exactly.
>> Sara Hart: Okay. You know, Reagan suffered from chronic short-sightedness or myopia.
>> Liam Salcuni: The irony.
>> Sara Hart: I know, it's not even metaphorical though. Reagan's short-sightedness was the reason he was disqualified from combat. It really was, but it didn't stop him from getting behind the silver screen and making films with the First Motion Picture Unit.
>> Liam Salcuni: Many of the productions put on by the First Motion Picture Unit fit into our definition of propaganda, right, to say the least. And the First Motion Picture Unit was not the only military film production entity during the war.
>> Sara Hart: There were more?
>> Liam Salcuni: There were more.
>> Sara Hart: Oh, good.
>> Liam Salcuni: Frank Capra, award-winning Hollywood filmmaker who directed films like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, played a huge part in the Hollywood military crossover. Only the projects Capra worked on took place in Astoria, New York, not in California. After Pearl Harbor, Capra left Hollywood immediately to join the Army Signal Corps under the wing of General George C. Marshall. This is like the First Motion Picture Unit, but slightly larger. Army historian Susan Thompson writes, "The Signal Corps in World War II was responsible for producing and distributing thousands of motion picture films. The films, which many say directly influenced the war's outcome, covered wide-ranging topics. These included training and indoctrination films targeted at military audiences, newsreel footage, and informative films designed to keep the American public informed and to boost their morale, and motivational films meant to increase and maintain a high production level by factory workers supporting the war.
>> Sara Hart: First Motion Picture Unit made a lot of different kinds of films.
>> Liam Salcuni: Totally. General Marshall created the Army Pictorial Service, a department within the Army Signal Corps, with the goal to broadcast pro-war media messages. The Army Pictorial Service also specialized in training videos for new recruits and soldiers as well. Capra's major project with the Army Pictorial Service was the Why We Fight series.
>> Sara Hart: Oh, Why We Fight.
>> Liam Salcuni: Yep, which was originally intended for soldiers. After seeing how well done and effective these films were at crafting a pro-war narrative, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt ordered the films to be distributed for the public to view across the country. The film set a standard for Americans across the country on their patriotic duties and what was really at stake during the war.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah. Okay. So, and this title may be familiar to some of you out there, listeners, from a later release. In 2005, director Eugene Jarecki screened his own Why We Fight at Sundance. That was a single documentary film whose title was an intentional callback to the World War II series, but which was itself much more critical in its review of the military-industrial complex, as especially of the way that, you know, that it's grown since World War II.
>> Liam Salcuni: Totally.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah, and Capra's project wasn't. It wasn't critical of the armed forces and the systems that supported their expansion, and it wasn't meant to be. Capra's working in the context of World War II and the draft, and morale was super important. His job was to bolster that morale, and he really did it. In order to cultivate strong morale among troops and the general public, the military leaned into Hollywood and television, and Capra was good at this. There was a thoroughgoing degree to which social and economic pressure was put on the American people. And through film and mass media messages, everyday responsibilities from going to work or food rationing were cast as these kind of patriotic and honorable duties.
>> Liam Salcuni: Totally. Not to mention enlisting itself.
>> Sara Hart: Oh yeah, that too. Maybe even especially, right?
>> Liam Salcuni: Right, exactly. The military is using Hollywood to get new recruits. I've watched some of these short films, and I got to say, I got to be honest, Jimmy Stewart looks pretty cool.
>> Sara Hart: He does.
>> Liam Salcuni: He's wearing a leather jacket. He has aviator glasses on. I mean, come on. If you're an impressionable young person, Stewart was all swagged up next to a fighter plane definitely grabs your attention. Also, Winning Your Wings was shown in high schools across the country.
>> Sara Hart: Whoa.
>> Liam Salcuni: Yeah. So the military was taking celebrities, their national platform, and using this to appeal to young men to enlist. And again, it worked really well.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah, it did. And not only was the military utilizing Hollywood talent for recruiting and troop training videos, but also to counter enemy propaganda. Frank Capra was inspired to develop a counter-series against Nazi Germany's own media projects. And we remember Leni Riefenstahl's 1935 Triumph of the Will, which is a pro-Nazi propaganda film directly inspired, that film directly inspired Frank Capra to create pro-allied films in response. And by and large, his series Why We Fight was, you know, it was effective at conjuring up the fighting spirit among millions of Americans.
>> Liam Salcuni: Right. Capra sees this fascist propaganda come out and he hits back with this anti-fascist.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah, it's like a media war, like a media war for the public opinion.
>> Liam Salcuni: Exactly.
>> Sara Hart: Some of the best filmmakers in the world dedicating their energies to pulling their populations into a certain perspective on the war.
>> Liam Salcuni: We could go all afternoon down this rabbit hole, but we have an area of focus, and that is with the First Motion Picture Unit and Private Snafu.
>> Sara Hart: Okay.
>> Liam Salcuni: Right? So the military, in collaboration with Hollywood, is making all these big production films to get recruits and boost morale, and it works. Now, what to do with all these new recruits who weren't trained at all, and 70% of them who had dropped out of school?
>> Sara Hart: I mean, adaptability. You really hope they're strong in adaptability.
>> Liam Salcuni: Yeah, seriously. In the article, classified cartoons, Private Snafu, wargaming.net writes, "Private Snafu cartoons were a way to help enlisted men with weak literacy skills learn. The Army also supplied them with supplementary comic books in a way that may seem a little antiquated now. Both the show and books focused on simple language, song, and rhyme, as well as racy illustrations, mild profanity, and moralizing. The nature of Private Snafu was to make costly mistakes, so in theory, the soldiers would learn not to. Again, the military, having found success in other projects, then turned to film to help educate these troops who were having a hard time learning and adjusting to the life as an active duty soldier."
>> Sara Hart: Yeah, and we can imagine just how much of a welcome change this must have been, right? Traditionally, the Army used other media to educate the troops. And this is from Warfare History Network. It's a little quote for you, some facts from history. "Before the first episode of Private Snafu was shown in 1943, the Army instructed its troops on security, proper sanitation, and other military subjects essential to proper soldiering via --" get this "-- 11 pre-planned lectures in large group settings."
>> Liam Salcuni: Boring.
>> Sara Hart: Boring. Like converting. Converting, it goes on to say, "converting hundreds of thousands of civilians with minimal education into military specialists seemed nearly impossible."
>> Liam Salcuni: Oh, my gosh. I mean, I imagine myself in that situation, drafted into a major global war. Far away from home. There are a lot of stressors beyond gaps in formal education, I'd say at least. And they want me to sit still in a huge room and listen to a bunch of lectures. I mean, come on. Seeing a movie star delivering an inspiring speech or a silly cartoon character was a way new recruits could be reminded of home, and just a way cooler medium to watch and learn through for most of them. It offers something familiar. Not only were military training films effective, Army historian Susan Thompson writes, "The training films cut training time by an average of 30%." So they were efficient too.
>> Sara Hart: Right, which is cool, and not surprising in some ways. And one of the most surprising aspects of Private Snafu is the whole project is the fact that so many reputable animators, Hollywood giants, and high-ranking military personnel took part in this project, right?
>> Liam Salcuni: Yes, Frank Capra, who was the head of the Army's First Motion Picture Unit, was also the winner of three Academy Awards, not nothing. Warfare History Network writes on the choice to go with Warner Brothers Studios that "the studio's Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny cartoons, shown before feature films, were a massive hit. And although after 1941, the cartoons often carried strong pro-war and anti-fascist messages meant to arouse public involvement, they managed to stay entertaining, light-hearted, and relatable. The Army saw that a similar format would be the perfect way to reach a newly conscripted audience of varying educational backgrounds.
>> Sara Hart: Warner Brothers Studios would be the main creative force behind the project, and they had experience that would help them with this.
>> Liam Salcuni: Yes, and being such a well-established production company in the film industry, they didn't have a problem in gathering talent for the project. Frank Capra came up with the name "Private Snafu."
>> Sara Hart: Good name.
>> Liam Salcuni: But the creative power behind the main character of the series, Private Snafu, is credited to none other than Theodor Geisel.
>> Sara Hart: Theodor Geisel? Do you mean Dr. Seuss?
>> Liam Salcuni: Yep. One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish. Or, Oh, the Places You'll Go. Or, "I will try them, and you will see. I do not like green eggs and ham. I do not like them. Sam, I am?" That's right, folks. That Dr. Seuss. His real name is Theodor Geisel. And he wrote most of the scripts for the episodes. He was the main writer for the Private Snafu series.
>> Sara Hart: What? OMG. Horton Hears, a hand grenade.
>> Liam Salcuni: No. Okay. Private Snafu is described as a "short, bald, motor-mouth example of what a soldier should not be."
>> Sara Hart: Okay. This is the character.
>> Liam Salcuni: This is the character. The depiction of Snafu catching tropical diseases, leaking classified information, and dying from general negligence taught the troops the downside of being naive, careless, and continuously amorous. Or, in other words, don't be like Private Snafu.
>> Sara Hart: Seriously. So instead of drilling the recruits, many of whom were drafted and may have had reservations about being drafted, the military showed a goofy cartoon character to get their point across.
>> Liam Salcuni: It sounds so strange, but it worked. Hi, folks. You're listening to SNAFUBAR, a podcast about American military mishaps and national myths. I'm your host, Liam Salcuni, lecturer with the history department at Cal Poly Humboldt. And I'm here with Sara Hart, chair of the Applied Humanities Department at Cal Poly Humboldt. In this episode, we're taking a look at the Private Snafu series, 27 animated episodes focusing on educating new military recruits, many of them without a formal education. Theodor Geisel, or as you probably know him, Dr. Seuss, played an instrumental role in the development of the Private Snafu cartoons. Dr. Seuss is the author of many well-known children's books, such as The Cat in the Hat or Oh, the Places You'll Go! And the artist behind many political and social cartoons. Some of his work is culturally insensitive and contains racist depictions of minority groups. In 2021, Dr. Seuss Enterprises announced that they would stop publishing six titles containing these derogatory images.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah. Disney and Warner Brothers have also faced scrutiny for the same offense. And the representations in Dr. Seuss's no longer published works, they're pretty bad. Some really unthinking, unreflective racism. And this is its own topic. It was -- these sorts of depictions were really prevalent during World War II, lots of non-human animalistic tropes for the enemy combatants and for the cultures they came from.
>> Liam Salcuni: It is. It's very startling once you start to look deeper and uncover it. And these tropes show up in children's stories and cartoons, too. It's very unsettling, to say the least. And also when you think about that a majority of the American public saw no issue with this, it just adds to that frustration. And we could spend all afternoon kind of getting and unpacking that, but we have to stay on track.
>> Sara Hart: We're on track today. Private Snafu, this will come up a little bit later, and we do want to acknowledge it, listeners, because if you go watch the Private Snafu series on YouTube, which we recommend and we'll recommend again, you'll notice it. But today, okay, so why did Frank Capra and the military settle on Theodor Geisel, or Dr. Seuss, to be at the helm of the Private Snafu project?
>> Liam Salcuni: Geisel had made a name for himself as a young cartoonist, something he was passionate about all his life. His father wanted him to get a doctoral degree. He finished a bachelor's at Dartmouth, and then he started but never finished an English PhD program at Oxford University.
>> Sara Hart: Well, okay. So he didn't follow the academic track, but he did take on the doctor part, and that's how we know him. Okay. So what about where he's from? How did he get his start?
>> Liam Salcuni: All right. Yeah. Born in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1904, Geisel was from a middle-class immigrant family. He was a bright student, but really mostly interested in illustration. Geisel published his first cartoon in the Saturday Evening Post, which was received well. The illustration depicts two people riding camels. And it looks very similar to the classic "Seuss style" he'd later champion as his trademark. He made $25 from the publication.
>> Sara Hart: Which is like almost $500 today, just for the record, which is really not bad, you know.
>> Liam Salcuni: Not bad, not bad. And so after that, he was committed to a career in illustration and writing. In 1927, he began working as a cartoonist for Judge Magazine based out of New York City, the Big Apple, NYC. He worked there for a number of years with a steady income. His career really took a turn when he did an illustration in Judge that included a reference to Flit insect spray, which was made and manufactured by none other than Standard Oil.
>> Sara Hart: Uh-oh, Standard Oil, here comes the money.
>> Liam Salcuni: More like Horton, here's a paycheck.
>> Sara Hart: Okay.
>> Liam Salcuni: Horton, here's a paycheck. His success with the Flit ad gave him 17 years of reliable work as the artist for Standard Oil Flit insect spray. He gained national recognition and pursued other opportunities as an illustrator in magazines like Vanity Fair and Life. His blend of rhyme and illustration is what led him to pursue publishing children's books. In 1937, he successfully published, and to think that I saw it on Mulberry Street, his first published children's book. It was denied by 27 different publishers for being essentially too different and weird. It was finally picked up by Vanguard Press, and the rest, as they say, is history.
>> Sara Hart: I mean, 27 different publishers, 27 rejection letters. Can you imagine? I mean, look, here comes the mail, all the excitement, all the and the -- and then, pom, pom, pom, one more no.
>> Liam Salcuni: Yeah. It really took him a lot of --
>> Sara Hart: Twenty-seven times.
>> Liam Salcuni: Twenty-seven times. It's a lot of times.
>> Sara Hart: That's a lot.
>> Liam Salcuni: That's a lot of nos and turned around and get lost. But the moral of the story is don't quit on your dreams.
>> Sara Hart: Persistence, seriously, very impressive.
>> Liam Salcuni: For sure. And then in 1941, Geisel really shifted his focus and started concentrating on anti-fascist cartoons, right, when the war is picking up, particularly cartoons that mocked Nazi Germany's Adolf Hitler and Italy's Benito Mussolini. He was getting more politically involved in his craft. He also published anti-isolationism cartoons, criticizing figures like Charles Lindbergh, the voice of the America First Committee, which supported an isolationist position. Lindbergh was a world-renowned pilot, who famously piloted the first non-stop flight from New York to Paris in 33 hours.
>> Sara Hart: Thirty-three hours. Talk about jet lag.
>> Liam Salcuni: Talk about jet lag.
>> Sara Hart: Charlie Horse cramp.
>> Liam Salcuni: Lindbergh is super controversial. He was an admirer of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, particularly their advanced Air Force. He was, like, enamored by it. When he was visiting Berlin in 1938, he accepted the Service Cross of the German Eagle from Hermann Göring, who was awarded Lindbergh the medal on behalf of Adolf Hitler.
>> Sara Hart: Yikes.
>> Liam Salcuni: Well, in his cartoons, Geisel openly mocked the America First Committee as well as Hitler and Mussolini. He started publishing these types of cartoons in the New York-based magazine, PM. Fearing US isolationism and the imminent threat that Nazi tyranny posed to the world, he got to work, publishing over 400 anti-fascist and anti-isolationism cartoons. He also picked up illustration work for the US Treasury, encouraging people to buy war bonds.
>> Sara Hart: Interesting. Okay. And how does this get him involved with the Private Snafu project?
>> Liam Salcuni: Well, in Geisel's own words, he recalled that "the way I went to work for PM is that I got annoyed with Lindbergh and his America firsters. I was already somewhat prominent as a cartoonist, but nobody would print my cartoons against Lindbergh. So I went to work for PM for almost nothing. When the United States got into the war, I started receiving a lot of letters saying I was a dirty old man who had helped us get into the war, and I was too old to fight. So I enlisted."
>> Sara Hart: That's awesome. You show them, Geisel.
>> Liam Salcuni: Right. In 1943, he joined the Army's First Motion Picture Unit. Packed his bags for California, where he linked up with Frank Capra, already our Hollywood juggernaut. It was in Hal Roach Studios that Geisel wrote the episodes for Private Snafu.
>> Sara Hart: Okay. So, as a writer, he's hired, not as an animator, or hired, enlisted.
>> Liam Salcuni: Right. He's enlisted as a -- I think he comes in as a captain, as a writer. Dr. Seuss did this stint in the military as a writer working on Private Snafu.
>> Sara Hart: And we know that the military was actively looking for artistic talent, so this totally makes sense. Why did Capra think Geisel would be a good fit for the project?
>> Liam Salcuni: Well, interestingly, it was because of his background in writing children's books. He had a talent for turning stories into catchy jingles and rhymes. Capra recognized this and believed he would be a perfect fit for Private Snafu, where he was tasked with creating simple, engaging stories that taught new recruits proper conduct and behavior in the armed forces. Since many of these recruits lacked formal education, Capra felt his storytelling style made him especially well-suited for the role.
>> Sara Hart: Okay. So Dr. Seuss served in the Army during World War II, though definitely not in a traditional combat role. And how did his time in the military impact his later career?
>> Liam Salcuni: Well, you know, he's able to develop his skills in storytelling, rhyme, rhythm during the time with the First Motion Picture Unit. Much of his writing before this point had also explored larger social issues and moral dilemmas, something he further developed through the Private Snafu project. These themes would later become a defining feature of his children's books, which often presented moral and social issues through imaginative stories written for younger audiences.
>> Sara Hart: And palatable to adults. I'll tell you in the world of children's literature, Dr. Seuss is still way up there for readability, you know, in a multi-generational kind of way. Lots of good stuff there.
>> Liam Salcuni: I agree. I totally agree. So much. One example. Geisel was inspired to write and illustrate Horton Hears a Who after visiting Japan in 1953, where he researched the effects of the atomic bomb and World War II on Japanese children.
>> Sara Hart: Wow. I did not know that about him. And so this really marked a departure from some of those sentiments we talked about a few minutes ago, the dehumanizing stereotypes in his earlier political work, especially the anti-Japanese cartoons that he published during World War II.
>> Liam Salcuni: Correct. Geisel had a change of heart, a profoundly humanizing experience visiting Japan. He was shown around to different schools and introduced to Japanese students by Mitsugi Nakamura, a Japanese educator. Horton Hears a Who is dedicated to Nakamura. So if you find, you know, a copy of that or have a copy of that, check it out. Horton says, "A person's a person, no matter how small." That's Horton's big lesson for us. And it captures the sentiment Geisel was trying to convey in the book. Every person deserves to be treated with dignity and respect, no matter where you come from or what you look like. You're a human being. I think he may have lost sight of that during the war, especially after he learned about Pearl Harbor like so many other Americans. There's, like, this incredible dehumanization, I mean, towards Japanese-Americans, particularly.
>> Sara Hart: Pearl Harbor was hard. I mean, looking back, that is what it looks like. He was living through this time when there was a really clearly defined enemy and a high level of American confidence that the Allied position was the right one. And as part of his professional life, Geisel, in particular, you know, it was his job to be convincing about that, to present a clear pro-American, anti-Axis, and especially for him, anti-Japanese message. And the medium that he was working in political cartoons, it's minimalist. You know, it's spare. You have to pack a lot of punch into a single image and a few words. And racist stereotypes, they're a clear way to demonize and dehumanize the whole people in those small frames, which makes killing those people easier. So after the war, Geisel turned it around. No longer pressed to convince wide audiences that the enemy was the enemy, he goes and works with Nakamura towards understanding and to try to get that message across to kids. Then and in the future, he writes books like Horton Hears a Who. Okay. Back to his wartime work. This is very inspiring. This post-war work is very inspiring. But back to his wartime work, how was he getting his message across then?
>> Liam Salcuni: Right, right. Private Snafu. So in the Private Snafu series, the narrative center on a goofy, carefree, and often selfish character whose negligence leads to the consequences not only for himself, but for the larger group as well. Through these stories, Geisel combined humor and satire with serious lessons about military conduct, illustrating the worst-case scenarios that could result from behavior similar to Private Snafu's.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah, harnessing the power of a bad example.
>> Liam Salcuni: Exactly. Oh, he harnessed it. He harnessed it. The Private Snafu series allowed Geisel to use exaggerated humor with instruction, using these situations to communicate important wartime messages in a way that soldiers would remember. And it just sticks out too. It's goofy. It's funny. It grabs your attention. And he wasn't working alone. Geisel wasn't the only entertainment talent brought on board for the Private Snafu series. There's Chuck Jones, one of the directors for the series, who started his career at Warner Brothers Studios as an animator, working on projects that featured Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, and later Bugs Bunny.
>> Sara Hart: What's Up, Doc?
>> Liam Salcuni: And What's Up, Doc?
>> Sara Hart: Much better.
>> Liam Salcuni: That voice in your head saying that, that's Mel Blanc, the man of a thousand voices, who is the voice behind Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, Tweety Bird, and Porky Pig, just to name a few. He was involved.
>> Sara Hart: And that's really just scratching the surface, right?
>> Liam Salcuni: Literally a thousand voices. He's in everything, Mel Blanc. Among others are Phil Eastman, a children's book author turned animator who would go on to have a successful career in the industry. All of these writers, animators, and directors were working on a super-secret World War II military project. No, no, no. Not the Manhattan Project, which comes to mind when you think of top-secret military projects during World War II. No, no, no. No, Private Snafu. This is a top-secret, highly classified project.
>> Sara Hart: This was classified.
>> Liam Salcuni: The series of a silly cartoons was treated as a highly confidential and top-secret job, requiring security clearance and sworn secrecy of the collaborators.
>> Sara Hart: Can you imagine? I mean, that's hilarious. So much talent, okay, and you come in and you're going to work into your -- make your cartoons and you have to, like, hush, hush about the whole thing. That's great. Okay. So tell us a little bit about how it all came together. What did the final product look like? How did Private Snafu turn out?
>> Liam Salcuni: Totally. But I want to just pause right here just to -- on your last point too about going into the studio and, you know, imagine if you're, like, captured by, I don't know, like Russian spies and they're, like, they see you have military clearance, and then they learn you're like this. You're this cartoonist. They're like, this guy's -- they're like, this guy's lying. Like you're lying. And he's, like, "No, I'm an artist."
>> Sara Hart: "I make cartoons."
>> Liam Salcuni: "I make cartoons." Yeah. To your question, Sara, how did Private Snafu turn out? I'm not going to sugarcoat it here. Private Snafu series is guilty of the similarly racially insensitive depictions of Japanese Americans, like the work of Geisel we mentioned earlier. It's happening at the same time as Executive Order 9066, or essentially, Japanese internment. You know, this leads to Japanese internment. We are talking about Japanese Americans having to prove their citizenship and allegiance to the United States. So in the series, that shows up. That's there. I just have to call it how it is. And for folks, Japanese internment, otherwise known as imprisonment. Really, relocation to these --
>> Sara Hart: Yeah. We might do an episode on Executive Order 9066. That was, you know, the federal government did round up and isolate and lock up Japanese Americans, and not just Japanese Americans, Italian Americans.
>> Liam Salcuni: In terms, you know, back to focus. In terms of the series main characters, like who's in the show, who's in these episodes, what's it like, you have Private Snafu who looks like a taller Elmer Fudd.
>> Sara Hart: Awesome.
>> Liam Salcuni: He has this thick Brooklyn accent, a "lights on, no one's home demeanor," and is mostly clumsy and clueless. The message to the recruit again is don't be like Private Snafu. Throughout the series, Private Snafu is occasionally visited by another character who makes an appearance in the show by the name of Technical Fairy, First Class, who is shirtless and wearing short shorts.
>> Sara Hart: This is my favorite character, and oh, wow. Yeah.
>> Liam Salcuni: Yeah, this Technical Fairy, First Class. And he has these, like, little fairy wings too. He smokes a cigar and has this 5 o'clock shadow. He's got these little fairy wings and a wand. It's some humorous and twisted reimagining of the fairy godmother.
>> Sara Hart: It's pretty great.
>> Liam Salcuni: It's hilarious. In the article, Technical Fairy, First Class, author Michael Borewell describes Technical Fairy as a side character that plays the part of a sergeant God fairy, granting Snafu's wishes, shows up, and allows the private to experience the unpleasant aspects of being a sailor, a pilot, and a tankman. The episode ends with Snafu slogging back through his march in the desert, but somehow happier and more content with his situation.
>> Sara Hart: Okay. So Private Snafu is always thinking he wants to be something else that he doesn't want to do or doesn't like whatever job he's been ordered to do. This has got to be pretty relatable to the troops watching.
>> Liam Salcuni: Yeah, totally. And nearly every instance when Technical Fairy shows up, Snafu asks for some ridiculous wish. For example, in the episode "Gripes," Snafu wishes that the troops didn't need to follow orders and complete their chores. So the episode spirals out of control. Technical Fairy grants this wish. It spirals out of control. It's chaos at Snafu's military camp, and the troops are subsequently caught off guard by a Nazi barrage. Moral of the story: sometimes you don't want to do your chores. They might be monotonous and seem pointless, but every person in a platoon has a responsibility, a responsibility that is larger than themselves.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah, that's the negative example storytelling and Geisel, and others use this in a way that made the cartoons not only effective but memorable for the troops who all at some point, probably questioned the utility behind certain menial tasks, or they got tired of their work, got tired of taking orders. And like you said earlier, a lot of these men were drafted and had zero military experience.
>> Liam Salcuni: Totally. Oh, this got me thinking. Another episode called Spies is just as wild. And it too offers some real situations and scenarios the recruits might find themselves in, right? This is World War II. You might be stationed anywhere across the country or around the world, for that matter. The US is really concerned about German and Japanese spies. You never know where a spy might be hiding. You got to keep your, you know, you got to be aware of that. So Snafu is granted leave from the military base. He goes into town and gets belligerently drunk. I mean, the character, who is this small, goofy-looking guy, is falling over, slurring his words, absolutely sloppy. By the way, I'm laughing my butt off. Mainly because, folks, the animation style looks like a classic Looney Tunes cartoon for children. It's like so strange. And then he sees this beautiful woman.
>> Sara Hart: Oh, Jessica Rabbit, cartoony seduction.
>> Liam Salcuni: Totally. Exactly. Yes. And so he spills all of these secrets about where his unit is moving to and from. And so he spills all these secrets about where his unit is moving to and from. The woman then writes a letter directly to Hitler, sending it via passenger pigeon.
>> Sara Hart: Passenger pigeon.
>> Liam Salcuni: There you go. When he returns to camp and leaves for his military assignment, they're later ambushed by the Nazis and blown up. Then Snafu descends into the depths of hell, where Hitler is Satan. Moral of the story: don't lose your cool when you're off the base.
>> Sara Hart: Right. I mean, keep your wits about you, or else you might give away some sensitive information to an enemy informant and be blown straight to hell --
>> Liam Salcuni: Literally.
>> Sara Hart: -- into the fiery grips of the enemy who is also the devil. And it's like all classic fire and brimstone, pitchforks and whatnot.
>> Liam Salcuni: Oh, yeah. Hitler with a pitchfork. Snafu in a cauldron. It's a lot.
>> Sara Hart: Dr. Seuss wrote that.
>> Liam Salcuni: And Dr. Seuss wrote that.
>> Sara Hart: Chuck Jones directed it. Mel Blanc did the voice for Private Snafu. It's all pretty racy.
>> Liam Salcuni: Yeah, insane, right? Oh, but these cartoon shorts, they didn't show up on Saturday morning TV or after the newsreels in the theater. And that's part of how they got away with the over-the-top nature of these cartoons. An article published by the Department of War says that "Geisel and his team believed that the risque subject matter would help keep soldiers' attention. And because the Snafu series was for army personnel only, producers could avoid traditional censorship. Geisel's cartoons were often featured on Army Navy Screen Magazine, a bi-weekly production of several short segments."
>> Sara Hart: They got to skirt the censors. That's like a really big deal at the time.
>> Liam Salcuni: Huge deal. I mean, and talk about censorship, listen to this, folks. The Motion Picture Production Code was a bunch of censorship laws that restricted profanity, violence, sex, and foul language in film. This was done to preserve American morals.
>> Sara Hart: "American morals." That was their stated purpose, right? Preserving American morals, one movie theater at a time. There was this guy, Joseph Breen, who was the head of the Production Code Administration for two decades. So it was his job to enforce the motion picture production code, and for a film to be allowed to play in the United States, it had to get what he called a purity seal.
>> Liam Salcuni: A purity seal? What?
>> Sara Hart: Yeah.
>> Liam Salcuni: And they called it that?
>> Sara Hart: They called it that. It was a purity seal. Yeah, a whole story on its own, that one. Breen, he's a figure.
>> Liam Salcuni: He's a figure. And I also read somewhere too that this production code also made it essentially -- they censored interracial love.
>> Sara Hart: They did. They censored interracial love. They censored any sympathy criminals. So if somebody did something bad, you could be a criminal, and you were allowed to be a criminal according to the Breen code, but only if you got your -- come up on till the end.
>> Liam Salcuni: Retributive justice.
>> Sara Hart: Only if there was retributive justice, only if there was some kind of redemptive violence at the end and like redemptive for society. Yeah, the list of things that they -- any prolonged kissing of any sort, not allowed. There was really a lot going on in those codes.
>> Liam Salcuni: And this thing stood for like 50 years, right?
>> Sara Hart: Well, what we have today is a variation. So the rating system that we have today, the Motion Picture Association rating system that we see with PG-13 and R and --
>> Liam Salcuni: Is the successor.
>> Sara Hart: -- is the successor to what we're talking about here, to the --
>> Liam Salcuni: Motion Picture Production Code.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah.
>> Liam Salcuni: That's bizarre.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah.
>> Liam Salcuni: That's actually blowing my mind right now. That's crazy.
>> Sara Hart: Whoa. Yeah, so okay.
>> Liam Salcuni: Whoa.
>> Sara Hart: This is not a story for today. So we're reaching the end of today's story, which has been the story of Private Snafu. We're here in the SNAFUBAR. We could not talk about Private Snafu at some point. And when we stumbled upon this, it was just pretty hilarious for us that it existed. And the series, its history, its makers, it shows us one more time just how deeply war and the military has influenced American life in ways that we don't always see. Then as now, war is woven into American popular cultural experience, sometimes in ways that we just don't expect.
>> Liam Salcuni: So true. Geisel will go on to influence countless children around the world. His books have been translated into 50 languages. And the Cat in the Hat, Fox and Socks, these aren't war stories. But Dr. Seuss's career points to one of the ways popular media and the military have overlapped and mutually influenced each other. Some of our most beloved children's authors and animators, they got their start in the context of war.
>> Sara Hart: Really. I mean, what a trip. And also, listeners, this episode is an invitation. The Private Snafu series, like we said, is now declassified and available on YouTube. And while it's not appropriate for all ages, it is definitely worth checking out.
>> Liam Salcuni: Thank you for tuning into SNAFUBAR. I'm Liam Salcuni.
>> Sara Hart: And I am Sara Hart.
>> Liam Salcuni: That's all, folks.
>> Sarah Hart: You've been listening to SNAFUBAR, a Cal Poly Humboldt production brought to you by the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. Our team includes me.
>> Jeff Crane: And me.
>> Abigail Smithson: Abigail Smithson, producer.
>> Liam Salcuni: Liam Salcuni, writer, researcher.
>> Roman Sotomayor: Roman Sotomayor, writer, researcher.
>> Abigail Smithson: You can find more information about SNAFUBAR on khsu.org.
Produced at Cal Poly Humboldt.
