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.
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.