Shull, Michael S. and David E. Wilt. Doing Their Bit: Wartime American Animated Short Films 1939-1945. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2004.

Chapter 8 of Shull and Wilt's book describes the history of Private Snafu and his role as an educational tool. GIs could relate to Snafu, yet did not want to be him. Private Snafu was goofy-looking, physically unimposing, ignorant, and disgruntled young soldier: "a diametrical opposite of the handsome soldier portrayed in Hollywood films." Private Snafu proved to be the transition between the sanitized training videos and the harsh realities of war.

Wartime US military videos often downplayed the gory traumatic injuries and death of war. The Private Snafu series, being an animation, could portray GI death and ease soldiers into reality that disobedience and noncompliance would lead to death. After all, animations lived in the borders of fantasy and reality, so death, capture, or pain were unreal, even comical to the viewer. Such has to be the outlet for the anxieties the soldiers felt. It had to allow soldiers to desensitize them from the senseless destruction around them. In many ways, the transformation of Private Snafu mirrors the transformation of every GI. In the beginning (the first few episodes), Private Snafu is the complete idiot who disregards authority, but by the end, becomes a quirky member of the unit that gets the job done.

Shull provides an in-depth analysis of individual "Private Snafu" films and their collective role in war time film history.  The "Private Snafu" series represents the first animated wartime character and deviated both thematically and stylistically from other films of its time.  For example, its stories are told from the eye of the heterosexual male with many references to women as objects of desire in ways that the Production Code would not have tolerated had the films been released to the general public.  Another transgression from other films of its time was the inclusion of “snafu” as a four-letter word of sorts because it is an acronym for "Situation Normal All F*cked Up."  Furthermore, unlike other propaganda films which included abundant elements of patriotism such as the American flag and demonizing images of the enemy, these images were few and far between in “Private Snafu” (except in the Nazis as the Devil in "Spies" and the fanged Japanese caricature in another short, "The Goldbricks" (1943)).  

Shull’s analysis demonstrates that although the character of Private Snafu represents the polar opposite of how an ideal soldier looks and how he should behave, his very deviation from societal norms made him appealing and easy to relate to, which were important in serving the needs of effective propaganda.   In addition, his lack of companionship (Private Snafu appears without a sidekick) makes salient an existential question which many soldiers often faced in a psychological confrontation with their sense of self in military life.

Shull, Michael S. and David E. Wilt. Doing Their Bit: Wartime American Animated Short Films 1939-1945. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2004.

Chapter 8 of Shull and Wilt's book describes the history of Private Snafu and his role as an educational tool. GIs could relate to Snafu, yet did not want to be him. Private Snafu was goofy-looking, physically unimposing, ignorant, and disgruntled young soldier: "a diametrical opposite of the handsome soldier portrayed in Hollywood films." Private Snafu proved to be the transition between the sanitized training videos and the harsh realities of war.

Wartime US military videos often downplayed the gory traumatic injuries and death of war. The Private Snafu series, being an animation, could portray GI death and ease soldiers into reality that disobedience and noncompliance would lead to death. After all, animations lived in the borders of fantasy and reality, so death, capture, or pain were unreal, even comical to the viewer. Such has to be the outlet for the anxieties the soldiers felt. It had to allow soldiers to desensitize them from the senseless destruction around them. In many ways, the transformation of Private Snafu mirrors the transformation of every GI. In the beginning (the first few episodes), Private Snafu is the complete idiot who disregards authority, but by the end, becomes a quirky member of the unit that gets the job done.