The Secret Weapon

Last night I watched the last 2 episodes of the new French historical epic, Apocalypse. A major work that is a history of the 2nd World War. It was produced by the France2 Network and diirected by Isabelle Clarks. It contained many hours of never before seen footage from private and commercial archives. Much of the footage was colorized in a fashion that only accentuated the feeling of horrific reality and haunting nostalgia. 6 Hours of course is not enough time to really tell the stories, subplots and human drama of this near apocalypse of our civilized world, but they managed to show how the war was actually a world even. The concurrent events all over the world were presented inan interrealated fashion which gave a clearer understanding of what had happened and why.

I can only give my most enthusiastic praise to this series and hoe that it is shown all over the world on tewlevision and as a teaching aid. It did have 6.6 million viewers in France.

In a remarkable serendipidous coincidence, I looked at the blog of HistoryMike in Toledo later that evening. While I was watching Apocalypse, I remembered one of my favorite Warner Bros. WW2 propaganda cartoons by the genius, Bob Clampett, Gremlins From The Kremlin!

I looked at mIkes Blog and he had posted a WW2 propaganda cartoon called TOKIO JOKIO and asked about the violent racist content and the context. Actually, I find that the material produced at this time was a truly cathartic release from the horrors of the reality the world was facing hourly. America was able to laugh, dance and sing in a way it had never done before as a survival mechanism which has always served it well and really was a big part of the effort to win WW2!

So, here is Gremlins From The Kremlin, a part of Americas greatest secret weapon, humor!