“So I wrote about Walt Disney in a book about fast food because Disney greatly influenced how McDonald’s marketed its food to children – and that helped change the health of children throughout the world. Some of the things I learned were truly bizarre, like the fact that Heinz Haber, one of Disney’s principal scientific advisers, had been involved with medical experiments performed on concentration camp victims in Nazi Germany.
Haber later hosted a Disney documentary singing the praises of nuclear power: Our Friend The Atom. That fact seemed incredibly bizarre – and yet on some level it also seemed relevant. It made sense, when you’re talking about systems that worship uniformity, conformity, and centralized control.” — Interview with Eric Schlosser, in Karl Weber, ed., Food, Inc.: How Industrial Food is Making us Sicker, Fatter and Poorer – And What You Can Do About It (New York: Public Affairs, 2009), pp. 9-10.
“Walt had accompanied [Gunther] Lessing to American Nazi party meetings and rallies.” — Steven Watts, The Magic Kingdom: Walt Disney and the American Way of Life (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1997), p. 68.
[According to one of Disney’s animators, Arthur Babbitt,] “On more than one occasion, I observed Walt Disney and Gunther Lessing there, along with a lot of other prominent Nazi-affiliated Hollywood personalities. Disney was going to meetings all the time. I was invited to the homes of several prominent actors and musicians, all of whom were actively working for the American Nazi party.” …
Walt was also committed to the ‘America First’ movement and became one of Hollywood’s most active prewar isolationists. Under Lessing’s tutelage, Disney discovered how the passions and power of political activism could be used as weapons for personal gain. And later on, for revenge. — Marc Eliot, Walt Disney: Hollywood’s Dark Prince (New York: Carol Publications, 1993), pp. 120-121.
Wow.
Honestly, I had no idea. In America, the very name Disney conjures up images of wholesomeness, family values, family home evenings, Mom and Pop and the kids, the 1950’s, White towns and white picket fences, G-rated movies, cartoons for little children, and good, decent, morally uplifting, non-degraded entertainment for all ages.
Guess there was more to that story than that! I must be ignorant, as I have never heard of this side to good old Walt.
I am acquainted with Mr. Schlosser, a well-known author, as I talked to him on the phone once. I can’t say it was a pleasant conversation. I have no idea what the guy’s problem was, but he seemed to be one of those folks who is earning fame and fortune in Modern America, and once people rise that high in the tower, they can be pretty hard to talk to on a one to one level, that is if they will even talk to you at all, as you know they are so “busy” all the time.
I do like his writing though.
