Three years earlier, Geisel had been at work on his fourth children’s book, “Horton Hatches the Egg,” when a news flash on the radio announced that Paris had fallen to the Nazis. Having dabbled in political cartoons during the 1930s, Geisel felt compelled to put his projects for young readers aside and brandish his pen to fire satirical shots at Adolf Hitler and American isolationists such as aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh who wanted to keep the country out of the war in Europe. “While Paris was being occupied by the clanking tanks of the Nazis and I was listening on my radio, I found that I could no longer keep my mind on drawing pictures of Horton The Elephant. I found myself drawing pictures of Lindbergh The Ostrich,” he said.
Geisel wrote rhyme-studded scripts and contributed to storyboards of the cartoon, which was considerably more risqué than even the looniest of Looney Tunes (although the acronym that inspired the character’s name was sanitized to “Situation normal all FOULED up”). Since “Private Snafu” was released to only a military audience, it was not subject to the censors upholding the Motion Picture Production Code and could feature mild profanity, occasional off-color jokes and double entendres such as the hazards of “booby traps” posed by buxom spies. One episode even depicted a mosquito named “Malaria Mike” taking aim at Private Snafu’s bare bottom as he bathed in a river.
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