Kornhaber, Donna. "Animating the War: The First World War and Children's Cartoons in America." The Lion and the Unicorn 31.2 (2007): 132-146.

Animators of the post-Great War period, usually with experience in the front or service of military firm service, cast the war as fantastical, even comic adventures. This medium presented a delicate balance between reality and fantasy.  This change was pivotal in that generation of children and had effects into the second world war. In addition, animation became a more direct and more easily produced medium for training and technical reels. This new breed of animation did not shy away from "adult" themes such as death, but applied a new logic adapted for children. The plasmaticness of form depicted in Bosko the Doughboy shows how even inanimate objects can "die", but this fantastical death cancels the underlying carnage. The sheer amount of deaths, both of animate and inanimate objects, negates death as being scary.

This desensitization of the post-Great War generation through animation is the same generation that would fight in the next world war. The problem with live cinema was that it was not genuine and actively tried to portray to soldiers a reality too different from their own.  With animation, the struggle had always been between reality and fantasy.  In essence, it was not supposed to be real.  Animation can portray and neutralize the terrors of war, since it was fantastical and realistic.  It primed soldiers to accept animation as comic, even with the insidious propaganda.