This article focuses on the animated depictions of the First World War, and examines the changes in these depictions of the conflict with time. Before America joined, the cartoons showed the conflict as a setting for adventure and larger-than-life characters. After the US joined, cartoons attempted to present sanitized views of the war, often going without references to actual events at all, or instead acted as documentaries aimed at adult audiences. It was after the war, however, when animation provided the perfect medium for "recasting" the events of the war in imaginative ways which stretched reality. These changes from a real to fantastical and magical view of the world are what fueled the view, and eventual marketing, of cartoons as entertainment specifically for children.

Many of Warner Brothers' series launched around the time of the Silly Symphonies, possibly to compete with the series' success, were among the realistic depictions of the war. They included Felix Turns the Tide and Bosko the Doughboy. In the former, grim battle scenes and relatively graphic imagery conveyed the "damage, confusion, and carnage" of the conflict. In the latter, while Bosko has a relatively elastic body, this fantasy element cannot save him from injury, as compared to other, earlier cartoons that show war as "consequence-free.

This article could be useful in my thesis in supporting the view of the Silly Symphonies as moral, simple, and dream-like, as compared to the brashness of Warner Brothers animated shorts where the humor lay in obviousness and reality. It also provides extensive fuel for comparison of the Disney works of the time to those of Warner Brothers and other studios, and puts all of these films in the context of wartime media, examining the differing morals and tones with which these underlying messages were presented.

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.