Originally published at: "Mars and Beyond" is a 1957 Disney show about life on other planets | Boing Boing
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This all has a very Chuck Jones feel to it…
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This reminds me of one of my favorite books on my “weird” shelf: Men of other planets by Kenneth Heuer, from 1951. The premise, I think, is that Mr. Heuer wanted to write a popular book about the solar system, but didn’t think it was seductive enough. So he speculates on what life would be like on each of them – Jovian gasbags, etc. The illustrations are etchings, and amazing – worth the whole book. They’re uncredited, so I can only assume Heuer did them himself.
A quick search reveals that the illustrations are “Scratch board… by R.T. Crane”. Amazing.
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That “Jolly Horrible Comics” cover looks to be an intentional reference to this specific pulp cover which was recycled in various forms (all three of these were drawn by Alex Schomburg, who wasn’t above tracing his own work to save time):
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If anyone knows a YouTube channel that has all the Wonderful World of Disney shows (hopefully in chronological order), please let me know.
You see, I am/was a Preacher’s Kid, and this show always came on at the same time we had to leave for Sunday night services. 
ETA: Someone sent me a link to a (n unsanctioned) Disney archive. 
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Those scientists on the cover of Jolly Horrible Comics remind me of Pink Floyd’s Teacher. Leave them kids alone!
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Errmergerd! Ert’s Bernder! (the middle one)
Also: Yes, shoot the robot when it is in the water so it falls and crushes the girl and she drowns. Good plan.
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The real scientists weren’t all great folks either. I was hoping to just sit back and enjoy the cool animation but then the episode had to go ahead and ruin it by featuring Wernher von Braun:
I just watched the animated short Netflix documentary Camp Confidential: America’s Secret Nazis last week, which was pretty interesting. The guards at this secret camp in D.C. for high profile Nazi prisoners, such as scientists like von Braun, were mostly Jewish refugees who spoke good German. And then they had to be super nice to the prisoners because we wanted them to come work for us. The (now elderly) former guards that they interviewed in the documentary were not cool with this, but had to follow orders.
Man, I wish we could have built our space program without relying on effin’ Nazis.
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Apple+'s For All Mankind does a really interesting alternate-history take on the “Nazis in NASA” problem.
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Without (Nazi)German scientists and engineers there wouldn´t be a space programme. On both sides of the iron curtain. It is as simple and terrible as that.
Von Braun wasn´t a staunch Nazi, he willingly worked with them, he knowingly used slave labour from concentration camps, and you could call him a war criminal. I personally think that he was a opportunistic, remorseless technocrat.
Actually our world incinerating ICBM system was built before the space program was started. Being ready to destroy anyone you don’t like is the real America First thinking.
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He was a member of the SS, oversaw two of the worst labor camps in the war, and was responsible for the murder and torture of thousands of slaves. He was a Nazi and a monster, full stop. The excuse “but he didn’t really mean it!” holds no water. Neither does “but the Moon!” He wasn’t solely responsible for getting us to the Moon. The rockets would have been built with or without him and his Nazi cabal.
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Bullshit. There’s no doubt that the US and USSR were able to rapidly advance their technologies and take advantage of earlier Nazi rocket research with the help of the Nazi scientists, but it’s not like the Nazis were the only ones with any ideas about rocketry. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena CA has its roots in Cal Tech rocket experiments that started in the early 1930s done by scientists like Theodore von Kármán who hated Nazis:
We would have got there eventually.
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Don’t forget Robert Goddard, our own American rocket pioneer, and inventor of the liquid fueled rocket. Before movies had sound.
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Middle picture: Bender’s pervy cousin.
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He knowingly used concentration camp inmate slave labor. Conditions at Peenemunde and Dora were horrific. He developed terror weapons with no strategic or tactical value. He was Nazi enough.
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Yeah, there’s no such thing as “just dipping your toes in Nazism.”
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He managed to design a weapon that killed (roughly) 5,000 to 8,000 people when it was used. And 20,000 to 25,000 while it was built.
But hey, at least he wasn’t a stinkin’ commie, right?
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he willingly worked with them
In other words – given his contributions to their cause – he was an extremely effective Nazi.
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