Let’s face it. While Disney has had considerable influence on the world of entertainment, there’s not a lot that they’ve done to change world history. Practically the only examples I know of are believed to come from today’s film. According to Leonard Maltin, at least, it was when Roosevelt and Churchill watched this at the Quebec Conference that FDR agreed in the power of aerial assault and authorized all-out bombing of Germany. Further, there’s a fictional bomb mentioned at one point that sparked interest in British military forces and was created under the name of the “Disney bomb.”

The first chunk of this was played off and on after the film’s 1940s theatrical release, but the rest of it languished in the Vault for decades. The first section is a basic history of flight, focusing for rather obvious reasons on the use of airplanes as tools of combat. After that, the delightfully named Alexander Nikolaievich Prokofiev de Seversky, a Russian immigrant and aeronautical pioneer, takes over, explaining why air power is absolutely crucial to defeating the Axis.

I’m far from an expert on the history of aviation presented here, though I am aware of history enough to know that the Nazis did not overcome the Maginot Line through superiority of aircraft! But it’s interesting that James Agee’s review of the film pointed out that we were being won over by a single person’s view and that we’d all better hope they were right. It’s not the kind of review you’d necessarily expect for a propaganda film, but then, how much would you expect a propaganda film like this to be reviewed in the first place?

And make no mistake; this is a propaganda film. This is very much intended to convince. This is cited in some places as the first true educational film, and I can’t really speak to that without a whole lot more research that I’m not going to take the time to do, but I’d argue only the first section, the one I saw as a child, is purely educational anyway. Disney wants de Seversky to sway you. He wants you to be persuaded that the best way to defeat the Axis is through lots of airplanes—and not just any airplanes, but specifically bombers with gun turrets. The point of the movie is to convince.

Of course, I am seeing it at a perspective of decades past the events it is trying to influence. I know that the Allies did indeed bomb the Axis into submission; I know about the last, terrible bomb that Disney did not and could not. I sit in 2017 and watch 1942 examine what a few men believed were the best choices for preventing a horrific evil—and I don’t even think they knew how evil—from spreading over the entire world. And their method worked. Was it the best method? Possibly, but goodness knows I am not the person to say so for sure.

Walt rushed this one into production. RKO didn’t want to distribute it, because they didn’t think it would make any money—and indeed the studio took until 1945 to pay off the debts of its war films. United Artists took on the distribution. Astoundingly, the film’s only Oscar nomination was for Best Original Score. It’s not even the best-known of Disney’s war production, much less the best-known of the various propaganda films of the era. Still, it’s quite possible it changed the face of the war; perhaps this mouse kills fascists.