10. US Army training films were created in response to a literacy problem among the troops
As the draft drew more and more of America’s young men into the military, a problem with literacy levels among the troops arose. Many of the young men lacked fundamental reading skills, with some having had minimal schooling. To address the problem, the military created a series of film shorts, which were animated, and a series of comic books to reinforce the lessons of the films. The cartoons were intended to be humorous, somewhat risqué at times, and were classified documents intended for distribution within the military only. They featured a character created by Frank Capra named Private Snafu, the name being a long standing military acronym meaning Situation Normal – All Fouled Up in the cleaner of its two meanings. The other substituted a commonly used expletive for the word starting with the letter f.
Most of the series was written by Dr. Seuss, in his standing as Captain Theodore Geisel. The series introduced new recruits and draftees to military life and situations, protocols, and expectations. Private Snafu, as written by Geisel, became an example of what not to do. He was presented as stupid, obtuse, and lazy in some of the films, several of which end in his own demise, demonstrating to the audience the danger of not doing whatever the army told them to do. Snafu thus lives up to his name in each of the films, demonstrating that the situation may well be fouled up, but it is thus because of the failure of the hapless GI to complete his assigned duty in the proper manner. The films were among the most popular of all the training films presented to the troops.