Private Snafu

Hi Folks! Welcome back to SNAFUBAR. We’re getting animated today! We are touching on a topic that’s close to home, or rather, close to the name of our podcast. Today, we are getting into the Private SNAFU series, a top secret animated series funded by the military during World War II. Your eyes are not deceiving you, this was a real, top secret project funded by the military. And the strange part is, many famous names in animation like Mel Blanc and Theodore Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, were a part of it. Join us as we explore the history behind the comical and strange Private SNAFU series. SNAFUBAR is hosted by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Sara Hart⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Chair of the Department of Applied Humanities at Cal Poly Humboldt. We have a guest host today, Liam Salcuni, who teaches history classes at Cal Poly Humboldt. SNAFUBAR is regularly co-hosted by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jeff Crane ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠who is an Environmental Historian and Dean of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at Cal Poly Humboldt. Research and writing for the show is done by Liam Salcuni and Roman Sotomayor SNAFUBAR is produced by Abigail Smithson and brought to you by the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at Cal Poly Humboldt. Works Cited: Audrey Amidon, “The US Military Goes to Hollywood: Behind the Scenes with the First Motion Picture Unit,” 2013. CenSoc WWII Army Enlistment Dataset Codebook, 2023. Classified Cartoons: Private SNAFU Christopher Klein, When Dr. Seuss Went to War,” 2016. David Vergun, “First Peacetime Draft Enacted Just Before World War II,” 2020. Mark David Kaufman, “Ignorant Armies: Private SNAFU Goes to War,” 2015. Phillip Knell, “Suess on Film,” 2016. Peter Zablocki, “Private SNAFU,” 2025. The National WWII Museum: New Orleans, “Training the American GI.” US Army Heritage and Education Center, “World War II Core Area.” Paul Dickson, “OCTOBER 16, 1940—UNCLE SAM’S GOT YOUR NUMBER, GUYS,” 2020. Susan Thompson, “Communicating and training through film: an Army Signal Corps innovation,” 2022. Theodor Seuss Geisel & Edward Connery Lathem, The Beginnings of Dr. Seuss: An Informal Reminiscence, 2010. National Parks Service, “The American Homefront and the Buildup to World War II: The Selective Service Act and the Arsenal of Democracy.”