YMMV / Peace on Earth

• Alternative Character Interpretation: While the short wants you to believe humanity caused its own extinction through war, it's more likely that the ruined village the animals discover was evacuated when World War I broke out, destroyed during combat and abandoned afterwards once a ceasefire had been reached and the residents had returned to find it destroyed and the animals just assumed humanity went the way of the dodo since no one, to their knowledge, ever returned. Since the story is being told through the perspective of a character, the part about the last two soldiers could also just be an embellishment. There are also historical basis for abandoned towns and buildings being reclaimed by nature, such as No-Man's-Land, Detroit's Packard plant, and Chernobyl.
• Award Snub: This short lost an Academy Award to the Silly Symphonies short "The Ugly Duckling". Supposedly. No record has been found, despite fans' best efforts. Thankfully, it got better awards later on, like being number 40 on Jerry Beck's list of the 50 Greatest Cartoons.
• Fridge Brilliance:
  • "The flat-footed people started shooting at the bucktoothed people ..." A squirrel would likely only recognize German soldiers with fallen arches shooting up British soldiers with bad teeth; and be totally ignorant of the greater political story behind the conflict. Not to mention misinterpreting a local battle that devastated the region as a world-wide apocalypse.
  • "The vegetarians began to fight the meat-eating people..." He might well have seen soldiers in the Indian division of the British army eating only vegetarian dishes before shooting at the Germans in retaliation (Germany is known for its meat dishes and sausages). Again, ignorant of the political context behind the conflict, the squirrel only saw people killing each other over dietary choice.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The film is set in a world where mankind went extinct due to war with animals rebuilding society from the ashes left by humanity. Within ten years of the short's release, the Cold War would be underway and nuclear weapons came into being, and the idea that the next major global conflict could, at the very least, destroy modern civilization became a serious possibility, even becoming a reccuring topic in works like Threads.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Ironically, humans being replaced by other species, after the former having gone extinct, has become a reccuring topic in the Speculative Biology genre.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The war and the humans. Not to mention the music playing over that part.
  • The last man. After he's been shot, you have the joy of watching him slowly sink into the mud, his hand slowly reaching out.
• Retroactive Recognition: The grandpa squirrel is voiced by a then still unknown Mel Blanc.
• Signature Scene: The last man on Earth, mortally wounded, struggling to lift his rifle, shooting dead his assailant, and then slowly dying as his body sinks into the water-logged trench is one of the most morose depictions of war violence committed to animation and is horridly grim even compared to the rest of the war scenes.
• Spiritual Successor: A short story by Ray Bradbury (and the 1984 Russian film of it) There Will Come Soft Rains does the same thing, but with an automated house instead of furry critters.
• Tear Jerker:
  • The scene of the last two men is just depressing. They have absolutely nothing to fight for at this point, and it seems the only reason they carry on is because they have nothing left to live for as they know that they are the only remaining humans left.
  • While the squirrel grandpa finds humans monstrous he laments their inability to solve their differences peacefully.
• Values Dissonance: When this cartoon was released in December of 1939, much of the world was already at war, and Hitler's persecution of Jews in the Nazi-controlled portions of Europe was swiftly moving towards full-on genocide (Kristallnacht having taken place in 1938^however...While the Nazis' antisemitism and dogma was well-documented in the years leading up to the war, it wasn't until late in the war, specifically 1944-1945, when Western Allied forces began to liberate German "work camps" that widespread evidence of their true natures was revealed. Most people who asked were told that only criminals, sexual deviants, and the violently insane were sent there, with the Nazis conveniently playing fast and loose with who was considered "criminals, sexual deviants, and the violently insane", and anyone who tried to ask further questions tended to get a "visit" from the Gestapo and subsequently disappear. While there were reports throughout the war from escaped survivors and the Resistance, either the reports were ignored or Allied intelligence was not in a position to do anything about them. Suffice to say, it was very unlikely that anyone involved in the making of the short had any idea of what was going on in Europe.). The United States was still neutral, and in retrospect the cartoon can be seen as a call for continued neutrality, a call for America to stay out of Europe's war. Today, America eventually joining the fight against Hitler in late 1941 (although its entry into the war was because of the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor) is generally viewed as a good thing.
• Values Resonance: Despite the complicated and unfortunate timing involved regarding World War II, the cartoon's anti-war message was still relevant enough in the 1950s to warrant a Cold War remake calling for nuclear disarmament.

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