This is a beautifully-made and quite poignant animated short film, but while no one can doubt the sincerity of the sentiment, it reduces the discussion of war to a level of simplification unfitting for the subject. To diminish such a topic to a five-minute short, and to aim it at children using anthropomorphic squirrels (or mice, in the 1950 remake "Good Will to Men") is the essence of propaganda.
In 1939, Europe was torn by Nazi aggression, but the United States had yet to enter the war. Many people of good conscience were arguing that the U.S. should remain neutral, essentially ceding all of Europe to the tender mercies of Adolf Hitler. It was in this climate that "Peace on Earth" was made, arguing that both sides in a conflict are morally equivalent, since both have violated the commandment "Thou Shalt Not Kill" (which is more correctly translated as "Thou Shalt Not Commit Murder", a very different thing.) It's a good thing that minds of more mature reasoning decided that it would be very necessary for us to fight the Axis powers.
"Peace on Earth" comes from the same sort of personality that states in all earnestness that "war never solves anything" while conveniently ignoring the many things that war has indeed solved: tyranny, oppression, slavery, genocide, fascism, Nazism, and (in the cold war) Soviet communism; the elimination of totalitarian Islamist extremism is still underway.
Peace is not just the absence of war, but the presence of justice, and there are some things for which is is worth while to fight or even die. Diplomacy is of course preferable to armed conflict, but if honorable goals are abandoned in the course of diplomatic negotiation, then the result is simply defeat by a different means, and the justice that was desired was perhaps never deserved.
In 1939, Europe was torn by Nazi aggression, but the United States had yet to enter the war. Many people of good conscience were arguing that the U.S. should remain neutral, essentially ceding all of Europe to the tender mercies of Adolf Hitler. It was in this climate that "Peace on Earth" was made, arguing that both sides in a conflict are morally equivalent, since both have violated the commandment "Thou Shalt Not Kill" (which is more correctly translated as "Thou Shalt Not Commit Murder", a very different thing.) It's a good thing that minds of more mature reasoning decided that it would be very necessary for us to fight the Axis powers.
"Peace on Earth" comes from the same sort of personality that states in all earnestness that "war never solves anything" while conveniently ignoring the many things that war has indeed solved: tyranny, oppression, slavery, genocide, fascism, Nazism, and (in the cold war) Soviet communism; the elimination of totalitarian Islamist extremism is still underway.
Peace is not just the absence of war, but the presence of justice, and there are some things for which is is worth while to fight or even die. Diplomacy is of course preferable to armed conflict, but if honorable goals are abandoned in the course of diplomatic negotiation, then the result is simply defeat by a different means, and the justice that was desired was perhaps never deserved.