FliegerBunnies
The continuing saga of Bunnies aT War on the Eastern Front...
There was a point in time back in the 40s when the Rooskies were our "Fightin' Russian Allies". Then they went on to become the Despicable Red Menace of the Cold War... A few years later, following their governmental reorganization, we kind'a got chummy again - and now our current administration is talking about Nuking them... No wonder the Rooskies get so irritable! I mean, can't we ever make up our own minds..?? But for now, we celebrate that point in time, when through Russian Valor and American Lend Lease - the Glorious Red Army stomped all over the Wehrmacht, the Luftwaffe and anyone else who got between them and Berlin..!
Of the somewhat checkered history of Bunnies aT War comics, perhaps the oddest chapter was written on the eastern front. In 1941, Operation Barbarossa had converted the USSR from co-belligerent status to that of victims of the German blitzkrieg. While Joseph Stalin, always a crafty negotiator, had deftly switched sides and the Russians were soon to become the mightiest of the allies fighting in Europe...
Yes, with the Rooskies now aligned with Britain, America’s lend-lease shipments began making their way across the wide pacific and through the even wilder Murmansk run to Soviet ports... In fact, long before Pearl Harbor in late 41 and the US getting into the shooting war, US equipment was bolstering both the British in North Africa and the Russian Red Army on the Eastern Front as they strove with the Axis powers for survival..!
Exactly how or why the first shipments of Bunnies aT War made it to Russia is now lost to history, but they first show up mentioned in the unit histories during the siege of Moscow, where the Rooskies apparently used bundles of the comix in place of sandbags for trench abutments... It was noted that reprimands were issued to a number of infantrymen who broke the bundles open to look at the colored pictures. A few of the men apparently clamed the bundles had been burst during an artillery bombardment - these were let off “easy” and allowed to be in the first wave of the next counterattack... With consequences such as this, it’s perhaps not surprising that Russian readership of BAW at first picked up slowly...
Bunnies aT War’s big breakthrough with the Rooskies came several months later at Stalingrad, where a Russian truck convoy was cut off by a German pincher movement. In desperation, several truckloads of BAW were liberally dosed with kerosene and driven blazing into the Panzer spearhead... The resulting chaos was monumental, the German spearhead collapsed and in the retreat much strategic ground was recovered, stabilizing the Russian salient and enabling them to keep their perilous grip on the ruins of Stalingrad...
Not long after that, apparently some of the “Sandbagged” bundles of BAW were burst during an artillery bombardment prefacing a German thrust... The battle reports mention vast clouds of singed pages drifting back over the advancing German columns, which soon slowed then halted entirely as the troops scrambled about collecting all the pictures of scantily clad bunnies that they could get their Aryan mitts on... this reprieve gave the Rooskies time to mount a counter attack which drove the Germans back...
Glowing reports from several commissars, on the stunning usefulness of BAW, were apparently what lead Stalin himself to demand even more and increased shipments during the Teheran conference... Soon whole Liberty Ships stuffed to the gunnels with BAW comix were being shipped to the Rooskies. The ultimate fate of most of these comix is unknown and with typical belligerent indifference the Russian historians aren’t saying... But some news of this must have gotten back the BAW staff, for it wasn’t long before a new Russian Bunny, Iliyana Cuteyinska was introduced among the regular cast of female characters. Though as far as our researches have been able to determine, no specifically Russian issues were produced, nor does there seem to have been any effort to translate the comics into Cyrillic... But then, given the nature of the story illustration, probably little translation was needed in any case...
Still Iliyana Cuteyinska's popularity continued to grow, there are reports of large banners of her on display at the 1943 Party Congress and even a rare, somewhat blurry photo of Stalin posing next to a large poster of proletarian Bunny...
As the conflict escalated, further uses for BAW were experimented with. Some copies were reportedly stuffed into the warhead cases of the Katusyhas - the truck mounted rocket launchers, sometimes referred to as "Stalin Organs". Immediately preceding an attack, these rockets loaded with BAW were detonated in aerial bursts over the German lines. In the ensuing scramble of troupers grasping for the singed pages the Rooskies would press home their attack - often with great success...
While in the Baltic, a less successful experiment took place - Code named: "Spud Boats", Several elderly steamers, intended as decoys for German U-boats, were packed with bundles of the comics lining their inner hulls - in the hopes that these would lessen the impact of torpedoes while adding flotation to the Steamers during an attack... A modicum of experimentation would have demonstrated that a bundle of comics has similar floatation characteristics as that of your average brick... This experiment was not successful...
Similarly, due to the shortage of kapok, some life vests were stuffed with shredded BAW pages. When Soviet sailors learned of this, many of them began breaking open their life vests in the hopes of finding bits and pieces of the comics... This became such a problem that severe reprimands needed to be issued and eventually the BAW stuffed life vests were with-drawn. Its probably just as well, for any sailor needing the use of one of these ersatz kapok vests would likely have sunk like the proverbial brick...
Not to be deterred by a few setbacks, the Rooskies continued to find novel uses for the BAW comics, in fact, even when there were none available they found ways to make use of their absence... Shortly before the battle of Kursk (the greatest tank battle of all time) Soviet agent-provocateurs spread rumors among the German ranks of huge shipments of BAW stockpiled behind the lines, awaiting distribution as prizes, following the successful completion of the battle... During the battle, its said that an armored column was detoured in a vain attempt to locate these notional comic dumps, thus adding unnecessary dispersal to the German attack and aiding the defending Rooskies, who of course, ultimately won the day...
However, this does bring us to perhaps the oddest twist in the BAW histories... for if the Comics were popular among the Rooskies, captured copies proved even more popular with troops of the German Wehrmacht. In fact, a brisk black market trade sprung up with tattered copies bringing phenomenal prices in ersatz cigarettes and other commodities...
Somewhere around this point the German high command began to take notice. It was apparently felt that it was detrimental to moral for copies of BAW to be circulating among the troops, as in every story bevies of sexy bunnies and kittens in allied uniform were thrashing the Axis troops into heaps of disheveled refuge, worse yet, often the German officials themselves were characterized and held up to ridicule... Perhaps the most grievous example was in an issue where caricatures of Hitler and Goring were pelted with rotten melons then strapped to tank treads and driven through a field of cow pies... Unfortunately we don’t know exactly what was done or said at the German strategy meetings, but apparently the problem was discussed in the highest circles... what can be presumed from what happened next, is that they must’ve deemed it counterproductive to issue any decrees or bans on the black market comics as that likely would have only increased demand and helped to publicize the offensive material... Instead, apparently what was decided on, was to flood the market with copies of their own knock off version of BAW. Though somewhere directions must’ve gotten crossed, because what eventually was produced, “Flieger Bunnies at Attaken” purportedly written by Herman Goebbels himself, wouldn’t have deceived the most square headed of infantrymen..!
Few examples of this exceedingly rare comic still exist, but one copy that somehow ended up at the US Army Museum at Fort Bragg, Georgia, depicts a fat Vaugnarian bunny on the cover knocking down a British spitfire by the volume of her voice... This in fact was: Brunhilda Von Bunny, In the story, supposedly scripted by Goebbels, she stomped on British and Russian invaders, ran them through with her Spear of Destiny and also crushed poorly traced versions of some of the BAW regular cast, with her massive butt...
Ersatz copies of FliegerBunnies were apparently distributed to the German troops, but it was such a mind boggling failure that even the SS couldn't stomach it!! What’s more, Instead of its hoped for effect, FliegerBunnies so demoralized some Wehrmacht troupers that they deserted to the American lines while asking for the real thing...
Briefly the Luftwaffe experimented with dropping bundles of FliegerBunnies on the advancing Russian troops - but other than flattening a few unlucky infantrymen, it did nothing to slow down the Rooskies, who reportedly used them for toilet paper...
Eventually the Germans gave up on the project and sent all the remaining copies to the Italians where they were fed to goats...
FliegerBunnies was arguably either the worst comic ever published or at the very least, the most misguided... Even Ronald Reagan at Fort Roach, didn't manage a worse or more inept misuse of the cartoon format - Though he tried...
Meanwhile, the Rooskies' experiments in comic warfare lead to even greater demands for more and ever more copies of BAW, ‘til eventually the sources of supply began to dry up... In fact, it is supposed that one of the reasons, copies of Bunnies aT War are so rare today, is because that so many tons of them were shipped to the Eastern Front, only to vanish forever, somewhere in the vast stretches of the Soviet Union...
In any case, the American and British high command never seemed to fully understand the implications of comic warfare - especially the British, who were generally a war or two behind in strategy anyway... But if the Rooskies wanted BAW comics then the British soon determined that they must have them too (even if they didn’t understand why) and anything the Brits wanted, the US Commanders wanted more of... There’s a report of Patton and Montgomery getting into a screaming, scratching match over distribution of comics to their respective troops... whether this is apocryphal or not, it does seem certain, that when over demand began to dry up all supplies of the comics, it was the field marshal who proposed a “solution”...
“Why not send the bloody Rooskies some other Punch or Judy or something, I say, they won’t know the difference, they can’t even read the silly things.” Montgomery is reported as exclaiming...
As a result, wheels of industry ground into motion as FDR sent over huge shipments of Andy Panda, Raggedy Ann and Little Lulu, all of which so infuriated the Russians and the Germans that the entire program of warfare by comix had to be reconsidered... "Machen again mit der hassenboobers, or ve ain't retreading no more!" was the message received from the irate enemy... "De Any Panda is making good borscht, bot de Leedle Lulu is too moch bland," was the response of the Russian troops...
Following the cessation of hostilities, Comic Warfare was banned by a specific clause of the Geneva Convention (though no one seems to recall exactly why) Perhaps simply to prevent any further atrocities such as FliegerBunnies from ever again seeing print...
For Further refference, See Also: