the shocking true story of Bambi

Gunned down and burned by the Nazis: the shocking true story of Bambi

Mar 23 2023

Bambi, the iconic fawn is this year celebrating a very significant birthday, it being a century since the German imprint Ullstein Verlag first published Bambi: A Life in the Woods. Written by Felix Salten, an Austro-Hungarian, the coming-of-age novel would go on to be banned by the Nazis before eventually winding up in the hands of Walt Disney and becoming the animated children’s film many know and love.

Perhaps the most crucial difference between Salten’s novel and Disney’s film is that the former was aimed at adults, initially appearing as a serialisation in the Viennese newspaper Neue Freie Presse, before being published as a book the following year.

Many readers of the Salten’s original interpret it as not about animals but about Jews or other minority groups. This was also how the Nazi’s interpreted it. In 1935, both of Salten’s Bambi novels were banned and burned by the Nazis, who viewed them as Jewish propaganda. Because of this, few first editions of Bambi remain, despite it having been a bestseller. Salten and his wife, unsafe in Austria, fled following the German annexation in 1938, moving to Switzerland where the writer remained for the rest of his life.

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