The dark story behind Bambi, the book Hitler banned

The extent of Walt Disney’s grasp of the natural world remains unclear. After the Austrian author Felix Salten sold the rights to his 1923 bestseller Bambi for a paltry $1,000, Walt is reputed to have suggested myriad unhelpful plot additions to the simple story. ‘Suppose we have Bambi step on an ant hill,’ he offered at one script meeting, ‘and then cut away to see all the damage he’s done to the ant civilisation?’

His writers knew better. The resulting 1942 forest fantasia, which leaps in swooning bounds from one extravagantly coloured and orchestrated natural history lesson to another, was nominated for three Oscars, and by 2005 had grossed $102 million.

The original author did less well out of his gambolling creation. Salter never saw a penny of the Disney movie’s global success and died alone, forgotten, in exile. He had fled to neutral Switzerland from his homeland of Austria because — as it may surprise some to learn — Bambi, along with Salten’s other works, was on a list of books banned by the Nazis in 1935. For, as this elegant, uncompromising new translation by the American academic Jack Zipes (with suitably shadowy illustrations by Alenka Sottler) makes clear, it is not really a children’s book at all.

Salten’s basic plot — the bittersweet Bildungsroman of a young deer — will be familiar to fans of the movie. The book begins enchantingly enough, with Bambi’s mother educating him on the difference between a butterfly and flower. Bambi develops from naive fawn to grand old prince of the woods, coming of age through the rites of love and loss, teaching himself, and us, about the ever-changing natural world as he does.

The eponymous deer is not the only character Disney fans may recognise either: there is Faline, the skittish object of his affections; a harrumphing screech owl to dispense aged wisdom; and plenty of romping squirrels.