A German brass band (including Hirohito on sousaphone and Mussolini on bass drum) marches through a small German town (where everything, including the clouds and trees, is decorated with the Nazi swastika), singing the virtues of the Nazi doctrine. Passing by Donald’s house, they poke him out of bed with a bayonet to get ready for work. Because of wartime rationing, his breakfast consists of stale bread, coffee brewed from a single hoarded coffee bean, and a spray that tastes like bacon and eggs. The band shoves a copy of Mein Kampf in front of him for a moment of reading, then marches into his house and escorts him to a factory.
Upon arriving at the factory (at bayonet-point), Donald starts his 48-hour daily shift screwing caps onto artillery shells in an assembly line. Mixed in with the shells are portraits of the Fuehrer, so he must interrupt his work to do a Hitler salute every time a portrait appears. The pace of the assembly line intensifies (as in the classic comedy Modern Times), and Donald finds it increasingly hard to complete all the tasks. At the same time, he is bombarded with propaganda messages about the superiority of the Aryan race and the glory of working for The Führer.
After a “paid vacation” that consists of making swastika shapes with his body for a few seconds in front of a painted backdrop of the Alps, Donald is ordered to work overtime. He has a nervous breakdown with hallucinations of artillery shells everywhere. When the hallucinations clear, he finds himself in his bed—in the United States—and realizes the whole experience was a nightmare. The short ends with Donald embracing a miniature Statue of Liberty, thankful for his American citizenship.