Synopsis:
Donald is trying his best to establish a victory garden but the crows are giving him a hard time.

Comments:
During World War 2 it was common for families in many countries - especially occupied ones - to grow vegetables wherever they could find a suitable strip of land. This was done in an attempt to be at least partly self-sufficient in greens. In the USA these gardens were commonly known as Victory Gardens.

Other stories:
During the first half of the war Barks was employed in the Disney Studios where he - foremost as a story director - contributed to several films carrying war themes. Some of the released animated shorts were Donald Gets Drafted and The Vanishing Private. Furthermore, Barks worked on shelved films such as Madame XX and Donald's Tank. All 4 films are from 1942 and more details can be seen HERE.
In the aftermath of the infamous Japanese attack on the American fleet at Pearl Harbor Barks along with two colleagues wrote and sketched LFC7/1942 Pluto Saves the Ship in 1942 and the following year Barks drew FC0029 Too Many Pets. Both stories partly take place on ships' wharfs which were highly dangerous, spy-infested places during the war, because they contributed greatly to the war efforts.

Synopsis:
Donald stays on the French Riviera where he is contacted by a sinister looking man. A major spy story unfolds...

Comments:
The most obvious spy story is, of course, this one, which is positively swarming with spies. Barks wrote the story in the post-war period when the so called Cold War between the two dominating political systems of the world - Capitalism and Communism - was at its highest. People were scared and thought they saw spies everywhere. Barks used this hysteria to write a satire about spies and counterspies. In order to make the spies as credible and menacing as possible, he drew them with 100% human features.

Other stories:
Already in 1948 Barks ventured into the world of spies when he made WDCS094 'Coast Patrolman' in which Donald repeatedly gets tricked by spies. To add a little more mystery to the spies Barks supplied them with code names such as Madame X and Madame XX. This idea was also carried to the extremes in Dangerous Disguise which was swarming with characters called Operator XX, Madame Triple-X, Operator 4-X, Operator Minus-X, and many more.
In several of his Cold War stories Barks used heavy satire when describing a fictional nation called Brutopia, which is an easily recognizable parody of the former Soviet Union. The name alone (a combination of Brutal and Utopia) leaves us with little doubt as to what kind of country this is. The eerie feeling is rapidly reinforced when we meet some of its pig-faced inhabitants: they are all criminals and spies. Story examples: U$17 A Cold Bargain, U$57 The Swamp of No Return, and WDCS278 Have Gun, Will Dance.

Synopsis:
The Beagle Boys arrange to suck the money out of the Money Bin but luckily the nephews discover an old tunnel leading from the tank to the river bank.

Comments:
The Money Bin's address is Killmotor Hill, and in this story we are told that it was built on the very site of old Fort Duckburg, which was a pioneer stronghold during the Indian wars.

Other stories:
It may seem a bit surprising that Barks made so few references to his country's native population - and its clashes with settlers and others. In FC1025 Trail Tycoon Scrooge has a brief encounter with an Indian tribe in the wilderness, in WDCS234 Riding the Pony Express Donald, as a dude ranch tourist, reenacts the old Wild West days as a riding mailman, while the other tourists act as scalping Indians, and in U$30 War Paint Barks satirizes film companies which use badly dressed-up actors in the roles of ferocious Indians.

Synopsis:
Scrooge is at the harbour to collect a jade elephant from a ship, but he only encounters a mysterious stowaway...

Comments:
This satirical story is perhaps the most memorable of Barks' stories that has the subject of war as the main theme. Not only does the story take place in a war torn country where everybody tries to subdue the other, but Barks even killed off several of the secondary characters rendering the story quite realistic. Still, Barks was forced to tone down some of the killings; in the original story the disguised prince Char Ming garroted two enemy soldiers, but Barks had to modify the action and changed it to just showing the prince jumping the men from behind without the strangulation tool in his hands.

Other stories:
Previously, Barks had made two more less violent and graphic stories in which the topic of war was an important ingredient; in both MOC04 Maharajah Donald from 1947 and WDCS297 Monkey Business from 1965 the ducks are caught in the middle of regional wars.

Synopsis:
The nephews have bought what they think is a toy model of the army's latest ray gun. But the weapon is very real!

Comments:
In this story Barks introduces us to a very frightening and very deadly weapon of a type that was used later in the Star Wars film series. We even visit the creator of the weapon - the Pentagon.

Other stories:
Small guns played a relatively big role in Barks' stories despite the fact that they were not that welcome in Disney's funny animal universes. Examples: Donald has a serious shoot-out in FC0199 Sheriff of Bullet Valley and Scrooge acted as a marksman with his six-shooter in U$57 The Swamp of No Return.
Big guns with deadly force were also present from time to time; in FC0495 'The Horseradish Story' and in U$41 The Status Seeker the villains try to kill the ducks with heavy machine gun fire, but on the more 'innocent' side we have witnessed Duckburg's old wartime gun Old Number One in WDCS239 The Village Blacksmith as well as Scrooge's old Boer War cannon in numerous stories.
Missiles were presented in WDCS244 Missile Fizzle and used in WDCS081 'The Fake Map', and warships were ingredients in FC0256 Luck of the North (where a destroyer almost killed the ducks with cannon fire) and in WDCS283 Cap'n Blight's Mystery Ship (where several men undoubtedly got killed when another destroyer sank their ship).
Even the most sinister weapon of them all, the atom bomb, was in some way present in some of Barks' stories; in CG Donald Duck's Atom Bomb Donald invents the bomb, but at least Barks took a more unrealistic approach by rendering the bomb relatively harmless. In WDCS160 'The Christmas Camel', however, he was much more realistic when he briefly described his nation's need for radium to be part of the hellish machines.