Speaking of which, it's always been this way. Walter disney got very friendly with German buearaucracy after the events of Kristallnacht, all because he wanted them to continue showing disney films.

[–] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 5 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

He was Nazi and antisemite adjacent at the very least. I'm not sure it played out like you described either

IN 1938, a month after the Nazi assault on German Jews known as Kristallnacht made headlines across the world, Walt Disney gave Hitler’s pet filmmaker, Leni Riefenstahl, a tour of his studio. He showed her some Mickey Mouse sketches, and she offered to show him “Olympia,” her cinematic slog through the 1936 Berlin Olympics. He turned her down because he was worried it would get out that he was playing host to a woman most of Hollywood shunned. In his biography “Leni” Steven Bach writes that when she returned to Germany, she praised Disney for receiving her, saying, it “was gratifying to learn how thoroughly proper Americans distance themselves from the smear campaigns of the Jews.”

https://archive.is/jQ2rY#selection-464.0-472.1

Also, definitely a racist.

And there is the fact that in 1938, a month after Kristallnacht, Disney personally welcomed Nazi director Leni Riefenstahl to his studios.

Even if he wasn’t personally anti-Semitic, Gabler allows that Disney “willingly, even enthusiastically, embraced [anti-Semites] and cast his fate with them.”

Gabler cites a meeting in which Disney referred to the Snow White dwarves as a “n***** pile” and another in which he used the term “pickaninny.” The book notes that Disney anticipated the Song of the South controversy and attempted to make it less racist with a rewrite and meeting with the NAACP. The meeting never happened, and the movie was released anyway. There was also some controversy about the company’s unwillingness to hire minorities at Disneyland.

https://www.vulture.com/2013/12/walt-disney-anti-semitism-racism-sexism-frozen-head.html