The men are the main posthumous antagonists of the 1939 anti-war short "Peace on Earth" and its 1955 remake "Good Will to Men." In both shorts they are portrayed from the animals' perspective as a group of incomprehensible, bloodthirsty creatures who are constantly waging war on each other, ultimately wiping each other out and causing the complete extinction of mankind.
History[]
In "Peace on Earth" some infant squirrels are shown asking their grandfather about the titular song, specifically what the line "good will to men" means, and he explains that there are no more men in the world, but he remembers them as irrational and "ornery" creatures who could not get along with each other, and were constantly coming up with reasons to wage war on each other, describing a conflict between flat-footed and buck-toothed men, and another between vegetarians and meat-eaters, eventually culminating in a massive armed conflict similar to World War I, with the squirrel recalling that bombs and shells were flying everywhere, until there were only two men left in the world, one soldier from each side, and they killed each other. Following this, a group of animals found the wreckage of human society and decided to rebuild it, finding a Bible (which they think is a book of rules) with the commandments "Thou shalt not kill" and "Love thy neighbor as thyself" and sadly note that the humans didn't practice what they preached.
The remake "Good Will to Men" updates the conflict with Cold War themes, with an elderly mouse explaining to a group of young mice that the men kept waging war on each other, but each time did so with more sophisticated technology to cause even more destruction, eventually culminating in a nuclear conflict where each side (presumably the Western powers and the Soviets) bombed each other at the same time, causing a nuclear apocalypse (the animals, however, seem unaffected by the radioactive fallout).