To Hell with the Kaiser!

To Hell with the Kaiser is a lost 1918 American silent Great War propaganda comedy film produced by Screen Classics Productions and distributed by Metro Pictures. It was directed by George Irving and starred Lawrence Grant as the Kaiser.

Lawrence Grant, who spent his lengthy career playing odious villains, appeared in the dual role of Kaiser Wilhelm II and his lookalike, German actor Robert Graubel. Terrified of being assassinated, the Kaiser hires Graubel to impersonate him at various political functions. In the film, the Kaiser achieves military success through an infernal pact with Satan. Once this is established, the film concentrates on the seemingly endless tally of misdeeds perpetrated by the Kaiser during his quartercentury reign over Germany. His partner in crime is the Crown Prince Earl Schenck, who thinks nothing of casually raping convent girls and gunning down protesting nuns. The Crown Princes latest conquest is Ruth Monroe Betty Howe, the daughter of an American inventor. When Ruths father protests this outrage, he is brutally murdered, whereupon Ruths sister Alice Olive Tell vows revenge. Using her fathers newest invention, a wireless machine whose coded messages cannot be intercepted, Alice directs a battalion of planes to bomb the small German village where the Kaiser is hiding. Captured by the Allies, the Kaiser is ignominiously dumped in a POW camp, but not before enduring a wellaimed sock on the jaw from a pugnacious doughboy. In despair, the Kaiser commits suicide and sends his soul to hell. In hell, the devil Walter P. Lewis gives up his throne, confessing that the Kaiser is far more sinister than he could ever hope to be.Like many American films of the time, To Hell with the Kaiser was subject to restrictions and cuts by city and state film censorship boards. For example, the Chicago Board of Censors cut, in Reel 2, the intertitle Give the men free reign sic you know what that means, Reel 3, the three intertitles These quarters are not so bad all but the girls, of course, Ill take the first choice, and Morning the lust of the war gods, and, Reel 5, the intertitle You came here willingly etc. ........

Source: Wikipedia