This anti-British propaganda film from 1917 uses animation, which was still a new filmmaking technique at the time, to mock Britain for its imperialist ambitions. The drawings are by Robert L. Leonard, a graphic artist who became known especially for his film posters (such as the poster for Rausch in 1919). The verse was written by Hans Brennert, a prolific writer for stage and screen. The film was commissioned by the Bild- und Filmamt (BUFA), which had been founded in January 1917 by the Supreme Army command to coordinate the production of propaganda film and newsreels as well as censorship for all visual media. Das Saugetier (the title credit uses wordplay to change the word Säugetier [mammal] to Saugetier [polyp]) depicts Great Britain as the figure of John Bull, who lays claim to the diamonds of the Boers in South Africa, the Suez Canal in Egypt, tea in India, and rum in Jamaica and eventually morphs into a greedy polyp whose tentacles reach for the entire globe. Attacked by German U-boats, biplanes, and zeppelins dropping bombs, the polyp’s tentacles are cut off one by one until he is defeated. The film was released to German movie theaters after the German navy had resumed its strategy of unrestricted submarine warfare in February 1917. Worrying about its own ability to feed its population after a failed potato harvest while the war dragged on, the German Supreme Command hoped to cripple British food supply through submarine attacks on British and Allied merchant ships and thus force Britain to surrender. While the German navy succeeded at sinking 12 million tons of shipping (almost 5,000 merchant ships), unrestricted submarine warfare did not lead to British surrender, nor did it even significantly impact British wartime production or consumption. The U-boat campaign did, however, lead to the United States’ entry into the First World War in April 1917, and thereafter German defeat.