Description
The Union of Great French Associations against Enemy Propaganda was formed to counter German propaganda in occupied French territories. The Union produced a number of its own posters vilifying Germany and its military. This poster was issued shortly after the Second Battle of the Marne (JulyAugust 1918), a decisive victory for the Allied troops and the beginning of the German Armys defeat. Maurice Neumont, a politically active artist who worked for the Union, depicts a barely human French poilus (hairy, slang for a French soldier) wearing a gas mask and ragged clothes with a shell, an abandoned gun, and German helmet at his feet. The posters title, They Shall Not Pass!, is said to have been proclaimed by French generals at the Battle of Verdun in 1916 but is used here to celebrate the German retreat at the River Marne. By 1918, both French and German civilians were exhausted by the war and agitating for a resolution to the conflict. In France, a movement to negotiate with the Germans was aborted by Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau (The Tiger), a fierce advocate of total war. The defiant text at the bottom of the poster cautions French civilians against peace negotiations with Germany, warning of the lies and hypocrisies of the boches, a derogatory term for Germans.
Details
- Work Date:
- 1918
- Dimensions:
- 22⅞ x 15½ inches
- Medium:
- Tinted lithograph
- Credit Line:
- Gift of Bartlett H. Hayes, 1985