Was von der Entente übrig bliebe wenn sie Ernst machte mit dem Selbstbestimmungsrecht iher eigenen Völker und die Zügel losliesse! (What would remain of the Entente if it took seriously the 'self-determination right' of its own nations and let go of the reins!)
Was von der Entente übrig bliebe wenn sie Ernst machte mit dem Selbstbestimmungsrecht iher eigenen Völker und die Zügel losliesse! (What would remain of the Entente if it took seriously the 'self-determination right' of its own nations and let go of the reins!)
51 x 89 on sheet 61 x 94 (centimeters, height x width)
Notes:
In February 1918, addressing a Joint Session of Congress, Woodrow Wilson elaborated on the Fourteen Points that had been established as a basis for a peace settlement: "National aspirations must be respected; people may now be dominated and governed only by their own consent. 'Self determination' is not a mere phrase; it is an imperative principle of actions which statesmen will henceforth ignore at their peril." (http://www.gwpda.org/1918/wilpeace.html, accessed December 25, 2014).
This German propaganda poster attacks the Allied powers (the Entente) for hypocrisy in urging self-determination for German-controlled lands while denying it for their own foreign conquests. Curtis 2016, 84-85. "Their colonial possessions are presented in the form of symbolic animals – the British Lion, the French Cockerel, the Russian Bear and the American Bison, each animal held by their respective colonial masters on a vast network of restraining reins." Barron 2008, 17. The colonial animals are oversized, filling the map, conveying the impression of the vast changes that would follow if the Entente "let go of the reins."
