L’Europe Future

A lasting peace…through war and the total abolition of the German state!

The Europe of the Future Such as the Allies Will Have to Impose it to Ensure the Final Peace in Europe is boldly proclaimed across the top of this provocative World War I propaganda broadsheet. Text continues to explain that the dismemberment of the German and Austro-Hungarian empires, the forfeiture of the Kingdom of Prussia, and the Reconstitution of Poland are all necessary to attain law and order on the continent.

The accompanying map provides a concrete visual proposal on how exactly such a political re-division could come to pass. The largest components of the German confederation have been resurrected along borders loosely reflected in the era prior to the Franco-Prussian War and the 1871 Treat of Versailles. A large neutral zone can be seen dividing these weakened states and an ascendant France, firmly in possession of the Alsace-Lorraine region.

Austria and Hungary have been reconstituted as independent sovereign nations, though their borders have been much diminished. An idealized, although almost certainly untenable, situation is outlined in the Balkans. Blocks of text surrounding the image provide further details and end in a chilling conclusion about the totality of the war, Our motto to all, combatants and non-combatants, must be: Until the End!

The map was designed by Mademoiselle Magda, a Paris schoolteacher, and published in 1916 by F. Pigeon. Rare and possibly unrecorded, as I have been able to identify no other examples in OCLC or elsewhere.