1915 British propaganda broadsheet: the twin German & Austro-Hungarian Octopuses, symbols of age-old territorial aggrandizement

The Prussian Octopus

Printed colours. Some light verso reinforcements to old creases & folds. Old pin holes to upper left and right corners in blank margins.

Since Fred W. Rose’s famous 1877 Serio-Comic War Map of Europe, in which Russia had been portrayed as an aggressively expansionist giant octopus, the much-maligned cephalopod had become an established satirical symbol of subversive extra-territorial meddling & covert imperialism. However with the approach of World War One, it was a symbolic identity increasingly ascribed by British & French propagandists to the Hohenzollern Germany of Kaiser Wilhelm II rather than to their new ally, the Romanov Russia of Tsar Nikolaus II.

London printers, H & C Graham Ltd, published this rare and engaging portrayal of the two Prussian and Austro-Hungarian octopuses in late 1915 or early 1916. The explicit aim of map is clear: to show how Germany and Austro-Hungary had both carried through a pre-meditated policy of grasping territorial expansion & aggrandizement, not only since the outbreak of the War, but historically through past decades & centuries, a pattern which the map’s author traces back as far as the early 18^th Century, to the Prussia of Frederick the Great. As the text in the upper panel notes with sharp irony:

“We do not threaten small nations,” declared the German Chancellor on December 10th, 1915: “we do not wage the war which has been forced upon us in order to subjugate foreign peoples, but for the protection of our life and freedom.” The pictorial map is a commentary on his words. It shows how Prussia has stolen one province after another from her neighbours and, like a baleful octopus, is still stretching out her tentacles to grasp further acquisitions. The territories included in the original Kingdom of Prussia are marked [dark grey]. The territories since absorbed to negotiation, force, or fraud are marked [light grey].

The map appears to have also been disseminated in several allied and neutral countries in Europe & foreign language editions in both Italian and Swedish are also known. The map may have also provided the inspiration for Maurice Neumont’s subsequent French propaganda poster of December 1917.