Was England will! (What England Wants!)
Squadrons of aircraft with British roundels fill a burning sky over blast furnaces and factory chimneys under the headline 'What England wants!' The only evidence is one quoted politician, William Joynson-Hicks, labelled 'the English labour leader', so a single speaker's call to bomb the Rhineland stands in for a nation's intent while the image supplies the catastrophe.
- Date
- 1918
- Period
- First World War
- Made by
- German home-front publicity (sponsor not named on the poster); artist Egon Tschirch
- Region
- Western and Central Europe
- Country
- German Empire
- Medium
- Poster
- Issuer type
- Mixed
- Regime
- German Empire
- Leader
- Wilhelm II
- Audience
- Domestic public
- Purpose
- Mobilize or secure compliance
- Themes
- War and the military, Home front
- Event
- World War I
- Techniques
- Fear appealCard stacking
- Source
- Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
- Source
- Library of Congress, retrieved September 27, 2026
- Rights
- Public domain in the U.S. (published before 1931)
Tschirch, Egon, 1889-1948, artist; Rehse Archiv für Zeitgeschichte und Publizistik, DLC, former owner. 1918. Library of Congress, LC-USZC4-12309.
Text on the object
Was England will! Der englische Arbeiterführer Joynson-Hicks (Daily Telegraph vom 3.1.18) „Man muß die rheinischen Industriegebiete mit hundert Flugzeugen Tag für Tag bombardieren, bis die Kur angeschlagen hat!“ Druck: Selmar Bayer, Berlin S.O. 36
What England Wants! The English Labour leader Joynson-Hicks (Daily Telegraph of 3 January 1918) "The Rhenish industrial districts must be bombed day after day with a hundred aircraft, until the cure has taken effect!" Printed: Selmar Bayer, Berlin S.O. 36
Set in blackletter (Fraktur) type; the compound-word break markers typical of the script are rendered as ordinary hyphenation here. Artist credit ('Egon Tschirch 1918') is signed in script at lower left of the illustration and is not included as running text.
