They shall not pass. It is a heavy phrase, isn't
it? It really is. It feels cinematic. Like something
you'd hear in a trailer for a, I don't know,
a high -budget fantasy epic right before the
hero makes a last stand. Right. On a bridge against
a horde of monsters. It has that kind of scripted
Hollywood quality to it. Exactly. It sounds like
a screenwriter came up with it to make the audience
cheer. Well, what's so fascinating about the
research we have today is that, you know, reality
is often much better written than fiction. Because
this is not a line from a movie. It's arguably
the most recycled, repurposed and powerful four
word slogan. in modern military history. And
that is exactly our mission for this deep dive.
We're going to trace the biography of this one
single sentence. Yeah. We're looking at its origins,
its strange evolution, and the, honestly, the
surprising global journey of On Ne Pas Pas, as
it's probably more famous, the Spanish version.
No pasaran. No pasaran. And the stack of notes
we have is, I mean, it's massive. We are jumping
all over the timeline. We're going from the muddy
trenches of World War I to... you know, the streets
of London in the 1930s. And then to revolutionary
Nicaragua in the 80s. All the way up to the current
conflict in Ukraine right now in 2024. It's a
wild genealogy. We're going to figure out how
a desperate order given by a French general and
a dugout in 1916 somehow becomes the favorite
chant of anti -fascists in the UK, communist
revolutionaries in Central America, and modern
mechanized brigades in Eastern Europe. It's really
a case study in how an idea survives. It's not
just about the words. It's about the psychology
of that line in the sand. Yeah. The sheer human
refusal to yield. Okay, so let's get our boots
muddy. We need to go back to the source. Now,
most people I talk to, if they know the phrase
at all, they connect it to the Spanish Civil
War. But that's not where it was born, is it?
No. That's where it got famous, you could say.
That's where it went viral, to use a modern term.
But the birth is arguably much, much grimmer.
We have to go back to 1916, the Western Front,
the Battle of Verdun. Verdun, World War I. often
called the meat grinder. And that name wasn't
an exaggeration. Verdun was the longest battle
of the entire war. The German strategy was, well,
it was explicitly to bleed France white. Wow.
They attacked a point they knew the French would
defend to the last man, essentially just trying
to attrition the French army right out of existence.
So the stakes are literally national survival.
Completely. And into this meat grinder steps
General Robert Nivelle. Historians have a lot
of mixed opinions on Nivelle later in the war.
He's a bit of a controversial figure. But at
Verdun, he understood the assignment. The situation
was dire. The German pressure was just overwhelming.
And Nivelle needed something that wasn't just
a tactical order, but a spiritual one. He needed
a mantra. He did. And he issued the command.
Uno paspa. One does not pass. Or they shall not
pass. And it became... The spine of the French
defense. It was the anchor. And what's fascinating
to me is how quickly it jumped from just a verbal
order in the heat of battle to visual propaganda
for civilians. I'm looking at this poster from
1918 by an artist, Maurice Newmont. Do you have
that in front of you? I do, yeah. It's the one
in the show notes with the soldier on the ridge,
right? It looks so different from modern recruitment
ads. It's not an action movie poster. He looks
like a statue. He looks unmovable. It's almost
religious imagery, isn't it? It is. Let me read
the text because the language is incredibly dense.
It's poetic, but also very dark. It says, twice
I have stood and vanquished on the Marne. Brother
civilian, the underhand offensive of white peace
will attack you in turn. And like me, you must
stand firm and vanquish. There is so much to
unpack in just those two sentences. That term
white peace, that's not something we really use
anymore. What did that mean to a soldier in 1918?
So a white peace or a peace without victory was
this idea of negotiating an end to the war, maybe
leaving Germany with some of its gains or at
least not totally crushed. I see. To the French
army, after losing hundreds of thousands of men
in the mud, the idea of a negotiated peace felt
like a betrayal. It felt like all that death
was for nothing. So the poster is saying, I held
the line against the bullets. You civilians need
to hold the line against the diplomats. Precisely.
It's framing the politician or the pacifist as
just another version of the enemy. The poster
also goes on to warn against Bosch hypocrisy.
Bosch, that being the slur for Germans at the
time. Right. It's dehumanizing, but very effective
propaganda. And the slogan, anna pas pa, evolved
right here. It wasn't just, don't let soldiers
walk past this trench anymore. It became, don't
let their ideas or their negotiations penetrate
our resolve. That's a key distinction. That's
the first time it moves from physical territory
to, well, psychological territory. But it wasn't
just the French using this, was it? I saw a note
here about the Romanian front that I found really
surprising. Yes, and this is so often overlooked
in Western history books. The Battle of Manaiti
in 1917. This was basically the Verdun of the
East. for the Romanian army. They were up against
German Field Marshal von Mackensen, who was a
terrifying figure at the time. And the Romanians
used a direct translation. They did. Petsinu
setrets, one does not pass through here, or here,
nobody passes. It has that same defiant ring
to it. It served the exact same function. I mean,
Romania was being squeezed off the map. quite
literally, and this phrase became the anchor
for their national identity during the war. It's
proof that the sentiment, this absolute refusal
to back down, is universal. It doesn't matter
what language. When your back is against the
wall, the message is the same. Exactly. Speaking
of universal, the research threw a curveball
that I honestly was not expecting. We usually
track this slogan from World War I onwards, right?
Assuming Verdun is ground zero. But there's a
precursor. There is. If you really dig into the
archives, and I mean deep into 19th century military
records, you find the sentiment earlier. We have
to go to Brazil. The War of Canudos? Right. This
is a conflict in the late 1890s between the first
Brazilian Republic and this group of settlers
led by a religious mystic, Antonio Consolero.
A very specific history that most people outside
Brazil don't know. But there are records of the
phrase, Which translates to, Exactly. Now, was
General Nivelle in France reading Brazilian military
history? Probably not. It's unlikely there's
a direct link. But it just goes to show you that
the line is a primal human concept, whether it's
a mystic in the backlands of Brazil or a general
in France. When you're defending your home, the
language converges. That is fascinating. It's
like convergent evolution, but for language.
Yeah. But here's where the story pivots. We leave
the trenches of World War I. The war ends. The
slogan should have retired, right? It should
be in a museum on a dusty poster. It should have.
But then the 1930s happened. And this is where
the phrase gets weaponized in a totally new way.
We go back to France, 1934. But this isn't war
against Germany. This is French against French.
It is. The political atmosphere in Paris was
toxic. You had the rise of the League's basically
far -right nationalist paramilitary groups. They
were rioting, trying to destabilize the parliament.
It was very close to a civil war. And standing
against them was Leon Blum. a prominent socialist
leader. And during a huge counter -demonstration,
Blum resurrects the old war cry. He yells to
the crowd, Ils ne passeront pas. They shall not
pass. But notice the context shift here. He's
not talking about invading Germans. He's talking
about fellow French citizens who hold a different
ideology. That is a massive shift. It's no longer
we must protect the soil. It's we must protect
our political system. It's the moment the slogan
becomes the property of the left. Before this,
it was a nationalist military slogan, something
a general would say. Blum turned it into an anti
-fascist slogan. He was saying that fascism would
not be allowed to seize power in France. Which
sets the stage perfectly for the main event,
the version of the story everyone knows. Spain.
the Spanish Civil War. This is the crescendo,
1936, the siege of Madrid. This is where the
slogan becomes legendary. On one side, you have
the Republican forces, a mix of socialists, communists,
anarchists, international volunteers. On the
other, the nationalists led by General Francisco
Franco, backed by Hitler and Mussolini. And the
Republicans have a voice. Dolores Ibarri Gomez.
La Pensionaria, the passion flower. She's a legendary
figure, a communist politician with this incredible
fiery way of speaking. And she delivers a radio
broadcast that just changes history. The nationalist
army is bearing down on Madrid. It looks like
the end. The government is fleeing. And she screams
into the microphone, no pasarán. It's electric.
It's not an order from a general anymore. It's
a cry from the people. It galvanized the city.
It wasn't just words. Men and women built barricades.
They dug trenches in the cobblestone streets.
They held Madrid for two and a half years against
a superior military force largely fueled by that
three -word incantation. It became the definition
of anti -fascist resistance. And this is the
tragic part of the deep dive. Slogans don't actually
stop bullets forever. No, they don't. And this
is where the story gets chilling. Because slogans
don't exist in a vacuum. The enemy hears them
too. Franco was listening. He was. And he waited.
When Madrid finally fell in 1939, when the war
was effectively over, Franco didn't just march
in and declare victory. He issued a specific
response. He declared, hemos pasado. We have
passed. Or in the colloquial Spanish of the time,
ya hemos pasado. We have already passed. That
is petty and devastating. It's psychological
warfare. He took their greatest symbol of hope,
the thing they shouted while they were dying
to defend their city, and he turned it into the
punchline of their defeat. It effectively said,
your words were empty. My tanks were real. It
highlights something we don't talk about enough.
Words are weapons, but they can be captured just
like artillery. Absolutely. It was a deliberate
attempt to humiliate the defeated side. But here's
the resilience of the phrase. Franco took the
city, and he took the slogan, but he couldn't
kill the idea. Because while Madrid was falling,
the phrase had already jumped the English Channel.
To London, the Battle of Cable Street. October
1936. This is a fascinating moment in British
history. You had Sir Oswald Mosley and his British
Union of Fascists, the Blackshirts, and they
wanted to march through the east end of London.
Which was a predominantly Jewish and Irish working
class neighborhood. That's a deliberate provocation.
It was an invasion. And the locals knew what
was happening in Spain. They saw the connection
between Mosley and Franco. So when they blocked
the streets to stop Mosley's march, they didn't
chant in English. They shouted, no pasaran. They
used the Spanish, knowing exactly what it meant.
It connected their street fight in London to
the siege in Madrid. It made them part of a global
struggle. But, and this is a nuance I really
love in the research, the British left added
a second part to the slogan. Oh, really? I missed
that in the notes. What was it? Sometimes, in
their pamphlets and speeches, they would follow,
No pasarán with nosotros pasaremos. We will pass.
Exactly. It changes the dynamic completely. No
pasarán is defensive. It's hold the line. Nosotros
pasaremos is offensive. It means we are coming
for you. It signaled they didn't just want to
stop fascism. They wanted to advance their own
ideology. That's a confident addition. So we've
gone from French trenches to Spanish radio to
London street brawls. But then World War II breaks
out properly. Does the phrase go back to the
military? It comes full circle. We see it on
the Maginot Line badges in France. Which, frankly,
is a bit ironic in hindsight. Because the Germans
didn't pass through the Maginot Line. They just
drove around it through Belgium. Right. A static
slogan for a static defense in a mobile war.
Not a great fit. But there is one moment in WWII
where the phrase regains its glory. And it involves
a French -Canadian. Major Paul Trucquet. I remember
reading this story. Yes. The Royal 22E Regiment.
The Vanduus. Italy. December 1943. The Battle
of Ortona. I've read about Ortona. Journalists
at the time called it Little Stalingrad. Just
brutal house -to -house fighting. Unbelievably
brutal. They were blowing holes in walls to move
between buildings because the streets were just
kill zones. The tactic was called mouseholing.
Right. And Triquet is there with his company.
They're cut off, ammunition is low, and they're
facing elite German paratroopers. The situation
is strikingly similar to Verdun in 1916. So what
does Triquet do? He reaches back into the history
books. He rallies his men by shouting, ils ne
passeront pas. He uses Nivelle's original French
phrasing. And it worked. It worked. They held
the objective. Truquet won the Victoria Cross.
It shows that for a Francophone soldier, even
one from Canada, those words are like a spell.
You say them and you summon the ghosts of Verdun
to stand next to you. It's the ultimate shorthand
for we die here rather than move back. It is.
It connects the soldier to a whole lineage of
resistance. So fast forward. The world wars end,
the Cold War heats up, and the phrase travels
again, this time to the jungles of Central America.
Of the 1980s, Nicaragua, the Sandinista revolution.
Now, for listeners who might be a bit fuzzy on
80s geopolitics, the Sandinistas were the socialist
revolutionaries who overthrew the Somoza dictatorship.
And then fought against the U .S.-backed Contras.
Right. And No Pasaran became the defining slogan
of the Sandinista government. There was even
a famous documentary in 1984 titled Nicaragua,
No Pasaran. Why does that phrase resonate there?
I mean, it's a long way from the Marne. Because
the sentiment fits the anti -imperialist narrative
perfectly. Whether it's Germans invading France
or what they saw as Yankee imperialism via the
Contras, the dynamic is the same. A large, powerful
force trying to enter and a smaller, determined
force refusing to yield. It's almost like the
phrase sheds its original context and just keeps
the emotional core. It becomes a template. Fill
in the blank for who they are. Which brings us
right up to the present day. And I mean literally
now. Because I was surprised to see this in the
notes regarding the war in Ukraine. This is the
most recent entry in the biography of this slogan.
We're looking at the 155th Mechanized Brigade
of the Ukrainian Army. And they are using the
French slogan. They are. But there's a very practical
link here. This isn't just random history nerds
picking a cool phrase. This brigade was recently
trained and equipped by France. Ah, so they're
driving French vehicles wearing French supplied
kit. And absorbing French military culture. They
adopted the motto, On ne passe pas en French.
That is. It's almost haunting. You have a slogan
born in the trench warfare of 1916 being used
in the trench warfare of Eastern Europe in 2024.
It speaks to the cyclical nature of war. Technology
changes. We have drones, we have HIMARS, we have
satellites. But the fundamental experience of
an infantryman holding a muddy hole in the ground
while an enemy tries to kill him, that has not
changed in a century. And clearly, the language
they need to get through that hasn't changed
either. It's the verbal barrier. It is. It connects
the 19 -year -old Ukrainian conscript to the
poilu at Verdun and the volunteer in Madrid.
It's a lineage. It tells them, you are not alone
in this feeling. So let's just look at the map
we've drawn. Verdun to Brazil, the streets of
Paris to the ruins of Madrid, the east end of
London to the jungles of Nicaragua, and finally,
the front lines of Ukraine. It's a phrase that
refuses to retire. As long as there isn't us
defending a home and a them trying to take it,
someone somewhere will say they shall not pass.
It really changes how you hear it. It's not just
a poster slogan. It's a survival mechanism. It
is. But, and here is the thought that kept me
up last night while researching this. Go on.
I love a good existential crisis to end the deep
dive. We've been talking about holding the line,
physical lines, trenches, rivers, city limits.
The slogan relies on the idea that there's a
barrier you can defend, a place where you can
physically stand and say, stop. Right. Physical
geography. But look at modern conflict. We live
in an era of hybrid warfare, cyber attacks, disinformation
campaigns, election interference. The enemy doesn't
always come with a tank you can see. They come
through the fiber optic cables, through the servers.
Exactly. So the question I want to leave with
you is this. In a world where borders are invisible
and conflict is digital, does the concept of
They shall not pass. Still work. That's a tough
one. Can you hold a line that doesn't physically
exist? Or has holding the line become purely
symbolic? When the enemy can be inside your power
grid or your social media feed without ever crossing
a physical border, maybe we need a new slogan.
Or maybe we just need to figure out what the
line even looks like now. That is a provocative
thought to end on. It makes you wonder if our
language has caught up to our reality. I don't
think it has yet. Well, on that note, we're going
to wrap up this deep dive. We hope you look at
those old propaganda posters a little differently
now. Stay curious. We'll catch you in the next
deep dive.