"They shall not pass" (French: Ils ne passeront pas!; Spanish: ¡No pasarán!; Romanian: Pe aici nu se trece!) is a slogan used to express determination to defend a position against an enemy.
It was most famously used during the Battle of Verdun in the First World War by French General Robert Nivelle. It appears on propaganda posters, such as that by Maurice Neumont after the Second Battle of the Marne, which was later adopted on uniform badges by units manning the Maginot Line. Later during the war, it was also used by Romanian soldiers during the Battle of Mărășești (the Romanian translation of the phrase is "Pe aici nu se trece", literally meaning "One does not pass through here").
"¡No pasarán!" was used by British anti-fascists during the October 1936 Battle of Cable Street, and is still used in this context in some political circles. It was often accompanied by the words nosotros pasaremos (we will pass) to indicate that communists rather than fascists will be the ones to seize state power.[3]
The phrase was brought to the public consciousness again following action in December 1943 by French-Canadian officer Paul Triquet of the Royal 22e Regiment; his action included his use of Nivelle's phrase "to win a key objective at Ortona, Italy, in the face of overwhelming German opposition."[4]
Author Max Brooks referenced the phrase in his book World War Z, a fictional oral history of a worldwide war between zombies and the living. During France's counteroffensive against the living dead, a team of commandos moving through a tunnel breaks through a wall to find three hundred zombies on the other side. The last words heard from the squad's leader: "On ne passe pas!"
The title of Scottish documentary Nae Pasaran, which focuses on Scottish solidarity with Chile during the Pinochet dictatorship, is a play on the phrase using the Scots word nae.
In the sitcom Whack-O, Chiselbury School for the Sons of Gentlefolk had "They shall not pass" as its school motto.[11]
The song Fields Of Verdun, by the music group Sabaton, has a line which states "... It was said, ‘They shall not pass!’”. The "History Version" of the song has a female voiceover at the beginning, stating "This is Verdun. Here - they shall not pass!".
Gallery[]
On ne passe pas! on a French medal commemorating the Battle of Verdun