Kolossal!,

1914

Germany’s pride in their giant airships, called zeppelins, is satirized in this French poster, probably made after August 1914, when bombs were dropped on the Belgian cities of Liège and Antwerp in the first zeppelin attacks on the Allies. Bearing a diminutive Kaiser Wilhelm II while heading toward a silhouetted group of soldiers, the airship drags monuments of civilization—St. Basil’s Cathedral (Russia), the Great Sphinx of Giza (Egypt), the statue of Mannequin Pis (Belgium), and the Eiffel Tower (France)—in its destructive wake.