Poster "The English near Helgoland ..."

The satirical propaganda poster "British near Helgoland ..." was created in the style of Russian Lubok (cheap popular print) by one of the members of the artistic association "Segodnyashnii Lubok" (Lubok Today) poet and artist Vladimir Mayakovsky. The poster depicts the events of the First World War in the Mediterranean Sea. The author of the poster mixed two events - the battle of Helgoland Bay on August 28, 1914, in which the German fleet lost 3 cruisers and a battleship, and the breakthrough of the German cruisers "Goben" and "Breslau" in Constantinople from the Mediterranean Sea in the first half of August. They repulsed the attacks of the British and French and strengthened the fleet of the Ottoman Empire. Depicting the destruction of the cruisers "Goben" and "Breslau", the poster is an example of the distortion of historical facts to please patriotic Russian propaganda. Below the drawings are rhyming lines composed by Mayakovsky: 1. "The British in Helgoland / Ambushed by a German gang / But they to break the loins of / Geben and Breslau"; 2. "And the Turks in Constantinople / Took and stitch / As if from this Turk / The plaster did not peel off" (in Russian).