"They shall not pass" is a slogan used to express determination to defend a position against an enemy. "On ne passe pas" literally means "one does not pass"; this being a common French idiom to express interdiction. 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. It was also used during the Spanish Civil War, this time at the Siege of Madrid by Dolores Ibárruri Gómez, a member of the Communist Party of Spain, in her famous "No pasarán" speech on 18 July 1936. The leader of the Nationalist forces, Generalísimo Francisco Franco, upon gaining Madrid, responded to this slogan by declaring "Hemos pasado". "¡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 to indicate that communists rather than fascists will be the ones to seize state power. 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." In the 1980s, the phrase ¡No pasarán! was a theme in the civil wars in Central America, particularly in Nicaragua. Nicaragua no pasarán is also the title of a 1984 documentary by David Bradbury about the events in Nicaragua that led to the overthrow of Somoza's dictatorship.
In The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien, a veteran of WWI who had fought at the Battle of the Somme, the wizardGandalf shouts "You cannot pass!" at a Balrog, before cracking the bridge with his staff and being dragged into the abyss along with the Balrog. In the 2001 Peter Jackson movie ', Gandalf warns the Balrog first with "You cannot pass!" before crying "You shall not pass!".
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 '.
Chiselbury School for the Sons of Gentlefolk, headmaster Professor Jimmy Edwards, had "They shall not pass" as its school motto.
The song Fields Of Verdun, by the music groupSabaton, 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!".
They Shall Not Grow Old is a 2018 documentary film directed and produced by Peter Jackson. The film was created using original coloured footage of the First World War from the Imperial War Museum's archives.
