Alsace-Lorraine

Alsace-Lorraine, disputed German-speaking provinces (Elsass-Lothringen), on France's eastern borders, which became French territory in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. In 1871, as a result of the Franco-Prussian war, Alsace (the departments of Haut-Rhin and Bas-Rhin) and northern Lorraine (mainly the department of Moselle), were annexed to the new German Empire, the Second Reich. They were called the Reichsland, and governed from Berlin by a viceroy (Statthalter) in Strasbourg. The coking coal of Lorraine was welcome to the steelworks of Krupp and others in the Ruhr, and assisted the Second Reich's armaments programme. The inhabitants were given the option of staying or leaving for France; 45,000 left.

French politicians of the Third Republic dreamed of recapturing Alsace-Lorraine; it was a terra irredenta, a sore spot for decades in Franco-German relations. ‘Think of it always; never speak of it’ was their motto; a few who did speak of it before the First World War got sympathy, but no government backing. During that war it became an acknowledged French grievance.

By the Versailles settlement of 1919, the provinces again became French, again subject to French law and apparently happy at the change. In the summer of 1940, after the fall of France (though the point was not covered in the armistice terms), they were reannexed to Germany, and became part of two Gaue (see Gauleiter) in the Third Reich (see Map 43). At a few hours' notice 200,000 French-speaking inhabitants were evicted westwards.

The coking coal was again useful to the German armaments industry. The provinces were subjected to the full rigours of Nazi law—directed labour, directed education, elimination of Jews (see Final Solution), restrictions on religious meetings, and conscription. prisoners-of-war born in them, captured in the French Army, were most of them simply put into German uniforms and became part of the German Army. Some of the more ardently pro-German were accepted as volunteers for the Waffen-SS.

The remaining inhabitants, German-speakers but few of them pro-Nazi in sentiment, were given no opportunity to express any feelings of resentment they might have had. In 1945, as automatically as in 1919, they reverted to French control, where they remain.

M. R. D. Foot