To whom did Alsace-Lorraine rightfully belong in 1870?

[Faeelin]

I don't know what this thread is asking? "The world belongs to whoever has the most guns?" Sure, then that road ends with sixty million people dead. And the answer is France, no, based on the parties' track record? Germany lost WW1, lost WW2, was Russia and France's playground between 1795 and 1815...

 

[Tallil2long]

Snip

They were taken by force, and what the locals wanted was neither here nor there.

By the early 20th century, however, such concerns could no longer be ignored.

Snip

just a minor nitpick. In fact, such concerns could still be ignored: A-L was handed back over to France without any reference to the desires of the population.

 

[Tallil2long]

I don't know what this thread is asking? "The world belongs to whoever has the most guns?" Sure, then that road ends with sixty million people dead. And the answer is France, no, based on the parties' track record? Germany lost WW1, lost WW2, was Russia and France's playground between 1795 and 1815...

My intent was to sample the attitudes of folks regarding who ought to have A-L, and what factors influenced their decision.

It has so far been rather enlightening and thought-provoking.

 

[Athelstane]

just a minor nitpick. In fact, such concerns could still be ignored: A-L was handed back over to France without any reference to the desires of the population.

Fair point.

Interesting given that plebiscites were insisted upon with OTHER German territories in question - West Prussia, Posen, Upper Silesia, Schleswig, etc. This was the new reality, a reality that had not been present before.

I might make an argument that by Versailles, that reality now demanded at least lip service to self-determination, at least in Europe (the colonial empires were still off the table, but not for much longer). I think the French could shrug off any opposition because it was simply assumed (including by Wilson and his advisers) that the inhabitants mainly wanted to be part of France again, and there was no need of plebiscites. There was not lots of visible evidence to the contrary, after all. And the Great War had made it easy to read the present into the past, casting the Treaty of Frankfurt into a more pernicious light than had been the case before.

Yet, had the Germans permitted and encouraged a healthy autonomy and sense of self-identity in Alsace-Lorraine, and worked to draw attention to it - start building a string counter narrative - that annexation might not have been so easy. It would not be hard to imagine Wilson insisting at least upon plebiscites in such an alternate reality.

Obviously, 1919 did not represent a smooth triumph for popular self-determination in Europe - far from it. Plenty of Europeans ended up under flags they did not care for - Sudetens and Hungarians and Ruthenians under Czechoslovak rule, Hungarians under Rumanian, Lithuanians under Polish, and so on. Such were the contradictions built in to the advent of nationalism now permitted in theory to almost any ethnic group, especially once clashed with other imperatives. But it was a new demand that could no longer be ignored, even if it could be manipulated and even overridden in some cases, such as Alsace-Lorraine in 1919.

 

[Tallil2long]

Fair point.

Interesting given that plebiscites were insisted upon with OTHER German territories in question - West Prussia, Posen, Upper Silesia, Schleswig, etc. This was the new reality, a reality that had not been present before.

I might make an argument that by Versailles, that reality now demanded at least lip service to self-determination, at least in Europe (the colonial empires were still off the table, but not for much longer). I think the French could shrug off any opposition because it was simply assumed (including by Wilson and his advisers) that the inhabitants mainly wanted to be part of France again, and there was no need of plebiscites. There was not lots of visible evidence to the contrary, after all. And the Great War had made it easy to read the present into the past, casting the Treaty of Frankfurt into a more pernicious light than had been the case before.

Yet, had the Germans permitted and encouraged a healthy autonomy and sense of self-identity in Alsace-Lorraine, and worked to draw attention to it - start building a string counter narrative - that annexation might not have been so easy. It would not be hard to imagine Wilson insisting at least upon plebiscites in such an alternate reality.

Obviously, 1919 did not represent a smooth triumph for popular self-determination in Europe - far from it. Plenty of Europeans ended up under flags they did not care for - Sudetens and Hungarians and Ruthenians under Czechoslovak rule, Hungarians under Rumanian, Lithuanians under Polish, and so on. Such were the contradictions built in to the advent of nationalism now permitted in theory to almost any ethnic group, especially once clashed with other imperatives. But it was a new demand that could no longer be ignored, even if it could be manipulated and even overridden in some cases, such as Alsace-Lorraine in 1919.

I figure A-L was treated differently from those other German territories simply because it had been ruled by France for so long. Obvious, right? But with interesting implications.

I mean, by the early 20th century, Western Europe obviously recognized some vague limitation on "Might makes right" (which is what conquest, or "the guy with the guns gets the land", really is). After centuries of warfare, the established nations clearly didnt want any more of that going on in their neighborhood (outside Europe was another matter, of couse). What you had managed to conquer back then, you were stuck with. What they wanted now was stability at home, the better to expand the colonial empires in Africa or Asia.

A conquest that happened two centuries ago has become just status quo in early 20th century W European eyes, its legitimacy doesn't have to be reinvestigated, and it wont be because it's too late to fix it. In 1919, it's only the new alienated territories in which they have to consider the wants of the inhabitants; the Statute of Limitations has run out for A-L after so long under France.

Except in German eyes, perhaps. But the very effort to "correct" the situation (whether based on recovering a historical loss, a commonly-held idea of nationalism, the need for a buffer zone, or iron resources, or whatever) denies the German effort any legitimacy in the eyes of the longer-established nations, because it violates the (relatively) comfortable stability they've achieved for themselves. That sort of thing wasn't supposed to happen in Western Europe any more. Germany just came to the table too late.

I can't help but wonder what would've happened if the established nations hadn't deliberately worked to keep Germany disunified in previous centuries, so she could've competed for rational borders back when that was still accepted. But for that, I'll have to go to the Pre 1900 forum...

 

[Saphroneth]

If one decides to use the definition of might makes right, then in 1870 Alsasce-Lorraine belonged to France. In 1872 it belonged to Germany. In 1919 it belonged to France.


If one decides to use the definition of who held the terrain for the longest period of time, it's kind of all moot because no modern nations except possibly China exist.


If one decides to use the linguistic definition, then that does kind of funny things to the world as a whole - like break up Austria-Hungary. (It also justifies the Sudetenland crisis, but that's neither here nor there.)


If one decides to use the cultural definition, then that's pretty close to impossible to work out. (It also breaks up Austria-Hungary.) It may be relevant here that Alsasce took part in the French revolution - and not in terms of revolting. By that standard, it could be argued Brittany is less French than Alsasce.

If one decides to use the self determination criterion, it would probably do some strange things to quite a lot of the world! Remember that the American Civil War was less than ten years ago, in 1870, and the issue at hand was basically self determination.

I can't help but wonder what would've happened if the established nations hadn't deliberately worked to keep Germany disunified in previous centuries, so she could've competed for rational borders back when that was still accepted. But for that, I'll have to go to the Pre 1900 forum...

...sorry? I wasn't aware of... eh?
I mean, I thought what basically happened was that the HRE imploded in a religious civil war into which other powers stepped because that's kind of what happened pre-Westphalia. But even before that it wasn't as if the HRE was all that German - it was, if anything, a superset of "Germany".
The idea that established nations deliberately worked to keep "Germany" disunified sounds almost like a conspiracy theory, to my ears.
It kind of presupposes that "Germany" as singular rather than plural was an idea well before I think nationalism as opposed to feudalism was a concrete concept. (There's a reason "The Germanies" was plural - nationalism didn't come along until quite late on. I think it was the 1740s or so in Britain, the 1790s in France, a bit later than that in Germany - thank Napoleon for that one - and was still a nascent concept in the USA in the 1860s, whence so many people being loyal to states not the Federal Government...)

 

[Halagaz]

That's an interesting factor. After the German annexation, many voiced pro-French sentiment. After the French re-annexation, many voiced pro-German sentiment. I seem to recall historical statements by some Bavarians that they'd rather be ruled by France than Prussia. In 1871, French reactionaries were saying "Better the Prussians than the Republic".
It becomes an interesting question at what point we should assume that the true popular will is being voiced. I suspect that only a free plebiscite can determine that; otherwise, it's likely to be more of a protest against enforced circumstances than anything else.

The popular will can change over time. It's not surprising that Germany had more fans in A-L in 1918 than in 1871. People from inner Germany would sporadically move in, the local pro-French would move out at an above-average rate, and so on. The slight increase in autonomy may have won the grudging consent of a few Alsatian fence-sitters as well.

German nostalgia after WWI doesn't appear to have been as widespread as the massive French nostalgia of the 1870s, so I strongly suspect France was still the majority opinion in Alsace-Lorraine. But yeah, the public wasn't as one-sided as it used to be and a plebiscite to make the final post-WWI verdict wouldn't have been a bad idea.

As for the public in 1870...nothing wrong with an extra plebiscite, but I believe the A-L politics of the next decade speak for themselves.

 

[Redolegna]

The French view on nationalism is that you get to call yourself French if you feel French and that you feel French if you agree with the French (revolutionary) values, mostly Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. Race, language and origins have nothing to do with it. Ok, so recent immigration policies tell us something a bit different, but that is how the theory goes nevertheless: after all, France has been a melting pot of many migrations and cannot claim a unifying racial or ethnic component, so it didn't try to (well, some nationalists like Barrès and Maurras tried to, in the late 19th and early 20th century but they did not succeed and it was usually done to try to exclude some particular groups).

Ernest Renan summed up nationalism according to the French in 1882 with his phrase about the nation being 'a daily referendum' (he actually said plébiscite, but same difference) in Qu'est-ce que la Nation?. He further pointed out that South America definitely wasn't part of the Spanish nation, and that the United States were not part of the British nation either. He singled out Switzerland as the ultimate example that it was the will of the members of a nation that created it and not the commonality of their language.

So long as France was the Second Empire, it did not matter much. But Prussia did not sign the peace treaty with Napoléon III who, as a dynastic monarch, could theoretically dispose of parts of his country the same way it had been done in the 17th and 18th centuries: rather, the German Empire signed and ratified a treaty with the Third Republic.

And that Republic was born specifically of the war. Gambetta tried to summon the spirit of the First Republic with the very idea of 'la nation en armes' (the armed nation). In 1789, only an estimated 10% of Frenchmen could speak French. The rest spoke a kaleidoscope of patois, dialects and, in some cases, foreign languages. It did not matter. So long as you could bleed for France and its values, you were French.

It took two years, but one of the very first measures of the National Assembly was to emancipate the Jews who lived in France by granting them citizenship. It passed in 1791. Interestingly, the biggest share of those Jews lived in Alsace and Lorraine, was often very poor and, of course, did not speak French. In 1871, perhaps more than 40% of them emigrated to the rest of the French territory. A not inconsiderable part of newly-French Jews choose to convert to Christianity but by no means all or most of them. And in 1914, letters from Jewish 'poilus' show that they are going to war not necessarily because they like war but because they want to pay back the French nation and the Republic for what they gave them, referring to themselves as 'recently French' when their families had been French for sometimes a hundred years, three or four generations. As much as the Third Republic could prove centralizing on matters of culture (actively suppressing the Breton, Occitan, and many others, languages), there was also a very strong assimilating strand among the French from Lorraine, Provence and former Alsatians.

Then you have to take into consideration the attitude of the population during the war. Of course, nobody is going to be especially welcoming to huge armies, but Metz's population was, without contest, much more willing to fight than the general who was tasked with holding it (General Bazaine was found guilty of treason for his surrender. During the siege, he had to stay out of the city proper, because his wavering behaviour made him persona non grata among the citizens who were French, thank you very much, and did not want to give in). Strasbourg sustained a siege for a month before surrendering. As for Belfort, it capitulated only after Paris had done so and actually stayed French after the war. Francs-tireurs operated in Alsace as well.

So, if we take the realist view on foreign relations, Alsace-Moselle (France kept Nancy, after all) was the Germans' by the right of the strongest in 1871.

But in 1870, it's no contest: Alsatians, even if they might not appreciate some specific policies of the Second Empire, felt very much French. So much so that, as has been pointed previously in the thread, German nationalists had to pretend they knew better than the Alsatians themselves. And by the French definition of nationalism, they were very much welcomed in the French nation. Not because Louis XIV and Louis XV had conquered the place but because the people from Lorraine and Alsace had taken part in the Revolution and its wars and were part of the political system in France.

 

[Tallil2long]

Snip


...sorry? I wasn't aware of... eh?
I mean, I thought what basically happened was that the HRE imploded in a religious civil war into which other powers stepped because that's kind of what happened pre-Westphalia. But even before that it wasn't as if the HRE was all that German - it was, if anything, a superset of "Germany".
The idea that established nations deliberately worked to keep "Germany" disunified sounds almost like a conspiracy theory, to my ears.
It kind of presupposes that "Germany" as singular rather than plural was an idea well before I think nationalism as opposed to feudalism was a concrete concept. (There's a reason "The Germanies" was plural - nationalism didn't come along until quite late on. I think it was the 1740s or so in Britain, the 1790s in France, a bit later than that in Germany - thank Napoleon for that one - and was still a nascent concept in the USA in the 1860s, whence so many people being loyal to states not the Federal Government...)

Not a conspiracy theory, just politics.

It suited other countries' purposes to encourage the HRE to stay, and become more, fragmented, and they acted accordingly. For instance, foreign intervention during the 30 Years War, and the terms of the Peace of Westphalia, not only diminished HRE cohesion but also both strengthened the German princes and increased their political division. Then theres France's poaching of bishoprics, A-L and bits across the Rhine, which helped deter political consolidation. An imperial councilman described Westphalia as making Germans "the booty for their neighbors, a people divided and weakened by partition, powerless to save themselves". Mazarin's League of the Rhine was a French effort at further weakening the HRE, while ensuring that the League's members could not unify.

After the HRE grew sufficiently weak that it was of little concern, it suited other Powers to prop up the petty princedoms so none was able to absorb the others. For example, Napoleon's Confederation of the Rhine ensured that France could get effective support from Germany, but maintained a princely structure that prevented consolidation into fewer, larger states. After Napoleon's downfall, the creation of the German Confederation at the Congress of Vienna was perfectly calculated to maintain division (measures usually had to achieve 2/3 or unanimous votes to pass) and give the rulers of Britain, Denmark and the Netherlands opportunity to meddle in its affairs. And of course, it perpetuated an increasingly ridiculous Austrian leading role in German affairs. Basically, the Powers recreated an analogue of the old fragmented HRE to counter any tendency to consolidate.

France, Britain, Spain and Russia had all gone through their own consolidation phases; though there was then no one 'Germany', nor apparently an immediate likelihood of one, the others were well aware that the petty German polities could eventually consolidate, too. They knew how it worked, and they had to know that a unified Germany would pose more competition for them.

The only reason Germany wasn't prevented from unifying altogether was that France had got herself put down firmly after Napoleon, Austria wasn't at her strongest and had other distractions, and Britain, not being on the Continent, had never fully understood the 'need'.

So, no conspiracy, just nations pursuing their own interests by meddling to keep potential rivals weak; it's an old, well-worn tactic.

One wonders just how much effect the awareness of past weakness, being trampled, and of foreign meddling had on unified Germany's approach to relations with its neighbors. I'll have to go back to learning to read German if I want to know, probably.

 

[Axeman]

New Mexico.

 

[Tallil2long]

New Mexico.

Dunno why I didn't think to include that option on the poll...

 

[Green Painting]

I think if the locals had a choice, they would most probably opt for independence. From hindsight, it was the wisest choice as well.

Since Germany and France was constantly locked in a series of war with each other, independence was would be the only way to ensure peace in Alsace-Lorraine / Elsaß-Lothringen. In addition, independence would ensure that the locals can be exempted from serving as cannon-fodders of both war machines of the German Kaiserreich and French Colonial Empire.

 

[kung Zog]

I think if the locals had a choice, they would most probably opt for independence. From hindsight, it was the wisest choice as well.

Since Germany and France was constantly locked in a series of war with each other, independence was would be the only way to ensure peace in Alsace-Lorraine / Elsaß-Lothringen. In addition, independence would ensure that the locals can be exempted from serving as cannon-fodders of both war machines of the German Kaiserreich and French Colonial Empire.

Well, independence if lucky might give it a Luxembourg or even Switzerland status, if unlucky it would be an area even more contested that OTL A-L.

 

[Athelstane]

I figure A-L was treated differently from those other German territories simply because it had been ruled by France for so long. Obvious, right? But with interesting implications.

I mean, by the early 20th century, Western Europe obviously recognized some vague limitation on "Might makes right" (which is what conquest, or "the guy with the guns gets the land", really is). After centuries of warfare, the established nations clearly didnt want any more of that going on in their neighborhood (outside Europe was another matter, of couse). What you had managed to conquer back then, you were stuck with. What they wanted now was stability at home, the better to expand the colonial empires in Africa or Asia.

A conquest that happened two centuries ago has become just status quo in early 20th century W European eyes, its legitimacy doesn't have to be reinvestigated, and it wont be because it's too late to fix it. In 1919, it's only the new alienated territories in which they have to consider the wants of the inhabitants; the Statute of Limitations has run out for A-L after so long under France.

Actually, the "statute of limitations" seems longer than that.

Consider just a few examples:

1) Polish acquisitions of Prussian territory: These territories had been acquired during the second and third Polish partitions of 1773 and 1793 - with only Posen lost after the War of the Fourth Coalition, then regained at the Congress of Vienna.

2) Hungary's territorial losses, which mostly included lands (such as Transylvania) that had been part of the Kingdom of Hungary without interruption since the 1690's.

3) Southern Tyrol, which had been fully in Austrian hands since about 1500, save for a brief interregnum during the late Napoleonic Wars.

Indeed, looking over other examples of territorial changes, the real rule of thumb seems to be: ethnic self-determination wherever it served Western Allied interests by consensus, and largely ignored where it did not. And this invariably meant whatever would reduce the territory of Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey, even if particular Allies did not always get every scrap of territory yanked away that they might have wanted (the Italian failure to gain more Austrian territory around the Adriatic or Turkish territory in Southern Anatolia, the French failure to force the cession of the entirety of Upper Silesia to Poland, etc.). It also meant happy Allied acquiescence to the massive carveouts of old Russian imperial lands by the new Eastern European states, as a way of creating a healthy cordon sanitaire against Soviet communism.

The problem, of course, was that for every community made happy with Versailles' new borders, at least one other was made unhappy. Thus were sewn the seeds for another war.

 

[riggerrob]

Ironically, the French did not consider the Rhine River as a defensible border. After they regained control of Alsace-Lorraine, they built the Maginot Line in the Vosges Mountains. The Vosges assisted defender sin both directions. Germany ran around the North end at the start of WW2. When American forces approaches the Rhine River, in last 1944, their advance stalled when German soldiers mounted a stubborn defense around the old fortification surrounding Metz.

Inn the long run, France only wanted Alsace-Lorraine as a trip-wire against German invasion. They were happy to sacrifice German-speakers who populated the Rhine River Valley between Strassbourg and the Vosges Mountains, The Rhine River Valley is flat and swampy and poorly drained on both the modern Frnech and German sides. The few roads and bridges cannot support a heavy-armoured invasion. Once you encounter the low mountains on the east (Black Forest) and west sides (Vosges) the few roads and bridges don't provide very good mobility through steep, densely-forested mountain sides.

Farther South, the Jura Mountain Range is short, steep and great at keeping the French on their own side of the border ... and out of the broad, French-speaking, Western valley of Switzerland.

 

[Dunois]

Ironically, the French did not consider the Rhine River as a defensible border. After they regained control of Alsace-Lorraine, they built the Maginot Line in the Vosges Mountains.

This is factually incorrect, extensive fortifications were built along the Rhine:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortified_Sector_of_the_Lower_Rhine

 

[eliphas8]

The only legitimate rights for a state to own anything is self determination, but given how neither side would legitimately handle that, force is the ultimate determination, in which case it's clearly German.

 

[Athelstane]

This is factually incorrect, extensive fortifications were built along the Rhine:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortified_Sector_of_the_Lower_Rhine

But the main line of defense was, in fact, the Maginot Line, which was (in Alsace) mainly on the forward slope of the Vosges.

Perhaps it would be fair to say that the French (and Germans) of the period considered the Rhine "not very defensible" as opposed to "indefensible." It was just enough of a barrier to justify limited fortifications to delay enemy advance and buy time. But both sides preferred to fortify more rugged terrain.

 

[Matteo]

Facts give the answer to the question, much more than liar theories.

Prussia and the new 2nd Reich perfectly knew that Alsacians were french.
That's why they refused self-determination when they decided to take the territory for price of France's defeat.
Alsace was governed like an occupies territory.
All the deputies elected by alsacians were called "protesters" which was for them the only legal way to say that they kept on feeling french.

The claim of new Germany on Alsace was as serious as the claim of France on Rhineland in the name of roman Gaul having the Rhine as its frontier or as would have been a claim of Germany on the Netherlands or Belgium.

It was an old anachronic way of thinking territorial politics in an age that had become the age of nations and national identities.

 

[avernite]

That theory kind of breaks down by France deciding it knew what the Alsatians wanted, too, in 1919. They didn't hold a plebiscite either, AFAIK.