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The majority of Alsace–Lorraine's inhabitants were sceptical of the German Empire during the first two decades and voted for regional parties (Alsace–Lorraine Protesters and Autonomists). After Chancellor Bismarck's dismissal in 1890, the party landscape loosened, and parties of the Empire (Social Democrats, Centre, National Liberals , Left ...
In February 1661, with the Treaty of Vincennes, the King of France returned the Duchy of Bar to the Duke of Lorraine in exchange for several villages in Lorraine, to create a passage that would allow him to reach Alsace directly without passing through a foreign country. The capital and the duchy were occupied again from 1670 to 1697.
Alsace and Lorraine were annexed by Germany again in 1940. Unlike the rest of occupied France and the unoccupied so-called "Free France" (Vichy France) - which became a Nazi puppet state - Alsace-Lorraine was formerly incorporated into the Third Reich. It was returned to France once again after World War II.
France ceded more than 90% of Alsace and one-fourth of Lorraine, as stipulated in the treaty of Frankfurt. Unlike other members states of the German federation, which had governments of their own, the new Imperial territory of Alsace-Lorraine was under the sole authority of the Kaiser, administered directly by the imperial government in Berlin.
Although Adolf Hitler did not initially have plans to expand territorially in France except for the return of the formerly German Alsace-Lorraine, the total German hegemony gained after the Battle of France enabled him to plan the annexation of regions of France deemed strategically or economically important. [3]
The reconquest of Alsace-Lorraine, the "lost provinces," became an obsession characterized by a revanchism which would be one of the most powerful motives in France's involvement in World War I. In 1918, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson advocates the transfer of the territories to France as Point 8 in his Fourteen Points speech. Thus going against ...
In October 1865, Napoleon III, ruler of France, met with Prussian Prime Minister Otto von Bismarck in Biarritz, France.It was there that the two men struck a deal— France would not get involved in any future actions between Prussia and Austria or ally herself with Austria if Prussia somehow won the war and did not allow Italy to claim Venetia.
The border then changed after the French defeat during the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871), where the French Third Republic was forced to yield Alsace-Lorraine to the new German Empire in 1871. The territory was then returned to France 48 years later after the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.