The War Illustrated, Volume 3, No. 54, Page 269, September 13, 1940.

When the Germans defeated France in 1870 they demanded and received in due course, Alsace-Lorraine as part of the price of victory. In 1940 they have not yet formally demanded it, but there is no doubt that they will do so, and in the meantime they are acting as if the cession had already been made. Here by way of background we tell something of Alsace-Lorraine’s troubled history.

In Alsace-Lorraine there is no "Avenue Marechal Foch" now a days; they have all been changed into "Adolf Hitler Strasse." In the towns and villages they are taking down the French place names and putting up signboards in German. French advertising signs are rapidly disappearing, and placards advertising German newspapers have been pasted over the French posters calling for subscriptions to the National Defence loans. The hotel names are being Germanized also, and the names above the shops. But perhaps the most prominent of all evidences of the Germanizing process are the outlines of names over shop-fronts whose former owners were Jews; here the names have been torn away or scrawled over, and almost without exception the windows beneath have been smashed and the interior of the shop ransacked and wrecked. In the streets little children sometimes wave the swastika flag, and more and more it is becoming the custom to give the Hitler salute beneath the shadow of the great cathedral in Strasbourg which Goethe knew and loved.

Out of its 2,000 years of history Alsace-Lorraine-more properly Alsace and Lorraine, for until 1871 they were two district provinces-has spent many centuries under German rule. For nearly 800 years following the break-up of Charlemagne’s empire Lorraine was a more or less independent dukedom loosely attached to the Germanic Holy Roman Empire. Alsace was still more German in speech and culture-its people still speak a German dialect-and for many centuries its principle cities were virtually independent. In 1648, however, it was annexed to France following the Thirty Years’ War, and in 1766 Lorraine, too, was united to the French crown. Both provinces remained French until 1871 when, following the disastrous Franco-German war, Bismarck compelled France to surrender to the newly created German Empire the whole of Alsace and a large part of Lorraine, including the great town of Metz.

From 1871 until 1918 Alsace-Lorraine, as the ceded territories were now officially styled, was under German rule. For the first twenty years it was governed from Berlin by dictatorial decrees, but following the fall of Bismarck in 1890 the young Kaiser, Wilhelm 2nd-"the recluse of Doorn," as we have come to know him-embarked on a more liberal policy which reconciled many of the populace to German rule, although they still maintained their love for French culture, their devotion to the ideals of old France.

In 1911 the Kaiser granted Alsace-Lorraine a constitution, and the process of Germanization was greatly helped by developments in France herself, where the markedly hostile attitude adopted by the Government towards the Catholic Church deeply offended the Alsatians, who were and are devoted Catholics. At this time the Alsatian Clerical Party, strongest in numbers of all their political groups, became affiliated to the German Centre Party. Yet just before the Great War relations between the Alsatians and the Germans were worse than they had been for years, following several incidents in which German soldiers had adopted a most truculent attitude against Alsatian civilians. During the four years of the Great War the inhabitants of Alsace-Lorraine were in a most difficult, even terrible, position, and it was with unbounded joy that they welcomed the French troops as liberators in October, 1918.

Hard on the heels of the retreating Germans the French reoccupied their lost provinces; in 1919 Alsace-Lorraine was formally restored to France by the Traety of Versailles, and the mourning robes which for nearly 50 years had muffled the statute of Strasbourg in the Place de la Concorde were removed. The re-annexation of Alsace-Lorraine advanced France to a position of one of the most important European steel producers, for Lorraine has vast iron deposits and considerable coal resources which had been organized by Germany on a basis of large scale capitalism. But it also brought with it problems which the highly centralized and altogether secular French Republic found it difficult to solve. The Alsatians had possessed under the Kaiser a considerable measure of local government, and had learned to look to Strasbourg as their centre; now they were required to turn to Paris for inspiration and direction. Still more important was the fact that in Alsace-Lorraine the Concordat with the Papacy had been maintained so that the Catholic priests were paid by the State and the children were taught the Catholic faith in State-aided schools. While just after the war the provincial assemblies which the Germans had permitted were swept away, the "Cartel des Gauches" of 1924 under Herriot and Briand proposed that religious teaching in the national schools should be suppressed. But in face of a boycott of the schools, Herriot was obliged to compromise.

But the religious and provincial susceptibilities of the Alsace-Lorrainers had been roused, and in 1926 an autonomist organization was founded-the "Elass-Lothringer Heimutbund" (Home League of Alsace-Lorraine)-under the leadership of Eugen Ricklin, who had been a member of the German Reichstag and of the Alsace-Lorraine Landtag. Its programme included the recognition of Alsace-Lorrainers as a national minority, political autonomy with an Alsace-Lorraine local parliament, and the placing of the German language on an equality with French. Poincare, who was himself a Lorrainer, endeavoured to suppress the movement with a high hand, banning the autonomist newspapers and arresting the chief leaders. Ricklin and his lieutenant, Rosse, were tried at Colmar in 1928 on a charge of plotting against the State, but their condemnation and sentence to a term of imprisonment made the popular martyrs and they were soon amnestied.

Supported by the Catholic and Democratic elements the autonomists won increasing influence, and of the thirty deputies returned by Alsace-Lorraine to the last Chamber in Paris, six were declared autonomists. The autonomists always denied that they sought for reunion with Germany, but of late years there has been a pronounced National Socialist movement in the provinces, actively supported from within the Reich. Even after the war began they were active, and one of their number, C. P. Roos, was shot in October, 1939, as a German spy.

But now the Alsatian Nazis are having their way. Politically, the Anschluss has already been effected with the installation of Herr Wagner as Chief of Civilian Administration; it is rumoured that Alsace will form part of a new province, Gau Ober-Rhein, with Karlsruhe as its capital. "Henceforth," declared Herr Wagner soon after his appointment, "there will be no Alsace problem; the clean-up neglected in 1871 will be made; all the foreign elements in the country will be expelled because they have striven to maintain a perpetual state of dissension." The economic anschluss is also in progress, for already the customs barrier between Alsace and the Reich has been swept away and instead a new barrier has been erected between the province and France; the Alsatians have been given ration cards for bread, flour, meat, and sugar, such as their German neighbours have possessed for years, and in the restaurants they serve ersatz coffee and tea.