Why was alsace-lorraine such an important territory for the germans to conquer in WW1? was it an STRATEGIC position? why not go farther north?
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Why was alsace-lorraine such an important territory for the germans to conquer in WW1? was it an STRATEGIC position? why not go farther north?
>For the Germans to Conquer in WW1
Germany Controlled Alsace Lorraine in WW1, they got It in the Franco-Prussian war.
It has a large German-speaking population and German nationalists saw it as a part of Germany.
And like the other dude said, the region was in German hands in 1914. It was captured during the Franco-Prussian War, which was a total disaster for France.
They had a large coal and steel reserves, had massive industry and were german speaking.
Their industry was actually a reason against Germany annexing it. The region produced more cotton textiles than the whole of Germany and it tanked the economy due to greater competition. When it was apart of France, it was the only place that produced them and had a dedicated market, now other Germans were shitty at the competition. Bismarck and some South German notables wanted to cede Alsace to Switzerland to offset this somewhat.
It proved to be a headache for Berlin though, the cultural differences between the Prussians and locals caused much resentment, especially due to the Kulturekampf and the Zabern Affair.
For France, the desire to retake it was more out of economic losses, and nationalism was used to justify it as a great wrong. On the opposite side, Alsatians grew nostalgic for France due to the better economic state of their region, and started to not care that they spoke German too.
>On the opposite side, Alsatians grew nostalgic for France due to the better economic state of their region, and started to not care that they spoke German too.
Not true, any desire to go back to France was quickly decling decades into German rule, most of the people born after the annexation didn't speak any French and didn't need French to advance socially and educationally, the French minority in Lorraine wasn't declining rapidly but at the same time was still steadily declining especially in large cities, the city of Metz at some point became majority German as well.
There wasn't necessarily much love for the Empire in A-L though considering the province was treated as though it was an occupation. The Catholic majority was barred from higher education and the limited autonomy granted to them in 1879 was not considered enough. The Zabern Affair demonstrates the tension between the locals and Prussians as the people saw the Empire as just a Prussian occupation. The French era was just romanticised by some in this period, it didn't matter that fewer spoke French, stories of a nicer time persisted.
Regardless of what you said here the fact of the matter is that in the last elections most people voted for mainstream German parties.
>The Catholic majority was barred from higher education
Source?
The State Supervision Act is the legislation. It essentially stripped the Catholic Church of any influence and power in universities, and allowed new 'secular' boards to arbitrarily discriminate against Catholics.
>https://www.jstor.org/stable/25017757?seq=1
This paper mentions some restrictions, along with the Catholic press being muzzled.
>Regardless of what you said here the fact of the matter is that in the last elections most people voted for mainstream German parties.
In the 1912 German election, of the 15 seats in Alsace-Lorraine, 9 went to Alsace-Lorraine parties.
>and allowed new 'secular' boards to arbitrarily discriminate against Catholics.
Proof?
Secularism is not discrimination.
>In the 1912 German election, of the 15 seats in Alsace-Lorraine, 9 went to Alsace-Lorraine parties.
No:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichsland_Elsa%C3%9F-Lothringen#Ergebnisse_der_Reichstagswahlen_1874%E2%80%931912
>Proof?
>In Prussia the answer to Catholic political opposition was the Kulturkampf. Anti-Catholic measures similar to those in Prussia were soon introduced into Alsace-Lorraine by the imperial authorities; government regulations severely restricted Catholic education, muzzled the Catholic press, and expelled certain Catholic religious orders from the Reichsland.
>Recognizing the danger posed by an organized Catholic opposition, the high president (Oberpresident) of Alsace-Lorraine, Eduard von Miller, suppressed the Committee and gave Rapp forty-eight hours to leave Alsace-Lorraine. The swift and decisive action which the government took against this first Catholic attempt at organization probably discouraged future attempts to establish a permanent Catholic political party, for it was not until the 1890's that the Catholics of the Reichsland seriously considered the possibility of forming a permanent, unified political organization. Rapp's expulsion and the suppression of the Committee were also instrumental in setting the Catholics against the government, just prior to the Reichstag election of 1874.
The rights of the Catholic clergy were restricted, and their hold on education taken from them and given to the state, with all organised attempts at resistance being forcibly broken.
>No
See pic rel. I will concede, it seems we're both correct on this, a greater number of people in A-L voted for mainstream German parties, but a greater number of seats were taken by local ones.
>expressing their freedom
And then the Prussian state censored the press of the Catholic majority. Two wrongs don't make a right, it just becomes petty tit-for-tat bullshit.
>and expelled certain Catholic religious orders from the Reichsland.
Good, the Spanish were anti-Catholic because they removed and supressed the Jesuits!
Like you see from your own source, anti-clericalism wasn't somehow something invented by protestants to suppress Catholics specifically, in fact I'd ask you to really show the difference between the Kulturkampf and the suppression of the Jesuits that happened a century earlier, at least for Bismark the basic justifications were the same.
>The rights of the Catholic clergy were restricted, and their hold on education taken from them and given to the state, with all organised attempts at resistance being forcibly broken.
I guess segregation is good if it's done on religious grounds? Do you support Jim Crow's laws?
>See pic rel. I will concede, it seems we're both correct on this, a greater number of people in A-L voted for mainstream German parties, but a greater number of seats were taken by local ones.
The German wiki is clear that those local parties were sections of the larger parties, if you check the local SPD, FVP and the local Zentrum got 13 of the 15 seats while the apparently French Lorraine party got the remaining 2, maybe there is some further logic why the map considers the Alsatian Zentrum to be different but to me it doesn't seem like a secessionist party.
From the English wiki:
>In December 1905 Léon Vonderscheer joined the Reichstag group of the Centre Party, being the first Alsatian Catholic politician to do so.[1] In 1906 the party merged into the Centre Party, becoming its branch in Alsace-Lorraine.[2] The party did however retain a degree of independence towards the all-German Centre Party.[4] For example, their Reichstag deputies did not join the Centre Party faction en bloc.[5]
>Like you see from your own source, anti-clericalism wasn't somehow something invented by protestants to suppress Catholics specifically, in fact I'd ask you to really show the difference between the Kulturkampf and the suppression of the Jesuits that happened a century earlier, at least for Bismark the basic justifications were the same.
I see your point. I suppose Alsace-Lorraine differs slightly though since it wasn't as if the locals had grown tired of the Catholic Church, but more rather the external Prussians seeking to stripe them of political and educational power.
>I guess segregation is good if it's done on religious grounds? Do you support Jim Crow's laws?
That's somewhat facetious, private religious education exists for those who want to instill the values of their faith much in the same way it operates today.
>The German wiki is clear that those local parties were sections of the larger parties, if you check the local SPD, FVP and the local Zentrum got 13 of the 15 seats while the apparently French Lorraine party got the remaining 2, maybe there is some further logic why the map considers the Alsatian Zentrum to be different but to me it doesn't seem like a secessionist party.
From the English wiki:
Yes I'm not sure why a distinction has been made, perhaps they were afforded more autonomy. I wouldn't say an A-L party must be secessionist, more that they are autonomist and seek to be treated as an actual member-state of the German Empire's federation rather than a Reichsland. The Zabern Affair was not necessarily seeking full independence, more seeking local respect.
Interesting, I haven't heard this.
Were this to happen, Germany would exchange it for some part of Switzerland, which could also be interesting.
>Germany would exchange it for some part of Switzerland
What a delusional thought... which canton would willingly join the German Federation? Why would Elsass joining the Eidgenossenschaft make any canton wanna accept Wilhelm as a ruler?
How so?
>What a delusional thought
Exactly why it was rejected by the Swiss, who also didn't want to antagonise France.
>Why would Elsass joining the Eidgenossenschaft make any canton wanna accept Wilhelm as a ruler?
Bismarck believed the economic incentive of having Southern Alsace, an industrial region, within Switzerland might be enough for the federal state to overrule some cantons. This was never seriously considered in Switzerland, more suggested by Bismarck, and lobbied incredibly by the Committee of South German Industrialists to give up Upper Alsace.
>Eidgenossenschaft
Wrong era, post the Sonderbund War, Switzerland was a federal state.
See above.
>Alhough one of the Committee's main functions was to pay the fines which Catholic parents incurred for refusing to send their children to Protestant schools, the government claimed, apparently not without some justification, that the Committee was agitating the population in preparation for the Reichstag election of 1874
The Church was literally fining people for expressing their freedom and you complain that the government acted like the Church did? This is hilarious.
>Bismarck and some South German notables wanted to cede Alsace to Switzerland to offset this somewhat.
or Luxembourg, another German state who understands French culture very well.
>Bismarck and some South German notables wanted to cede Alsace to Switzerland to offset this somewhat.
those would have been some weird borders
The southern German states, especially Bavaria (which controlled the Palatinate) did not want to be turned into Prussian military outposts, and using Alsace-Lorraine as a buffer zone was a convenient way to avoid this problem while securing the French border.
It represented 75 % of Iron production of Germany
>they were speaking german
no they werent. it was in france, they were speaking french. maybe there were some germans there because germany was right next to it but it was french. look at the name ffs
Yes elsaß lothringen is as German as it sounds
>Elsaß-Lothringen.
That's French written in German.
>The name Alsace can be traced to the Old High German Ali-saz or Elisaz, meaning "foreign domain".[7] An alternative explanation is from a Germanic Ell-sass, meaning "seated on the Ill",[8] a river in Alsace.
>Lorraine[Note 1] is a cultural and historical region in Northeastern France, now located in the administrative region of Grand Est. Its name stems from the medieval kingdom of Lotharingia, which in turn was named after either Emperor Lothair I or King Lothair II.
>Lothar is Danish, Finnish, German, Norwegian, and Swedish masculine given name, while Lotár is Hungarian masculine given name. Both names are modern forms of the Germanic Chlothar (which is a blended form of Hlūdaz, meaning "fame", and Harjaz, meaning "army"),[1][2] Hlothar or Lothaire.
To be fair, these names have germanic origins and were in similar ways used by the franks. The franks present in alsace weren't latinized though and identified german, not french during the late medieval and early modern ages.
>The name Alsace can be traced to the Old High German Ali-saz or Elisaz, meaning "foreign domain"
Yes, foreign, because it did not and does not belong to Germany. It's French clay.
Keep it. Paris has already completely homogenized the culture there. Anything of value has been lost and it has become nothing but another shit-tier French province (shittier than even the laughing stock of the German west, the Saarland). This is what Paris does to any annexed European territories. They send in their fricking prefects and the prefects leave a docile, servile population back, while the best are froced into the Paris shithouse where they have to live with insane rents and criminality. Everyone looses.
no you moron, foreign as in from the other shore of the rhine, not from another nation.
keep crying you krautshit barbarian, Alsace will never belong to you swine ever again
>With the decline of the Roman Empire, Alsace became the territory of the Germanic Alemanni. The Alemanni were agricultural people, and their Germanic language formed the basis of modern-day dialects spoken along the Upper Rhine (Alsatian, Alemannian, Swabian, Swiss). Clovis and the Franks defeated the Alemanni during the 5th century AD, culminating with the Battle of Tolbiac, and Alsace became part of the Kingdom of Austrasia.
Alsace was alemannic before it was frankish, though the allemani had shortly before taken it from the romans, so not really ancient rights there.
More importantly, alsace was german before it was french, which it became through force of arms in the 17th century. It was an act of french imperialism that the world must remember. (Mostly because the french will never cease to remind the world of acts of german imperialism, but what can we do.)
>thousands of years ago some tribal germshits squatted here before migrating elsewhere, therefore the land should belong to the modern state of Germany
lmao
they didnt migrate anywhere, froggy. stop shitting up the thread with your shitty bait.
I repeat Hermann, you will never have the lands again you sausage-sucking cuck
It's ok pierre, I know your kind struggles with english so try and read my post again.
>More importantly
Ca veut dire que l'une chose est plus important que l'autre.
Yeah well they did. The alemanni were there before the franks (but frank does not equal french either), they both took it from someone else and it's literal ancient history. Early modern history is very clear though - french agression on german lands belonging to the holy roman empire.
>holy roman empire
no such thing
German name for it is Elsaß-Lothringen.
The vast majority of the population in Alsace was german speaking, Lorraine was more mixed, but the part that was annexed by Germany was also majority german.
how was it reconquest ? before becoming french clay it was mostly independent microstates
when germany (re)conquered it in 1971 only about 10% of its population were native french speakers
I bet you're one of those homosexuals who gets mad when someone labels something before 1871 as German because "Germany didn't exist until 1871!!!!"
none of you lived there nor know anyone who lived in A-L in the 17th-20th century. yet somehow know they were speaking german?
Are you moronic? They spoke High and Middle German dialects, they could understand people from Baden, most of Switzerland and Pfalz, Luxemburg just fine while if they didn't learn French they wouldn't be able to communicate with their neighbors to the West.
>None of you knew anyone from that time period, so how do you know things?
What is 'history'?
holy dumbfrick
unholy dumbfrick
They didn’t have to build defenses in Baden and Bavaria. States that probably wouldn’t be cool with Prussian militarizing it’s territory. Lorraine and Alsace bypas them.
Alsace Lorraine was conquered from the HRE in the 17th century, while the HRE was busy with turks no less. This especially perfidious act of fr*nch imperialist agression had to be avenged, no way around it.
The French king Francis I was considered as a candidate for emperorship in the early 16th century, VGH Franco-German invasion of the Ottoman empire.
>"Might is right he he he"
>"No you can't conquer me, it's not fair!"
Because pre-Napoleonic invaded many time.
some of my ancestors were from there
like the third time his house was destroyed, and his fields burned, he packed up the family and moved to america
what made him think moving to muttland would be an improvement
Tbh once the european superstate comes the entire debate will be meaningless. Alsatians are still ethnic germans after all, even if they speak french.
>once the european superstate comes
this will never actually happen
why are the french so in denial of their warmongering past?
It was inhabited overwhelmingly by Germans, duh.
It was inhabited entirely by Frenchmen, just like today.
no one is buying your revisionism, pierre
see
Not an argument.
They didn't conquer Alsace-Lorraine in WW1 as they already had it.