Germany's Territorial Losses in History

Most of Germany's territorial losses were the direct result of the Treaty of Versailles, which was signed right after World War I. However, the lost of territory had begun in 1648 at the end of the Thirty Year War, when France, one of the victors of that war, had seized Alsace and Loraine. Therefore, losing land meant losing part of her population, whose descendants are living in the regions she lost.

Contrary to what happened in other European countries, Germany's territorial losses were not the result of secession or emancipation movement of any of her states, or of selling land to a neighboring nation, as is the case with Mexico and Russia selling a portion of their territories to the United States. Huge fragments of German territory were annexed, by force, to her former war enemies, or to be used to form new countries. In other words, it was just taken away from her by the United States and Great Britain's initiative. This loss of land has a historical background, and it shows deep-seated prejudices against Germany and the Germans, in the same way today the American and British politicians regard Russia as 'evil', with the blinders of preconceived ideas.

In 1648, at the end of the Thirty Years War, France had annexed Alsace and Lorraine through the Peace of Westphalia treaty, acquiring 33,900 km2 of territory inhabited by German-speaking people. These two regions had been part of the Empire of Charlemagne in the Dark Ages; with the dissolution of this Empire, Alsace and Lorraine became part of the Eastern Frankish Realm, under Ludwig the German, in 870 AD, by the Treaty of Meersen. In the next century the Eastern Frankish Realm would become the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation.

Although Germany recovered Alsace and Lorraine during the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871), the Treaty of Versailles (1919), which put an end to World War I, robbed Germany of these territories again, attaching them to France. These same “peace” treaty deprived Germany of huge chunks of territory to create two new nations: Poland and Czechoslovakia, isolating Eastern Prussia from the rest of Germany. French prime minister Georges Clemenceau and American President Woodrow Wilson were behind the idea of taking more than 110,000 km2 of territory away from Germany to create the States of Poland and Czechoslovakia. By doing so, they did not solve problems but laid the groundwork for the emergence of a monster: Nazism. At the end of World War II, East Prussia (about 50,000 km2) was annexed to the Soviet Union. Despite of these territorial losses, Germany has always been portrayed as the villain of history by Western media and movies screenplay writers.

Below, the map of Germany after the signature of the Treaty of Versailles shows her territorial loss after World War I.