Treaty of Frankfurt (1871)
The Treaty of Frankfurt (French: Traité de Francfort; German: Friede von Frankfurt) was a peace treaty signed in Frankfurt on 10 May 1871, at the end of the Franco-Prussian War.
This article is about the Treaty of Frankfurt of 1871. For other treaties, see Treaty of Frankfurt (disambiguation).Treaty of Frankfurt
The treaty did the following:
The treaty also established the terms for the following:
Alsace-Lorraine was returned to France in the Treaty of Versailles, 1919.
Factors that influenced the boundary[edit]
Strategy[edit]
The German military spoke up for control of the Alsace region, up to the Vosges (mountain range) and the area between Thionville (Diedenhofen) and Metz as a requirement for the protection of Germany. Most importantly, the German military regarded control of the route between Thionville and Metz as the most important area of control if there were ever to be a future war with France.[1]
Legacy[edit]
This treaty polarized French policy towards Germany for the next 40 years. 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 addressed the issue as Point 8 in his Fourteen Points speech, expressing the will of the United States to the restitution of the region to France. Thus Alsace-Lorraine returned to the French Republic under the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. The Germans accepted to surrender under the term of the American proposal.