Alsace-Lorraine

Alsace-Lorraine (French: Alsace-Lorraine; German: Elsass-Lothringen) was the territory originally of the German empire, ceded to Louis XIV by the peace of Westphalia in 1648, but returned by France to the newly-unified Germany under the 1871 Treaty of Frankfurt (which ended the Franco-Prussian War) and restored to France after World War I by the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. It was annexed by the German Third Reich in 1940, and again reverted to French control in 1945.

The territory was made up of 93% of Alsace (7% of Alsace remained French) and 26% of Lorraine (74% of Lorraine remained French). Because of historical reasons, specific legal dispositions are still applied in the territory, now known legally as Alsace-Moselle.