A Stress Test for German Nationalism: Protective Custody in Alsace-Lorraine during the First World War

Abstract

When the First World War broke out, the French government declared the return of Alsace-Lorraine its only public war aim, arguing that the population was ‘French in spirit’. In an age rife with claims of national self-determination, trapped in a protracted war of attrition and facing a nationally ambivalent population, the German state soon came under enormous pressure to ensure the loyalty and patriotism of the inhabitants of its western borderland. This article examines why Imperial Germany failed to meet this ‘stress test’. It focuses on the crucial but hitherto neglected issue of protective custody (Schutzhaft), whereby police and military authorities were able to arrest and detain ‘suspect’ civilians without charge or trial. The article finds that protective custody, an emergency measure under martial law, played a central role in the failure of German policy in Alsace-Lorraine: it undermined the rule of law, shifted the focus onto national dissent and gave rise to an atmosphere of suspicion and fear. The article also demonstrates that the Reichstag successfully put limits on protective custody in the second half of the war. Yet leaving the authoritarian doctrine of enforcing national loyalty in place, the more lenient administrative approach had a disintegrative rather than a stabilizing effect, preparing the ground for widespread disaffection with German rule months before the war ended.

The Paris System in Western Europe: Minorities, Self-Determination, and the Management of Difference in the “Civilized West”

“…The First World War acted as a catalyst of these preexisting tensions, sidelining more liberal approaches to integrate the region in the German state. German military authorities' rigid policy of demanding unconditional loyaltywhile suspending most personal libertiestransformed economic hardship and political discontent into national antagonism and ubiquitous suspicion (Kramer 2002;Prott 2021a;Prott 2021b). Toward the end of the war, the German government began a policy of aggressive Germanization, which involved changing French names of places and persons, the expropriation of French-owned large properties, and the resettlement of Germans from eastern parts of the Empire to Alsace-Lorraine, right up to planning the partition of the region after the war (Preibusch 2006, 519-568).…”

“…Yet this policy of Germanization did not escalate into serious inter-ethnic conflict (O'Connell 2018, 35-36). Indeed, while Germanization did erode local support for the Reich, unlike in Alsace-Lorraine loyalty to Berlin was never seriously challenged in Eupen-Malmedy (Pabst 2014, 78-79;Prott 2021aPrott , 2021b. Overall, this persisting allegiance contributed to the absence of major tensions.…”