The Fall of the Dynasties: The Collapse of the Old Order: 1905-1922

by Edmond Taylor

Germany was stripped of all her colonies by the Treaty of Versailles — they were divided among France, the British Commonwealth, Belgium and Japan — returned Alsace-Lorraine to France, temporarily surrendered the rich coal fields of the Saar Basin to French administration, gave up the Walloon cantons of Eupen and Malmedy to Belgium, and returned northern Schleswig to Denmark. Her heaviest losses were in the East In addition to the former Polish provinces of the Empire she had to hand over to Poland a sizable and disputed piece of Silesia, along with a corridor to the Baltic — peopled in the majority by Poles — which divided East Prussia from the rest of the German Republic. The ancient Hanseatic city of Danzig, almost wholly German in population, was detached from Germany and became a free port under international administration (the other Hanseatic town of Memel eventually went to Lithuania). In time the questions of Danzig and of the Polish Corridor were to furnish Hitler the pretext for