AHC: German Alsace-Lorraine

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to find a way, with the latest point of divergence, for Alsace-Lorraine to be considered a natural part of Germany by everyone at the start of the twentieth century. For this thread Alsace-Lorraine means the modern day French departments of Moselle, Bas-Rhin, Haut-Rhin, and Territoire de Belfort.

My original idea was for France to do worse in the War of Spanish Succession suffering a decisive defeat at the Battle of Malplaquet so that in addition to our timeline's terms they're also forced to cede the Duchy of Alsace back to the Holy Roman Empire to act as a defensive barrier along with the territory between the two main parts of the Duchy of Lorraine to them. The problem this brings though is that if and when the Duchy of Lorraine is traded away, either at the peace talks or in the future if the War of Polish Succession still goes ahead, that includes a chunk of Moselle as shown on this map. Easiest solution is to simply say that whilst France receives most the duchy negotiations have the Empire keeping a small part but that's a bit inelegant. So can anyone think of any other possibilities to have Alsace-Lorraine become German?
 
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What means "everyone"? There are still people today with rather absurd ideas of natural German parts.
Not counting cranks assume 'everyone' to means the vast majority of European people and all of the European governments.
 
Germany wins World War One, keeps Alsace-Lorraine, and the French eventually stop grumbling about it.

Doesn't really fit with the OP, which specified "at the start of the twentieth century".

If we do take a post-Franco-Prussian war POD, then it'd have to be near-complete Franco-German reconciliation in the Belle Epoque.
 
Well, the easiest is the HRE getting its shit together and not fragmenting, then just have it hold Lorraine and pfft, magic. Of course, 700-900 years of butterflies to 1900.

For the War of the Spanish Succession... I find it unlikely, but Louis XIV was ready to give up all of his conquests since 1648 for peace, but the Allies demanded that he had to remove his grandson Philip himself, Louis obviously refused and the proposal went down. That would leave only Sundgau (south of Alsace) and the Three Bishoprics (which included Metz) in the hands of the French.
 
what means "everyone"? they are still people today with rather absurd ideas of natural german parts
The same exists with those claim the Rhine is France's "natural" border
Maybe since the region was an at the time of the Great War, an Imperial Territory
Possibly it could be made independent at Versailles as a buffer state with quite likely an expanded Eastern border
 
Avoid WWW1 and if possible , avoid US intervention. The Germans were winning in the east and south, and a stalemate in the western front might end in a white peace between France and Germany
 
Actually, in the early twentieth century, there were signs that at least the population of Alsace-Lorraine was becoming reconciled to German rule. From 1874 to 1890, in almost every election, Alsace-Lorraine voted for Reichstag delegations unanimously and irreconcilably opposed to German rule. This started to change after the Dreyfus affair--in Germany the Kulturkampf was over, while France was becoming increasingly anticlerical. So the clerical party, the largest in Alsace-Lorraine, came out for autonomy within the German Reich. However, an irreconcilable party remained, and was strengthened by such things as the "Zabern (or Saverne) Affair" of 1913. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zabern_Affair If that affair--and the First World War--had been avoided, there might eventually have been a general acquiescence in Alsace-Lorraine being German.
 
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