Many histories of the late 19th and early 20th centuries regarding the origins of WWI seem to indicate that snatching Alsace Lorraine from France elicited a visceral and permanent revanchist antipathy from the French towards Germany. We've all heard the various stories, e.g. schoolchildren France being shown the areas blacked out on maps, the French trying to trade first tier colonies to keep the frontier intact, etc.
After 1870, France and Germany went in separate directions and by the 1890s the French had sown up a defensive alliance directed against Germany. But what if the Germans let the French up easy in 1870? Even though they obviously just took a severe drubbing that would smart for several decades, without the violation of its borders and the ill-will it created, surely that memory would fade? By 1914, Germany was economically and militarily unquestionably stronger than France, so France would have had no reason to want to upset a peaceful status quo. Could a warming of relations leading to eventually to something like the ECSC and bodies of integration coming to pass?
I guess in other words, I'm asking to what extent German-French rivalry after 1870 would be a permanent fixture of European relations, regardless of the A-L component. It seems to me that France chose a sub optimal strategy (confrontation) because the had an axe to grind. Without this, the clearly superior strategy was ever-increasing integrated relations with Germany ('better to be the Devil's right hand', so to speak).