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Following World War II, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg formulated plans to annex parts of Germany. This was considered as a form of reparations [1] in addition to monetary compensation and employment of workers.
The territorial demands of the ruling Luxembourg National Union Government were made known in late summer 1945. Luxembourg required Germany to relinquish German territory that had been separated from the former Duchy of Luxembourg under the terms of the 1815 Congress of Vienna, and the further extension of Luxembourg to the Saar River. Only a portion of the population of Luxembourg was in agreement with these concepts of a "Greater Luxembourg".
In support of this territorial claim, in November 1945 troops of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg occupied a small zone of their own within the actual French occupation zone, installing two garrisons.
In a memorandum dated November 27, 1946, the Government of Luxembourg stated that the border be relocated between 5 and 10 kilometers (3.1 and 6.2 mi) into German territory. An area of 544 square kilometers (210 sq mi) was affected, including all or part of the German border districts of Bitburg, Our, Saarburg, and Prüm, the population of which was 31,188 people. The area constituted approximately 20% of the territory that Luxembourg had ceded to Prussia in 1815.
Similarly to those of Belgium, the Netherlands, and France, these territorial demands were refused by the three primary Allied powers—the US, the United Kingdom, and the USSR—with reference to the considerable problems posed by supplying the needs of the 14 million refugees from the annexed eastern territories of the former Reich who were already present in their respective zones of occupation. The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg nonetheless persisted in its territorial demands.
Under Article 4 of the London Six-Power Conference of June 7, 1948, "Preliminary Territorial Agreements", the following was noted: "The delegations have agreed to submit to their governments suggestions concerning certain minor provisional territorial adjustments in connection with the western borders of Germany."
The Government of France implemented this decision of the London Conference as follows: under Order No. 212 of the French Military Government of April 23, 1949, the incorporation into the territory of Luxembourg of the Kammerwald together with the settlement of Roth an der Our and the estate of Neuscheuerhof (Bauler) was declared. The area in question consisted of 547 hectares (2.11 sq mi) near the Luxembourg settlement of Vianden.
Shortly thereafter Luxembourg declined to annex Roth and Neuscheuerhof, so that only the uninhabited area of the Kammerwald was separated from Germany.
In the agreement of July 11, 1959, between the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and the penitent [1] Federal Republic of Germany, [1] Luxembourg conclusively renounced its claim to the area of the Kammerwald and returned the territory to the Federal Republic of Germany, which in return paid 58.3 million DM to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.
The Potsdam Conference was held at Potsdam in the Soviet occupation zone from July 17 to August 2, 1945, to allow the three leading Allies to plan the postwar peace, while avoiding the mistakes of the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. The participants were the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States. They were represented respectively by General Secretary Joseph Stalin, Prime Ministers Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee, and President Harry S. Truman. They gathered to decide how to administer Germany, which had agreed to an unconditional surrender nine weeks earlier. The goals of the conference also included establishing the postwar order, solving issues on the peace treaty, and countering the effects of the war.
The Potsdam Agreement was the agreement among three of the Allies of World War II: the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Soviet Union after the war ended in Europe on 1 August 1945 and it was published the next day. A product of the Potsdam Conference, it concerned the military occupation and reconstruction of Germany, its border, and the entire European Theatre of War territory. It also addressed Germany's demilitarisation, reparations, the prosecution of war criminals and the mass expulsion of ethnic Germans from various parts of Europe. France was not invited to the conference but formally remained one of the powers occupying Germany.
Saarland is a state of Germany in the southwest of the country. With an area of 2,570 km2 (990 sq mi) and population of 990,509 in 2018, it is the smallest German state in area apart from the city-states of Berlin, Bremen, and Hamburg, and the smallest in population apart from Bremen. Saarbrücken is the state capital and largest city; other cities include Neunkirchen and Saarlouis. Saarland is mainly surrounded by the department of Moselle in France to the west and south and the neighboring state of Rhineland-Palatinate in Germany to the north and east; it also shares a small border about 8 kilometres long with the canton of Remich in Luxembourg to the northwest.
The Klaipėda Region or Memel Territory was defined by the 1919 Treaty of Versailles in 1920 and refers to the northernmost part of the German province of East Prussia, when, as Memelland, it was put under the administration of the Entente's Council of Ambassadors. The Memel Territory, together with other areas severed from Germany, was to remain under the control of the League of Nations until a future date, when the people of these regions would be allowed to vote on whether the land would return to Germany or not. Today, the former Memel Territory is controlled by Lithuania as part of Klaipėda and Tauragė counties.
The German occupation of Luxembourg in World War II began in May 1940 after the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg was invaded by Nazi Germany. Although Luxembourg was officially neutral, it was situated at a strategic point at the end of the French Maginot Line. On 10 May 1940, the German Wehrmacht invaded Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands. Luxembourg was initially placed under a military administration, but later became a civilly administrated territory and finally was annexed directly into Germany. The Germans believed Luxembourg to be a Germanic state, and attempted to suppress what they perceived as alien French language and cultural influences. Although some Luxembourgers joined the resistance or collaborated with the Germans, both constituted a minority of the population. As German nationals, from 1942, many Luxembourgers were conscripted into the German military. Nearly 3,500 Luxembourgish Jews were murdered during the Holocaust. The liberation of the country by the Allies began in September 1944, but due to the Ardennes Offensive it was not completed until early 1945.
The Saar Protectorate, officially Saarland, was a French protectorate and a disputed territory separated from Germany. On joining the Federal Republic of Germany in 1957, it became the smallest "federal state", the Saarland, not counting the "city states" of Berlin, Hamburg, and Bremen. It is named after the Saar River.
The entirety of Germany was occupied and administered by the Allies of World War II from the Berlin Declaration on 5 June 1945 to the establishment of West Germany on 23 May 1949. Unlike occupied Japan, Germany was stripped of its sovereignty and former state: after Nazi Germany surrendered on 8 May 1945, four countries representing the Allies asserted joint authority and sovereignty through the Allied Control Council (ACC). At first, Allied-occupied Germany was defined as all territories of Germany before the 1938 Nazi annexation of Austria; the Potsdam Agreement on 2 August 1945 defined the new eastern German border by giving Poland and the Soviet Union all regions of Germany east of the Oder–Neisse line and divided the remaining "Germany as a whole" into four occupation zones, each administered by one of the Allies.
At the end of World War II, plans were made in the Netherlands to annex German territory as compensation for the damages caused by the war. In October 1945, the Dutch state asked Germany for 25 billion guilders in reparations. In February 1945 it had already been established at the Yalta Conference that reparations would not be given in monetary form. The plan which was worked out in most detail was the one made by Frits Bakker Schut, and hence became known as the Bakker Schut Plan or Groot Nederland Plan.
The Territory of the Saar Basin was a region occupied and governed by the United Kingdom and France from 1920 to 1935 under a League of Nations mandate. It had its own flag : a blue, white, and black horizontal tricolour. The blue and white stood for Bavaria, and white and black for Prussia, out of whose lands the Saar Territory was formed. Initially, the occupation was under the auspices of the Treaty of Versailles. Its population in 1933 was 812,000, and its capital was Saarbrücken. The territory closely corresponds with the modern German state of Saarland, but was slightly smaller in area. After a plebiscite was held in 1935, it was returned to Germany.
The Duchy of Nassau was an independent state between 1806 and 1866, located in what is now the German states of Rhineland-Palatinate and Hesse. It was a member of the Confederation of the Rhine and later of the German Confederation. Its ruling dynasty, now extinct, was the House of Nassau. The duchy was named for its historical core city, Nassau, although Wiesbaden rather than Nassau was its capital. In 1865, the Duchy of Nassau had 465,636 inhabitants. After being occupied and annexed into the Kingdom of Prussia in 1866 following the Austro-Prussian War, it was incorporated into the Province of Hesse-Nassau. The area today is a geographical and historical region, Nassau, and Nassau is also the name of the Nassau Nature Park within the borders of the former duchy.
There were three Partitions of Luxembourg between 1659 and 1839. Together, the three partitions reduced the territory of the Duchy of Luxembourg from 10,700 km2 (4,100 sq mi) to the present-day area of 2,586 km2 (998 sq mi) over a period of 240 years. The remainder forms parts of modern-day Belgium, France, and Germany.
The territorial evolution of Germany in this article include all changes in the modern territory of Germany from its unification making it a country on 1 January 1871 to the present although the history of "Germany" as a territorial polity concept and the history of the ethnic Germans are much longer and much more complex. Modern Germany was formed when the Kingdom of Prussia unified most of the German states, with the exception of multi-ethnic Austria, into the German Empire. After the First World War, on 10 January 1920, Germany lost about 13% of its territory to its neighbours, and the Weimar Republic was formed two days before this war was over. This republic included territories to the east of today's German borders.
The Greater Region, formerly also known as SaarLorLux, is a euroregion of eleven regional authorities located in four European states. The term has also been applied to cooperations of several of these authorities or of their subdivisions, administrations, organisations, clubs and people. Member regions represent different political structures: the Walloon region, comprising the French and German-speaking Communities of Belgium; the former Lorraine part of Grand Est, a region of France, including the French departments Meurthe-et-Moselle, Meuse, Moselle and Vosges; the German federated states of Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland; and the sovereign state of Luxembourg.
The Social Democratic Party of Saarland was a political party existing between 1946 and 1956 in the Saar Protectorate. It had a short-lived predecessor, the Social Democratic Regional Party of the Saar Territory existing between 1933 and 1935 in the Saar Territory.
The Saar Statute was a Franco-West German agreement signed in 1954 which resulted from lengthy diplomatic negotiations between France and West Germany. It helped to pave the way for a more modern Europe following post World War II tensions and geo-political disputes. The incorporation of the Saarland was finalized on 1 January 1957.
After World War II both West Germany and East Germany were obliged to pay war reparations to the Allied governments, according to the Potsdam Conference. Other Axis nations were obliged to pay war reparations according to the Paris Peace Treaties, 1947. Austria was not included in any of these treaties.
After the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II in 1945, Belgium planned to annex parts of the territory along the Belgian–German border. In addition to monetary compensations and the lending of labour forces, this was considered a way of reparations. In mid-April 1949, Belgium surprisingly waived any interest in most of the previously claimed areas.
The German-Luxembourg Nature Park is a cross-border nature park, which was established on 17 April 1964 by state treaty between the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. It thus became the first cross-border nature park in Western Europe. On the German side Naturpark Südeifel is providing services for visitors.
The French occupation zone in Germany was one of the Allied-occupied areas in Germany after World War II.
Germany and Luxembourg first established bilateral relations in April 1951. The two countries have shared a peaceful and friendly relationship over their 73 year relationship, especially through their mutual cooperation in international organisations such as the European Union, NATO, the OECD and the United Nations. The heads of state of both countries participate in the annual meeting of German-speaking countries.