Borderland Politics

A crucial forum for many of the debates about reintegration was politics. Equally, political life in interwar Alsace was dominated by questions posed by return. This chapter charts developments in regional politics as this focus upon the single issue of reintegration triggered the emergence of the autonomist political movement, and generated some unorthodox alliances between mainstream parties. Questions of Alsace squeezed normal political debate and became more important than differences between left and right, yet the focus upon the local that this engendered interacted with cross-border connections, as people, ideas, and political tracts crossed the border. The chapter considers these multiple impulses. It discusses parties that contested the region’s elections, analyses the issues that drove political debate, and traces the evolution of opinion in Alsace, as the population grappled with the dynamics of return and their place in Europe.