Map

Wellred

Core Argument

This chapter is a map, not a text-based argument. It depicts Germany in 1920 following the Treaty of Versailles, signed in June 1919. The map’s sole function is to visually enumerate the territorial losses and administrative transfers imposed on the defeated German state. Nine numbered areas are identified, each corresponding to a specific cession or internationalisation. These include the transfer of Moresnet and Eupen-Malmédy to Belgium; the surrender of the Saar coalmines’ output to France and the placement of the Saar region under League of Nations control for fifteen years; and the return of Alsace-Lorraine to France, thereby reversing the 1871 Treaty of Frankfurt that ended the Franco-Prussian War. Further losses involved parts of Upper Silesia going to Czechoslovakia and other portions to Poland. The province of Posen—already under Polish control following the Great Polish Uprising—along with Pomerania, the Soldau area, and parts of south East Prussia (determined by plebiscite) were also ceded to Poland. Danzig and Memel were placed under League of Nations authority, and Schleswig-Holstein was transferred to Denmark via plebiscite. The map provides no analysis, polemic, or theoretical context; it is a straightforward cartographic record of the post-war settlement’s territorial provisions. Its inclusion in a Marxist theoretical vault would serve as a reference point for understanding the geopolitical fragmentation of Germany after the First World War, a precondition for the revolutionary upheavals and counter-revolutionary stabilisation that followed. The map itself, however, offers no commentary on class relations, imperialism, or the contradictions of Versailles—it simply documents the new borders that the German bourgeoisie accepted and the German working class would later confront.