Even today, Alsace is a country whose strange mix of French and apparently German elements is fascinating. One can see cozy German-looking halftimbered houses next to French-style mairies, and the local market woman uses an odd mix of the Alsatian German dialect elsässerditsch and French. Alsace is still clearly different from the rest of France. Between 1870 and 1945, Alsatians experienced a change in nationality four times, without ever being asked what they wanted. After France had lost the war against Prussia in 1870/71, Alsace and parts of Lorraine were forcefully incorporated into the new German Reich in the form of a so-called Reichsland, a state that was basically under the tutelage of Prussia and the emperor. It was continuously denied the kind of autonomy enjoyed by all the other German federal states throughout the whole period of annexation. Prior to 1870/71, Alsatians had been happy to live in a French national context, despite the fact that most of them spoke a German dialect; they had not cultivated a specifically Alsatian consciousness either.

It is still a contentious issue as to what extent Alsace had become German by 1914 and what its national character was. This question has mostly been approached by means of merely applying the categories of Frenchness and Germanness. Despite coming to differing conclusions, most Canadian and American scholars of Alsace stick exclusively to the dichotomy of French/German. Recent German literature on Alsace claims that by 1912 the population and political structures were hardly any different from those states in Germany, such as Bavaria, that had strong particularistic tendencies and regionalist traditions, thus leaving no doubt as to Alsace's German national identity. Most recently, some American and Alsatian scholars have explored the notion of a specific Alsatian consciousness and identity that developed in the course of the Reichsland period. Alsatian identity is viewed as either a regional one within the wider concentric circle of a more or less German national identity, or in the sense of Allemand ne veux, Français ne peux, Alsacien je suis (I don't want to be German; I cannot be French; I am Alsatian), identifying an Alsatian identity that is deemed to have been a crypto-French identity in a defense position against the Germanization efforts of the Reich.