In 1919, with the Allied victory in the First World War, Alsace-Lorraine was returned to France by Germany at the Treaty of Versailles. However, the old departments of Meurthe and Moselle was not recreated by reverting to the old department borders of before 1871. Instead, Meurthe-et-Moselle was left untouched, and the one-third of Meurthe and the four-fifths of Moselle that had been formed the German region of Lorraine in 1871 were reinstituted as the new department of Moselle, which shares the name of the old department of Moselle but which has quite different borders.
