After the end of World War II, plans existed to increase Dutch territory by 30 to 50 percent at the expense of Germany.
On this day in 1949 the Netherlands annexed German territory next to the Dutch-German border. It was one of the territorial adjustments after the end of World War II, in which Germany suffered because it was on the losing side. The Netherlands annexed a territory of 6900 hectares i.e. 69 square kilometers. This territory encompassed a series of small border areas rather than a single, larger territory.
It is interesting to note that there were plans to annex a much larger part of Germany after the end of World War II, which would enlarge the Netherlands by as much as 30 to 50 percent. It was supposed to be compensation for the German occupation. The Netherlands would have received the cities of Cologne, Aachen, Münster, and Osnabrück. However, the Allies eventually decided against the plan.
Of the mentioned 6900 hectares that the Netherlands received in 1949, most were returned to West Germany in 1963, after it paid 280 million marks in reparations.
