The border changes following World War I put enormous pressure on both the central German authorities and on social and political relations in the borderlands. Coal-rich Upper Silesia was one such area of change, one of the regions designated by the Allies for a border plebiscite. This book is an in-depth examination of the Upper Silesian plebiscite and the ways in which the new Weimar Republic and the people of the borderland chose to react in this postwar crisis.