, the French army entered Metz in November 1918 and Philippe Pétain received his marshal's baton from French President Raymond Poincaré and Prime Minister Georges Clémenceau on the Esplanade garden. The city returned to France under the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.[
However, after the Battle of France in 1940 during the Second World War, the city was annexed once more by the German Third Reichinto a Reichsgau named West mark. As a symbol of the German annexation, Chancelor Adolf Hitler celebrated Christmas 1940 at the former bergamt of the Imperial District of Metz, but local people largely rejected the German occupation. Multiple French Resistance cells were active during this period in the region of Metz, such as the Mario and the Derhan groups, whose activities included collecting arms for the Liberation, distributing flyers, helping to prisoners and resisters, and sabotage. Several resistants were detained and tortured in the Fort of Queuleu in Metz and Jean Moulin died in Metz's railway station while on a train in transit towards Germany. In 1944, the attack on the city by the U.S. Third Army under the command of General George S. Patton faced heavy resistance from the defending German forces. The Battle of Metz lasted for several weeks and Metz was finally captured by the Americans in November 1944, and the city reverted to France after the war. During the 1950s, Metz has been chosen to be the capital of the newly created Lorraine region.Also, with the creation of the European Communities and then the European Union, Metz has became a central place of the Greater Region and the SaarLorLux Euroregion.In 1979, the city was home to the Metz Congress, the seventh national congress of the French Socialist Party, during which future French President François Mitterrand won the nominating process of the French presidential election of 1981 after defeating the internal opposition led by Michel Rocard. Later, Pope John Paul II delivered a Mass
