by the Belgian government. It was headed by a Belgian general, Herman Baltia. Under the terms of the Treaty, Belgian control over the territory was contingent on the result of a local plebiscite, held between January and June 1920. The plebiscite itself was held without a secret ballot, and organized as a consultation in which all citizens who opposed the annexation had to formally register their protest; just 271 of nearly 34,000 eligible voters did so. The League of Nations accepted the result and the Transitional Government prepared for the unification of Eupen-Malmedy with Belgium in June 1925. Integration into Belgium, 1925–1940 In June 1925, Eupen-Malmedy was finally incorporated into the Belgian state as part of Liège Province. The inhabitants of the region voted in its first Belgian general election in 1925 and returned a vote in favour of the centre-right Catholic Party. A local centre-right party, the Christian People's Party (), emerged by 1929. The early Belgian administration of Eupen-Malmedy was paralleled by secret negotiations between Belgium and the Weimar German government of Gustav Stresemann over a possible return of the region in exchange for money. The negotiations collapsed in 1926 following the German signature of the Locarno Treaties (1925) guaranteeing Germany's western borders and international pressure. Various ethnic German organisations emerged in the Eupen-Malmedy region in the late 1920s, campaigning to promote German culture and the return of the territory to Germany. After the rise to power of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Germany in 1933, agitation in Eupen-Malmedy increased and many inhabitants began to wear swastika badges. Local socialists began to distance themselves from calls to return to Germany. In 1935, an openly pro-Nazi party emerged locally, known as the Homeland-Loyal Front (Heimattreue Front), which achieved a majority in all three of the Eupen-Malmedy districts in the elections of 1936 and 1939. Annexed to Germany, 1940–1945 In World War II, Nazi Germany invaded Belgium in May 1940 and rapidly defeated and occupied Belgium for a second time. On 18 May, Hitler announced the re-integration of Eupen-Malmedy into Germany while the rest of the country remained under military occupation. The Belgian government in exile, however, refused to recognise the German annexation and maintained that Eupen-Malmedy was part of Belgium. Support for the German takeover eroded sharply after the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Administered as part of Nazi Germany, 8,000 local men were conscripted into