The Free City of Danzig (German: Freie Stadt Danzig; Polish: Wolne Miasto Gda?sk) was an autonomous Baltic Sea port and city-state established on January 10, 1920, in accordance with the terms of Part III Section XI of the Treaty of Versailles of 1919, which split it off from Germany along with other German territories. It was placed under League of Nations "protection", with special economic-related rights reserved for Poland.^[1] The city was denied self-determination, despite the majority of German-speaking citizen calling for a reunion with Germany.

The city-state was denied the name Hanseatic City.

The status as Free City ceased to exist at the beginning of World War II in early September 1939 when German troops arrived and the city declared itself part of Germany. Starting with the conquest by the Soviet Army in the early months of 1945, the Germans of Danzig were expelled, and the city was put under Polish administration under the Polish name, Gda?sk and Polish people were brought in as replacement.

Establishment

Territory

The Free City of Danzig included the major city of Danzig (Gda?sk) as well as Zoppot (Sopot), Tiegenhof (Nowy Dwór Gda?ski), Neuteich (Nowy Staw) and some 252 villages and 63 hamlets. Covering a total area of 1,966 square kilometers (754 sq mi), the territory was roughly twice the size of the Napoleonic statelet.

Polish rights declared by Treaty of Versailles

The Free City was to be represented abroad by Poland and forced to be in a customs union with it. The German railway line that connected the Free City with newly created Poland was to be administered by Poland. Similarly, the Westerplatte (until then a city beach), was also given to Poland, which created a military post within the city's harbour. There was also a separate Polish post-office established besides the existing municipal one.

League of Nations High Commissioners

Unlike mandated territories, which were entrusted to member countries, Danzig like the Territory of the Saar Basin remained under the authority of the League of Nations itself, with representatives of various countries taking on the role of High Commissioner:^[2]

Population

The Free City had a population of 357,000 (1919), 95% of whom were German-speakers ^[3], with the rest mainly speaking either Kashubian or Polish.

The Treaty of Versailles, which had severed Danzig and surrounding villages from Germany, now required that the newly formed state had its own citizenship, based on residency. German inhabitants lost their German nationality with the creation of the Free City, but were given the right within the first two years of the state's existence to re-obtain it; however, if they did so they were required to leave their property and make their residence outside of the Free State of Danzig area in the remaining part of Germany.^[1]

Politics

It became clear almost at once that the overwhelming German majority population of the Free State resented the concessions which had been made to Poland and their dismemberment from Germany. Professor Burckhardt, the League of Nations' High Commissioner in Danzig found, by 1939, his position as absolute arbiter in the endless disputes almost untenable.

In May 1933, the Nazi Party won the local elections in the city. However, they received 57 percent of the vote, less than the two-thirds required by the League of Nations to change the Constitution of the Free City of Danzig. The government introduced anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic laws, the latter primarily being directed against the newly brought in Poles and Kashubian inhabitants. The city also served as a training point for members of the German minority within Poland that, recruited by organisations such as the Jungdeutsche Partei ("Young German Party") and the Deutsche Vereinigung ("German Union"), would form the leading cadres of Selbstschutz, an organisation involved with murder and atrocities during the German invasion of Poland in 1939. As throughout Germany, Jews were increasingly persecuted; the Danzig Great Synagogue was taken over and demolished by the local authorities in 1939.

Despite several years of proposals by the German governments, both before and after 1933, to renegotiate Danzig's anomalous position, Poland refused, and as late as April 1939 Professor Burckhardt was told by the Polish Commissioner-General that any attempt to alter its status would be answered with armed resistance on the part of Poland.^[4]

Second World War and aftermath

The Nazi government voted for re-unification with Germany on September 2, 1939, the day after the German invasion of Poland began. Although illegal under the terms of the city's constitution, the state was nevertheless formally incorporated by Germany into the newly-formed Reichsgau of Danzig-West Prussia. Polish civilian Post Office employees had been trained and had a cache of weapons, mostly pistols, three light machine guns and some hand grenades, when they defended the Polish Post Office for 15 hours. They were executed upon their surrender, against international law. The Polish military forces in the city held out until the 7th at the fortified Westerplatte. About 10,000 members of the Polish intelligentsia were executed within the first week of the German invasion.

Around 90% of the city was reduced to ruins towards the end of the Second World War. On March 30, 1945 the city was taken by the Red Army. It is estimated that more than 90% of the pre-war population were either dead or had fled by 1945. A number of inhabitants of the city perished in the sinking of a ship assisting evacuation, the Wilhelm Gustloff. It had up to 10,000 refugees on board at the time, including about 1,000 seriously wounded soldiers and sailors.

The Allied Powers were presented with a communist fait accompli at the Potsdam conference that the former Free State was now part of Poland. (The Yalta conference was unclear on this point).

By 1950, around 285,000 former inhabitants of the Free City were living in an Allied-occupied Germany. and 13,424 former citizens of Free City had been positively verified and granted Polish citizenship.^[5] By 1947 126,472 Germans were expelled to Germany from Gda?sk, and 101,873 Poles from Central Poland and 26,629 Poles from Eastern Poland took their place.^[5]

See also

• Gda?sk
• Danzig Corridor
• Alfons Flisykowski
• Danzig Research Society
• History of Gda?sk
• Interwar period
• Administrations of Danzig before April 1945
• Defense of the Polish Post Office in Danzig
• Arthur Greiser (Nazi Politician)
• Albert Förster (Nazi Politician)
• Oliwa
• Westerplatte
• Free City of Danzig (Napoleonic)

References

External links

A 20 Danzig gulden note

• H.G. Wells on the Polish Corridor (WikiSource)
• Jewish community history
• History of Gdansk/Danzig
• Gda?sk history
• In 1997 Gdansk celebrated his thousand anniversary
• history & hallucination
• The power of Gdansk

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