Story
The story of Westerplatte
Here, at 4:50 in the morning of 1 September 1939, the first shots of the Second World War were fired. This peninsula at the mouth of the Dead Vistula was once a seaside resort, established around 1830 with a beach, a park and a bathing complex.
After the First World War, Danzig became a Free City under the League of Nations, and in 1921 the League gave Poland the right to keep an ammunition depot near the city with a garrison; Westerplatte was chosen, and the Polish Military Transit Depot opened in January 1926. The garrison was limited to 88 soldiers, and Poland was not allowed to build fortifications, though it quietly built five small concrete guardhouses and a barracks prepared for defence. When the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein opened fire on the depot, the small garrison held out for a week before surrendering.
Nearby rises the monument to the defenders.
This story is compiled from Wikipedia and other open sources; dates and numbers are checked against the source. The text is shared under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence. Source ↗
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