WW2-Poland-2015

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Gdańsk Gdańsk (German & many English language publications: Danzig), is the largest city and capital of the Pomeranian Voivodeship in northern Poland. A strategic and highly influential port for nearly a thousand years, Gdańsk was a stronghold of the Teutonic Knights, and later became an influential city within the Hanseatic League during the Middle Ages. Largely destroyed in the Second World War, Gdańsk was splendidly rebuilt in the aftermath as one of Europe's most beautiful port cities. Today, Gdańsk has a population of 460,000, and is Poland's largest northern city, drawing numerous visitors into its historic city centre, its outstanding museums, and to its expansive beaches spread along the coast of the Gulf of Gdańsk, making it a popular summer destination for many Poles and foreign visitors alike. In addition to tourism, Gdańsk is also the republic's principal seaport, handling large amounts of imports and exports from the city's harbour. The city, along with neighbouring Sopot and Gdynia to the north, is part of the Tricity (Polish: Trójmiasto), an urban conurbation of nearly 750,000. Understand As Poland's main northern port at the mouth of the Vistula River, Gdańsk is a key departure and arrival point for visitors and trade along the Baltic. especially to and from Scandinavia. Along with trade, shipbuilding was a key signature of the city's economy in the past. While trade remains a key component to Gdańsk's economy, the shipbuilding industry has declined in recent decades, giving way to tourists seeking the historical charms and scenic nature of thePomeranian coast. The Golden Gate and the Long Lane is a central part of the city. History First recorded as a settlement in 997, Gdańsk was likely founded by Duke Mieszko I of the Piast dynasty, capitalizing on Baltic trade routes as well as establishing a Piast presence on the Pomeranian coast. In the 12th and 13th centuries, the town expanded to the north and south as it outgrew its original borders. As Piast Poland politically disintegrated due to inheritance issues, the town became one of the centers for the independent Duchy of Pomerelia. Under its duke, Swietopelk II, Gdańsk was granted Lübeck city rights in 1235 as German-speaking merchants took up residence Page46
in the growing town. By the end of the 13th century, Gdańsk was reincorporated into the reformed Polish kingdom under Przemysł II. A conflict between Poland and Brandenburg in 1308 led to the intervention of the Teutonic Knights, a German Roman Catholic military order that had established a political presence to the east in Prussia. Originally allied with Poland, the Knights turned against their former allies and seized Gdańsk, insinuating a massacre of many of the town's residents. Under the Teutonic Knights, Gdańsk (then increasingly known by its German name of Danzig) was consolidated into a monastic state. Initially stagnating under the order's religious militarism, the Knights realized Danzig's importance to Baltic seagoing trade could no longer be ignored. Teutonic controls over the town were relaxed by the mid-14th century, as the town was allowed to join the Hanseatic trading alliance. Now within the Hanseatic League, a degree of prosperity arrived, yet discontent with Teutonic rule remained under the surface. 53 of the region's prominent nobles and clergymen in 1440 formally signed into the Prussian Confederation, a group opposing the rule of the Teutonic state. After the Thirteen Years' War's conclusion in 1466, which saw Polish forces defeat the Knights, the town was reincorporated back into the Polish kingdom, although endowed with significant autonomy. By the 16th century, ethnic Germans constituted a majority in Danzig, with Slavic Polish and Kashubians a minority. Despite initial suppression by the deeply Catholic Polish state, Danzigers largely embraced Protestantism as the Reformation spread from northern Germany. During this period, one of the high points of the Renaissance in Poland, Nicolaus Copernicus visited and worked in the city, with the abstract of his work, Narratio Prima published first in Danzig in 1540. Danzig's prosperity, however, would be severely interrupted by both the Thirty Years' War and the Swedish Deluge between the 1630s to 1660, causing the city to decline. Danzig faced yet another crisis in 1734 when besieging Russian and Saxon soldiers forced the city into a humiliating surrender after the city sided with Stanisław I over Augustus III during the War of the Polish Secession. Danzig fiercely resisted the First Partition of Poland by the nearby Kingdom of Prussia in 1772, though it was later annexed by the Prussians in the Second Partition of 1793. Briefly a Napoleonic client state from 1807 to 1814, Danzig remained in the Prussian kingdom, and later the German Empire, for over the next hundred years. Under Prussia and Germany, Danzig industrialized, becoming a key German commercial port. With the collapse of the German Empire and the rapid creation of the Second Polish Republic at the end of World War I in 1918, tensions between the new Weimar and Polish governments ran high as both groups laid claims over Danzig. Concurring with ethnic Polish uprisings against Weimar German rule in Silesia at the end of the war, the Treaty of Versailles forcibly split Danzig from the rest of Germany, establishing a semi-independent Free City of Danzig administered by a high commissioner from the League of Nations with an elected local assembly. The treaty additionally established a customs union between the free city and Poland, as well as giving Poland rights over all railways within the free city's territory. In response to the treaty and semi-international rule, the German majority rapidly grew deeply critical of the free city's creation, resenting its political separation from Germany. Popular anger spilled into a wave of anti-Slavic sentiment felt throughout the city in the 1920s and 1930s, targeting the city's Polish and Kashubian minorities. The Nazi Party gained an electoral foothold over the city beginning in the early 1930s, whose regional platform called on the unification of Danzig with the rest of the Third Reich. The opening salvos of World War II began at Westerplatte, on the city's outskirts, on 1 September 1939 when the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein attacked the Polish military battery there. The Nazis quickly stormed the city, although they met fierce resistance from Polish units, particularly at the city's Polish Post Office. Many members of the city's Slavic minority of Polish and Kashubians were forcibly arrested and executed afterwards. During the war, the German concentration camp of Stutthof, located 34km (21 mi) east of Danzig in the present town of Sztutowo, served as the the killing ground of an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 people, many of whom were ethnic Poles and Jews. By the war's conclusion in 1945, Danzig was largely in ruins and occupied by the Soviet Red Army. Approved Page47
Page 1 and 2: TRIP BOOK POLAND 2015 Page1
Page 3 and 4: Page3
Page 5 and 6: Njen položaj in dostopnost ozemlja
Page 7 and 8: polovica Judje. Po vojni se je polj
Page 9 and 10: Poljska kampanja (1939) Nemška okl
Page 11 and 12: Po incidentu v Gleiwitzu (današnje
Page 13 and 14: The invasion of Poland led Britain
Page 15 and 16: 2,383 wounded[3] or: 5,327 killed,
Page 17 and 18: epelled by the 180 Polish soldiers
Page 19 and 20: Powię ksz German battleship Schles
Page 21 and 22: Stutthof concentration camp Muzeum
Page 23 and 24: Stutthof concentration camp in 2008
Page 25 and 26: 5,000 prisoners from Stutthof subca
Page 27 and 28: Condition Destroyed Built 1941 Site
Page 29 and 30: No air attack ever came. Whether th
Page 31 and 32: • Tiso, Jozef (Roman Catholic pri
Page 33 and 34: forests. While visiting Wolf's Lair
Page 35 and 36: [PL] Sadowska Mieczysława 600 649
Page 37 and 38: Protection and masking Reich Securi
Page 39 and 40: A few minutes before 12.30 Stauffen
Page 41 and 42: To investigate the events and detec
Page 43 and 44: The code name “Mauerwald” comes
Page 45: The Museum of Coastal Defence Wież
Page 49 and 50: in the evenings or at weekends. Tax
Page 51 and 52: • The Maiden at the Window (Panie
Page 53 and 54: its stoic defenders, and is one of
Page 55: downstairs in the evening, yet duri

WW2-Poland-2015

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