Westerplatte

The Westerplatte peninsula is a peninsula on the Baltic Sea in the Polish region of Pomerania. There was located a military fortification that became an emblem of the resistance of Poland in World War II (Battle of Westerplatte).

History

Before the War

The Poles were equipped with a 75mm field gun, two 37mm Bofors antitank guns, four mortars and several medium machine guns, but lacked any real fortifications. In the autumn of 1939, the Polish garrison occupying Westerplatte consisted of 182 soldiers, who were expected to be able to resist any attack for 12 hours. Under the Treaty of Versailles, Danzig (Gdansk) was a free city-state under the protection of the League of Nations, in which Poland had a post office, special port rights, and, from 1924, the right to maintain an arsenal. "protected". The place where the arsenal was kept was the small peninsula of Westerplatte, flat and sandy, with an area of approximately half a square kilometer.

When Hitler assumed power in January 1933, the Poles set out to reinforce their defenses of Westerplatte. They built bunkers, officially called "barracks," and added reinforced concrete protection at the foot of the ravines and the noncommissioned officers' villa. In addition, the Poles established seven guard posts, two of which blocked access to the mainland via the vulnerable isthmus. Beginning in March 1939, when Hitler made claims to Poland, the garrison went into a state of high alert, and by the end of August construction of the guard posts had been completed. On August 31, the number of troops had gone from the 88 stipulated in principle to 210 soldiers. The commander was Henryk Sucharski (1898-1946) and his second in command was Captain Dabrowski.& # 34;

(Taken verbatim from "Great Battles of World War II" Ed. Parragon, 2008)

Start of World War II

In the German attack plan the invasion was to start at 04:45, but in fact it started at 04:00; when the old school battleship Schleswig-Holstein sailed from Danzig and opened fire on the Polish garrison at Westerplatte. Due to the treaty restrictions the Poles were forbidden to fortify that peninsula, but in fact they had done so in some buildings. Consequently, the small garrison was able to hold out for a week despite heavy bombardment and repeated infantry assaults. The Westerplatte commander surrendered on 7 September due to a shortage of ammunition and lack of supplies. Westerplatte was even known as the "Polish Verdun" due to the terrible hammering that its tenacious defenders suffered during the first week of hostilities.