Danzig, free city of

Danzig, free city of (Polish: Gdańsk). Area of 1,950 sq. km. (754 sq. mi.) lying astride the estuary of the Vistula basin. Although its geographical location made it historically and economically Poland's natural outlet to the Baltic Sea, its population of 400,000 was overwhelmingly German with only 6% being Polish. It thus became part of Hitler's casus belli in launching the Polish campaign in September 1939.

The Versailles settlement of 28 June 1919 made it an autonomous political unit, known as the Free City of Danzig. This complicated political arrangement transferred the city's sovereignty to the League of Nations; placed it within Poland's customs frontier and its foreign policy under the control of the Polish government; and provided it with political institutions modelled on the Weimar constitution.

The creation of this city state satisfied neither Germany nor Poland. Danzig's German inhabitants wanted the city to be part of Germany. For both the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany, it became a central German irredenta in the east. For Poland, the denial of outright control of what was its historic outlet to the sea compromised its secure access to the Baltic. The development of Gdynia, a nearby fishing village in the Polish corridor, into a major Baltic port reflected Polish concerns. A bad political compromise, the creation of the Free City of Danzig provided a flashpoint for German–Polish rivalry and as such helped to precipitate the Second World War. It was occupied at the start of the Polish campaign and incorporated into the Third Reich.

Paul Latawski

Bibliography

Kulski, W. W. , Germany and Poland: From War to Peaceful Relations (Syracuse, NY, 1976).
Mason, J. B. , The Danzig Dilemma: A Study in Peacemaking by Compromise (Stanford, Calif., 1946).