The Battle of Westerplatte

Poland's Thermopylae

The Battle of Westerplatte inside the Free City of Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland) is commonly cited as the first battle of World War II (even though German false flag attacks and exchanges of fire along the border already began a few hours earlier). Since then, it has become a national symbol of Poland's heroic yet doomed resistance to the German invasion: a small group of soldiers, with no hope of victory, holding out in the face of an overwhelming enemy far longer than anticipated.

The city of Danzig came to the forefront after the end of World War I, when, in accordance with U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points, the Versailles Treaty re-established Poland as a sovereign nation. Danzig immediately became a problem. Germany was allowed to keep its territory along the Baltic coast, which made Poland a landlocked country. It was vital for Poland's trade to have a seaport, so a "Polish Corridor" was established, cutting East Prussia off from the rest of Germany. Danzig, located on the coast in the middle of the corridor, became Poland's maritime trading port.

This led to a crisis, since 90% of Danzig's inhabitants were ethnic Germans, and forcing them to be a part of Poland would have violated another one of the principles of the victorious Entente Powers, the self-determination of nations. A compromise solution was established at the urging of British Prime Minister David Lloyd George: Danzig, renamed the Free City of Danzig, would belong to neither nation. Instead, it would become a city state of its own, overseen by the League of Nations.

This was the best solution anyone could come up with, but it was far from a good solution. The ethnic Germans in Danzig still wanted to belong to Germany, the Polish farmers whose lands around the city were incorporated into the city state wanted to belong to Poland, Germany still considered the loss of the city an intolerable offense, and Poland still considered its sea access insecure. The city was a powder keg waiting to blow, and was slowly becoming more and more openly pro-Nazi over the interwar years.

In 1921, the League of Nations granted Poland permission to build an ammunition depot in Danzig and station a small garrison there to protect the country's interests. The 60 hectare (148 acre) forested peninsula of Westerplatte was chosen as the location. The peninsula is connected to the mainland by a natural land bridge at its southeast end, where a train station was established behind a wall and a gate. The north side of Westerplatte overlooked the Bay of Danzig, the south side faced a port canal and warehouses on the far side. The garrison was 88 men, and Poland was forbidden from building military fortifications on the peninsula.

In 1933, with Nazi German politicians demanding border changes and with France and Poland secretly discussing a possible preventive war against Germany, the Polish government instigated the Westerplatte Incident on March 6. At the time, the pro-Nazi Danzig government was trying to renounce the shared Polish-Danzig control over the government and the police and replace it with exclusive control. As a response, Poland landed 200 soldiers on Westerplatte to demonstrate its willingness to preserve the status quo by force if necessary. Violence was avoided when Danzig relented in its demands and Poland removed the troops in reply.

Nevertheless, Poland began to construct discreet and small-scale defenses on the peninsula: several guard houses, a barracks and additional buildings partially hidden in the forest, trenches, barricades and barbed wire.

Things took another turn for the worse in the first half of 1939, when Germany annexed a part of nearby Lithuania. With the Nazi regime's territorial expansions becoming more and more blatant, Poland resorted to a ruse to increase the defense force on Westerplatte. Civilians dressed up in military uniforms left the peninsula, but it was actual soldiers who later "returned." Depending on what source you believe, this boosted the garrison to either 182 or 210-240 men. At some point, the Poles also used freight trains to smuggle in a field gun, two anti-tank guns, and four mortars to complement their normal arsenal of rifles, pistols, hand grenades and some 40 machine guns. Under the oversight of Major Henryk Sucharski and his deputy Captain Franciszek Dąbrowski, the trenches, barricades and barb wire obstacles were also expanded, and reinforced concrete shelters were built under the barracks.

Hitler originally scheduled the invasion of Poland and the concurrent assault on Westerplatte for August 26, 1939. One day before, on August 25, the old German pre-dreadnought battleship Schleswig-Holstein sailed into the port of Danzig, ostensibly on a courtesy call, and anchored down 160 yards (150 m) from Westerplatte, with a contingent of 225 marine shock troops onboard. Meanwhile, a local SS unit, the SS Heimwehr Danzig assembled 1,500 men under the command of Danzig Police General Friedrich-Georg Eberhardt.

On the morning of the 26th, Hitler decided to postpone the invasion at the last minute, as he had just been informed of the Polish-British Common Defence Pact signed the day before. Despite this hiccup, the Germans were sure of victory: the local police told the captain of the Schleswig-Holstein that Westerplatte would fall in 10 minutes after a preliminary bombardment. Eberhardt was more cautious and estimated a few hours of combat. For their own part, the Poles were supposed to hold out for 12 hours, after which they would hopefully receive reinforcements.

The actual fighting began on the revised invasion date of September 1. The Schleswig-Holstein fired a broadside at the Polish garrison at or shortly after 4:45 A.M. (Some sources claim the initial broadside occurred at 4 A.M.) The bombardment breached the wall separating the peninsula from the mainland in several spots, but was far less effective than hoped for: the ship was so close that the explosive shells didn't have enough time in the air to arm.

The German marines entered the breaches eight minutes later, advanced 220 yards (200 m) and engaged a Polish outpost, but found themselves in a kill zone, with Polish crossfire hitting them from multiple directions and barbed wire preventing their progress. At around 5:15 A.M., the Polish field gun also opened up on the Germans and also destroyed several German machine gun nests atop the warehouses across the canal on the southern side of Westerplatte. The two anti-tank guns engaged the Schleswig-Holstein. More or less simultaneously, a small maritime unit of the Danzig Police tried to approach the western end of the peninsula by boat, landing while the defenders were concentrating on the main attack in the east. They were repulsed, but Polish Staff Sergeant Wojciech Najsarek was killed by machine gun fire during the attempt, becoming the first dead Polish defender of Westerplatte, and possibly the war.

The German marines retreated at 6:22 A.M. after suffering heavy losses. A second, 75-minute bombardment by the Schleswig-Holstein preceded another attack and knocked out the field gun, but the following assault was also repulsed by around noon, with the leader of the marines suffering a grave wound, and both sides dug in for a longer fight. Four Poles were killed and several others wounded on the first day; German losses were 16 dead and 120 wounded.

The Germans decided that the peninsula needed to be softened up some more before another assault. They re-examined the aerial recon photos they had. They previously underestimated the Polish defenses, but not started to overestimate them. They mistook six haystacks for armored bunker domes, and incorrectly surmised that the Poles must have an extensive system of bunkers and underground tunnels.

Over the following days, the Germans bombarded Westerplatte with naval and heavy, ground-based artillery. 60 Junkers Ju-87 "Stuka" dive bombers dropped 29 U.S. tons of ordnance on the afternoon of the second day, killing at least 8 Poles and destroying a guard house, the only radio the Poles had, and most of the food stores. At some point over the course of the siege, likely during this air raid, four Polish soldiers tried to run away; they were caught by their comrades, executed for desertion and buried in a grave the Germans found after the battle.

On September 4, a German torpedo boat and an old mine layer launched a surprise attack from the bay on the north side. The defenders, whose fortifications on that side had been greatly reduced, never landed a hit on the ships, but crew mistakes and equipment failure still caused at least one German fatality and an ignominious retreat.

At this point, we need to mention a controversy regarding the Polish defenders. Narratives published in the decades after the war all claimed that Major Sucharski led his men bravely during the fighting. More recent accounts from the 90s, however, make a different claim. These claims proffer that Sucharski was actually in a state of shell shock (Read our earlier article) for most of the battle, and his second-in-command, Captain Dąbrowski was the de facto commander in charge. If this is true, it would explain why Sucharski called an officers' meeting on September 5 and suggested surrender. Dąbrowski opposed the idea, and the group decided to hold out a while longer.

The Germans kept launching probing attacks, but came up with a new approach at 3 A.M. on September 6. They set a train on fire and sent it hurling down the tracks toward an oil cistern in the midst of the Polish positions. The ploy failed due to the terrified driver, who decoupled the engine too early, causing the flaming battering ram to come to a premature stop. It did set the forest on fire, giving the Poles additional smoke cover. A second fire train was sent down the tracks in the afternoon, but that also failed.

Sucharski suggested surrender once more on the same day. To be fair, the situation was desperate: the defenders were low on food and ammo. Many of the wounded were suffering from gangrene, and the room used for their treatment, as well as all the medical supplies, had been destroyed in the bombing.

Nevertheless, resistance continued for another night. On September 7, German fire raked Westerplatte from 4:30 A.M. till 7 in the morning, with flamethrowers and bombardment destroying another guard house and damaging two others.

Eventually, the Polish defenders raised the white flag at 9:45. Eberhardt, who was in overall command of the German operation, was so surprised by the small number of Poles and their tenacity that he allowed Major Sucharski to keep his sabre after the surrender ceremony (the sword was confiscated later). The German troops stood at attention as the Polish defenders marched out of their positions and into captivity at 11:30 A.M. Though the Germans on site honored the courage of the defenders, one Polish soldier, radio operator Sergeant Kazimierz Rasiński was later murdered after he refused to hand over radio codes even after brutal interrogation. The toll of the seven-day battle was 15 dead and around 40 wounded Poles and 50 dead and 150 wounded Germans.

If you would like to visit Westerplatte and see the remains of the defenses and the monument that commemorates the battle, you can do so on our War in Poland Tour.

Save 25% until September 2!