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Napoleonic-era Danzig

The Free City of Danzig, sometimes referred to as the Republic of Danzig, was a semi-independent state established by Napoleon during the Napoleonic Wars in years 9 September 1807– 22 January 1813/1815. It consisted of the city of Danzig (Gdańsk) with all its rural possessions in the mouth of Vistula river and the Hel peninsula.

After the Congress of Vienna (1815), Danzig became part of the Kingdom of Prussia and was made the capital of a district and the province of West Prussia. The traditional autonomy of the city was significantly reduced.

Interwar Danzig

The Free City of Danzig (German: Freie Stadt Danzig; Polish: Wolne Miasto Gdańsk; French: Ville Libre de Dantzig) was a separate state established on 10 January 1920.

Its territory included the city of Danzig and the surrounding area, which from 1815 had been part of Prussia (which itself became part of the German Empire in 1871). The Free City comprised 1,966 km² (754 mi²) including the cities of Danzig, Zoppot (Sopot), Tiegenhof (Nowy Dwór Gdański), and Neuteich (Nowy Staw), as well as 252 villages and 63 hamlets with a total population of 357,000 in 1919. Under the Treaty of Versailles it was separated from Germany, created as a separate state under the protection of the League of Nations with special rights reserved to Poland. Most of the population of the Free City of Danzig used the German language for communication (over 90%), although some (4 - 8%) used Kashubian and Polish.While Germans had now citizenship of the city, according to the Treaty of Versailles they could apply for and receive German citizenship at any time if they desired.

The Free City was represented abroad by Poland and was in a customs union with Poland. The railway line that connected the Free City with Poland was administered by Poland. The separated military post within the city's harbour, the Westerplatte, formerly a city beach, was also given to Poland. There were also two post-offices, one municipal and a second Polish.

In May 1933, the Nazi Party won the local election. However, they received only 57 percent of the vote, less than the two thirds required by the League of Nations to change the Free City's constitution. The government introduced laws that were anti-Jewish and anti-Catholic. The city served also as training point members of German minority in Poland that were recruited from organisations such as Jungdeutsche Partei, Deutsche Vereinigung, that would form the leading cadres of Selbstschutz an organisation involved with mass murder and atrocities during German invasion of Poland in 1939.

Beginning in 1939, in the upcoming conflict between Poland and Germany, the Free City's Nazi government engaged in persecutions of Poles, including the eviction of all Polish students from the Danzig Technical University to Poland. It then voted to be annexed by Nazi Germany on September 2, 1939, the day after the German invasion of Poland, and was incorporated into the province of Reichsgau Danzig-Westpreussen. The annexation was illegal from the point of view of the Free City's constitution. Two areas of the city were defended by Polish forces: The Polish Post Office in Danzig until 2 September, and the fortified Westerplatte until 7 September. The defenders of the Post Office were subsequently executed.

The city was taken by Soviet forces on 30 March 1945. Ninety percent of the city was reduced to ruins in the war and thereafter, and it is estimated that more then 90 % percent of the pre-war population was killed or expulsed by Soviet and Polish troops on the end of the war. The mass expulsion was connected to massive war crimes by Soviet and Polish troops. Systematical mass rapes and executions created an atmosphere of terror, with the result of a nearly complete ethnical cleansing of the city of Danzig. In the sinking of the military training ship for U-boat trainees "Wilhelm Gustloff"by Soviet submarine, which had 5,000 to 7,000 refugees and over 1,000 soldiers and sailors on board at the time, some inhabitants of the city died.

At the Yalta and Potsdam conferences, Danzig was put under Polish administration, along with most of Pomerania, Silesia and southern East Prussia. Poland engaged in a program of mass expulsion of all Germans from the city, thereafter officially known by its Polish name, Gdańsk. One of the major tools of the program of mass expulsion were the so called Bolesław Bierut laws. The Bierut laws declared all mobile and immobile private property of ethnic Germans as Polish state property, and exempted crimes against the German population from punishment.

By 1950, around 285,000 former Free City of Danzig inhabitants lived in the remaining parts of Germany, while an estimated 100,000 had lost their lives in the war or were expelled.

See also

• Alfons Flisykowski
• Danzig Research Society
• History of Gdańsk
• Administrations of Danzig before April 1945
• Former countries in Europe after 1815

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• Special territories
• Former countries in Europe
• History of Germany
• Polish historical regions
• History of Gdańsk