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The Polish Corridor was the name given to a strip of land transferred from Germany to a reformed Poland through the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. The Corridor (in some places only 40 km wide), effectively separated East Prussia from the rest of Germany and administratively, it was a part of the Pomeranian Voivodship.
Background
Giving Poland access to the sea was one of the guarantees proposed by United States President Woodrow Wilson in his famous Fourteen Points of 1918. The thirteenth of Wilson's points was:
- An independent Polish state should be erected which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant.
The transfer of this territory was said to be justified on three grounds:
- Historical. The area had been part of the Kingdom of Poland from the tenth century to the fourteenth century (see Kingdom of Poland (1025–1138), Kingdom of Poland (1138–1320), Kingdom of Poland (1320–1385), and Kingdom of Poland (1385–1569)) and from 1453/66 to 1772, when it was annexed by Prussia during the first partition of Poland.
- Ethnographic. The majority population of the region was either Polish (in the area on the west bank of the Vistula, between Gdańsk (Danzig) and Bydgoszcz (Bromberg)), or Kashubian (the direct descendants of an early Slavic tribe of Pomeranians) in the coastal area north-west of Danzig. Germans constituted a minority in this particular area, making about 421,000 people out of 990,000 inhabitants (42.5%) of the region.
- Economic and political. It was argued that if the newly independent Polish state did not have an outlet to the Baltic Sea, it would be economically and therefore politically dependent on Germany. Since Britain and France wanted a strong Polish state as a counter-weight to Germany, they accepted this argument.
Consequences and the Post-War Era
Also in the post-World War I period, the important seaport of Danzig (Gdańsk), which had a largely German population, was made a seperate state called "Free City of Danzig" and put under the protection of the League of Nations with giving the population the choice of becoming German citizens at will. Taking advantage of the Corridor and reducing their dependence on Danzig, the Poles built a new seaport at Gdynia.
Following the appropriation of the Polish Corridor, the province of East Prussia was cut off from the rest of Germany, resulting in severe economic difficulties. In 1922 the "Seedienst Ostpreußen" (literally: Sea Service East Prussia) was established by the German Ministry for Transport to have a connection to East Prussia that was not dependant on the transit through Polish territory.
The creation of the Corridor aroused great resentment in Germany, and all post-war German governments refused to recognize the eastern borders agreed on at Versailles. The German statesman Gustav Stresemann, for instance, known for his policy of conciliation with the western allies, several times declared that Germany's eastern borders would have to be revised, and refused to follow Germany's acknowledgement of its western borders in the Treaty of Locarno of 1925 with a similar declaration with respect to its eastern borders.
Nazi Era
In 1933 the Nazi Party led by Adolf Hitler took power in Germany. Hitler at first ostentatiously pursued a policy of rapprochement with Poland, culminating in the Polish-German Non-Aggression Pact of 1934. In March 1938, Germany annexed Austria and in October, the Sudetenland. During the same month, Germany demanded that Poland join the Anti-Comintern Pact and allow for the incorporation of the Free City of Danzig into the Reich. In addition, Germany requested the construction of an extra-territorial highway and railway through the Polish Corridor to Danzig and East Prussia. Poland refused to join the Pact, but agreed to negotiations over German railway traffic and on building a German highway through the Polish Corridor.
However, this conflicted with Hitler's plans to gain support against the Soviet Union .. Hitler planned to use Poland as buffer against possible Soviet intervention against his planned offensive in the West and later as an ally in his quest to pursue Lebensraum in the East. Annexation of Lithuania, Memel, Soviet Ukraine and Czech lands was offered to Poland as an enticement, and although Poland used previous occasion to retake some territory of Czechoslovakia(.] Polish leaders now refused to give their independence into the hands of Germany and join Hitler's plans of continental conquest. Backed by guarantees of support from both the Britain and France, Poland refused to negotiate the status of the Free State of Danzig which would put the Polish state in a position of servitude towards Germany,. and practically subordinated Poland to the Axis and the Anti-Comintern Bloc.. A final ploy for peace was made by Nazi's in late August, but German armed forces had orders to attack Poland on September 1, so it was aimed was to place the blame for war on the Poles At midnight on August 29, Ribbentrop handed British Ambassador Sir Neville Henderson, a list of terms for Poland which would allegedly ensure peace. Danzig was to return to Germany and there was to be a plebiscite in the Polish Corridor, but all Poles who were born or settled there since 1919 would have no vote, while all Germans born but not living there would. (Nazi's didn't realize that there was a Polish majority in this region even according to the German census of 1910). An exchange of minority populations between the two countries was proposed. If Poland accepted these terms, Germany would agree to the British offer of an international guarantee, but this would include the Soviet Union.A Polish plenipotentiary (with full powers) was to arrive in Berlin and accept these terms by noon the next day. British Cabinet viewed the terms as "reasonable," except the demand for a Polish Plenipotentiary (it was seen similiar to Czech President Hacha accepting Hitler’s terms in mid-March 1939). When Ambassador Lipski went to see Ribbentrop on August 30, he was presented with Hitler’s demands and asked if he had full powers to sign. When Lipski said no, Ribbentrop ended the meeting afterwads the German radio then broadcasted the demands with the comment that Poland had rejected them.
On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland, and German forces captured the corridor during the Battle of Bory Tucholskie by 5 September. After Poland's defeat, by mid-October, Danzig and the Polish Corridor were re-annexed by Germany.
Post-War Era
At the Potsdam Conference, 1945, following the German defeat in World War II, Poland's borders were reorganized at the insistence of the Soviet Union, which was in occupation of the whole area. Territories east of the Oder-Neisse Line, including the Corridor and Danzig, were put under Polish control. East Germany recognised this border in 1953, West Germany did so in 1970 and the re-unified Germany did so in 1990.