Second World War and Aftermath
World War II began with the shelling of the Westerplatte on 1 September 1939. Gauleiter Forster entered the High Commissioner's residence and ordered him to leave the City within two hours, and the Free City was formally incorporated into the newly formed Reichsgau of Danzig-West Prussia. Polish civilian Post Office employees had received military training and were in possession of a cache of weapons – mostly pistols, three light machine guns, and some hand grenades – and were thus able to defend the Polish Post Office for fifteen hours. Upon their surrender, they were tried and executed. (The sentence was officially revoked by a German court as illegal in 1998.) The Polish military forces in the city held out until the 7th September.
By the end of the Second World War, nearly all the city had been reduced to ruins. On 30 March 1945, the city was taken by the Red Army. It is estimated that nearly all the pre-war population were either dead or had fled. A number of inhabitants of the city perished when the evacuation ship Wilhelm Gustloff was sunk. It had up to 10,000 refugees on board at the time, including about 1,000 seriously wounded soldiers and sailors.
At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, the Allies had been unclear as to the fate of the former Free State. At the Potsdam Conference after the end of the war in Europe, they agreed that it would become part of Poland.
By 1950, around 285,000 fled and expelled citizens of the former Free City were living in Germany, and 13,424 citizens of the former Free City had been "verified" and granted Polish citizenship. By 1947, 126,472 Danzigers of German ethnicity were expelled to Germany from Gdańsk, and 101,873 Poles from Central Poland and 26,629 Poles from Soviet-annexed Eastern Poland took their place.
Read more about this topic: Free City Of Danzig
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