After 1945
After World War II the city was transferred to Poland. Szczecin, as it was now called, was also demographically transformed from a German into a Polish city. At the same time as the flight and expulsion of the German population, Poles moved in. Settlers from Central Poland made up about 70% of Szczecin's new population. Additionally Poles and Ukrainians from Polish areas annexed by the Soviet Union. settled there. In 1945 and 1946 the city was the starting point of the northern route used by the Jewish underground organization Brichah to channel Jewish DPs from Eastern Europe to the American occupation zone.
Szczecin was rebuilt and the city's industry was expanded. At the same time, Szczecin became a major Polish industrial centre and an important seaport (particularly for Silesian coal) for Poland, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany. Cultural expansion was accompanied by a campaign resulting in the "removal of all German traces." In 1946 Winston Churchill prominently mentioned Szczecin in his Iron Curtain speech: "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent".
The 1962 Szczecin military parade led to a road traffic accident in which a tank of the Polish People's Army crushed bystanders, killing seven children and injuring many more. The resultant panic in the crowd led to further injuries in the rush to escape. The incident was covered up for many years by the Polish communist authorities.
The city witnessed anti-communist revolts in 1970. In 1980, one of the four agreements, known as the August Agreements, which led to the first legalization of Solidarity, was signed in Szczecin. Pope John Paul II visited the city on 11 June 1987. The introduction of martial law in December 1981 met with a strike by the dockworkers of Szczecin shipyard, joined by other factories and workplaces in a general strike. All these were suppressed by the authorities. Another wave of strikes in Szczecin broke out in 1988 and 1989, which eventually led to the Round Table Agreement and first semi free elections in Poland.
Since 1999 Szczecin is the capital of the West Pomeranian Voivodeship.