Battle of Westerplatte

• 1. Introduction

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  The Battle of Westerplatte began on the morning of the 1st of September 1939, when the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein fired on a Polish military depot in the harbour of the Free City of Danzig. It was the first battle of the German invasion of Poland, and it marked the start of the Second World War in Europe. Nobody agrees on the exact minute of that first salvo. Accounts give 04:43, 04:45, 04:47 or 04:48, and the Polish historian Jarosław Tuliszka reconciles them. In his reading, 04:45 was the planned time, 04:47 was when Captain Gustav Kleikamp gave the order, and 04:48 was when the guns actually fired.

  Shortly afterwards, Major Henryk Sucharski radioed the nearby Polish base on the Hel Peninsula with a message of four words: "SOS: I'm under fire." The men he commanded were not expected to be much of a problem. Kleikamp had been assured by the Danzig Police that "Westerplatte would be taken in 10 minutes."

  This documentary asks how that prediction failed so completely. It asks who really commanded the defenders, and why a forested peninsula with little tactical weight became one of the great symbols of Polish resistance.

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• 2. A Depot in Danzig

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  In 1921, in the wake of the Polish-Soviet War, the League of Nations granted Poland the right to install a garrisoned ammunition depot near Danzig. The city had become the Free City of Danzig, a city-state nominally supervised by the League. Its mostly ethnic German population pulled it steadily toward Germany. The Free City objected to the depot, but the right was confirmed in 1925, and an area of 60 ha on the Westerplatte peninsula was chosen.

  The harbour channel separated the peninsula from Danzig's New Port. On land, a brick wall topped with barbed wire divided the Polish-held part from Danzig's territory. A dedicated rail line ran through the Free City to link the depot with Polish territory nearby.

  The depot was completed in November 1925 and officially handed to Poland on the last day of that year. It became operational in January 1926 with 22 active storage warehouses. League documents called it the Wojskowa Składnica Tranzytowa, or WST, meaning the Military Transit Depot. Its garrison was fixed at 2 officers and 20 non-commissioned officers, with privates bringing the total to 88 of all ranks. Poland was forbidden to build further military installations or fortifications there.

  By early 1933, German politicians and media figures were complaining about the need for border adjustments. The Polish and French governments, meanwhile, discussed a preventive war against Germany. On the 6th of March, in what became known as the Westerplatte incident, Poland landed a marine battalion and briefly raised the garrison to about 200 men. The move showed Polish resolve to defend the depot. It also pressed the Danzig government. Danzig was trying to renounce an agreement on shared control of the harbour police, and wanted full control of the police and the harbour. Sources disagree about how the episode ended. One says the League authorised Poland on the 14th of March to reinforce its garrison. Another says the extra troops left on the 16th of March after protests from the League, Danzig and Germany. In return, Danzig dropped its objections to the harbour-police agreement.

  Hidden among the peninsula's trees stood several small guardhouses, with more buildings, including barracks, in the middle of the depot. Most were built of reinforced concrete and backed by trenches, barricades and barbed wire. There were no bunkers and no tunnels. The Poles built these works quietly, despite the ban on fortifications. They would be tested in 1939 by a garrison far larger than the treaty allowed.

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• 3. Two Plans

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  In March 1939, a German ultimatum to Lithuania ended with Germany annexing the Lithuanian coastal Klaipėda Region, and the Westerplatte garrison went on alert. Fearing a Nazi coup in Danzig, the Poles decided to reinforce the depot in secret. Their subterfuge was simple. Civilians in Polish Army uniform left the base, and new Polish soldiers went in.

  By late August 1939, the garrison stood well beyond its official 88 men, though the true number is still debated. Older sources speak of 182 men. More recent research suggests 210 to 240, including six officers. Among them were Major Henryk Sucharski, his deputy Captain Franciszek Dąbrowski, Captain Mieczysław Słaby and Lieutenant Leon Pająk. Estimates include about 20 mobilised civilians and about 10 regular troops who happened to be on site when fighting began.

  The small arms were pistols, grenades and about 160 rifles. Heavier weapons were a 75 mm field gun of the wz. 1902/26 model, two Bofors 37 mm anti-tank guns, four 81 mm mortars and about 40 machine guns. Eighteen of the machine guns were heavy. Trenches were extended and wooden barricades built. Barbed wire was strung into obstacles, and reinforced concrete shelters were added in the basements of the barracks. Foliage was thinned to reduce cover on the expected avenues of attack.

  Three lines of defence were planned, because the Poles mainly expected a land assault. The outer line used entrenched outposts codenamed Prom, Przystań, Łazienki and Wał, which were to hold long enough for the garrison to mobilise. The second line centred on five guardhouses, numbered I to V, in the middle of the depot. The last stand was the headquarters and barracks at the centre, sometimes called Guardhouse VI. Supporting positions were named Elektrownia, Deika, Fort, Tor kolejowy and Kej. The plan called for 12 hours of resistance, after which reinforcements from the mainland were expected to lift the siege.

  On the 25th of August 1939, the old pre-dreadnought battleship Schleswig-Holstein sailed into Danzig harbour on the pretext of a courtesy call. It anchored 150 m from Westerplatte. On board were 225 marines of a shock-troop company under Lieutenant Wilhelm Henningsen. Ashore, the SS Heimwehr Danzig fielded 1,500 men under Police General Friedrich-Georg Eberhardt. Kleikamp, aboard the battleship, held overall command.

  The marines were first ordered to attack on the morning of the 26th of August. That day Kleikamp moved the ship farther upstream, and Sucharski put his garrison on heightened alert. Shortly before the Germans disembarked, the orders were cancelled. Hitler had postponed hostilities on learning of the Polish-British Common Defence Pact, signed the day before. He had also learned that Italy was hesitant about its obligations under the Pact of Steel.

  Neither Eberhardt nor Kleikamp had specific information about the Polish defences. They assumed a preliminary bombardment would soften the fortifications enough for the marines to take Westerplatte. Eberhardt was more cautious than the Danzig Police and expected to need a few hours. He put the garrison at no more than 100 men. The marines would be the ones to meet a force at least twice that size.

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• 4. The First Morning

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  Not one Polish soldier was hurt by the battleship's opening broadside. Because Schleswig-Holstein sat so close to its target, its heavier shells had no time to arm, and they did not explode on impact.

  Eight minutes after the guns fired, Henningsen's marines advanced. They had landed two hours earlier on the eastern side of the peninsula and expected an easy victory. They crossed the brick wall at the border, which artillery had breached, and pushed about 200 m forward to engage the Polish Prom outpost. There they walked into an ambush. Concealed positions poured crossfire into a kill zone, while barbed wire slowed every movement.

  Around 05:15, the Polish field gun under Pająk opened intense fire. It shot 28 rounds and knocked out several machine-gun nests on warehouses across the harbour canal. Polish mortars shelled the German infantry, and the 37 mm guns even targeted the battleship. At about the same time, the Poles repulsed a landing attempt on the western side of the depot by a small maritime unit of the Danzig Police.

  At 06:22, the marines radioed the battleship in a panic. They reported heavy losses and said they were withdrawing.

  A longer bombardment from 07:40 to 08:55 preceded the second attack, and it knocked out the Polish field gun. The Germans assaulted again from 08:35 to 12:30. They met mines, felled trees, barbed wire and heavy fire. By noon they had retreated, and Henningsen was gravely wounded. Eberhardt asked for air support, but bad weather over Westerplatte delayed it.

  By the end of the first day, the Poles had four dead and several wounded. The German marines had lost sixteen killed and 120 wounded. One of the four Polish dead was Staff Sergeant Wojciech Najsarek, killed by machine-gun fire in the first clash. He is described as the first Polish combat casualty of the battle, and perhaps of the war.

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• 5. Seven Days

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  Six haystacks were declared to be armoured bunker domes by German officers who re-examined their aerial photographs after the first day. They had earlier underestimated the Polish defences. Now they overestimated them, imagining extensive underground and armoured fortifications. In the following days, the Germans pounded the peninsula with naval guns and heavy field artillery, including a 105 mm howitzer battery and 210 mm howitzers.

  On the 2nd of September, between 18:05 and 18:25, a two-wave raid by 60 Junkers Ju 87 Stuka dive bombers dropped 26.5 t of bombs. The raid eliminated the Polish mortars and killed at least eight soldiers. A single 500 kg bomb destroyed Guardhouse V. Smoke covered all of Westerplatte, and the Poles lost their only radio and much of their food. Some German sources say the Poles briefly showed a white flag after the raid. Not all historians are convinced, and the German observers may have been mistaken.

  On the 4th of September, the torpedo boat T196 and an old minesweeper, the Von der Groben, made a surprise attack. The Poles' Wał outpost had been abandoned, so only the Fort outpost stood between the attackers and the north. The Poles never hit a German naval unit. Even so, T196 and Schleswig-Holstein both suffered accidents blamed on crew error or equipment failure. At least one man died on the battleship, and several were injured.

  At 03:00 on the 6th of September, the Germans sent a burning train toward the Polish positions. The target was an oil cistern. The terrified driver decoupled too early, so the train never arrived. Instead it set fire to the woods that had given the Poles valuable cover. The burning wagons created a perfect field of fire, and the Germans suffered heavy losses. A second fire-train attack that afternoon also failed.

  At 04:30 on the 7th of September, the Germans opened intense fire that lasted until 07:00. Flamethrowers and bombardment, with Schleswig-Holstein taking part, destroyed Guardhouse II and damaged Guardhouses I and IV. At 09:45, a white flag appeared. Sucharski surrendered the post to Kleikamp, and the Germans stood at attention as the garrison marched out at 11:30.

  Over 3,000 Germans, including soldiers and support formations such as the Danzig Police, had been tied up in the operation. About half of them took part in direct action, 570 on land and over 900 at sea. German casualties totalled 50 killed, 16 of them from the Kriegsmarine, and 150 wounded. The Poles lost 15 men and had at least 40 wounded. Eberhardt initially let Sucharski keep his ceremonial Polish saber, called a szabla, though it was confiscated later. Even then, the foreign press got the commander wrong. Life and the Pictorial History of the War both misidentified him as a Major "Koscianski".

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• 6. Who Commanded

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  On the 5th of September, Sucharski gathered his officers and urged surrender. The garrison had already outlasted anything its orders required. Dąbrowski, his deputy, opposed giving up, and the group decided to hold out a while longer.

  A second conference on the 6th of September found Sucharski ready to surrender again. The German Army was by then outside Warsaw, and Westerplatte was running critically low on supplies. Many of the wounded were suffering from gangrene.

  For decades, early historiography treated Sucharski as the commander throughout the battle, and early accounts portrayed him as a heroic figure. Accounts from the early 1990s presented a different picture. According to this evidence, his officers had vowed never to disclose in their lifetimes that he was shell-shocked for most of the battle. He had advocated surrender as early as the 2nd of September, and several times after that. Dąbrowski had effectively taken command following Sucharski's breakdown on the second day of the siege. Historians still debate Sucharski's conduct.

  On the 8th of September, the day after the capitulation, the Germans found a grave holding the bodies of four unidentified Polish soldiers. They had been executed by their comrades for attempted desertion. According to Tomasz Sudoł, this likely happened after the air raids of the 2nd of September.

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• 7. Symbol of Resistance

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  "Westerplatte broni się jeszcze," meaning "Westerplatte fights on," was the phrase Polish Radio broadcast repeatedly from the 1st of September 1939. It made the depot an important symbol while German advances continued elsewhere. On the 16th of September, the poet Konstanty Ildefons Gałczyński wrote a poem that voiced a later myth: that every one of the defenders had died fighting to the last man. The battle came to be seen as a Polish Battle of Thermopylae.

  The name spread quickly. In 1943, a Polish People's Army unit was named the Polish 1st Armoured Brigade of the Defenders of Westerplatte. That same year, the Polish Underground State named a street after the battle. In 1944, during the Warsaw Uprising, insurgents gave the name Westerplatte to one of their strongholds. The Polish historian Krzysztof Komorowski writes that "Westerplatte has become one of the symbols of the Polish struggle for independence, and is inscribed in the list of the most heroic battles of modern Europe."

  The battle is often called the opening battle of the Second World War, but it was one of many in the first phase of the invasion, known as the Battle of the Border. The British historian I. C. B. Dear placed the battleship's salvos "minutes after Luftwaffe attacks on Polish airfields" and other targets. A bridge at nearby Tczew had been bombed around 04:30, and the false-flag Operation Himmler had begun hours earlier.

  For both sides, the importance was political rather than tactical. The defence tied up substantial German forces for far longer than anyone expected. One result was that Schleswig-Holstein could not lend fire support in the nearby battles of Hel and Gdynia.

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• 8. The Peninsula After

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  On the 12th of September 1939, the Polish wireless operator Sergeant Kazimierz Rasiński was murdered by the Germans. He was shot after a brutal interrogation in which he refused to hand over radio codes. Hitler visited Danzig on the 19th of September and inspected Westerplatte on the 21st. The Polish field gun became one of Germany's first war trophies of the war. It was displayed on a column at Flensburg and later moved to stand before the Naval Academy Mürwik.

  From the 28th of March to the 1st of April 1945, the peninsula saw fighting again. Elements of the German 73rd Infantry Division defended it against the Soviet 76th Guards Rifle Division until the German units were evacuated by sea.

  Guardhouses I, III and IV, the power plant and the barracks survived the war. In 1946, a cemetery and a Tomb of the Unknown Soldier were established on the peninsula, with the cemetery placed near the destroyed Guardhouse V. During the early Stalinist era, Westerplatte was presented as a symbol of Poland's prewar anticommunist government and was marginalised in official history. Mieczysław Słaby, the garrison surgeon, was arrested, tortured and died in the custody of the Ministry of Public Security in 1948.

  After the mid-1950s liberalisation, the site became a communist propaganda symbol. In 1956, the Polish Naval Academy was named for the "Heroes of Westerplatte," and the name spread to schools, streets and other institutions. In 1962, a Soviet T-34 tank replaced a Christian cross at the cemetery, and the first government-organised remembrances began. In 1966, a 25 m obelisk atop a mound, the Westerplatte Monument, was erected in a park. Guardhouse I was later relocated to save it from destruction during construction of a new harbour channel. In 1971, Sucharski's grave was moved to Westerplatte from his original burial place in Italy. A small museum opened in the renovated Guardhouse I in 1974, and since the 1980s the National Museum in Gdańsk has administered the site.

  The cross returned to the cemetery in 1981. In June 1987, Pope John Paul II visited Westerplatte, and a plaque commemorating the visit was unveiled in 2015. After the fall of communism, the tank was transferred in 2007 to a museum in another town. In 2001, the Polish government recognised the ruins as cultural heritage, and on the 1st of September 2003 the site was designated an official Historic Monument.

  State ceremonies are usually held there on the 1st of September. Prime Minister Donald Tusk attended in 2014, President Bronisław Komorowski in 2015, President Andrzej Duda in 2016 and Prime Minister Beata Szydło in 2017. The 70th anniversary in 2009 drew former Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki and former Presidents Lech Wałęsa and Aleksander Kwaśniewski, along with figures from about 20 other countries. They included German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and French Prime Minister François Fillon.

  Two Polish films tell the story, Westerplatte in 1967 and Tajemnica Westerplatte, The Secret of Westerplatte, in 2013. Dozens of books, scores of press articles and scholarly studies, and many poems, songs and paintings have followed. The Polish government in Gdańsk plans to open a dedicated public museum on the site in 2026.

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