Westerplatte
Westerplatte is a Presqu'île covered with sand and forests located on the Baltic coast, in periphery of Gdansk.
The ammunition dump
From 1926 to 1939, it shelters the Polish armament on this territory of the free city of Gdansk.
The Battle of Westerplatte
The place is known to be the place of a battle éponyme (1 September 7th, 1939) opposing the Germans to the Poles during the Second world war. The attack of Westerplatte is regarded wrongly as the first places of confrontation of the second war, since in fact for a few minutes the German attack had already started in Poland.
The German attack began on September 1st, 1939 by a bombardment carried out by the German battleship the Schleswig-Holstein, officially visits " of it; of courtoisie" in Gdansk, followed by the terrestrial attack. During 7 days, hardly more than 200 Polish soldiers defend themselves with 3 guns and 4 mortars against 3500 Germans supported by aviation, heavy artillery and the Schleswig-Holstein battleship.
During the engagements, the Germans undergo losses estimated at several hundreds of soldiers put out of combat, against hardly 15 Poles killed, one 16th being tortured then assassinated after rendering after having refused to give the codes of radio operator encoding. During and after the war, the soldiers of Westerplatte were the symbol of the fight of Poland, the determination and the courage of the Polish soldiers. Today still the memory of Westerplatte and its defenders is very present in the Polish spirit and common culture.
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