Westerplatte
Sign in to savethumb|upright|Westerplatte Monument in memory of the Polish defenders Westerplatte (, , ) is a peninsula in Gdańsk, Poland, located on the Baltic Sea coast mouth of the Dead Vistula (one of the Vistula delta estuaries), in the Gdańsk harbour channel. From 1926 to 1939, it was the location of a Polish Military Transit Depot (WST), sanctioned within the territory of the Free City of Danzig (now Gdańsk).
Article
13 sectionsContents
- History
- Resort
- Transit depot
- Battle of Westerplatte
- Post-war
- See also
- Further reading
- Sources and documents
- Guidebooks
- Fiction
- Other
- References
- External links
thumb|upright|Westerplatte Monument in memory of the Polish defenders Westerplatte (, , ) is a peninsula in Gdańsk, Poland, located on the Baltic Sea coast mouth of the Dead Vistula (one of the Vistula delta estuaries), in the Gdańsk harbour channel. From 1926 to 1939, it was the location of a Polish Military Transit Depot (WST), sanctioned within the territory of the Free City of Danzig (now Gdańsk).
The first shots of the Second World War were fired at the Battle of Westerplatte which began at 0450hrs on the 1 September, 1939. The fighting started when the German WWI battleship SMS Schleswig-Holstein began shelling the Polish ammunition depot on Westerplatte. After a siege that lasted a week, the Polish garrison surrendered to German forces that were part of invasion of Poland.