Early in the morning of 1 September 1939, the German battleship ‘Schleswig-Holstein’ began the artillery shelling of the Military Transit Depot, an exclave of Poland located on the Westerplatte peninsula in the Free City of Gdańsk. Along with the bombardment of Wieluń and the attack on the bridges in Tczew, this was one of the first military acts carried out as part of the Fall Weiss plan, that is, the Third Reich’s aggression against Poland. Today, for Poles it is a symbol of the beginning of the Second World War.

Commanded by Commodore Gustav Kleikamp, the battleship entered the port of Gdansk on 25 August 1939 under the pretext of paying tribute to the German sailors who died in August 1914 on the sunken cruiser “Magdeburg” and were buried in the Gdansk garrison cemetery. In fact, the battleship’s deck housed an elite Kriegsmarine assault company which, at dawn on 1 September 1939, under cover of 280mm artillery shells destroying Westerplatte, launched an assault on the Polish ammunition depot, defended by around two hundred Polish Army soldiers.

Commanded by Major Henryk Sucharski and his deputy Captain Franciszek Dąbrowski, the Poles resisted the massive attacks by the numerically superior German troops, totalling more than 4,000 soldiers, heroically and with complete dedication for seven days. In their well fortified strongholds, the Polish defenders resisted shelling from the sea, attacks from German infantry and from bombardment from Luftwaffe aircraft.

After 7 days of heroic defence, due to exhaustion, the losses (15 dead and about 50 wounded), the lack of ammunition and prospect of Polish rescue, Major Sucharski decided to capitulate. A tribute to the steadfastness and bravery of the Polish soldiers was the attitude of General Friedrich G. Eberhardt, who, saluting the Polish commander, granted him the right to wear an officer’s sabre in captivity.

Years later, the Germans themselves emphasised the tremendous valour and sacrifice of the Polish soldiers in confronting the overwhelming attacking force. They compared the defence of Westerplatte to the Battle of Verdun, which was one of the greatest battles of the First World War.