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, it was one of the first military acts carried out as part of the Fall Weiss plan, the Third Reich’s aggression against Poland. Today, for Poles it is a symbol of the beginning of the Second World War.

The warship, commanded by Commodore Gustav Kleikamp, entered the port of Gdansk on 25 August 1939 under the pretext of paying tribute to the German sailors who had fallen in August 1914 on the sunken cruiser “Magdeburg” and were buried in the Gdansk garrison cemetery. In fact, aboard the battleship there was an elite Kriegsmarine assault company which, at dawn on 1 September 1939, under cover of 280mm artillery shells destroying Westerplatte, initiated an attack on the Polish ammunition depot, defended by around two hundred Polish Army soldiers.

The Poles, commanded by Major Henryk Sucharski and his deputy Captain Franciszek Dąbrowski, heroically and self-sacrificially resisted for seven days the massive attacks by the German troops, which numbered more than 4,000 soldiers in total. In their well-fortified strongholds, the Polish defenders resisted shelling from the sea, attacks made by German infantry, and protected themselves 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 with no prospect of Polish reinforcements, Major Sucharski decided to capitulate. A tribute to the steadfastness of the Polish soldier 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 immense force of the attacking outpost. They compared the defence of Westerplatte to the Battle of Verdun, which was one of the greatest battles of the First World War.