Word: danzig
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...proud old Hanseatic City of Danzig and its small surrounding hinterland worked and played last week so normally that uninformed visitors could scarcely have guessed what international storms were gathering about it. Churchgoers went in and out of St. Mary's, the great brick Gothic Cathedral, nicknamed "Stout Mary" because of its square plump tower. Foreigners (Danzigers not allowed) played roulette at the elegant casino at Zoppot. Thousands played on the gloriously white sands or swam in the cool waters of Danzig Bay. Up in the heavily wooded section south of the city, picnicking still went on. Couples promenaded...
...Vistula, but it scarcely compared to the turnout which had already been staged for such Nazi bigwigs as Field Marshal Hermann Göring and Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess. Against the Poles, who are outnumbered by Germans 24-to-1 but who run the public services in Danzig, Adolf Hitler can never lay the complaint that they suppressed Germanity in the Free City. But despite the surface calm, Poles could list last week numerous serious complaints against Germans. It was these which caused so much apprehension in Poland and a first-class European scare...
Filtering into the Free City by air (Danzig is two hours by commercial plane from Berlin), sea and land were German "tourists," all men between 25 and 40. By week's end the Poles estimated there were 7,000 of them. They were housed in the barracks at Langfuhr, northwest of the city, and soon were observed installing machine guns and building fortifications on the Bischofsberg, the hill to the city's southwest. Moreover, Danzig itself started a local Nazi Heimwehr of some 10,000 men. Authentic reports had it that boatloads of artillery and anti-aircraft...
Massed by the thousands outside Danzig were Poland's troops. But they scrupulously stayed on the Polish side of the border. The Free City of Danzig's government is supervised by a League of Nations High Commissioner. Poland's rights there are limited to the administration of customs, railroads, and foreign relations. Internally Danzig is autonomous. Thus the treaties which gave Poland an outlet to the sea through Danzig prohibit Polish military occupation of that outlet. On the Westerplatte, a low bank at the entrance to Danzig Harbor, however, is generally harbored a small garrison of Polish...
...face of it, the seizure of Danzig by Germany would mean no more than another Hitler conquest, another large Baltic seaport (of which Germany already has three), another 791 sq. mi. and 407,000 more Germans added to the Reich. To Poland the loss of Danzig would probably eventually mean the loss of the Polish Corridor and landlocked economic if not political domination by Germany...