Word: danzigers
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Early this week there was another, this one at Kaltof in highly inflammable Danzig. Involved was no highly placed ruler or diplomat, but a German butcher named Gustav Gruebner, who was killed by a shot fired from an official Polish automobile. Since incidents amount to what nations want to make them, Führer Adolf Hitler could give Butcher Gruebner a sure niche in history by deciding that this was ' just the right kind of provocation he needed to march into Danzig...
There are always two versions to diplomatic incidents, and I'affaire Gruebner was no exception. The Polish account: the Polish Vice-Commissioner to Danzig went to Kaltof to investigate the sacking of a Polish customs house by a German mob; his party was attacked, compelling his chauffeur to fire in self-defense. To this the German version bears little resemblance: there was merely an orderly demonstration against "molestations" of German girls by Polish officials, and Gustav Gruebner was plugged for no reason at all. The Nazi-controlled Danzig Government through the Senate President promptly demanded compensation for Butcher Gustav...
...Warsaw and the rest of Poland solemnly commemorated the fourth anniversary of the death of Marshal Josef Pilsudski, Polish hero and dictator, but not Danzig. There the Nazi Senate prohibited any ceremonies on the ground that in the present tension they could not guarantee order. Polish retort was that since the Germans could not keep order, the Polish Army should move in and do it. When a Polish bookshop proprietor displayed the old Marshal's picture his windows were smashed. Nazi police conveniently arrived too late to arrest the vandals...
More alarming than any other incident was the arrival in Danzig of the same husky young Germans who "toured" Czecho-Slovakia and Memel just before Adolf Hitler moved in. Estimates of Danzig's "tourists" last week ranged from 1,000 to 30,000. Some of them wore Storm Troopers' uniforms. Danzigers who have been serving in the German Army also turned up back in Danzig, having received "furloughs." Danzig police leaves were canceled...
...Poles in Danzig there was some encouragement in the arrival at Gdynia, the all-Polish port only twelve miles northwest of Danzig, of Polish artillery. And just to keep the record straight the Polish Government reiterated its oft-repeated firm stand: "Any attempt to alter the present state of affairs in Danzig will have as an immediate effect immediate action by the Polish military forces, which at present are in a state of readiness...