World War II Database

1. Anonymous says:
29 Aug 2012 08:04:25 AM

What country would accept a portion of it's land be saparated?Imagine New England being separated from the rest of the US if New York State were given over to Canada. The Poles had no right to Danzig nor the Corridor.

2. Anonymous says:
6 Aug 2013 06:22:51 PM

Re: the post of 29 Aug 2012: "Imagine Alaska being separated from the rest of the US by British Columbia, Canada..." oh yeah, I guess it would be okay for the US to invade Canada over that too... DOH!

3. Anonymous says:
11 Feb 2014 02:55:22 PM

#2 Comment has no basis
Alaska was never separated from the US mainland. The US purchased Russian-America from the Russians in 1867!

4. Anonymous says:
4 Mar 2014 08:23:59 AM

Poland wouldn't be severing it's own land, just withdrawing it's customs officials and conceding control of a territory that had, (19 years previously), been part of Germany and that was occupied by 95% German ex-pats that had spent 20 years organizing mass labour actions in protest to Polish administration...so kinda not the same.

5. Anonymous says:
18 Mar 2014 08:42:12 PM

Poles behaved unreasonably and they were very unfriendly to Germans: they should give up Danzig and agree on exterritorial corridor from Germany.

6. Anonymous says:
20 Apr 2014 01:01:52 PM

ok 1897 the first Zionist Congress in Switzerland 200 powerful Jewish people from all over the world to vote on how to steal Palestine from the British and force all jews

7. Anonymous says:
7 Jun 2014 08:59:17 AM

Maybe Putin took a page from history with his Crimea demands. Scary.

8. Anonymous says:
28 Feb 2015 10:17:28 PM

Comment #3 has no basis.Alaska has always been separated from mainland US territory by British Columbia in exactly the same way the so-called "Polish Corridor" separated Germany proper from the (former) East Prussia.Still is.Don't believe me?Look at any atlas of North America.Seriously why are you writing nonsense.

9. Anonymous says:
15 Mar 2015 09:02:45 PM

Peter needs an update on European history.
Austria and Germany for many centuries were part of the same Empire. Most of the Emperors were Austrians (Habsburg) After the Empire was desolved, Austria became part of the Deutsche Bund. Guess, it's President was an Austrian. After the II. Reich was formed Germany and Austria became strong allies. Austria was not annexed

10.  David Stubblebine says:
16 Mar 2015 12:07:28 PM

To Anonymous #9:

Austria was absolutely annexed – or it was reunified with Germany or whatever you want to call it. No one is denying the common history and heritage of the two regions but on March 11, 1938 they were two separate nations, on a governmental basis at the very least. The following day, that distinction was dissolved. That transition is what is important about this event, whether it is called “annexation” or anything else. To be so incensed over such a minor semantic distinction 77 years after the fact seems non-productive to me.

11. Tancred says:
18 Aug 2015 01:42:07 AM

What this rather badly written article doesn't mention is that the British did not make any serious attempt to settle the crisis. Instead they exacerbated it - British ambassador Kennard actively encouraged the Poles to resist the German demands and provoke war. Henderson was not aware of this policy that was initiated by Lord Halifax, British foreign secretary. The British still believed theyt were a great power in 1939 and could play the 'great game' in Europe as they did since the 1700s and manipulate one power against another. The war could have been avoided if Poland could have been persuaded to relent over Danzig in exchange for other concessions or a financial package.

12. Anonymous says:
8 Jan 2016 02:13:52 PM

i would like to call out the writers of this on a few points
1. they say hitler used the dazig problem as a spring board for war ,i do not believe that . hitler said time after time"what am i to do thousand and thousands of fellow germans are being massacred but he kept away, the numbers continued to mount finally 58,000 was the total of woman children and old men heads bashed in mutilated kids nailed to the sides of barns pictures to horrible to look at obvious torture and hitler said enough. a few at the signing of versailles predicted it was destined to hand because of the requirements in the treaty,IT WAS A SETUP of course to the victor goes the spoil and the first casualty of war is the truth. those who sensor the narrative are the same the wrote the treaty and sent thugs into danzig to foment detention and killing of german poles. also general smiley (polish general)said he could crush germany in 2 days,he wanted to invade germany read the truth !!!

13. Anonymous says:
11 Jan 2016 10:07:52 AM

I'm seriously wondering if this article is slanted, why was the massacres not addressed. did they happen ?
its alleged 58000 old men women and children were horrifically slaughter over a long period, with many pictures.
also what about general smugglers comment that he wanted war with germany? also what about the proof the germany was not ready for war, and countless enemy captured tanks used by germans. pictures don't lie. i just want the truth which unfortunately is the first casualty of war. the truth

14. Anonymous says:
23 May 2016 11:17:17 PM

Great Article Peter! I've been trying to find a sensible timeline of these events. I know about the Soviet/Nazi non-aggression pact of August 23, 1939 (?date). Just wondering if you could write a little about that? How does that relate to Danzig specifically? Also, would be really helpful if you could include 2 maps of Danzig "pre-WW1 / pre-WW2" so we could get some idea of the changes.

Maybe this goes without saying but never could quite figure out why Poland was deprived of a coastline for so long. Certainly there are land-locked countries in the world but Poland seemed Jury-rigged (no pun intended).

15. Anonymous says:
9 Aug 2016 11:30:30 PM

Comments 12&13 are blatant lies.The massacres occurred only in the diseased mind of Adolf Hitler,And Hitler wanted more than Danzig.He wanted Poland reduced to the staus of a German satellite.That was the meaning of his demand that Poland adhere to the anti-comintern pact.

16. Anonymous says:
22 Sep 2016 07:45:34 PM

good articulation

17. Anonymous says:
17 Apr 2017 02:34:53 AM

Great article. If only this time line had been taught in my school 20 years ago. I am not surprised to hear of Hitler attempting to peacefully negotiate. The economy was strong, they wanted peace as much as the rest of the UK.
I have German in my blood, yet, have been taught to hide my heritage. I only read this article because of the present conflict with North Korea and the USA. Now I feel that I can share your article with others.
Thank you.

18. Douglas R Arbo Jr says:
16 May 2017 06:10:12 PM

Comments 12 & 13 are not lies. Yet an inconvenient truth contradicting the all perceptions that the Germans were completely evil they feed us in school, etc.

19. Anonymous says:
29 Jul 2017 05:27:20 AM

I have a question about the various series of conflicts which culminated in the Danzig massacres (according to: https://members.iinet.net.au/~gduncan/massacres_east.html#Poland, "At a later investigation, the testimonies of 593 witnesses established the fact that at least 3,841 named ethnic Germans were murdered by the Poles prior to the full German occupation. These revenge murders were carried out as early as April, 1939 in the Polish Corridor.").
I am curious: were there a series of conflicts and ethnic divisions (leading to assaults, or physical violence outbreaks) prior to the outbreak of WW2 on September 1? It seems that the subsequent killings of the Germans during the invasion and the following German killings of Poles after, in retaliation, weren't really a product of a sudden event, but some gradual ethnic rifts that had been stewing for quite some time.

20. Leslie Phelps says:
30 Aug 2017 07:05:36 AM

Several of you are the victims of revisionist history. I won't say which ones, but you are way off.

21.  David Stubblebine says:
30 Aug 2017 10:36:53 AM

In re-reading some of the comments here, I am struck with how the Hitler-apologists have (intentionally?) overlooked one important point: Since later history clearly exposed it had been Hitler’s intent to invade Russia all along, what do you suppose Hitler’s intent with respect to Poland and Danzig was? That he ever intended to have any manner of peaceful resolution with Poland over Danzig or anything else seems painfully unlikely.

22. Janneta Stoddern says:
9 Oct 2017 01:16:07 AM

My Mother was an actual free citizen in Danzig at the time of the first invasion of the Polish Army. This occurred on her 5th Birthday 03/09/1939. She witnessed the Polish army walking into Danzig and shooting several of their neighbours in cold blood. She and her sisters had to sleep under the floorboards under their brother’s beds to keep them safe. This though did not help her as she was raped at the age of 5 by a Polish Soldier.
Why is none of this history listed? Their house was occupied by the Nazis and then the Poles, closely followed by the Russians. My Grandmother ran a resistance group to aid the escape of their Jewish neighbours as well as many others.
They ended having to walk from Danzig to an East Berlin refugee camp to get to safety. Leaving my Paternal Great Grandmother behind who was too old to walk. The Manor house and farm lands they owned were taken from them as well as many family heirlooms.
I am trying to source my maternal family history and am constantly hitting brick walls. Why? Also why is Danzig being listed as Polish back then when it was a free city?

23. Steve Holz says:
22 Mar 2018 02:39:47 PM

Danzig was populated by Germans and had been so since 1793. After WW1 peace treaty in Versailles, Danzig was declared as the "Free City of Danzig" but with Polish access to the harbour. Poland was also given a landtounge to the Baltic sea next to Danzig. This cut Germany in two halves with no direct access to Germany East Prussia.
This was one of many mistakes made by the Versailles peace treaty. Poland now found themselves in a very dangerous position.
Hitler and Germany wasn't pleased at all and claimed back a corridor through Poland by the Baltic coast to east Prussia, including Danzig.
France & GB felt obligated to support Poland because of the Versailles borders but Germany invaded anyway. France and GB declared war on Germany for the 2nd time in 35 years. But the where no sign of direct help from them, in the end it was the Soviet communists who "liberated the Polish people" in this by very an unfriendly manner. First Poland was crushed by nazis and 5-6 years later by the communist.
Poland suffered heavily during the war with millions of deads and then for 45 years as a communist state. Poland, was it worth it? Just to hold on to some land you lost some 130 years earlier?
We don't know what had happened if the Polish given Hitler the corridor to east prussia, it's all speculation from here.
Germany would probably invaded Poland anyway to be able to invade Soviet later. But a world war could have been avoided if France and GB didn't declared war on Germany.
But as it happened, europe was drawn into WW2 with horrible consequences. The result, big parts of Europe destroyed, Nazi-Germany crushed and Hitler dead but 45 years of cold war and also a communist east europe.

24. Mark says:
6 May 2018 12:13:46 AM

The UK and France committed suicide by backing the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939.

They should have allowed a referendum on Danzig.

25. The Truth says:
31 May 2018 03:00:00 AM

Germany offered negotiation many times over Danzig and the corridor, but Poland refused every single time. There wasn't even one tiny amount of compromise, nothing. Britain and France committed themselves to war with Germany by guaranteeing Polish borders and they knew it - Lord Halifax repeatedly obstructed attempts by ambassador Neville Henderson to broker an agreement between Germany and Poland. Much is made of German intentions towards Poland but Polish expansionism has been ignored by historians; even in 1939 Poland wanted to expand west and annex all Germany territory east of the Oder-Niesse line. Poland actively desired war as a means to this end.

26. Anonymous says:
15 Jun 2018 05:06:11 AM

The British & French mistakes were many. The first was indeed the Versailles Treaty - if the Allies had conquered Germany instead of accepting their surrender at the end of WW1 there would have been no 'grievances' because Germany woukld have ceased to exist. After that mistake, WW2 was more or less inevitable. The inly questions was 'when'. The longer Hitler was allowed to prepare the worse it would have been. Hitler there is no doubt that Hotler's gial was to attack Russia - and that he knew he had to put France out of first. So, if not Poland, would Britain have gone to war over France ? If not, then it's unlikely we would have gone to war over Russia and it's an even bet that Hitler would have beaten Stalin ...
I would suggest the best opportunity to have stopped Hitler wouild have been when he occupied the Ruhr = which almost everyone agreed he had the right but which gave him the resources to make the next step ..

27. Anonymous says:
18 Jun 2018 10:31:06 AM

Please proof-read the articles before publishing. Many mistakes.

28. Jayme W says:
6 Nov 2018 05:56:14 AM

The real travesty is the treaty of Versailles, the french/british/italians wanted Germany punished for the war ignoring Wilson's 14 point plan, that started for reasons of treaties. Everyone bandied their threats and began mobilizations that just escalated their opponents to do the same. At the end of WW1, the Germans laid down their weapons and were at the mercy of Britain and France. Wilson tried to broker a more compassionate treaty but european interests wanted a scapegoat. These attitudes setup the enviroment IMO which lead to Hitler's rise and WWII

29. Myles golden says:
25 Nov 2018 04:40:07 PM

The author took enormous liberty with his opinion.
I see this entire situation as a huge failure in diplomacy by the Allied politicians. You cant tell a sovereign country it cant handle its own boarder disputes. Hitler promised not to invade a country without talking it out with Chamberlin first. He tried but Chamberlin had allowed Churchill to box him in politically. Germans gave Hitler power because he promised to defend the Volk first. He stood true to his word to Chamberlin and the German people. Poland had plenty of reasonable solutions handed to their leader. Of whom was know to be inebt and in meed of solid guidence from Britain and France. Instead, he was given a guarentee of retaliation if he was attacked. The goof thought he was safe and the allies would come with guns blazing to stop Germany. How did that work out for Poland? At the end of the war, the Allies set back on the river bank watching the free Polish up rising be demolished. After Poland was leveled then they let uncle joe march in and have the Poland he wanted from the beginning. Communist got everything they wanted in Poland without any opposition. Nice job, millions died for what?
Roosevelt and Churchill were the ones that gave no effort to avert war.
In my OPINION, they believe a war could benefit themselves politically as well as help the flat economies of their countries.
But no doubt Hiitler wanted the world to see the power of the German armed forces that the germans created without switching to a war economy.
This is a much deeper and complicated grave moment in time.
A writting about it should not be claimed as encyclopedic. This is an opinion column. Facts only please do not insert your assumptions as if fact

30. Anonymous says:
31 Mar 2020 01:03:10 PM

Chesty Puller quote, "All right, they're on our left, they're on our right, they're in front of us, they're behind us... they can't get away this time."

Lt. Gen. Lewis B. "Chesty" Puller, at Guadalcanal

Was at Chosin Korea different war.

31. Anonymous says:
20 Apr 2020 12:47:47 AM

Oh dear god, the revisionism and the ludicrousness is off the charts in this comments section.

1. Germany's initial demands (barring the stipulation that Poland join the Comintern Pact) were totally reasonable. Danzig was ethnically German and Hitler had every right to demand that Germans (especially the ones in Danzig who revered him) should be integrated into the Reich.

2. Unless you can provide factual, thoroughly-checked sources (AKA not anecdotal sources), it is widely agreed that Poland did not engage in massacres against the ethnic German population of Danzig.

3. While Hitler's claims that Danzig was German and should therefore become part of the Reich had basis, he did unfortunately use this crisis as an excuse to wipe the Polish state off the map, otherwise he would not have agreed to partition Poland with Stalin, and Poland would not have been crushed in a month's time. Germany was ready for war, and Hitler was more than willing to supply that war.

4.The Allies' guarantee of Polish borders was sort of a violation of the Locarno Treaties, which made the Eastern European borders open for revision (of which Hitler did plenty) but also made the peaceful conclusion of German-Polish talks nigh impossible. The British goal during the Locarno Treaties was expressly so that Eastern Europe would accede to German demands to bring Germans back into Germany, so why the British themselves would defeat their own goal is beyond comprehension. Furthermore, Polish borders, by virtue of the Treaty of Versailles, did not include the Free City of Danzig, which Hitler planned to annex. If a move on Danzig constituted a "violation of Polish borders", then that would, de facto, mean that Poland had annexed Danzig, the one thing that would give Hitler vindication about Polish plans. While the extraterritorial railroad is something else entirely, I find it hard to believe that the free movement of Germans from East Prussia to Germany proper via rail could not have been negotiated.

5. The idea that in order to survive, Poland needed the Polish Corridor was ludicrous. Hungary was not given a corridor to the Adriatic after the Treaty of Trianon, in fact, such a corridor was removed from Hungary and given to a newly formed Yugoslavia.

re: comments #1, 2, 3, 4, 8
The main difference between Alaska and East Prussia is that Alaska was disconnected via land gained, while East Prussia was disconnected via land lost. The US would not have a basis to attack Canada for British Columbia because they never actually had British Columbia to begin with, while Germany had a basis to attack Poland over the corridor because they had lost it in a war only 21 years prior.

re: comments #12, 13, 17 to an extent, 18
Why are we suddenly believing Hitler? Last I checked, wasn't he the guy that said Germany had no more claims to make in Europe, then went ahead and annexed Czechoslovakia? And, while the German people may have wanted peace, Hitler himself definitely wanted war. One does not crush a nation in a month without thorough preparation. There was no setup, unless you're talking about the setup of the Wehrmacht as they were arrayed against the Polish troops.

re: comment #25
Again, no sources say that Poland wanted to annex German land. Especially land that was 100% NOT Polish, and ESPECIALLY not only ~17 years after winning their big war against the Soviets.

re: comment #26
The Allies should have just fully conquered Germany? What? Do you know just how poorly that would have gone? Imagine having a country that had only been unified for 47 years suddenly lose its independence completely, while another state is granted independence on ethnic grounds from territory that partially belonged to that country, all for not even STARTING the war that caused millions of deaths on both sides. You can bet your bottom dollar that the Germans would have risen up in droves and eventually forced their occupiers to withdraw. The Versailles Treaty wasn't a mistake because it wasn't harsh enough, it was a mistake because it was too harsh. Germany got sliced and diced despite not even starting the war, so you can bet they felt utterly humiliated. Hell, even Belgium wanted land that didn't even rightfully belong to them on ethnic grounds when they took Eupen-Malmedy in the west and rigged the plebiscites, despite that it was mostly German.

32. tony says:
2 Mar 2022 07:21:47 AM

These are some good info

33. Anonymous says:
1 Apr 2023 01:16:34 PM

How strange when I thought Germany, the word Russia fell out of my mouth, and thinking Poland, Ukraine tumbled out letter by letter.
The US planned the Middle East war designating a religious sect as terrorists, and 20 years later the outcome of the new population knowing nothing else except US military control, is not a happy place. If one considers the Middle East wars were 'distractions' from the NATO bombing Yugoslavia with depleted Uranium, then this Ukraine/Russia confrontation is the bounce-back to Europe being the focus---again!