Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Gdansk

10 points to Adam for correctly remembering, self doubts aside, that Gdansk is named Danzig in German. For anyone curious, even when Germany lost a great deal of Prussia after World War I and Poland was reinstated as a nation-state, the Treaty of Versailles did NOT return Danzig to Poland. Instead, it remained the "Free City of Danzig" under control of the failed League of Nations.

I think it's safe to say that Germany wanted Danzig back. When the Wehrmacht began aggressions against Poland in 1939, regarded as the beginning of World War II, one of the first things done was to bombard Danzig. When the Soviet advance eventually lead to the capture of Danzig in 1945, the city was almost entirely destroyed. It wasn't until after the Postdam Conference that Danzig was returned to Poland and was once again known as Gdansk.

It has something of a violent history, to say the least.

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