Polish Corridor

The Polish Corridor in 1923

Polish Corridor (German: Polnischer Korridor; Polish: Korytarz gdański, województwo pomorskie) was the term used between the World Wars to refer to the Polish territory that separated the German exclave of East Prussia from the German Province of Pomerania. The area belonged to the Polish state which regained independence after World War I, as a result of the Treaty of Versailles. The "corridor" consisted of the part of Polish Pomerania along the Vistula River, forming the Pomeranian Voivodeship but excluding the Free City of Danzig. German author Hartmut Boockman claisms that the term was first used by Polish politicians, translated into German and used international, later criticised by Polish politicians as a German nationalistic one.

Background

Giving Poland access to the sea was one of the guarantees proposed by the United States President Woodrow Wilson in his Fourteen Points of 1918. The thirteenth of Wilson's points was:

An independent Polish state should be erected which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant.

Rationale

The transfer of this territory to Poland in 1920 was justified on these grounds:

• * Historical: The area had been part of the state of Poland (and later the Duchy of Pomerania) from its creation at the end of the 10th century until 1772 with the exception of 1309-1454 when the Teutonic Knights ruled Pomerelia. According to the Second Peace of Thorn (1466), this area became part of the Polish-Lithuanian union as Royal Prussia in 1466. Over 300 years later it was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia during the First Partition of Poland in 1772.

• Economic and political: It was argued that if the newly independent Polish state did not have an outlet to the Baltic Sea, it would be economically and therefore politically dependent on Germany. Since the United Kingdom and France wanted a strong Polish state as a counter-weight to Germany, they accepted this argument.

• Ethnic: As pointed by Antoni Abraham, Polish delegate to the Versailles Conference, most of the population of the region was Polish (in the area on the west bank of the Vistula, between Gdańsk (Danzig) and Bydgoszcz (Bromberg), including Kashubians (the direct descendants of the medieval West Slavic tribe of Pomeranians) in the coastal area north-west of Danzig.

Ethnic composition

Germans made up a minority in the Corridor Also, there was a Kashubian population and a Jewish minority.

German Population in the Corridor as of 1921 according to
Richard Blanke, Orphans of Versailles: The Germans in Western Poland 1918-1939, 1993

County	Total population	of which German	Percentage
Działdowo (Soldau)	23,290	8,187	34.5 % (35.2%)
Lubawa (Löbau)	59,765	4,478	7.6 %
Brodnica (Strasburg)	61,180	9,599	15.7%
Wąbrzeźno (Briesen)	47,100	14,678	31.1%
Toruń (Thorn)	79,247	16,175	20.4%
Chełmno (Kulm)	46,823	12,872	27.5%
Świecie (Schwetz)	83,138	20,178	24.3%
Grudziądz (Graudenz)	77,031	21,401	27.8%
Tczew (Dirschau)	62,905	7,854	12.5%
Wejherowo (Neustadt)	71,692	7,857	11.0%
Kartuzy (Karthaus)	64,631	5,037	7.8%
Kościerzyna (Berent)	49,935	9,290	18.6%
Starogard Gdański (Preußisch Stargard)	62,400	5,946	9.5%
Chojnice (Konitz)	71,018	13,129	18.5%
Tuchola (Tuchel)	34,445	5,660	16.4%
Sępólno Krajeńskie (Zempelburg)	27,876	13,430	48.2%
Total	935,643 (922,476 when added)	175,771	18.8% (19.1% with 922,476)

The 1920s

In the post-World War I period, the primarily German-speaking seaport of Danzig (Gdańsk) became the Free City of Danzig and was placed under the protection of the League of Nations, without consulting the local populace. After the seaport workers of the Free City of Danzig harbour went on strike throughout the Polish-Soviet War the Polish Government decided to built a new seaport at Gdynia in the territory of the Corridor. A large part of the German population of the Polish Corridor left the area after its cession to the Second Polish Republic had been published in June 1919. Poland took over complete control on January 20, 1920. Former public officials sent by Berlin to administrate Polish territories, colonists settled by Settlement Commission to Germanise the area Former public officials were not accepted as Polish citizens and had to leave the area. Other people, declining to give up German citizenship, had also to leave the Corridor.Due to the reduced population German schools were closed and property of former Germans residents was confiscated.

Throughout the East Prussian plebiscite in July 1920 Polish authorities tried to ensure that according to international agreements the plebiscite area will not be subject to movement of German forces.

Due to these difficulties, ongoing after the East Prussian Plebsicite ended with a significant German success, the German Ministry for Transport established the Seedienst Ostpreußen ("Sea Service East Prussia") in 1922 to provide a ferry connection to the German exclave of East Prussia, independent on the transit through Polish territory.

In 1925 the Polish government enacted a land reform program intending to reverse Germanisation of the area that occurred during actions of German Settlement Commission] which according to its own reports settled around 135,000-150,000 Germans in Polish areas held by Prussia before Poland regained independence during Germanisation campaign. During this attempt Germans took over 590 estates with overall area of 305 986 hectares, and 398 rural holdings covering 20 007 hectares. While 39 percent of the agricultural land of the Corridor area as a result became owned by Germans, the first annual list of properties to be reformed included 10,800 hectares from 32 German landowners and 950 hectares from seven Poles. The wojewoda of Pomorze, Wiktor Lamot supported the campaign that would reverse Germanisation of the area saying “the part of Pomorze through which the so-called corridor runs must be cleansed of larger German holdings”. The coastal region “ must be settled with a nationally conscious Polish population.. Estates belonging to Germans must be taxed more heavily to encourage them voluntarily to turn over land for settlement. Border counties, ... particularly a strip of land ten kilometers wide, must be settled with Poles. German estates that lie here must be reduced without concern for their economic value or the views of their owners.”

Throughout the 1920s and especially the 1930s, according to German propaganda, German planes and buses were reported to have been shot at by Polish police and militia while passing through or flying over the Polish Republic's territory on their way to or from German East Prussia.

The creation of the corridor aroused great resentment in Germany, and all post-war German Weimar governments refused to recognize the eastern borders agreed at Versailles. The German statesman Gustav Stresemann, for instance, known for his policy of conciliation with the Western Allies, several times declared that Germany's eastern borders would have to be revised, and refused to follow Germany's acknowledgment of its western borders in the Treaty of Locarno of 1925 with a similar declaration with respect to its eastern borders..

Nazi Era

The Nazi Party, led by Adolf Hitler, took power in Germany in 1933 . Hitler at first ostentatiously pursued a policy of rapprochement with Poland, culminating in the ten year Polish-German Non-Aggression Pact of 1934. In the coming years, Germany placed an emphasis on rearmament, as did Poland and other European powers. Regardless, the Nazis were able to achieve their immediate goals without provoking armed conflict; in 1938 Nazi Germany annexed Austria and the Sudetenland after the Munich Agreement. In October 1938, Germany tried to get Poland to join the Anti-Comintern Pact. Poland refused, as the alliance was quickly becoming a sphere of influence for an increasingly powerful Germany.

Following negotiations with Hitler for the Munich Agreement, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain reported that, "He told me privately, and last night he repeated publicly, that after this Sudeten German question is settled, that is the end of Germany's territorial claims in Europe". Almost immediately following the agreement, however, Hitler reneged. The Nazis increased their requests for the incorporation of the Free City of Danzig into the Reich, citing the "protection" of the German majority as a motive. In November 1938, Danzig's district administrator, Albert Forster reported to the League of Nations that Hitler had told him Polish frontiers would be guaranteed if the Poles were "reasonable like the Czechs." German State Secretary Ernst von Weizsäcker reaffirmed this alleged guarantee in December 1938.

The situation regarding the Free City and the Polish Corridor created a number of headaches for German and Polish Customs. The Germans requested the construction of an extra-territorial highway (Berlinka) and railway through the Polish Corridor, connecting East Prussia to Danzig and Germany proper. Poland agreed on building a German highway and to allow German railway traffic. However, no agreement was reached concerning the Free City of Danzig.

This seemed to conflict with Hitler's plans and with Poland's rejection of the Anti-Comintern Pact, his desire to either isolate or gain support against the Soviet Union. German newspapers in Danzig and Nazi Germany played an important role inciting nationalist sentiment; headlines buzzed about how Poland was misusing its economic rights in Danzig and German Danzigers were increasingly subjugated to the will of the Polish state. At the same time, Hitler also offered Poland additional territory as an enticement, such as the possible annexation of Lithuania, the Memel Territory, Soviet Ukraine and Czech inhabited lands. However, Polish leaders continued to fear for the loss of their independence and a shared fate with Czechoslovakia, although they had also taken part in its partitioning. Some felt that the Danzig question was inextricably tied to the problems in the Polish Corridor and any settlement regarding Danzig would be one step towards the eventual loss of Poland's access to the sea. Nevertheless, Hitler's credibility outside of Germany was very low after the occupation of Czechoslovakia.

In 1939, Nazi Germany made another attempt to renegotiate the status of Danzig; the city was to be incorporated into the Reich while the Polish section of the population was to be "evacuated" and resettled elsewhere. Poland was to retain a permanent right to use the seaport and the route through the Polish Corridor was to be constructed. However, the Poles distrusted Hitler and saw the plan as a threat to Polish sovereignty, practically subordinating Poland to the Axis and the Anti-Comintern Bloc while reducing the country to a state of near-servitude. Additionally, Poland was backed by guarantees of support from both the United Kingdom and France in regard to Danzig.

A revised and less favorable proposal came in the form of an ultimatum made by the Nazis in late August, after the orders had already been given to attack Poland on September 1 1939. Nevertheless, at midnight on August 29, Joachim von Ribbentrop handed British Ambassador Sir Neville Henderson a list of terms which would allegedly ensure peace in regard to Poland. Danzig was to return to Germany and there was to be a plebiscite in the Polish Corridor; all Poles who were born or settled there since 1919 would have no vote, while all Germans born but not living there would. An exchange of minority populations between the two countries was proposed. If Poland accepted these terms, Germany would agree to the British offer of an international guarantee, which would include the Soviet Union. A Polish plenipotentiary, with full powers, was to arrive in Berlin and accept these terms by noon the next day. The British Cabinet viewed the terms as "reasonable," except the demand for a Polish Plenipotentiary, which was seen as similar to Czechoslovak President Emil Hácha accepting Hitler’s terms in mid-March 1939.

When Ambassador Józef Lipski went to see Ribbentrop on August 30, he was presented with Hitler’s demands. However, he did not have the full power to sign and Ribbentrop ended the meeting. News was then broadcast that Poland had rejected Germany's offer.

On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland, and German forces captured the corridor during the Battle of Tuchola Forest by 5 September. Other notable battles were at Westerplatte, the Polish post office in Danzig, Oksywie, and Hel. After occupation by Nazi Germany a census was made by German authorities in December 1939. 71% of people declared themself as Poles, 188,000 people declared Kashubian as their language, but from them 100,000 declared themselves Polish[6]. 1

Postwar era

At the 1945 Potsdam Conference following the German defeat in World War II, Poland's borders were reorganized at the insistence of the Soviet Union, which occupied the entire area. Territories east of the Oder-Neisse line, including the corridor and Danzig, were put under Polish administration. East Germany recognised this border in 1953, West Germany recognised it with the Treaty of Warsaw (1970), and re-unified Germany did so in 1990 with the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany.

Trivia

H.G.Wells used the area in his science fiction book The Shape of Things to Come, published in 1933, as the starting point of a future World War.