Description

The Free City of Danzig was a semi-autonomous city-state that existed between 1920 and 1939, consisting of the Baltic Sea port of Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland) and nearly 200 towns and villages in the surrounding areas. It was created on 15 November 1920 in accordance with the terms of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles after the end of World War I. As the Treaty stated, the region was to remain separated from post-World War I Germany (the Weimar Republic) and from the newly independent nation of the Second Polish Republic ("interwar Poland"), but it was not an independent state. The Free City was under League of Nations protection and put into a binding customs union with Poland. After the German invasion of Poland in 1939, the Nazis abolished the Free City and incorporated the area into the newly formed Reichsgau of Danzig-West Prussia. Then, starting with the city’s conquest by the Soviet Army in the early months of 1945, ethnic German citizens of the former Free City of Danzig were either expelled or killed, and the city was put under Polish administration by the Allied Potsdam Agreement, and Polish settlers were brought in to replace the native German population.

Engraver: Otto Fischer