At 4:47 on the morning of September 1, 1939, the crash of heavy naval guns shattered the quiet at the port of Danzig. The fire came from a World War I-era German battleship anchored close to the Polish army depot on the Westerplatte Peninsula. Those shots marked the start of World War II. Since the early 1930s, Adolf Hitler had pursued an increasingly aggressive policy of German expansion.
His ambitions were aided in large part by the reluctance of France and Britain to enter another war with Germany so soon after the devastation of World War I. Hitler’s early grievances centered on the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, which had redrawn Germany’s borders. The treaty stripped Germany of substantial territory and placed millions of ethnic Germans under the control of neighboring states, many of them newly created. In 1936, Hitler ordered German troops into the demilitarized Rhineland.
The region had been demilitarized under Versailles to create a buffer between Germany and France. Although Britain and France protested, they took no action to stop him. In March 1938, Hitler demanded that Austria be incorporated into the Reich. This was achieved on March 12 of that year when a newly installed pro-Nazi Austrian government agreed to the takeover, making Austria a province of the Third Reich.
The move was not unpopular among many Austrians. Hitler then turned his attention to the Sudetenland, a region of Czechoslovakia with a large ethnic German population. British and French mediation led to Czechoslovakia being forced to cede the territory in an attempt to prevent a wider war. Later, in March 1939, Hitler annexed the remainder of Czechoslovakia.
At the same time, Hitler demanded that the Memel region, a strip of Lithuanian territory around the port city of Klaipeda, be returned to Germany. The area had been part of German East Prussia before being granted to Lithuania after World War I. Following heavy political pressure and threats of military action, Lithuania handed the territory over to Germany on March 23, 1939. One territory, however, continued to trouble Hitler: the Free City of Danzig.
Although predominantly German-speaking, Danzig had been separated from Germany after World War I and placed under League of Nations protection, with Poland granted port rights in the city. By 1936, Danzig’s local government had fallen under Nazi control. Reuniting Danzig with Germany posed a serious problem for Hitler, as it required dealing directly with Poland, a large and well-armed nation. His solution was to invade Poland and remove it as a sovereign state.
As part of the plan, Hitler made a secret agreement with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Under the deal, Soviet forces would also invade Poland from the east after Germany attacked from the west, and the two dictators would divide the defeated nation between them. The ship that fired the first shots of the invasion had arrived in Danzig in August 1939 for what was described as a ceremonial visit. The Schleswig-Holstein was an old vessel by then.
Built for the Kaiser’s Navy and commissioned in 1908, she was one of five pre-dreadnought battleships in her class, already outdated by the time she entered service because of the naval arms race between Germany and Britain. The ship had served at the Battle of Jutland in 1916, where she was struck by a single British shell, and was later decommissioned in late 1917. Following Germany’s defeat in the war, the much-reduced nation was permitted only a small navy. The Schleswig-Holstein was recommissioned in 1926 and later used as a training vessel.
Sent to Danzig in 1939 to await the order for the invasion of Poland, the battleship’s armament remained formidable. She carried four 28 cm main guns and ten 15 cm secondary guns. Her main guns could fire a 240-kilogram high-explosive shell more than 25 kilometers. At 4:47 on September 1, 1939, as German forces prepared to cross Poland’s land borders, the Schleswig-Holstein opened fire with her main and secondary guns on the Westerplatte fortress in the Bay of Danzig.
The Polish garrison had been on alert since Hitler’s seizure of the Memel region in March and had strengthened its forces in Danzig in case the Germans tried to take the city by force. The Westerplatte fortress was defended by roughly 210 to 240 Polish soldiers, supported by artillery, anti-aircraft guns, and mortars, with extensive field fortifications guarding the landward side of the peninsula. Incredibly, the battleship’s first bombardment proved ineffective. She was too close to her targets, and her larger shells did not have enough time to arm before impact.
They buried themselves in the ground without exploding, and the Polish garrison suffered no casualties in the first engagement. The Germans then landed armed sailors to assault Westerplatte directly. They were met by intense Polish defensive fire, and the Poles even used 37 mm anti-tank guns against the battleship itself. By 6:22 a.
m. , the German marines had withdrawn, having suffered 50 dead and wounded. At 7:40, the Schleswig-Holstein opened fire again, this time more effectively. A new German land attack began at 8:35 but was soon pulled back.
Over the following days, the battleship, along with German field artillery and Stuka dive bombers, bombarded Westerplatte. The Luftwaffe dropped 26 tons of bombs on the fortress, causing extensive destruction. Despite this, the Polish defenders refused to surrender. By September 6, the German army had advanced to the outskirts of Warsaw.
The Westerplatte garrison was surrounded, running low on supplies, and had suffered significant killed and wounded. The Schleswig-Holstein continued to support German ground troops by bombarding Polish positions. On September 7, after seven days of resistance, Polish commander Major Henryk Sucharski surrendered at 9:45 a. m.
He was hailed in the English-speaking world as one of the first heroes of World War II and was even featured in Life magazine. Such was the German respect for the Polish defense that Sucharski was initially permitted to keep his sword. As the Polish soldiers marched out at 11:30, the Germans stood to attention as a mark of respect. The tiny Polish garrison had managed to tie down roughly 3,000 German soldiers and sailors for a week.
German losses were around 50 killed and 150 wounded. Polish losses were about 15 killed and 40 wounded. In 1940, the Schleswig-Holstein took part in the German invasion of Denmark before returning to service as a training ship. In 1944, amid the pressures of total war, the ship was scheduled to be converted into a convoy escort with heavy anti-aircraft armament.
Before the conversion could be completed, she was hit by three bombs dropped by RAF aircraft on December 18, 1944, and sank in shallow waters at Gotenhafen, now Gdynia, Poland. The battleship was captured by the Red Army and, after the war, was raised by the Soviet Navy and towed to Tallinn. In 1948, she was towed to the island of Osmussaar in the Gulf of Finland to serve as a target ship. She was used in this role until 1966 and remains submerged off the island to this day, an unremarkable end for a vessel that fired the opening shots of World War II.
Today, the Westerplatte defenders’ barracks and guardhouses still stand. Two large 280 mm shells from the Schleswig-Holstein flank the entrance to the museum there, which opened in 2015. Danzig, now known as Gdansk, is today part of Poland.