Sunday, March 27, 2011

Gdynia, Poland's only interwar port

As can be seen from the 1919 map of Poland - the eastern borders of which were considerably expanded after the Polish-Russian war of 1920 - the recreated Polish state only had a small section of the Baltic coast (which separated East Prussia and Danzig from the rest of Germany, the cause of much tension later).  The country thus chose to build its own port in Gdynia (Gdingen in German), rather than rely on nearby Danzig (which had become a "free" city under League of Nations control) or Königsberg to the east. In 1926, about the time of this poster, the town had a population of 12,600 - by the end of the 1930s that had increased tenfold.

Today the facilities are still used, although since 1945, Poland has had Danzig to itself (as well as Stettin further west).

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