Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Also known as the Polish corridor, this was a strip of territory, some 15,540 sq km (6,000 sq miles) in size, granted to poland at the paris peace settlement of 1919, dividing the main part of Germany from East Prussia. Most of those living within it were Poles, and the area had belonged to Poland before the first partition of 1772. Danzig itself, whose population was predominantly German, was made a free city under the jurisdiction of the league of nations . The arrangement gave landlocked Poland vital access to a neutral port on the Baltic Sea, and thus reduced the newly-independent state's economic reliance on Germany. Friction inevitably persisted. First stresemann , and then hitler , demanded that the corridor, plus the free city of Danzig, be returned to Germany. This objective was eventually achieved by force at the start of world war ii . In 1945 the whole of this territory, including the city, was incorporated into Poland. ... log in or subscribe to read full text