Polish Corridor

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The Polish Corridor (also known as Danzig Corridor or Gdańsk Corridor; German: Polnischer Korridor, Polish: Pomorze, "Korytarz polski") was a territory located in the region of Pomerelia (Pomeranian Voivodeship, eastern Pomerania, formerly part of West Prussia) which provided the Second Republic of Poland (1920–1939) with access to the Baltic Sea, thus dividing the bulk of Germany from the province of East Prussia. A similar territory, also occasionally referred to as a corridor, had been connected to the Polish Crown as part of Royal Prussia during the period 1466–1772.[1][2]

Terminology

According to German historian Hartmut Boockmann the term "Corridor" was first used by Polish politicians,[3] while Polish historian Grzegorz Lukomski writes that the word was coined by German nationalist propaganda of the 1920s.[4] Internationally the term was used in the English language already as early as March 1919[5] and whatever its origins, it became a widespread term in English language usage.[6][7][8][9][10][11][12]

The equivalent German term is Polnischer Korridor. Polish names include korytarz polski ("Polish corridor") and korytarz gdański ("Gdańsk corridor"); however, reference to the region as a corridor came to be regarded as offensive by interwar Polish diplomacy. Among harshest criticizers of the term corridor was Polish Foreign Minister Józef Beck, who in his May 5, 1939 speech in Sejm (Polish parliament) said: "I am insisting that the term Pomeranian Voivodeship should be used. The word corridor is an artificial idea, as this land has been Polish for centuries, with a small percentage of German settlers".[13] Poles would commonly refer to the region as Pomorze Gdańskie ("Gdańsk Pomerania, Pomerelia") or simply Pomorze ("Pomerania"), or as województwo pomorskie ("Pomeranian Voivodeship"), which was the administrative name for the region.

Background

History of the area

In the tenth century, Pomerelia was settled by Slavic Pomeranians, ancestors of the Kashubians, which were subdued by Boleslaw I of Poland. In the eleventh century, they created an independent duchy.[14] In 1116/1121, Pomerania was again conquered by Poland. In 1138, following the death of Duke Bolesław III, Poland was fragmented into several semi-independent principalities. The Samborides, princeps in Pomerelia, gradually evolved into independent dukes, who ruled the duchy until 1294. Before Pomerelia regained independence in 1227,[14][15] their dukes were vassals of Poland and Denmark. Since 1308, following succession wars between Poland and Brandenburg, Pomerelia was subjugated by the Monastic state of the Teutonic Knights in Prussia. In 1466, with the second Peace of Thorn, Pomerelia became part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as a part of autonomous Royal Prussia. After the First Partition of Poland in 1772 it was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia and named West Prussia, and became a constituent part of the new German Empire in 1871. Thus the Polish Corridor was not an entirely new creation: the territory assigned to Poland had nominally been part of Poland prior to 1772, but with a large degree of autonomy.[16][17][18][19]

Allied plans for a corridor in the World War I aftermath

After the First World War, a Poland was to be re-established as an independent country. Since a Polish state had not existed since the Congress of Vienna, the future republic's territory had to be defined.

Giving Poland access to the sea was one of the guarantees proposed by 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."[20]

The following arguments were behind the creation of the corridor:

Ethnographic reasons

Ethnic situation was one of the reasons for returning the area to the restored Poland.[21] The majority of the population in the area was Polish.[22] As the Polish commission report to the Allied Supreme Council noted on 12 March 1919: "Finally the fact must be recognised that 600,000 Poles in West Prussia would under any alternative plan remain under German rule".[23] The Prussian census of 1910 showed that there were 528,000 Poles (including West Slavic Kashubians, who had supported the Polish national lists in German elections[24][25][26][27]) in the region compared with 385,000 Germans (including troops stationed in the area).[28][29] The Poles did not want the Polish population to remain under the control of the German state,[30] which had in the past treated the Polish population and other minorities as second-class citizens[31] and pursued Germanization. As Polish-born[32] professor Lewis Bernstein Namier, a former member of the British Intelligence Bureau throughout World War I[33] and the British delegation at the Versailles conference,[34] wrote in the Manchester Guardian on November 7, 1933: "The Poles are the Nation of the Vistula, and their settlements extend from the sources of the river to its estuary.... It is only fair that the claim of the river-basin should prevail against that of the seaboard." [35]