They were expected to last 12 hours, and they fought back all week! Westerplatte's heroic defense.
On 7 September 1939, she capitulated the defence of the Military Transit Component on Westerplatte. For 7 days about 200 soldiers of the Polish Army under the command of Major Henryk Sucharski and Captain Franciszek Dąbrowski heroically defended the facilities against German attacks from the sea, land and air. The defence of Westerplatte became a symbol of Polish opposition against German aggression.
Soldiers of the marine battalion on Westerplatte until 7 September 1939, on a narrow tip, covered by the mouth of the Vistula on the 1 hand and the sea on the other, fired at close scope by dense fire of the German battleship "Schleswig-Holstein", which erstwhile and for all with a yellow flame of thunder beat in the "face of Polish defenders", in a rain of firearm fire of infantry attacking from the land, put fierce resistance.
Despite the overwhelming advantage of German forces, Polish soldiers defended themselves bravely by encouraging not only Polish soldiers fighting German troops throughout the front line, but besides the full Polish society. The defenders were on the verge of physical and intellectual exhaustion, and each consecutive day of fighting marked additional sacrifices and unnecessary bloodshed in a confrontation that could not have ended up winning anyway.
After 7 days of heroic fighting, around 10.15 a.m., Major Henryk Sucharski decided to surrender the Polish Army garrison defending the Military Transit Component on the Westerplatte peninsula to the Germans.
In the fall of 2019, a squad of archaeologists from the Museum of planet War II in Gdańsk found the remains of 9 fallen Westerplatte Defenders. Thanks to the cooperation of the Museum of planet War II in Gdańsk, the Pomeranian Medical University in Szczecin and the Institute of National Memory, six of them have been established so far. 1 of them was St. Ignacy Zatorski, posthumously decorated with the Cross of Order VM, V class (in 1945).
More about fighting for Westerplatte and the 1939 defensive war: in IPN materials.
https://1September39.en/(link is external)
