History - Gdynia.com

began to grow economically, spurred forward by it's close proximity to the Baltic Sea. During this time Poland was embroiled in a struggle to regain it's independence, a struggle which naturally had a profound impact on the growth and cultural identity of the city.

In the year 1918 Poland finally regained it's independence, and one of the immediate problems facing the young country was lack of access to the Baltic Sea. Once the 1919 Treaty of Versailles was finalized, Gdynia would go on to become a territorial part of the new Republic of Poland, with the neighboring port city of Gdańsk declared a free city, and left under the jurisdiction of the League of Nations. With Poland being devoid of any port city to conduct large scale maritime trade through, the Polish government immediately began assessing ways to construct one from scratch, finally choosing Gdynia to host their ambitious plan. It was a communications engineer named Tadeusz Wenda who was credited as choosing Gdynia to host Poland's new port project, and because of this he is considered one of Gdynia's founding fathers.

administrative foundation was laid, focus turned to the city's development plan. Although creating a port and stable economy in Gdynia was a practical and urgent necessity, the plan's success wasn't solely driven by those factors alone. In addition to Poland's need of a sea port, the citizens of the country began to cast eyes upon the development plan, and Gdynia was transformed into a symbol of national pride, as well as a testament to the new country's industrial strength and ingenuity.

In 1921 the famous Polish writer Stefan Żeromski wrote a book about Gdynia called Wind from the Sea. The book was a literary interpretation of the history of Pomerania, written for a greater Polish audience who at the time were still building a national identity around their newly acquired territories. Around the same time that Żeromski's book was being published, another famous Pole named Antoni Abraham was already hard at work promoting Kashubian culture within Poland. The efforts by both of these men were tremendously helpful in unifying traditional Polish and Kashubian culture under one national identity, without which there may have been a cultural ravine separating Pomerania from the rest of the country.

It wasn't until 1923 that the first cargo ships began to arrive at Gdynia's sea port. Though the port still hadn't been fully completed, enough progress had been made to allow some small commercial transit to take place. This transit required infrastructure and housing for workers manning the docks, so Tadeusz Wenda was appointed to supervise a new rural urbanization plan that could accommodate this growth. Despite all development progress, by 1925 Gdynia was still just a small fishing village, and the port's development plan was requiring additional land. A decision was then made to merge the two villages of Gdynia and Oksywie, and form one small town. Six years after this merging, Gdynia was finally given it's official town rights.

Several months after Gdynia officially became a town, Józef Piłsudski established a new central government in Poland through a military coup. This coup would have far reaching effects on how local city governments were managed, and a shuffling of development priorities and administrative personal began. Within the new Piłsudski government, Eugeniusz Kwiatkowski was appointed as the Minister of Industry and Trade. Being a chemical engineer and economist, Mr. Kwiatkowski was a strong advocate for the development of a robust marine economy in Poland, and under his supervision Gdynia's ambitious port construction plans continued to move forward. Drawing on his extensive past experience in developing numerous cities throughout Poland, Mr. Kwiatkowski was able to contribute greatly to the development of Gdynia, specifically in the areas of shipping and fishing infrastructure. Today he is regarded as one of the great builders of Gdynia, and in honor of that accomplishment the city wharf and main shopping center where named after him, he was also given the prestigious Medal of Merit by the city government.

With the help of many great people Gdynia grew rapidly during this time, and thus attracted many Poles across the country wishing to partake in the city's newly found prosperity. While virtually all of the Western world was economically suffering from the effects of the Great Depression, trade and industrial development in Gdynia was booming, and would continue to run strong right up to the beginning of World War II.

the country, Gdynia was desperately defended until September 14. With Polish Coastal Defenses suffering losses as high as 75%, and facing immanent defeat, Colonel Stanisława Dąbka committed suicide on September 19. Although him and his men put up a heroic effort to defend the city, they were simply outgunned and outmanned by a much larger advancing German army.

After the fall of Gdynia, the city was incorporated into the Third Reich, and the name was changed to Gotenhafen, in honor of the German Goths. The remaining Polish population of the city was quickly repatriated to other areas within Poland, and Gdynia was turned into a naval base for the Nazis. From 1939 to 1945 the city was flooded with laborers sent from Germany to build ships and support infrastructure for the Kriegsmarine. Eventually the Allies would begin liberating the city, first by strategically bombing key German military installations, allowing most of the city's working infrastructure to escape without significant damage. However in 1945 the Soviet ground forces seized Gdynia, and in the process completely destroyed the port and all key economic infrastructure.

Upon the defeat of Nazi Germany, Germans living in the city fled before the Red Army arrived, and those that didn't were later displaced. At the war's end, a ruined Gdynia literally needed to be rebuilt again from scratch, and like earlier times it attracted Poles looking for a fresh start. Poland would go on to rebuild it's port city, and local Polish workers would again have the opportunity to return to Gdynia's shipyards for employment. In the coming years, it's vast reconstructed maritime industrial muscle would be used to build many ships for the Soviet Union. Repeating it's history just decades earlier, Gdynia would be used as a model city of success, and showcased throughout greater Poland, although this time it would be used as a propaganda tool for the repressive communist regime.