It was at Westerplatte that the first shots of World War II were fired, on 1
September 1939. The German battleship Schleswig Holstein 
opened fire on Polish ammunition dumps in the Free City of Gdańsk. The Germans
expected the capture of the Westerplatte to take a matter of hours, but the
182-man garrison under Major Henryk Sucharski resisted for seven days, their
heroism becoming a symbol of Polish resistance in the struggle against the Nazi
invasion.

Today ruined barracks and concrete bunkers, together with a huge Monument to the
Defenders of Westerplatte unveiled in 1966, bear witness to that struggle.