Dead Vistula in the context of Port of Gdańsk

⭐ Core Definition: Dead Vistula

The Martwa Wisła (Polish: [ˈmartfa ˈviswa]; German: Tote Weichsel; both literally "dead Vistula") is a river, one of the branches of the Vistula, flowing through the city of Gdańsk in northern Poland.

It got its name when this branch of the river became increasingly moribund. A harbor canal was dug up with the Westerplatte on one of the Martwa Wisła banks. It was constructed to flow through Gdańsk into the Gdańsk Bay. Its river mouth and environs double as a harbor channel for the Inner Port of the port of Gdańsk.

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Dead Vistula in the context of Westerplatte

Westerplatte (Polish pronunciation: [vɛstɛrˈplatɛ], [ˈvɛstɛrplatɛ], German pronunciation: [ˈvɛstɐplatə]) is a peninsula in Gdańsk, Poland, located on the Baltic Sea coast mouth of the Dead Vistula (one of the Vistula delta estuaries), in the Gdańsk harbour channel. From 1926 to 1939, it was the location of a Polish Military Transit Depot (WST), sanctioned within the territory of the Free City of Danzig (now Gdańsk).

The first shots of the Second World War were fired at the Battle of Westerplatte which began at 0450hrs on the 1 September, 1939. The fighting started when the German WWI battleship SMS Schleswig-Holstein began shelling the Polish ammunition depot on Westerplatte. After a siege that lasted a week, the Polish garrison surrender to German forces that were part of invasion of Poland.

View the full Wikipedia page for Westerplatte

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