GEOGRAPHY OF THE WAR

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20037, 8 September 1939, Page 8

GEOGRAPHY OF THE WAR

POLISH BATTLE FRONT CENTRES OF ATTACK UPPER SILESIA AND PASS The Westerplatte, which with Upper Silesia, has borne the brunt of the German attack on Poland, is a minute section of the great European plain within the Free City of Danzig, on the western bank of the Vistula. Since 1915 Poland has had the right to unload and store munitions and equipment destined for her army on a site in this area. In December, 1923, Poland asked the League of Nations for a larger site than that which she already had as a depot for war material in transit from Danzig to her military forces. A committee of investigation reported in favour of the Polish request, and in 1925 the Free City ceded the site ana sanctioned the maintenance of a Polish guard of 88 officers and men. Poland, however, was forbidden to erect fortifications, and agreed to allow the entry- of the Danzig police at all times, and to the use ot the Westerplatte basin by merchant ships whenever muntions were not being handled. It was generally considered that this arrangement had lost much of its original significance with the construction of the Polish port or Gdynia and its use as a naval base, together with the completion of a railway line down the centre of -the Corridor Upper Silesia Upper Silesia, where the most strenuous German attack lias been made, provided the Paris Peace Conference with its most difficult problem in delimiting the frontiers of Poland. The controversy that raged over this area was more severe than that over the Polish Corridor. In the first draft of the Treaty of Versailles it was proposed to hand over nearly the whole of Upper Silesia to Poland. The German delegation made a strong fight on this proposal. Moved by their arguments that Upper Silesia had not belonged to Poland since 1335, when it had passed under the control of the Austrian Hapsburgs, the conference amended the treaty to authorise a plebiscite under an inter-allied commission. When the plebiscite was held in March, 1920, 707,605 voted in favour of Germany and 479,359 for Poland. Following a long period of tension, marked toy a Polish insurrection, the League Council finally drew a boundary line in October, 1921, that gave to Germany about 75 per cent of the area and 57 per cent of the inhabitants. The area given Poland, however, contained 76 per cent of the coal mines, 90 per cent of the coal reserves, 97 per cent of the iron ore, all of the 13 ironworks, five of the eight zinc factories, and almost half jf the steelworks. Generally, the line has been regarded as about as fair, from. the point of view of self-deter-mination, as could possibly be drawn. To preserve the economic unity of the region an elaborate convention was signed in 1922 between Germany and Poland, providing for virtual free trade between the areas of Upper Silesia under their respective controls. Upper Silesia is the main industrial centre of Poland, and forms part of what is now frequently referred to as the “Industrial Triangle." Jablunka Pass The Jablunka Pass, which it is claimed that German troops have forced, is the most important gap in the Jablunka mountains, a subsidiary of the Carpathian system, separating Poland from what was Czechoslovakia. This range formed the boundary between the Czech and Polish sectors of Teschen before the cession of territory last September. The pass thus gives access from the south to the industrial region of Teschen and to the adjoining Silesia. Through the Jablunka Pass is laid the only railway which connects Slovakia with Moravia and Bohemia, the former components of Czechoslovakia. Germany took “military possession” of Slovakia on August 21.