Westerplatte is only 3-1/2 miles as the crow flies from my Great Grandparents house in the Langfuhr district. They must have been absolutely scared to death with the battleship shelling of Westerplatte and the Stuka dive bombers a couple days later. They probably figured they were goners. Amazingly, their house was spared in the war and is still intact today. They lost it in 1945 when the Soviets invaded, the Soviets and Poles evicted the ethnic Germans from Danzig (and all of eastern Europe), and their property was all confiscated. My great grandfather died penniless five years later.
Imagine having a front-row seat to the start of WW II.
Amazon has two good documentaries on the Battle of Westerplatte. One is about the heroic Polish defense of Westerplatte which I watched a couple months ago -- that would be good choices for today. The second one shows the defenders as more cowardly. You can guess how these were received in Poland.
