Background
Bydgoszcz (Bromberg) was part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth until 1772, when it was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia during the First Partition of Poland. As a part of Prussia, the city was affected by the unification of Germany in 1871 and became part of the German Empire. It would remain a part of the German Empire until the end of World War I. In February 1920, the Treaty of Versailles awarded the city and the surrounding region to the Second Polish Republic (the administrative region of Pomeranian Voivodeship). This resulted in a number of ethnic Germans leaving the region for Germany. Over the interwar period, the German population decreased even further. The 1931 Polish Census reported the German population in the city was 117,200; according to the German historian Hugo Rasmus, only about 10,000 Germans remained by 1939.
The emergence of the Nazi Party in Germany had an important impact on the city. Adolf Hitler revitalized the Völkisch movement, making an appeal to the Germans living outside of Germany's post-World War I borders. It was Hitler's explicit goal to reverse the work of the Treaty of Versailles and create a Greater German State. By March 1939, these ambitions, charges of atrocities on both sides of the German-Polish border, distrust, and rising nationalist sentiment led to the complete deterioration of Polish-German relations. Hitler's demands for the Polish Corridor and, Polish opposition to negotiations with him fueled ethnic tensions. For months prior to the 1939 German invasion of Poland, invasion, German newspapers and politicians like Adolf Hitler had carried out a national and international propaganda campaign accusing Polish authorities of organizing or tolerating violent ethnic cleansing of ethnic Germans living in Poland.
After armed conflict erupted on September 1, 1939, statements that persecutions of ethnic Germans had occurred in Poland, especially in Bydgoszcz, continued to appear in the Nazi press. It was a part of campaign accusing Polish authorities of organising or tolerating violent ethnic cleansing of Germans living in Poland.
Read more about this topic: Bloody Sunday (1939)
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