Why Was Danzig Made a Free City? | Germany, Poland, and a City Between Nations

Why was Danzig separated from both Germany and Poland? The Treaty of Versailles mandated that Germany would lose the trade city of Danzig so that a newly-recreated Poland would have access to the sea. But the Entente Powers refrained from ceding it directly to the Polish Republic, in part because of the large German population and their promise of self-determination for Europe's nationalities. The resulting Free City of Danzig survived as an autonomous entity until Poland and Germany became belligerents in World War Two.

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Sources Consulted:
Free City of Danzig (extract from the League of Nations publication: “Ten Years of World Cooperation”). League of Nations. 1930. https://www.un.org/unispal/document/a...

Miller, Stuart T. Mastering Modern European History. London: Macmillan Education LTD, 1990.

Pauley, Bruce. Totalitarianism in the 20th Century. 4th ed. Oxford: John Wiley & Sons Inc., 2015.