The proud old Hanseatic City of Danzig and its small surrounding hinterland worked and played last week so normally that uninformed visitors could scarcely have guessed what international storms were gathering about it. Churchgoers went in and out of St. Mary's, the great brick Gothic Cathedral, nicknamed "Stout Mary" because of its square plump tower. Foreigners (Danzigers not allowed) played roulette at the elegant casino at Zoppot. Thousands played on the gloriously white sands or swam in the cool waters of Danzig Bay. Up in the heavily wooded section south of the city, picnicking still went on. Couples promenaded on Danzig's patrician avenues lining the canals. City Hall was open as usual and the Nazi-operated radio station invited listeners to "come and see Danzig and spend your summer holidays here."
There was a Nazi demonstration last week at Tiegenhof, in the rich meadow land across the Vistula, but it scarcely compared to the turnout which had already been staged for such Nazi bigwigs as Field Marshal Hermann Göring and Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess. Against the Poles, who are outnumbered by Germans 24-to-1 but who run the public services in Danzig, Adolf Hitler can never lay the complaint that they suppressed Germanity in the Free City. But despite the surface calm, Poles could list last week numerous serious complaints against Germans. It was these which caused so much apprehension in Poland and a first-class European scare.
Filtering into the Free City by air (Danzig is two hours by commercial plane from Berlin), sea and land were German "tourists," all men between 25 and 40. By week's end the Poles estimated there were 7,000 of them. They were housed in the barracks at Langfuhr, northwest of the city, and soon were observed installing machine guns and building fortifications on the Bischofsberg, the hill to the city's southwest. Moreover, Danzig itself started a local Nazi Heimwehr of some 10,000 men. Authentic reports had it that boatloads of artillery and anti-aircraft had arrived by German ships. In the Danzig shipyards German employers were ordered by the political leaders to dismiss Polish workers. Out beyond on the fortified Hel Peninsula, which is Polish, antiaircraft guns took a shot at a German plane after giving it a warning salvo.
Obviously Danzigers were not raising an Army for attacking nearby Poland; what they hoped to be able to do was to stave off the Polish Army until German forces from East Prussia could cross the Nogat and come to their relief.