Gallery

Gotenhafen, Korridor & North Atlantic.
From the Beginning - - - to the End - - - 1938 - 1945.
Danzig's Westerplatte War extends around the World;

How Gotenhafen Received Its Name : 

>> began during October and would not end uptill the greater part of the Polish population of the city was expalled. While the Poles were being deported, Germans from foreign countries were simultaneously deported to Gotenhafen as colonists. On October 14th, the first shipment of Germans left Riga, Latvia, as part of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact with the Soviet Union for Gotenhafen, and in the coming months, 4.000 Reich Germans and 55.000 Latvians of German origin, would be transferred to the city. {13} The port of Gotenhafen was transformed by the Germans from a commercial into a military port, and all the werehouses were subsequently redesigned and rebuilt for that purpose.

Postal history relating to these events will be encountered by the collector. The technical side of the transfert of the Germans was handled by the Deutsche Umssiediµlung-Treuhand G.m.b.H., while the population expulsion of the Poles simply in the hands of the Gestapo and police. Confiscated Polish property in town was administrated by and later divided among the transferred Germans by the Haupttreuhanstelle Ost. Confiscated Polish property in the country was managed and distributed to German colonists by the Ostdeutsche Land wirtschaftsgesellschaft G.m.b.H. and its supplementary organizations, the Bauernsiedlungs-Gesellschaften.

"Gelegenheitsstempel" (special occasion postmarks) are not known to have been issued by the Reichspost for Gotenhafen. In early 1940, an additional two-circle-bridge postmark, "GOTENHAFEN" began to be used with a further character "a". This cancel is documented at Figure 12 on a field post card posted April 29th, 1940. Figure 13 shows a different style postmark, GOTENHAFEN, with additional character "j"  mailed August 21, 1941. Are there any postmarks indigenous to Gotenhafen with characters in the lower portion of the double-circle different illustrated here?

Gotenhafenen - a German Navy Town.

After the first World War, the German Naval High Command organized the Marinestation Ostsee for the resaponsibillity for the training of new recruits, other general training and coastal defense.

Danzig Study Group U.S.A.
Danzig Report Nr. 155 - January - February - March - 2012, Page 16.