At just after 04:45 local time on September 1, 1939, as the Germans launched their attack on Westerplatte and WWII officially began, another ferocious assault was just beginning at the small post office in the city's then-called Hevelius Square. Detachments of German police and SS units lay siege to the 50 Polish post office workers inside, who put up a brave struggle for over 14 hours until the casualties became unbearable, part of the building collapsed and the Germans began to attack with flame-throwers. One month later on October 2, 30 of the surviving postal workers were sentenced to death and subsequently shot a few weeks later, and the whole episode has become part of modern Polish folklore. A wonderful and truly heroic story of David and Goliath proportions, what all accounts of the story fail to tell is just what a bunch of harmless postmen were doing armed to the teeth, and why two elite Nazi units were attacking them. It's common knowledge that the Polish Post Office in the Free City of Gdansk employed a number of agents from Warsaw and were smuggling intelligence in and out of the city in cahoots with the Polish railways. It's also known that on the day war broke out the Germans were under orders to arrest all Polish officials in the city. Put these two pieces of information together and the story starts to make sense. In 1979, during the 40th anniversary of the attack, several Polish survivors of the siege resurfaced, although, according to local experts on the subject, no one revealed what was really going on, and what, if anything, they were protecting. The official Polish history of the events of September 1, 1939 although lacking in certain detail, is an inspiring tale, and after all, a good story is a good story. But one can't help wondering what was really going on that day. 

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