Seventy years ago today

World War II began on September 1, 1939 when a German battleship on a "courtesy visit" to the then-independent city of Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland) opened fire on a fort manned by 182 Polish soldiers at a place called Westerplatte. Following the bombardment, a force of some 3,000 German troops attempted to take the fort by storm but were bloodily repulsed. The heavily outnumbered Poles were subjected to repeated assaults, artillery barrages and Stuka dive-bomber attacks but held out for a week before running out of ammunition.

Today a group of European leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin joined Polish President Lech Kacynski in a wreath-laying ceremony at the site.