History of Mazury

he railway connection between Warsaw and Danzig (Gdańsk), of vital importance to Poland as it connected central Poland with its seacoast, completely under Polish sovereignty. Działdowo itself counted about 24,000 people of which 18,000 were Masurians

According to the municipal administration of Rybno, after World War I Poles in Działdowo believed that they will be quickly joined with Poland, they organised secret gatherings during which the issue of rejoining Polish state with help of Polish military was discussed. According to the Rybno administration most active Poles in that subregion included Jóżwiakowscy, Wojnowscy, Grzeszczowscy families working under the guidance of politician Leon Wojnowski who protested German attempts to remain Działdowo a part of Germany after the war; other local pro-Polish activists were Alfred Wellenger, Paczyński, Tadeusz Bogdański, Jóźwiakowski.

The historian Andreas Kossert describes that the incorporation happened despite protests of the local populace, the municipal authorities and the German Government, According to Kossert 6,000 inhabitants of the region soon left the area.

In 1920 the candidate of the German Party, Ernst Barczewski, was elected to the Sejm with 74.6 percent of votes and to the Polish Senate with 34.6% of votes for the Bloc of National Minorities in 1928. During the Polish-Soviet War Działdowo was briefly occupied by the Red Army which was cheered as liberators by the local German populace, which hoisted the German flag, but it was soon recovered by the Polish Army.

During the interwar period many native inhabitants of Działdowo subregion left it and migrated to Germany.

With the start of the German war against Poland on 1 September 1939, the German minority in the parts of Masuria attached to Poland after World War I, organised in paramilitary formation called Selbstschutz begun to engage in massacres of local Polish