History of Malbork

Kaliningrad, Russia). The town of Marienburg, under Mayor Bartholomäus Blume and others, resisted the Poles for three further years. When the Poles finally took control, Blume was hanged and quartered, and fourteen officers and three remaining Teutonic knights were thrown into dungeons, where they met a miserable end. A monument to Blume was erected in 1864.

The town became part of the Polish province of Royal Prussia after the Second Peace of Thorn (1466). It was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia in the First Partition of Poland in 1772 and became part of the Province of West Prussia the following year, which became part of the newly founded German Empire in 1871.

Under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles after World War I, the inhabitants were asked in a plebiscite on July 11, 1920, whether they wanted to remain in Germany or join newly re-established Poland. In the town of Marienburg, 9,641 votes were cast for Germany, 165 votes for Poland. As a result, Marienburg was included in the Regierungsbezirk Marienwerder within the German Province of East Prussia.

The town was hit by an economic crisis following the end of World War I. After a brief recovery in the mid-'20s, the Great depression was particularly severe in East Prussia. In January 1933, the Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power and immediately began eliminating political opponents, so that in the last semi-free elections of March 1933, 54 of Marienburg's votes went to the Nazis.). After the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, leaders of the Polish minority were arrested and sent to concentration camps.

During World War II a Focke-Wulf aircraft factory was set up at the airfield to the east of Marienburg. It was bombed twice by the USAAF in 1943 and 1944