Polish Corridor

Strip of land designated under the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 to give Poland access to the Baltic. It cut off East Prussia from the rest of Germany. Germany resented this partition and one of the primary causes of tension with Poland in the build-up to World War II was the German demand to be permitted to build a road and rail connection across the Corridor, in a zone to be granted extra-territorial rights, a demand which the Poles implacably refused. When Poland took over the southern part of East Prussia in 1945, it was absorbed.