The defence of Hel was the defence of the fortified Hel Peninsula on Poland's Baltic coast from 1 September to 2 October 1939. The garrison, made up of coastal artillery, anti-aircraft gunners, sailors and border troops, was cut off from the mainland in mid September, bombarded from the air and shelled by the German battleships Schlesien (from 21 September) and Schleswig-Holstein (which had already fired on Hel earlier in September and rejoined her sister ship on 25 September), and still held out for over a month. It was the last Polish position on the coast to capitulate.1
When the war began on the Westerplatte, a Polish naval base lay across the bay on a narrow sandbar called Hel. Its defenders would hold out for more than a month, long after every other Polish position on the coast had fallen.
The fortress on the sand
In the 1930s Poland fortified the Hel Peninsula, a long, narrow strip of land in the Bay of Gdańsk, as a base for its small navy, with coastal batteries2 and anti-aircraft guns. The coastal defence as a whole was commanded by Rear Admiral3 Józef Unrug.
Cut off
From 1 September German aircraft and ships attacked Hel. After the German army reached the Bay of Puck and broke the Polish positions on the mainland in mid September, the peninsula was isolated. When Westerplatte, Gdynia and Oksywie had fallen, Hel was the last Polish stronghold on the coast.1
Duel with the battleships
From 21 September the old German battleship Schlesien shelled the peninsula, above all the Laskowski battery at its tip4, and from 25 September she was joined again by the Schleswig-Holstein, which had already fired on Hel earlier in September. The Polish gunners answered, and on 25 September, by Polish accounts, the battery scored two hits on the Schleswig-Holstein, though it was only lightly damaged5. At the end of September the defenders blew up a barrier of torpedo warheads across the peninsula5 to block the German advance, although the damage was less than hoped.
The last days
By then Warsaw and Modlin had fallen and the garrison was short of food and ammunition1. The command decided to negotiate, and on 1 October 1939 the capitulation was signed in Sopot; on 2 October the garrison laid down its arms. The defenders had held out for 32 days.6
Why Hel mattered
Hel was the last place on the Polish coast to lay down its arms in 1939, and its long, isolated stand became, with Westerplatte, a symbol of the defence of the Polish seaboard. Admiral Unrug spent the rest of the war as a prisoner and is said to have refused to speak German to his captors3.