The article is an attempt to show the political and propaganda repercussions of an unexpected success of the FRG's football team at the World Cup in Switzerland in 1954. For Hungarians defeat came as a shock and even led to riots in Budapest. It can be posited that a 'mere' second place of the Hungarian team, in a sense triggered what might be termed as an energy of opposition. In the FRG, on the other hand, there was an explosion of joy. The victory in Bern was for the German society a cause for public merriment. Ten years after 1945 Germans could at last be proud of their country. The success in Bern and one year later the return of thousands of Germans from Soviet captivity marked for the west-German society an end of the hard post-war period.
The titular topic has not found itself in the centre of attention among Polish historians. On the contrary, for long it had been relegated to the margin, and only for the last ten years or so can we speak about a certain change, although by no means a breakthrough. The presented article attempts to outline prime issues by accentuating that German pilots in Poland initiated the practice of bombing residential districts. This is also the reason why the author represents the view that it is impossible to write about damage incurred in German cities while ignoring earlier raids against Rotterdam or London and the anti-humanitarian campaigns of the Luftwaffe. The article contains material portraying the extensive range of the losses suffered by German towns and civilian population. The author also asks whether the British and American commanders were always pursuing solely military aims and were uninvolved in acts of reprisal for the devastation of the United Kingdom and other states. Considerable space is devoted to raids against those cities, which in 1945 found themselves within Polish state frontiers; the greatest victim was Swinoujscie (12 March 1945). The reason for this approach lies in the fact that despite the publication of a number of studies, a complete presentation of this problem requires further extensive in-depth research. Bringing the reader closer to the origin, scale, and effects of air raids makes it possible to better understand the profound transformations, which occurred after 1945 in the mentality of millions of Germans and contributed to the growth of pacifist moods and a sui generis 'imposition of democracy'. The dramatic experiences of the German population should be always perceived in a wider context. Indubitably, the purposefulness of destroying German town will for long inspire lively discussions and a tendency to pass extreme judgments. More the reason for maintaining suitable distance and criticism while analyzing so-called carpet-bombing.
Information from Warsaw affected the situation in schools of higher learning in Gdansk and Sopot. In order to alleviate the tension, Party and academic authorities hastily consented to a meeting held on 12 March in the hall of the Gdansk Polytechnic. Stanislaw Kociolek, the First Secretary of the Voivodeship Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party, who was booed out of the hall, later admitted that the Party authorities had not correctly grasped the prevailing mood. The meeting was attended by 3 000 -5 000 students and members of the academic staff. The participants passed a resolution supporting the students of Warsaw and calling for an expansion of democratic liberties. In the afternoon, a demonstration organised next to the Students' Club , where the student activists met with Adam Rapacki, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, was dispelled by order keeping forces. A meeting at the Gdansk Polytechnic, originally planned for 15 March, was called off a day earlier, but this information did not reach all the academic and secondary school students and other persons interested in attending it. Groups of young people started gathering around the Polytechnic building, and at 3 p.m. the militia, ORMO (Voluntary Workers' Militia) and Polish Army officers dressed in civilian clothes commenced their first assault. The disturbances lasted for several hours, and during the climax they involved, either actively or passively, some 20 000 persons. In March 1968 this was one the largest street clashes in the country, with a considerable number of detained demonstrators and casualties. Characteristically, the majority of the detainees were young workers, showing that contrary to the propaganda meetings held in assorted work places, numerous workers actually supported student demonstrations. Another noteworthy fact is the presence of secondary school students; in May, one of the demonstrators from Gdynia, Bogdan Borusewicz, was arrested and sentenced to one and a half year imprisonment.
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