Page "Carl Friedrich Goerdeler" Paragraph 2

During World War I, Goerdeler served as a junior officer on the Eastern Front, rising to the rank of Captain.

From February 1918, Captain Goerdeler worked as part of the German military government in Minsk.

After the end of war in November 1918, Goerdeler served on the headquarters of the XVII Army Corps based in Danzig ( now Gdańsk, Poland ).

In June 1919, Goerdeler submitted a memorandum to his superior, General Otto von Below, calling for the destruction of Poland as the only way of preventing territorial losses on Germany's eastern borders.

After his discharge from the German Army, Goerdeler joined the ultra-conservative German National People's Party ( DNVP ).

Like most of the political class of Germany at that time, Goerdeler strongly rejected the Versailles Treaty, which stipulated that Germany cede territories to the restored Polish state.

In 1919, before the exact boundaries of the Polish-German border were determined, he suggested restoring West Prussia to Germany.

Despite his strongly held hostile feelings towards Poland, Goerdeler played a key role in breaking a strike by the Danzig dockers, who wished to shut down the Polish economy by closing Poland's principal port during the Polish – Soviet War of 1920 on the grounds that however undesirable Poland was as a neighbour, Soviet Russia would be even worse.