Gdańsk: Portrait of a City - Hardcoverby Peter Oliver Loew (Author) It was where World War II began on September 1, 1939. Its wartime experience was immortalized in Gnter Grass s The Tin Drum. Later it attracted worldwide attention as the site where workers strikes led by Lech Walesa and the ensuing Solidarity movement led to the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe. Proud Hanseatic port, heart of the Baltic Sea trade, twice a "Free City," present day liberal, cosmopolitan center: Gdask's