Wrocławska Street

When Prussia’s industrial revolution hit Upper Silesia in the 19th century, Gliwice transformed from a medieval market town into a booming factory city, complete with Europe’s first coke-fired blast furnace in 1796. By 1894, it became the first city in the region with a municipal tram system, initially steam-powered, electrified a few years later, zipping past newly-built civic quarters and brick facades that still line streets like Wrocławska. The city’s population exploded from 14,156 in 1875 to over 61,000 by 1905, all while maintaining its orderly German character until 1945, when it finally returned to Poland after more than two centuries away.

The city’s radio tower survived all of it and still holds the record as the world’s tallest wooden structure. On the night of 31 August 1939, a team of German operatives dressed in Polish uniforms stormed it, broadcast a brief anti-German message in Polish, and left behind a drugged and shot local farmer as evidence of a Polish attack that never happened. Hitler cited the incident the next day as justification for invading Poland. A city that spent a century perfecting blast furnaces and tramlines ended up best remembered for six minutes of radio, staged by men who weren’t even Polish, about an attack that wasn’t real.