Middle Ages The town grew in the vicinity of the castle. The river
Nogat and flat terrain allowed easy access for barges a hundred kilometers from the sea. During
Prussia's government by the Teutonic Knights, the Order collected tolls on river traffic and imposed a monopoly on the
amber trade. The town later became a member of the
Hanseatic League, and many Hanseatic meetings were held there. The Teutonic Order weakened greatly after the
Battle of Grunwald against advancing Poles and Lithuanians. The town was burned by the Teutonic Knights in 1410 before the
siege of the castle by Poles, however it remained under Teutonic control after the siege. In 1457, during the
Thirteen Years' War, the castle was sold to Poland by
Czech mercenaries of the Teutonic Knights,
Modern period Within Poland, Malbork flourished thanks to the Polish grain and wood trade and craft development. In 1680, a Jesuit school was opened. During the
Great Northern War in 1710, half of the population died of a cholera epidemic. In 1807, during the
Napoleonic Wars, the French entered the town, and in 1812 the
Grande Armée marched through the town
heading for Russia. and later on, one of the insurgents' main escape routes from partitioned Poland to the
Great Emigration led through the town. There were no
World War I fights, however, the town felt the war's negative effects: the influx of refugees, inflation, unemployment, and food supply shortages. As a result, Marienburg was included in the
Regierungsbezirk Marienwerder within the
German Province of
East Prussia. During the
Weimar era, Marienburg was located at the tripoint between Poland, Germany and the
Free City of Danzig. The town was hit by an economic crisis following the end of World War I. After a brief recovery in the mid-1920s, the
Great Depression was particularly severe in East Prussia. In January 1933,
Hitler and the
Nazi Party came to power and immediately began eliminating political opponents, so that in the last semi-free elections of March 1933, 54% of Marienburg's votes went to the Nazis. After the
German invasion of Poland in September 1939, leaders of the Polish minority were arrested and sent to
concentration camps.
World War II B-17 Flying Fortress targeting the Focke-Wulf factory as described. During
World War II a
Focke-Wulf aircraft factory was set up at the airfield to the east of Marienburg. It was bombed twice by the
USAAF in 1943 and 1944. Today the airfield belongs to the
22nd Air Base of the
Polish Air Force. During the war, the Germans established the
Stalag XX-B prisoner of war camp in the present-day district of Wielbark, among the prisoners of which were Polish, British, French, Belgian, Serbian, Italian, Australian, New Zealand and Canadian POWs. Also a
forced labour camp was established, and several forced labour subcamps of the Stalag XX-B POW camp. Some
expelled Poles from Pomerania were enslaved by the Germans as forced labour in the town's vicinity. The
Polish resistance was present in the town and would smuggle
Polish underground press and data on German concentration camps and prisons, spy on the local German industry, and organize transports of POWs who escaped the Stalag XX-B to the port city of
Gdynia, from where they were further evacuated by sea to neutral
Sweden. Near the end of World War II, the city was declared a
fortress and most of the civilian population
fled or were evacuated, with some 4,000 people opting to remain. In early 1945, Marienburg was the scene of fierce battles by the Nazis against the
Red Army and was almost completely destroyed. The battle lasted until 9 March 1945. Following the town's military capture by the Red Army, the remaining civilian population disappeared; 1,840 people remain missing. In June 1945, the town was turned over to Polish authorities who had arrived in the town in April and renamed it to its historic Polish name, Malbork. The German population that had not fled was expelled in accordance with the
Potsdam Agreement. Half a century later, in 1996, 178 corpses were found in a mass grave in Malbork; another 123 were found in 2005. In October 2008, during excavations for the foundation of a new hotel in Malbork, a mass grave was found containing the remains of 2,116 people. All the dead were said to have been German residents of pre-1945 Marienburg, but they could not be individually identified, nor could the cause of their deaths be definitely established. A Polish investigation concluded that the bodies, along with the remains of some dead animals, may have been buried to prevent the spread of typhus, which was extant in the turmoil at the end of World War II. The investigation was thus closed on 1 October 2010 as no justifiable suspicions of any crime were found. Majority of the dead were women and children most likely dead from hunger, diseases, cold and as collateral casualties of war operations, only a few of the bones had markings showing possible gunshot wounds. On 14 August 2009, all the dead people's remains were buried in a German military cemetery at
Stare Czarnowo in Polish Pomerania, not far from the German border.
Post-war period in the 1960s After World War II, the town was gradually repopulated by
Poles,
many expelled from
Polish areas annexed by the Soviet Union. In February 1946, the population of the town reached 10,017 people, then by 1965 grew further to 28,292 and by 1994 to 40,347. As a result, with the exception of the Old Town Hall, two city gates and St. John's church, no pre-World War II buildings remain in the Old Town area. In place of the old town, a housing estate was built in the 1960s. In 1962, a
pasta factory was established in Malbork, which soon became one of the largest pasta factories in Poland. ==Traditional language==