By the
Treaty of Versailles the navigation on the Oder became subject to international agreements, and following its articles 363 and 364
Czechoslovakia was entitled to lease in Stettin (now Szczecin) its own harbour bassin, then called
Tschechoslowakische Zone im Hafen Stettin (German: the
Czechoslovak Zone in the Port of Stettin). The contract of lease between Czechoslovakia and
Germany, and supervised by the
United Kingdom, was signed on February 16, 1929, and would end in 2028, however, after 1945 Czechoslovakia did not regain this legal position, de facto abolished in 1938/1939. A similar lease is still in effect for the
Moldauhafen port in
Hamburg until 2028. In 1945, after Soviet capture of the German city and hand-over to the Polish on 5 July 1945, the port remained under Soviet control, and it was to take until 1955 that Poland would obtain complete authority over the port. The
Red Army used the port to transact almost the complete maritime traffic containing spoils of war from the
Soviet occupation zone of Germany to the
Soviet Union because central German ports were much more damaged than Stettin's port. Particularly, in the Stettin area, parts of paper manufacturing plants from Stolzenhagen (today:
Stołczyn) and Scholwin (today:
Skolwin) as well as the
Stoewer vehicle plant were dismantled and shipped via the port. In July 1945 22,000 German forced laborer worked in the port. Also later, German specialists working in the port were exempt from
expulsion. The reason was that because inter-war Poland had only
a very short coast, there were not sufficiently many Polish harbor specialists to operate the port. == See also ==