The town is situated on the Obra river in the Greater Poland historic region, about 75 km (47 mi) west of Poznań.

While the earliest mentions of the settlement date back to 1231, the name Sbansin first appeared in a 1277 deed, issued by Duke Przemysł I of Greater Poland at his Poznań residence.

It was held by the Polish monarchs until in 1393 King Władysław II Jagiełło ceded it to his Masovian governor Jan Głowacz Nałęcz.

International trains connecting Paris and Berlin with Warsaw and the Polish-Soviet border at Negoreloe ran through Zbąszyń, and in 1929 a new larger railway station building was erected to enable the handling of heavy traffic and accommodate the necessary offices.

[12] During the initial stage, the local inhabitants of Zbąszyń responded to the authorities' appeal and provided the refugees with warm water and some food.

The refugees were housed in army barracks and in buildings forming part of the flour mill, and fifteen hundred of them were accommodated in private dwellings.

[12] Negotiations between the Polish authorities and the Germans came to an end on the 24 January 1939, when an agreement was signed under which the deportees were allowed to return to Germany, in groups not exceeding one hundred at a time, for a limited stay to settle their affairs and liquidate their businesses.

These arrangements took until the summer of 1939, and most probably, a small number of refugees were still on their temporary stay in Germany when the Germans invaded Poland on 1 September 1939.

[15] The Germans operated a Nazi prison and a forced labour camp for Jews in the town,[16][17] and destroyed the pre-war monument dedicated to the Polish insurgents of the Greater Poland uprising of 1918–1919.

The co-founder of the local unit of the Narodowa Organizacja Bojowa resistance organization, was arrested by the Germans in 1941, and sentenced to death and executed the following year.