In 1645, along with the Duchy of Opole, Zabrze returned to Polish rule under the House of Vasa, in 1666 it fell back to the Habsburgs, and was later annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia during the Silesian Wars[citation needed].

[14] In a secret Sicherheitsdienst report from 1934, Zabrze was named one of the main centers of the Polish movement in western Upper Silesia.

[17] In 1924 the Communist Party of Germany won the local elections and proposed changing the name of the city to Leninburg.

[18] In 1928, among the largest cities in western Upper Silesia, Polish parties received the most votes in Zabrze.

[19] The anti-Polish organization Bund Deutscher Osten was very active in the city, it dealt with propaganda, indoctrination and espionage of the Polish community, as well as denouncing Poles to local authorities.

[24] As a result of German persecution the Jewish community dropped from 1,154 people in 1933 to 551 in 1939, and its remainder was deported to concentration camps in 1942.

[25] During World War II, in 1941 the German administration requisitioned church property, in which it removed Polish symbols and memorabilia.

However, in stark contrast to the other cities in the so-called Recovered Territories, three quarters of the mostly bilingual inhabitants were spared expulsion.

[30] Following World War II, according to the Potsdam Agreement the city was handed over to Poland in 1945 and the town's name was changed to the historic Zabrze on 19 May 1945.

The first post-war mayor of Zabrze was Paweł Dubiel, pre-war Polish activist and journalist in Upper Silesia, prisoner of the Dachau and Mauthausen concentration camps during the war.

[31] The pre-war Polish inhabitants of the region, who formed the majority of the city's population in 1948,[32] were joined by Poles expelled from former eastern Poland annexed by the Soviet Union.

The city limits were largely expanded in 1951, by including Mikulczyce, Rokitnica, Grzybowice, Makoszowy, Kończyce and Pawłów as new districts.

[33] The Polish north–south A1 and east–west A4 motorways, which are parts of the European routes E75 and E40, respectively, run through Zabrze, and their junction is located just outside the city limits.

The Maciej mine shaft and the Main Key Adit (Główna Kluczowa Sztolnia Dziedziczna), one of the longest such structures in Europe, are open for tourists.

the Admiralspalast Hotel (1924-1927), housing estate on Słowiański Square (1927-1928) and St Joseph's Church (1930-1931, designed by Dominikus Böhm).

There are also numerous monuments referring to the history of the city, especially the Silesian uprisings fought here and World War II.

Like other towns in this populous region, it is an important manufacturing centre, having coal-mines, iron, wire, glass, chemical and oil works, and local Upper Silesia Brewery, etc.