WHAT’S THE STORY?
TODAY is the 75th anniversary of the world’s worst loss of life on board a single ship.
You would think that such an anniversary would be heavily commemorated, but precious few events are planned to mark the sinking of the MV Wilhelm Gustloff.
As we rightly prepare to mark the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, why is a maritime disaster which claimed the lives of 9400 people, most of them innocent civilians, not being commemorated?
The answer is that the ship was Nazi Germany’s pride and joy and the Soviet Union, whose submarine sent her to the bottom of the Baltic Sea, no longer exists. Nor would successor nation Russia be happy to be reminded that almost 5000 children died in the sinking on the night of January 30, 1945.
It is the sinking that has been almost forgotten yet it affected hundreds if not thousands of families. For that fact alone the anniversary should be marked.
WHAT WAS THE WILHELM GUSTLOFF?
SHE was a cruise ship built by Hitler’s Reich for Nazi Party officials and members to enjoy holidays as a reward for loyal service as part of the Nazi-controlled German Labour Front’s Kraft durch Freude (Strengh Through Joy) scheme. Originally going to be called the Adolf Hitler, the name was changed to that of the leader of the Nazis’ branch in Switzerland, Gustloff having been assassinated by a Jewish medical student in 1936 – Hitler himself ordered the name change after attending a memorial service for Gustloff.
Some 208m (684ft) long and weighing 25,000 tonnes, and capable of carrying up to 2000 passengers, the Wilhelm Gustloff was launched on May, 5, 1937, with Gustloff’s widow Hedwig naming the ship as Hitler looked on – you can see the launch online.
In April, 1938, she was pressed into service as a floating polling booth in the English Channel so that Austrian and German voters resident in England could vote for the Anschluss, the union between their two countries.
Sailors thought her an unlucky ship – her captain died of a heart attack on her official maiden voyage – and she made only a few cruises before war broke out, after which he became a hospital ship, troop carrier and a barracks, sitting in the harbour at Gdynia (Gotenhafen) in Poland for four years.
WHAT ARE THE FACTS OF THE SINKING?
AS the Red Army advanced along a huge eastern front, pressure grew to evacuate German troops and civilians from East Prussia and Danzig-West Prussia and what is now Latvia. Operation Hannibal was begun with the aim of repatriating Germans from these countries around the Baltic and the Wilhelm Gustloff was quickly restored to active service, leaving Gdansk (Danzig) at 12.30pm on January 30. The ship was carrying five times its usual number of passengers, with more than 10,500 people on board including 5000 children. Having been fitted with anti-aircraft guns and since she was carrying service personnel, the Wilhelm Gustloff could not be classed as a hospital ship, and her captain Freidrich Petersen made the fatal mistake of taking her into deep water that he knew was clear of mines.
It was not clear of enemy vessels, however. The Soviet submarine S-13 captained by Alexander Marinesko spotted her and manoeuvred between the ship and the shore, and with the vast majority of lookouts on the starboard side, Marinesko was able to get close and fire three torpedoes into the port side of the Wilhelm Gustloff – a fourth torpedo jammed in its tube.
All three torpedoes caused immense damage and immediate heavy casualties, with 370 women of the German naval auxiliary killed when their living quarters in a drained swimming pool suffered a direct hit.
Only a few lifeboats were launched before the ship began to list heavily and less than an hour after she was hit, the Wilhelm Gustloff slid bow-first beneath waves, with minesweepers and torpedo boats able to save only 1000 people. The vast majority of those on board drowned in the freezing Baltic, with hundreds of children found massed together and floating face down in their lifejackets. Subsequent research over many years put the final death toll at between 9400 and 9600.
Just 11 days later, the S-13 sank the German troopship Steuben with 4000 perishing, making Marinesko the submarine captain to be responsible for the most casualties of the war.
WHAT WAS THE REACTION INTERNATIONALLY?
THE sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff came at a time when Nazi Germany was already on the brink of collapse, so much so that Captain Petersen, who survived the sinking, was not even disciplined, though he died shortly after the end of the war.
The news of the disaster was suppressed in Germany, and the Soviet Union took many years to recognise Marinesko. When the facts began to emerge, most people in the Allies took the view that the Germans had brought it upon themselves, not least because German aircraft had sunk a Soviet hospital ship, the Armenia, early in the war with the estimated loss of 7000 refugees and wounded personnel from Crimea.
To put the losses in perspective, the number killed was six times higher than died in the Titanic disaster.
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