Aboard were 6,050 people: 173 crewmembers, 918 naval officers and men, 373 women’s naval auxiliaries, 162 wounded soldiers, and 4,424 refugees, including numerous women and children. The definitive English-language account of this sorry saga, it seems, still awaits its author. She has rounded up much of the available English-language material on the sinking, making good use of the eyewitness accounts of survivors. © Copyright 2020 History Today Ltd. Company no. And, though it incurred substantial losses, it would be broadly successful; with over 1,000 ships moving more than a million people to safety that winter. In addition, the ship was informed by radio of a number of German minesweepers in the area, and Zahn recommended turning on the ship’s green and red navigation lights to avoid a collision in the dark.
He was overruled by the senior civilian captain, Friedrich Petersen, who argued that the ship could not maintain her top speed for long and was too large to hold a zigzag course. Over the years, as the ship stood at the dock serving as a barracks, a number of the boats had been borrowed for other uses around the harbor. The sinking of MS WILHELM GUSTLOFF was the worst maritime disaster in the history of the world, with more dead then the Titanic AND Lusitania combined. It was intended for the German workers of the Third Reich.
It is certainly a grimly fascinating story, not least because of the wealth of ‘human interest’ that it contains: the desperate passengers fleeing from the advancing Soviets; or the Soviet submarine captain, a troubled maverick for whom the sinking brought the promise of redemption.
(27.01.2015), On the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the world remembers the millions of victims of the Holocaust. Giving in to the pleading, the Gustloff’s officers ordered boarding nets to be dropped from the ship, and refugees scrambled aboard. It was ultimately carrying soldiers, sailing under enemy colors and lightly armed, making it a valid target for Soviet subs. Fleeing before them, refugees were streaming into the German-held Baltic ports, clogging the docks, and mingling with the wounded soldiers left by German ambulance trains. The story of the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff is still unknown to a majority of non-Germans.
German intelligence had already informed the Gustloff that there were no known Soviet submarines or surface ships in the area. We use cookies to improve our service for you.
The Wilhelm Gustloff was the most lethal shipwreck in history, but some details of the sinking remain unknown. At 208 meters (680 feet), the Gustloff wasn't the largest ship used to transport wounded soldiers and civilians.
The civilian escape via the Baltic Sea belongs to one the most impressive chapters in German WWII military history. Up to 10,582 Crew and Passengers on the Gustloff. Wilhelm Gustloff (30 January 1895 – 4 February 1936) was the founder of the Swiss NSDAP/AO (the Nazi Party organisation for German citizens abroad) at Davos.
Over the years since the sinking, historians have argued about whether the Gustloff was a legitimate war target and whether her sinking should be classified as a war crime.
With about one million visitors annually, the documentation center Topography of Terror on Niederkirchnerstrasse is one of the most visited memorial sites in Berlin.
She sank taking down with her as many as 9,500 people. Lifeboats and rafts aboard the Gustloff could, if the need arose, accommodate only 5,060 people.
The sinking ship resulted in the loss of an estimated 9,300 victims, including 5,000 children.Those on board included 9,000 civilians fleeing an advancing Red Army, …
These three factors contributed to what would become a death sentence for most of the ship's passengers. The center of the US forces was the Zehlendorf district. There were over 10,000 people aboard the Wilhelm Gustloff, and only 1,239 were registered as survivors of the disaster.
Almost as many survived the Gustloff (c.1,200) as were killed on the Titanic. The Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church on Breitscheidplatz was severely damaged in bombing raids in 1943. Even though it is now known that the scene for this photo was actually staged two days later, it remains one of the most famous images of the 20th century, symbolizing the victory over Hitler, the destruction of the Nazi party and the end of the Second World War. It is also interesting for the wider context of the evacuation, of which the Gustloff’s voyage was part. The western allies, namely Americans, English and French, did not get to Berlin until July 1945 when they took over the western sectors of the city. The exact number will never be known.
He was 18 years old at the time, aboard the Gustloff as an aspiring naval pay clerk.
Six million Jews, and also homosexuals, gypsies and communists, were murdered by Nazi Germany. Only in recent decades has the fate of the Gustloff gained a degree of recognition beyond Germany, in part via Günter Grass’s 2002 novel Crabwalk, in which the sinking plays a prominent role. The Gustloff’s original Operation Hannibal assignment was to carry to safety the 2nd Training Division of submarine recruits, men who had bunked on her during training. (27.01.2015), Millions of Germans tuned in to a television film about the 1945 sinking of a Nazi ship full of refugees in the Baltic, which cost 9,000 lives and surpassed the Titanic as the worst maritime disaster in modern times. Only the navy could rescue them now. Contact In that role, Dönitz would sign the Allied terms of unconditional surrender on May 8, 1945. At around 9 p.m. on January 30, 1945, Adolf Hitler was speaking to the German people. It was the night of January 30, 1945, and disaster awaited her.
One reason why this maritime disaster is so unknown is the devastating historic background it faces. The former Outpost Theater cinema building is now part of the Allied Museum, which covers the period of postwar Berlin, including the 1948 airlift, up to the withdrawal of the Americans in 1994.
The ship was forced to stop almost immediately after casting off, however, when it was surrounded by a flotilla of small boats filled with refugees pleading to be picked up. Indeed, for many years the story was kept alive primarily by the tireless efforts of one survivor Heinz Schön, who worked hard to establish the truth of events and collected the personal accounts of survivors. The Wilhelm Gustloff was the most lethal shipwreck in history, but some details of the sinking remain unknown. 1556332. At around 9 p.m. on January 30, 1945, Adolf Hitler was speaking to the German people. One cannot help wondering if the closer attentions of an editor might have been beneficial. The Gustloff had been pressed into service as a transport ship during the Spanish Civil War, was later converted to a hospital ship, and in 1940 was converted again, this time to a barracks ship for U-boat trainees in Gdynia, Poland, on the Bay of Danzig.
However, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the book represents something of a missed opportunity. Was sabotage to blame when a suspicious radio message warning of sea mines reached the command bridge, just before the first torpedo hit? But it was by far the most well known.
It is a shame to be as critical as this, for Death in the Baltic should certainly be welcomed for bringing the story of the Wilhelm Gustloff to a wider audience.
The military cemetery is the final resting place for 7,000 Soviet soldiers who lost their lives in the fight for Berlin in the spring of 1945. Lifejackets had been provided for all, but there were not enough lifeboats. She was also to carry a number of women auxiliaries, some of whom had served in antiaircraft and artillery positions to free men for the front lines, and some wounded soldiers. Snow flurries swirled out of the darkness over the Baltic Sea. Read more: The Nazi archives: Where Germany's dark past is stored on paper.
She was launched in May 1937 and was named after Wilhelm Gustloff, the head of the Nazi Party in Switzerland, who had been assassinated in 1936.
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