Wilhelm Gustloff (ship)

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The Wilhelm Gustloff slides into the water during launch ceremonies.
The Wilhelm Gustloff slides into the water during launch ceremonies.

The Wilhelm Gustloff was a passenger ship built by the Blohm and Voss shipyards, and was named after the Nazi Wilhelm Gustloff. It was launched on May 5, 1937.

On a mission to help evacuate Germans and refugees trapped by the Red Army in East Prussia, it was hit by three torpedoes from a Soviet submarine in the Baltic Sea on the night of January 30, 1945. She sank taking about 9,400 people with her [1][2] — the worst loss of life in a single sinking in maritime history.[3]

Contents

[edit] History

The ship was built as a cruise liner for the German Kraft durch Freude (KdF) ("Strength Through Joy") labor organization which provided recreational and cultural activities for German workers, including concerts, cruises and other holidays. The Wilhelm Gustloff was the flagship of the KdF cruise fleet until the spring of 1939. That was her last civilian role.

From then on she served the needs of the German military.

During the summer of 1939, she was pressed into service to bring back the Condor Legion from Spain after the victory of the Nationalist forces under General Franco in the Spanish Civil War.

From September 1939 to November 1940, she served as a hospital ship. Later during the Second World War, as a consequence of the British blockade of the German coastline, she was confined to use as a barracks ship for U-boat trainees in the Baltic port of Gdynia (originally Gdingen in German, called Gotenhafen during the Nazi German World War II occupation of Poland).

[edit] Sinking

[edit] Final voyage

The ship's final voyage was to evacuate civilians, wounded German soldiers and sailors from Gotenhafen (Gdynia) near Danzig (Gdańsk) to Kiel. The ship's complement and passenger lists totaled 6,050 people on board but this did not include many refugees who boarded the ship without being recorded in the ships official embarkation records. Heinz Schon who carried out extensive research into the sinking during the 1980s and 1990s concluded that the Wilhelm Gustloff's was carrying a crew of 173 (naval armed forces auxiliaries), 918 officers NCOs and men of the 2nd Submarine Training Division (2.Unterseeboot-Lehrdivision), 373 female naval auxiliary helpers, 162 badly wounded soldiers and 8,956 refugees, mostly women, children and the elderly, for a total of 10,582 passengers and crew.[2] Although the ship was built for fewer than 2,000 passengers, it had the capacity to board many more for a short trip by utilizing its public recreational spaces to accommodate people, but it was carrying less than 50% of the rescue equipment necessary for the extra passengers.[citation needed]

The ship left Gotenhafen (Gdynia) early on 30 January 1945, accompanied by the passenger liner Hansa, also filled with refugees, and two torpedo boats. The Hansa and one torpedo boat developed problems and could not continue, leaving the Wilhelm Gustloff with only one torpedo boat escort, the Löwe.[4] The ship had four captains on board, three civilian and one military, and they could not agree on the best course of action to guard against submarine attacks. Against the advice of the military commander, Lieutenant Commander Wilhelm Zahn, a submariner who argued for a course in shallow waters close to shore and without lights, the senior civilian captain, Friedrich Petersen, decided to head for deep water. When he was informed by radio of an oncoming German minesweeper convoy, he decided to activate his ship's red and green navigation lights so as to avoid a collision in the dark, making the Wilhelm Gustloff easy to spot in the night.

The ship was soon sighted by the Soviet submarine S-13, under the command of Captain Third Class Alexander Marinesko which torpedoed the Wilhelm Gustloff with three torpedoes, about 30 km offshore between Großendorf and Leba soon after 21:00 (CET) -- hitting her three times.[2] In the panic that followed, many of the refugees were trampled in the rush to lifeboats and life jackets. Some equipment was lost as a result of the panic. The water temperature in the Baltic Sea at this time of year is usually around 4°C; however, this was a particularly cold day, with an air temperature of -10° to -18° C and ice floes covering the surface. Many deaths were either caused directly by the torpedoes or by instant drowning in the incoming water. Others were crushed in the ensuing panic on the stairs and decks, and many jumped into the icy, dark Baltic water. Many reports suggest children were clinging on to adults and women tried to save babies, though constant waves dragged them away from them, many not to be seen ever again. Small children fitted with lifejackets for adults drowned because their heads were under water while their legs were in the air.

In under 50 minutes after being struck, the Wilhelm Gustloff sank in a depth of 45 meters (150 feet). German forces were able to rescue some of the suvivors from the initial attack: torpedo boat T-36 rescued 564 people; torpedo boat Löwe, 472; Minesweeper M387, 98; Minesweeper M375, 43; Minesweeper M341, 37; the steamer Gottingen saved 28; torpedo-recovery boat (Torpedofangboot) TF19, seven; the freighter Gotland, two; and Patrol boat (Vorpostenboot) 1703 was able to save one baby. These figures are from the research of Heinz Schön, and that would make the total lost in the torpedoing and subsequent sinking to be 9,343 men, women and children. This would make it the worst loss of life in a single sinking in maritime history. [2]

In an article for the magazine "Sea Classics", Irwin Kappes mentions that "there were over 6,000 passengers on board" and that the escort ship Löwe was alongside within 15 minutes and took off as many survivors as she could carry and that when Captain Henigst of the Cruiser Admiral Hipper, herself carrying 1,500 refugees, received reports from her lookouts that she was under torpedo attack, he chose not to stop to pick up survivors. Kappes gives a precise total of those lost in the sinking (5,348). The source of this information was the German book "Die Gustloff Katastrophe" written by Heinz Schön, who has apparently recanted his original number.[1]

Heinz Schön's more recent research is backed up by estimates made by a different method. The Discovery Channel program "Unsolved History" has undertaken computer analysis (using software called maritime EXODUS) of the sinking that estimated 9,400 dead -85%(among over 10,600 on board); this analysis considered load density based on witness reports and simulation of escape routes and survivability with the timeline of sinking.[5][6][7]

[edit] Controversy

There were many ships carrying civilians sunk during the war by both the Allies and Axis.[8] However based on the latest estimates of passenger numbers and those known to be saved, the Wilhelm Gustloff remains the worst loss of life resulting from the sinking of one vessel in maritime history. Gunter Grass in an interview published in the New York Times on Tuesday April 8 2003 said "One of the many reasons I wrote [Crabwalk] was to take the subject away from the extreme right, ... They said the tragedy of the Gustloff was a war crime. It wasn’t. It was terrible, but it was a result of war, a terrible result of war."[9]

[edit] Wreckage

55.07° N 17.41° E is the resting place of the Gustloff. This is 30 km offshore, east of Łeba (17.33E) and west of Władysławowo (18.24E). It has been designated as a war memorial site (off-limits to salvage crews). On Polish navigation charts it is noted as "Obstacle No. 73".[10]

In 2006, a bell recovered from the wreck, and subsequently used as decoration in a Polish fish restaurant, was loaned to the "Forced Paths" exhibition in Berlin.[11]

[edit] Movie and novel

In 1959 it was the subject of the film Nacht fiel über Gotenhafen.[12] The Gustloff disaster was also the subject of the 2002 novel Im Krebsgang (English translation: Crabwalk) by Danzig-born German author and Nobel prize winner Günter Grass.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] Further reading

Bishop, Leigh; Shipwreck Expedition May 2003, led by Mike Boring, 2003  
www.wilhelmgustloff.com
A bibliography on the Wilhelm Gustloff		 A search for the website, wilhelmgustloff.com, (using Google 12:45, 8 November 2006 (UTC)) under the academic domian names "ac.uk" and "edu" returned no pages
The submarine that sank the Third Reich The website this is published on claims it is/was an article in the Russian Navy Chronicle but does not give author of date of publication. A search (using Google 12:45, 8 November 2006 (UTC)) returned only two mentions of the Russian Navy Chronicle both on the website http://www.strelna.ru.
Maritimequest Wilhelm Gustloff Photo Gallery A search for the website, maritimequest.com, (using Google 12:45, 8 November 2006 (UTC)) under the academic domain names "ac.uk" and "edu" returned no pages.

[edit] References

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ a b Irwin J. Kappes References states 5,348. He does not cite his sources but recommends: A. V. Sellwood, The Damned Don't Drown: The Sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff ; and Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans 1944-1950.
  2. ^ a b c d Jason Pipes, References citing Heinz Schon References (no page number) claims the loss of life was 9,343
  3. ^ The Goya, also torpedoed in 1945, sank with the loss of over 6,000 passengers and crew.
  4. ^ Löwe Torpedoboot 1940 - 1959 Sleipner Class
  5. ^ "Discovery Channel Unsolved History – Wilhelm Gustloff 2003"
  6. ^ maritime EXODUS
  7. ^ Michael Leja, References (a source in German)
  8. ^ George Martin Maritime Disasters of World War II
  9. ^ Crabwalk by Gunter Grass review on RedDot Books Ltd website.
  10. ^ Irwin J. Kappes References
  11. ^ Mark Landler Poles riled by Berlin exhibition originally published in The New York Times, August 30, 2006 republished in the International Herald Tribune
  12. ^ "Nacht fiel über Gotenhafen" DVD information

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