Wilhelm Gustloff
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Wilhelm Gustloff (January 30, 1895 - February 4, 1936) was the German leader of the Swiss NSDAP (Nazi) party; he founded the Swiss branch of the party at Davos in 1932.[1]
Gustloff was responsible for the distribution of the anti-Semitic "Protocols of the Elders of Zion". Gustloff was shot in 1936 by David Frankfurter, a Jewish student. He was born in Schwerin in Mecklenburg and had a state funeral in Schwerin in the presence of Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Göring, Heinrich Himmler, Martin Bormann and Joachim von Ribbentrop. Thousands of Hitlerjugend members lined the route. His coffin, which was transported on a special train from Davos to Schwerin, made stops in Stuttgart, Würzburg, Erfurt, Halle, Magdeburg and Wittenberg. His widow, mother and brother were present at the funeral and received personal condolences from Hitler. Ernst Wilhelm Bohle was the first at Gustloff's funeral to recite a few lines in honour of the deceased.
The German cruise ship Wilhelm Gustloff was named after Gustloff by the Nazi regime. The ship was sunk in 1945 with the loss of thousands of lives (8700-9300).
The Wilhelm Gustloff Foundation or Wilhelm-Gustloff-Stiftung was named after this party leader.
During World War II the small arms factory Wilhelm Gustloff Werke was named in his honour. His assassination is an element of the novel Crabwalk (in German: Im Krebsgang) by the German writer Günter Grass with the plot based the fate of KdF Ship Wilhelm Gustloff.
