Wilhelm Gustloff (ship)

Wilhelm Gustloff Modell sx3 cropped.jpg
A model of the Wilhelm Gustloff at the Laboe Naval Memorial
Career
Name: Wilhelm Gustloff
Namesake: Wilhelm Gustloff
Owner: Kraft durch Freude
Operator: Hamburg-South America Line
Port of Registry: Flag of Germany 1933.svg Germany
Builder: Blohm & Voss
Cost: 25 million Reichmarks
Yard number: 511
Laid down: August 1, 1936
Launched: May 5, 1937
Acquired: March 15, 1938
Identification: Radio ID (DJVZ)
Fate: Requisitioned into the Kriegsmarine (German Navy) on September 1, 1939.
Career Flag of the Red Cross.svg
Name: Lazarettschiff D (Hospital Ship D)
Operator: Kriegsmarine (German Navy)
Port of Registry: Germany
Acquired: September 1, 1939
Fate: Converted from Hospital Ship to floating barracks beginning November 20, 1940. The ship was repainted from white and green (Hospital Ship) colours to standard navy colours.
Career War Ensign of Germany 1938-1945.svg
Name: Wilhelm Gustloff
Namesake: Wilhelm Gustloff
Operator: Kriegsmarine (German Navy)
Port of Registry: Germany
Acquired: November 20, 1940
Out of service: November 1940 - January 1945
Fate: Torpedoed and sunk January 30, 1945
Notes: Used as a floating barracks for the Second Submarine Training Division until vessel returned to service ferrying refugees and soldiers as part of Operation Hannibal
General characteristics
Class and type: Passenger Cruise Ship
Tonnage: 25,484 Gross Register Tons
Length: 208.50 metres (684.1 ft)
Beam: 23.59 metres (77.4 ft)
Height: 56 metres (180 ft) Keel to masthead
Decks: 8
Installed power: Four 8-cylinder MAN diesel engines 9,500 hp
Propulsion: 2 (“twin-screw”) propellers (4 blades per prop)
Speed: 15.5 knots (approx. 29 km/h or 18 mph)
Range: 12,000 nautical miles @ 15 knots
Capacity: 1,465 passengers (designed)
Crew: 417 (cruise ship) - 173 (naval)
Notes: 489 Passenger cabins (248 two-bed and 241 four-bed)

The Wilhelm Gustloff was a German passenger ship constructed by the Blohm and Voss shipyards. She was sunk on January 30 1945 with a loss of around 9400 lives making this the worst maritime disaster in human history.

The ship was named after Wilhelm Gustloff, the assassinated German leader of the Swiss Nazi party (NSDAP). The Wilhelm Gustloff was launched on May 5, 1937 measuring 208.50 meters (684 feet) long by 23.59 meters (77.39 feet) wide with a capacity of 25,484 gross register tons. She was requisitioned into the Kriegsmarine (German Navy) on September 1, 1939 and served as a hospital ship during 1939 and 1940. Beginning on November 20, 1940 she was stripped of her medical equipment and repainted from her hospital ship colors (white with a green stripe) to standard naval grey. The Wilhelm Gustloff was then assigned as a floating barracks for naval personnel at the Baltic port of Gotenhafen (Gdynia) – near Danzig from 1940 onwards.

The Wilhelm Gustloff's final voyage was during Operation Hannibal in January 1945, when she was sunk while participating in the evacuation of civilian refugees, German soldiers, and U-boat personnel trapped by the Red Army in East Prussia. She was hit by three torpedoes from the Soviet submarine S-13 in the Baltic Sea on the night of January 30, 1945, and sank in under 45 minutes, taking an estimated 9,400 people with her.[1][2] which, if accurate, makes the sinking of the Wilhem Gustloff the largest known loss of life in a single sinking in maritime history.[3]

Contents

Ship history

The Wilhelm Gustloff was the first purpose-built cruise liner for the Nazi Kraft durch Freude (KdF) ("Strength Through Joy") labor organization. The purpose was to provide recreational and cultural activities for German functionaries and 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.

Military career

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

From September 1939 to November 1940, she served as a hospital ship with her official designation being Lazarettschiff D. On her first mission to the Baltic Sea, she treated 650 wounded Polish soldiers.

Beginning November 20, 1940, the medical equipment was removed from the ship and it was repainted from the hospital ship colours of white and green to standard naval grey.[4] As a consequence of the British blockade of the German coastline, she was used as an accommodations ship (barracks) for approximately 1,000 U-boat trainees of the 2nd Submarine Training Division (2. Unterseeboot-Lehrdivision) in the Baltic port of Gotenhafen (Gdynia) – near Danzig (Gdańsk).[5] The Wilhelm Gustloff sat dockside for over four years until she was put back in service to transport military personnel and civilian refugees as part of Operation Hannibal.

Operation Hannibal

Main article: Operation Hannibal

The ship's final voyage was to evacuate civilians, Kriegsmarine sailors, and wounded German soldiers from Gotenhafen to Kiel.[2] 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 ship's official embarkation records. Heinz Schön, who carried out extensive research into the sinking during the 1980s and 1990s, concluded that the Wilhelm Gustloff 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, for a total of 10,582 passengers and crew.[2] Although the ship was built for 1,465 passengers, she had the capacity to board many more for a short trip by utilizing her public recreation spaces to accommodate people, but she was carrying less than 50% of the rescue equipment necessary for the extra passengers.

The ship left Gotenhafen early on 30 January 1945, accompanied by the passenger liner Hansa, also filled with refugees and soldiers, and two torpedo boats. The Hansa and one torpedo boat developed problems and could not continue, leaving the Wilhelm Gustloff with one torpedo boat escort, the Löwe.[6] 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. As the ship's equipment included antiaircraft weapons, it had been travelling blacked-out, it was not marked as a hospital ship, and it was transporting combat troops, it did not have any protection as a hospital ship under the international accords governing this.[7]

The sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff

Map showing where the Wilhelm Gustloff was sunk in the Baltic

The ship was soon sighted by the S-13, under the command of Captain Third Class Alexander Marinesko, which fired three torpedoes at the Wilhelm Gustloff's port side about 30 km (20 miles) offshore between Großendorf and Leba soon after 21:00 (CET) hitting her with all three.[2] The first torpedo hit near the port bow, the second torpedo hit behind it just ahead of mid-ship. The third torpedo struck the engine room in the area below the ships funnel, cutting off engine and electrical power to the ship.The ship took a list to starbord and was settling by the head.Later the Wilhelm Gustloff listed to port.

In the panic that followed, many of the refugees were trampled in the rush to the 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 onrushing water. Others were crushed in the ensuing panic on the stairs and decks, and many jumped into the icy, dark Baltic. Reports talk about children clinging onto adults and women trying to save their babies, though constant waves dragged them away from them, most never to be seen again. Small children fitted with life jackets for adults drowned because their heads were under water while their legs were in the air.

Depiction of the sinking

Less than 45 minutes after being struck, the Wilhelm Gustloff went down bow first in 44 metres (150 feet) of water. German forces were able to rescue some of the survivors from the 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) V1703 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 largest loss of life in a single sinking in maritime history.[2]. All 4 captains who were on Wilhelm Gustloff did survive its sinking, but an official naval inquiry was started only against Wilhelm Zahn. His degree of responsibility was never resolved, however, because of Nazi Germany's problems in 1945 [1].

A porthole window from the Wilhelm Gustloff, salvaged in 1988

In an article in the magazine "Sea Classics", Irwin Kappes mentions that "there were over 6,000 passengers on board". He also states that the escort ship Löwe was alongside within 15 minutes, taking off as many survivors as she could carry, and that when Captain Henigst of the cruiser Admiral Hipper, herself carrying 1,500 evacuees, 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 as 5,348. The source of this information was the German book "Die Gustloff Katastrophe" written by Heinz Schön, who later revised his original numbers.[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 a computer analysis (using software called maritime EXODUS) of the sinking, which estimated 9,400 dead −85% (among over 10,600 on board); this analysis considered the load density based on witness reports and a simulation of escape routes and survivability with the timeline of the sinking.[8][9][10]

Controversy

Many ships carrying civilians were sunk during the war by both the Allies and Axis.[11] However, based on the latest estimates of passenger numbers and those known to be saved, the Wilhelm Gustloff remains the largest loss of life resulting from the sinking of one vessel in maritime history. Günter 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."[12]

According to the Soviet propaganda version, more than a thousand German officers, including 70–80 submarine crews, were aboard and died in the sinking of the Gustloff. The women onboard the ship at the time of the sinking and were described, perhaps falsely, as SS personnel from the German concentration camps[2].

Wreckage

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".[13] It is one of the largest shipwrecks on the Baltic sea floor.

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.[14] In 2007, the ship's bell was placed on display at the Gdańsk Museum in Krantor.

Books, Documentaries, and Movies

Books in German

The most prolific German author and historian on the subject of the Wilhelm Gustloff is Heinz Schön, one of the shipwreck's survivors, whose books (in German) include:

Books in English

Recent years have seen increased recognition of the Wilhelm Gustloff disaster in countries outside of Germany, with various books either written in or translated into English, including:

A film set for the German 2008 TV movie "Die Gustloff"

Dramatized Films

Documentaries

See also

Further reading

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 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 (a fiction title about the tragedy); and Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans 1944-1950.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 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 about 6,000 passengers and crew.
  4. ↑ CONVERSION TO FLOATING U-BOAT BARRACKS
  5. ↑ CONVERSION TO FLOATING U-BOAT BARRACKS
  6. ↑ Löwe Torpedoboot 1940 - 1959 Sleipner Class
  7. ↑ The Avalon Project - Laws of War : Adaptation to Maritime War of the Principles of the Geneva Convention (Hague X); October 18, 1907
  8. ↑ "Discovery Channel Unsolved History – Wilhelm Gustloff 2003"
  9. ↑ maritime EXODUS
  10. ↑ Michael Leja, References (a source in German)
  11. ↑ George Martin Maritime Disasters of World War II
  12. ↑ Crabwalk by Günter Grass review on RedDot Books Ltd website.
  13. ↑ Irwin J. Kappes References
  14. ↑ Mark Landler Poles riled by Berlin exhibition originally published in The New York Times, August 30, 2006 republished in the International Herald Tribune

External links