William gustav ship. The documentary "The Last Campaign" by Wilhelm Gustloff "
January 30, 1895 born in Schwerin WilliamGustloff, the future middle-level functionary of the National Socialist Party.
January 30, 1933 came to power Hitler; this day became one of the most significant holidays in the Third Reich.
January 30, 1933 Adolf Hitler appointed Gustloff Landesgruppenleiter Switzerland based in Davos. Gustloff led an active anti-Semitic propaganda, in particular, contributed to the dissemination of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" in Switzerland.
January 30, 1936 medical student Frankfurter came to Davos to kill Gustloff... From a newspaper bought at the station kiosk, he learned that the governor was "with his Fuhrer in Berlin" and would return in four days. On February 4, a student killed Gustloff... Next year name "Wilhelm Gustloff" was assigned to a sea liner laid down as "Adolf Gitler".
January 30, 1945 years, exactly 50 years after birth Gustloff, Soviet submarine S-13 under the command of a rank 3 captain A. Marinesco torpedoed and sent the liner to the bottom "Wilhelm Gustloff".
January 30, 1946 Marinesco was demoted and transferred to the reserve.
He began his working life as a small bank clerk in the city of the seven lakes of Schwerin, and Gustloff compensated for his lack of education with diligence.
In 1917, the bank transferred its young diligent clerk, suffering from pulmonary tuberculosis, to its branch in Davos. The Swiss mountain air completely healed the patient. Simultaneously with his work at the bank, he organized a local group of the National Socialist Party and became its leader. The doctor who had been treating Gustloff for several years spoke of his patient this way: "Limited, good-natured, fanatical, recklessly devoted to the Fuhrer:" If Hitler orders me to shoot my wife tonight at 6 o'clock, then at 5.55 am I will load the revolver, and at 06.05 my the wife will be a corpse. ”A member of the Nazi Party since 1929. His wife Hedwig was Hitler’s secretary in the early 1930s.
On February 4, 1936, Jewish student David Frankfurter entered a house marked W. Gustloff, NSDAP. He left for Davos a few days earlier - January 30, 1936 No luggage, with a one-way ticket and a revolver in his coat pocket.
Gustloff's wife took him into his office and asked him to wait; the puny, short visitor did not raise any suspicion. Through the open side door, next to which hung a portrait of Hitler, the student saw a two-meter giant - the owner of the house, talking on the phone. When a minute later he entered the office, Frankfurter silently, without getting up from his chair, raised his hand with a revolver and fired five bullets. Walking quickly to the exit - to the heartbreaking screams of the murdered man's wife - he went to the police and announced that he had just shot Gustloff. Called to identify the killer, Hedwig Gustloff looks at him for a few moments and says: "How could you kill a man! You have such kind eyes!"
For Hitler, Gustloff's death was a gift from heaven: the first Nazi killed by a Jew abroad, and in Switzerland, which he hated! The Jewish all-German pogrom did not take place only because the Winter Olympics were being held in Germany in those days, and Hitler could not yet afford to completely ignore world public opinion.
The Nazi propaganda apparatus squeezed the best out of the event. A three-week mourning was declared in the country, state flags were lowered ... The farewell ceremony in Davos was broadcast by all German radio stations, the melodies of Beethoven and Haydn were replaced by Wagner's "Twilight of the Gods" ... Hitler spoke: "Behind the killer is the power of our Jewish enemy filled with hatred, trying to enslave the German people ... We accept their challenge to fight! " In articles, speeches, radio broadcasts, the words "Jew shot" sounded like a refrain.
Historians view Hitler's propaganda use of the assassination of Gustloff as a prologue to "the final solution to the Jewish question."
Gustlov is dead, long live Wilhelm Gustlov!
The insignificant personality of V. Gustloff, almost unknown before the assassination attempt, was officially elevated to the rank of Blutzeuge, a holy martyr who fell by the hand of a mercenary. The impression was that one of the main Nazi leaders was killed. His name was given to streets, squares, a bridge in Nuremberg, an air glider ... Classes on the topic "Wilhelm Gustloff killed by a Jew".
In the name "Wilhelm Gustloff" was named the German "Titanic" the flagship of the fleet of an organization called Kraft durch freude, abbreviated KdF - "Strength through joy".
Led her Robert Leigh, head of the state trade unions "German Workers Front". It was he who invented the Nazi salute, Heil Hitler! with an outstretched hand and ordered all civil servants to perform it, then teachers and schoolchildren, and even later - all workers. It was he, the famous drunkard and "the greatest idealist in the labor movement" who organized the fleet of ships KdF.
The Nazis, led by Adolf Hitler, having come to power in order to increase the social base of support for their policies among the population of Germany, one of the directions of their activity identified the creation of a wide system of social security and services.
Already in the mid-1930s, the ordinary German worker, in terms of the level of services and benefits that he was entitled to, favorably distinguished from workers in other European countries.
An entire flotilla of passenger ships to provide cheap and affordable travel and cruises was conceived to be built as the embodiment of the ideas of National Socialism and their propaganda.
The flagship of this fleet was to be a new comfortable liner, which the authors of the project planned to name after the German Fuhrer - "Adolf Gitler".
The ships symbolized the National Socialist idea of \u200b\u200ba classless society and were themselves, in contrast to the luxury cruise ships sailing on all seas for the rich, "classless ships" with the same cabins for all passengers, making it possible, according to the Fuehrer's will, to the locksmiths of Bavaria, postmen Cologne, to Bremen housewives at least once a year an affordable sea trip to Madeira, along the Mediterranean coast, to the shores of Norway and Africa "(R. Leigh).
On May 5, 1937, at the Hamburg shipyard, Blum and Voss solemnly launched the world's largest ten-deck cruise ship, built by order of KdF. Gustloff's widow, in the presence of Hitler, smashed a bottle of champagne on the side, and the ship got its name - Wilhelm Gustloff. Its displacement is 25,000 tons, the length is 208 meters, and the cost is 25 million Reichsmarks. It is designed for 1,500 guests, at their service - glazed promenade decks, a winter garden, a swimming pool ...
Joy is a source of strength!
Thus began a short, happy time in the life of the liner, it will last a year and 161 days. The "floating rest house" worked continuously, people were delighted: prices sea \u200b\u200btravel were, if not low, then affordable. A five-day cruise to the Norwegian fjords cost 60 Reichsmarks, a twelve-day cruise along the coast of Italy - 150 rm (monthly wages of a worker and employee were equal to 150-250 rm). During the voyage, you could call home at a super-cheap rate and pour out your delight on your family. Abroad, vacationers compared living conditions with their own in Germany, and comparisons were often not in favor of foreign ones. A contemporary reflects: "How did Hitler manage to get hold of the people in a short time, to accustom them not only to tacit obedience, but also to mass jubilation at official events? A partial answer to this question is provided by the activities of the KdF organization."
Gustlov's finest hour fell in April 1938, when in stormy weather the crew rescued the sailors of the sinking British steamer Pegaway. The English press paid tribute to the skill and courage of the Germans.
The resourceful Lei used an unexpected propaganda success to use the ship as a floating polling station in the popular vote to annex Austria to Germany. On April 10, at the Thames estuary, Gustlow took on board about 1,000 German and 800 Austrian citizens living in the UK, as well as a large group of observer journalists, left the three-mile zone and anchored in neutral waters, where they voted. As expected, 99% of voters voted in favor. British newspapers, including the Marxist Daily Herald, were generous in praising the union ship.
The last cruise of the liner took place on August 25, 1939. Suddenly, during a planned voyage in the middle of the North Sea, the captain received an encrypted order to urgently return to port. Cruise time was over - less than a week later, Germany invaded Poland and World War II began.The happy era in the life of the ship was cut short during the fiftieth anniversary voyage, on September 1, 1939, on the first day of the Second World War. By the end of September, it was converted into a 500-bed floating infirmary. Major personnel changes were made, the ship was transferred to the naval forces, and next year, after another restructuring, it became the barracks of cadets-sailors of the 2nd training division of diving in the port of Gotenhafen (the Polish city of Gdynia). The elegant white sides of the motor ship, a wide green stripe along the sides and red crosses - everything is painted over with dirty gray enamel. Chief physician's cabin of the former infirmary occupied a submarine officer with the rank of corvette-captain, now he will determine the functions of the vessel. Portraits in the wardroom have been replaced: the smiling "great idealist" Lei gave way to the stern Grand Admiral Doenitz.
With the outbreak of war, almost all KdF ships were in military service. "Wilhelm Gustloff" was converted into a hospital ship and assigned to the German Navy - Kriegsmarine. The liner was repainted white and marked with red crosses, which was supposed to protect it from attack according to the Hague Convention. The first patients began arriving on board during the war against Poland in October 1939. Even in such conditions, the German authorities used the ship as a means of propaganda - as evidence of the humanity of the Nazi leadership, most of the first patients were wounded Polish prisoners. Over time, when the German losses became significant, the ship was sent to the port of Gotengafen (Gdynia), where it took on board even more wounded, as well as the Germans (Volksdeutsche) evacuated from East Prussia.The educational process proceeded at an accelerated pace, every three months - another release, replenishment for submarines - new buildings. But gone are the days when German submariners almost brought Britain to its knees. In 1944, 90% of course graduates were expected to die in steel coffins.
Already the autumn of 1943 showed that a quiet life was ending - on October 8 (9), the Americans covered the harbor with a bomb carpet. Floating infirmary Stuttgart caught fire and sank; this was the first loss of a former KdF ship. The explosion of a heavy bomb near Gustlov caused a one and a half meter crack in the side skinthat was brewed. The welded seam will still remind of itself on the last day of Gustlov's life, when the S-13 submarine will slowly but surely catch up with the initially faster floating barracks.
In the second half of 1944, the front approached very close to East Prussia. The Germans of East Prussia had certain reasons to fear revenge on the part of the Red Army - the great destruction and killings among the civilian population in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union were known to many. Germanpropaganda depicted the "horrors of the Soviet offensive".In October 1944, the first detachments of the Red Army were already on the territory of East Prussia. Nazi propaganda launched an extensive campaign to "denounce Soviet atrocities," accusing Soviet soldiers of mass murder and rape. By spreading such propaganda, the Nazis achieved their goal - the number of volunteers in the Volkssturm (German Volkssturm) militia increased, but the propaganda also led to increased panic among the civilian population as the front approached, and millions of people became refugees.
"They ask the question why the refugees were terrified of revenge by the soldiers of the Red Army. Anyone who, like me, saw the destruction left by Hitler's troops in Russia, will not puzzled over this question for a long time," wrote R. Augstein, longtime publisher of Der Spiegel.
On January 21, Grand Admiral Doenitz gave the order to begin Operation Hannibal, the largest evacuation of the population by sea of \u200b\u200ball time: more than two million people flew all the ships at the disposal of the German command to the West.
At the same time, the submarines of the Soviet Baltic Fleet were preparing for the final attacks of the war. A significant part of them was blocked for a long time in the Leningrad and Kronstadt ports by German minefields and steel anti-submarine nets, exhibited by 140 ships in the spring of 1943. After breaking the blockade of Leningrad, the Red Army continued its offensive along the shores of the Gulf of Finland, and the surrender of Finland, Germany's ally opened the way for Soviet submarines to the Baltic Sea... Stalin's order followed: submariners based in Finnish harbors to detect and destroy enemy ships. The operation pursued both military and psychological goals - to hinder the supply of German troops by sea and to prevent the evacuation to the West. One of the consequences of the Stalinist order was the meeting of Gustlov with the S-13 submarine and its commander, Captain 3rd Rank A. Marinesko.
Nationality - Odessa.
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| Captain of the third rank A.I. Marinesko |
Marinesco, the son of a Ukrainian mother and Romanian father, was born in 1913 in Odessa. During the Balkan War, his father served in the Romanian navy, was sentenced to death for participating in the mutiny, fled from Constanta and settled in Odessa, remaking the Romanian surname Marinescu in the Ukrainian way. Alexander's childhood was spent among breakwaters, dry docks and port cranes, in the company of Russians, Ukrainians, Armenians, Jews, Greeks, Turks; they all considered themselves primarily Odessa citizens. He grew up in the hungry post-revolutionary years, tried to grab a piece of bread wherever he could, and caught gobies in the harbor.
When life in Odessa returned to normal, foreign ships began to come to the port. Dressed and cheerful passengers threw coins into the water, and Odessa boys dived after them; few people managed to get ahead of the future submariner. He left school at the age of 15, being able to read, write somehow and “sell sleeves from a vest,” as he often used to say later. His language was a colorful and whimsical mixture of Russian and Ukrainian, flavored with Odessa "hochmas" and Romanian curses. Severe childhood tempered and made him inventive, taught not to get lost in the most unexpected and dangerous situations.
He began his marine life at the age of 15 as a cabin boy on a coastal steamer, graduated from a nautical school, and was called up for military service. Probably, Marinesco was a born submariner, even his surname was sea. Starting the service, he quickly realized that a small ship is most suitable for him, an individualist by nature. After a nine-month course, he sailed as a navigator on a submarine Shch-306, then graduated from the command courses and in 1937 became the commander of another boat, M-96 - two torpedo tubes, 18 crew members. In the pre-war years, M-96 bore the title "the best pilot of the Red Banner Baltic Fleet"by putting urgent dive time record - 19.5 seconds instead of 28 normative, for which the commander and his team were awarded a personalized gold watch.
By the beginning of the war, Marinesco was already an experienced and respected submariner. He possessed a rare gift to manage people, which allowed him to pass without loss of authority from the "comrade commander" to an equal member of the feast in the wardroom.
In 1944, Marinesko received under his command a large submarine of the Stalinets S-13 series. The history of the creation of boats of this series deserves at least a few lines, as it is a vivid example of secret military and industrial cooperation between the USSR and the Third Reich before the war. The project was developed by order of the Soviet government in an engineering bureau owned jointly by the German navy, Krupp and the shipyard in Bremen. The bureau was headed by the German Blum, a retired captain, and it was in The Hague - in order to circumvent the provisions of the Versailles Peace Treaty, which prohibits Germany from the development and construction of submarines.
At the end of December 1944, the C-13 was in the Finnish port of Turku and was preparing to go to sea. He was scheduled for January 2, but Marinesco, who had gone on a spree, did not appear on the boat until the next day, when the "special department" of the security service was already looking for him as a defector to the side of the enemy. Having evaporated the hops in the bath, he arrived at the headquarters and honestly told about everything. He could not or did not want to remember the names of the girls and the place of the "spree", he only said that they were drinking pontikka, Finnish potato moonshine, in comparison with which "vodka is like mother's milk."
The commander of the S-13 would have been arrested were it not for the acute shortage of experienced submariners and Stalin's order, which had to be carried out at any cost. Divisional Commander Captain 1st Rank Orel ordered the C-13 to urgently go to sea and await further orders. On January 11, a fully fueled C-13 headed along the coast of the island of Gotland into the open sea. Returning to base without a victory was for Marinesco tantamount to giving up to the tribunal.
As part of Operation Hannibal, on January 22, 1945, the Wilhelm Gustloff in the port of Gdynia (then called by the Germans Gotenhafen (German Gotenhafen) began to take on board refugees. First, people were placed on special passes - primarily several dozen submarine officers, hundreds of women from the naval auxiliary division and almost a thousand wounded soldiers.Later, when tens of thousands of people gathered in the port and the situation became more complicated, they began to let everyone in, giving priority to women and children.As the projected number of seats was only 1,500, refugees began to be placed on the decks, During the last stages of the evacuation, the panic intensified so much that some women in the port, in despair, began to give their children to those who managed to get on board, hoping to save them in this way. On January 30, 1945, the ship's crew officers had already stopped counting refugees, the number of which exceeded 10,000.
According to modern estimates, there should have been 10,582 people on board: 918 cadets of the junior groups of the 2nd training submarine division (2.U-Boot-Lehrdivision), 173 crew members, 373 women from the auxiliary naval corps, 162 seriously wounded soldiers, and 8956 refugees, mostly old people, women and children.
Attack of the century.
Captain Gustlov Peterson is 63 years old, he has not piloted ships for many years and therefore asked to give him two young sailing captains to help him. The military command of the ship was entrusted to the experienced submariner, corvette-captain Tsan. A unique situation was created: on the command bridge of the ship there are four captains with an unclear distribution of powers, which will be one of the reasons for the death of Gustloff.
On January 30, accompanied by the only ship, the torpedo bomber Lev, Gustloff left the port of Gotenhafen, and immediately a dispute broke out among the captains. Tsang, who knew about the danger of attacks by Soviet submarines more than others, suggested going in a zigzag with a maximum speed of 16 knots, in which case the slower boats would not be able to catch up with them. "12 knots, no more!" - objected Peterson, recalling the unreliable weld in the side skin, and insisted on his own.
Gustloff walked along the corridor through the minefields. At 19 o'clock, a radio message was received: a detachment of minesweepers is on the head-on course. The captains gave the command to turn on the identification lights to avoid a collision. The last and decisive mistake. The ill-fated radiogram remained a mystery forever, no minesweepers appeared.
Meanwhile, the C-13, unsuccessfully plowing through the waters of the prescribed patrol route, on January 30 went to the Danzig Bay - there, as Marinesko's intuition suggested, there must be an enemy. The air temperature is minus 18, snow is sweeping.
At about 19 o'clock the boat surfaced, just at that time the lights on Gustloff came on. In the first seconds the officer of the watch could not believe his eyes: the silhouette of a giant ship was shining in the distance! He appeared on the bridge of Marinesko, in the non-regulation, oily sheepskin sheepskin coat known to all Baltic submariners.
At 19:30 the captains of Gustloff, without waiting for the mystical minesweepers, ordered the lights to be turned off. Too late - Marinesco has already grabbed the cherished goal with a stranglehold. He could not understand why the giant ship does not zigzag and is accompanied by only one ship. Both of these circumstances will facilitate the attack.
A joyful mood reigned on Gustloff: a few more hours, and they would leave the danger zone. The captains gathered in the wardroom for dinner, a steward in a white jacket brought pea soup and cold meat. We rested for some time after the arguments and worries of the day, drank a glass of cognac for success.
On the C-13, four bow torpedo tubes are prepared for attack, on each torpedo there is an inscription: on the first - "For the Motherland", On the second - "For Stalin", on third - "For the Soviet people" and on the fourth - "For Leningrad".
The goal is 700 meters. At 21:04 the first torpedo is fired, followed by the rest. Three of them hit the target, the fourth, with the inscription "For Stalin", gets stuck in a torpedo tube, ready to explode at the slightest shock. But here, as often with Marinesco, the skill is complemented by luck: the torpedo engine stalls for some unknown reason, and the torpedo operator quickly closes the outer cover of the apparatus. The boat goes under water.
At 21:16 the first torpedo hit the bow of the ship, later the second blew up an empty pool where the women of the naval auxiliary battalion were located, and the latter hit the engine room. The passengers' first thought was that they ran into a mine, but Captain Peterson realized that it was a submarine, and his first words were:
Das war’s - That's all.Those passengers who did not die from three explosions and did not drown in the cabins of the lower decks rushed in panic to lifeboats... At that moment, it turned out that by ordering to close, according to the instructions, the watertight compartments in the lower decks, the captain inadvertently blocked part of the crew, which was supposed to start lowering the boats and evacuating passengers. Therefore, in the panic and crush, not only many children and women died, but also many of those who made it to the upper deck. They could not lower the lifeboats, because they did not know how to do this, besides, many davits were iced up, and the ship had already received a strong list. By the joint efforts of the crew and passengers, some of the boats were launched, and yet there were many people in the icy water. An anti-aircraft gun came off the deck of the ship's strong heel and crushed one of the boats, already full of people.
Approximately an hour after the attack, the Wilhelm Gustloff sank completely.
One torpedo destroyed the side of the ship in the area of \u200b\u200bthe swimming pool, the pride of the former KdF ship; it housed 373 girls from the auxiliary services of the fleet. Water poured out, shards of colorful tile mosaics crashing into the bodies of the drowning. Those who survived - there are not many of them - said that at the time of the explosion, the German anthem sounded on the radio, which ended Hitler's speech in honor of the twelfth anniversary of his coming to power.
Dozens of lifeboats and rafts floated around the sinking ship. The overloaded rafts are clung to people convulsively clinging to them; one by one, they drown in icy water. Hundreds of dead children's bodies: life jackets keep them afloat, but children's heads are heavier than legs, and only legs stick out of the water.
Captain Peterson was one of the first to leave the ship. A sailor who was with him in the same rescue boat would later tell: "Not far from us a woman was floundering in the water screaming for help. We dragged her into the boat, in spite of the captain's cry" put aside, we are already overloaded! "
More than a thousand people were rescued by an escort ship and seven ships that arrived in time to the crash site. 70 minutes after the explosion of the first torpedo, Gustloff began to sink. At the same time, something incredible happens: during the dive, the lighting that was out of order during the explosion suddenly turns on, and the howl of sirens is heard. People look with horror at the devil's performance.
The C-13 was lucky once again: the only escort ship was busy rescuing people, and when it began to throw depth charges, the torpedo "For Stalin" was already defused, and the boat was able to leave.
One of the survivors, 18-year-old housekeeping trainee Heinz Schön, for more than half a century collected materials related to the history of the liner, and became the chronicler of the greatest shipwreck of all time. According to his calculations, on January 30, 10,582 people were on board Gustlov, 9343 died. For comparison, the Titanic disaster, which hit an underwater iceberg in 1912, cost the lives of 1,517 passengers and crew members.
All four captains escaped. The youngest of them, by the name of Kohler, committed suicide shortly after the end of the war - he was broken by the fate of Gustloff.
The destroyer "Lion" (a former ship of the Dutch Navy) was the first to arrive at the scene of the tragedy and began rescuing the surviving passengers. Since in January the temperature was already −18 ° C, there were only a few minutes before the irreversible hypothermia of the body occurred. Despite this, the ship managed to rescue 472 passengers from boats and from the water.
The escort ships of another convoy also came to the rescue - the cruiser Admiral Hipper, which, in addition to the crew, also had about 1,500 refugees on board.
For fear of an attack by submarines, he did not stop and continued to retire to safe waters. Other ships (under "other ships" is understood as the only destroyer T-38 - the GAS did not work on the "Loew", "Hipper" left) managed to save another 179 people. A little more than an hour later, the new ships that came to the rescue were able to fish only dead bodies from the icy water. Later, a small messenger ship, which arrived at the scene of the tragedy, unexpectedly found, seven hours after the sinking of the liner, among hundreds of dead bodies, an unnoticed boat and in it a living baby wrapped in blankets - the last rescued passenger of "Wilhelm Gustloff".As a result, it was possible to survive, according to various estimates, from 1200 to 2500 people from a little less than 11 thousand who were on board. According to the maximum estimates, the losses are estimated at 9,985 lives.
Gustlov's chronicler Heinz Schön in 1991 found the last survivor of 47 people from the C-13 team, 77-year-old former torpedo operator V. Kurochkin, and twice visited him in a village near Leningrad. The two old sailors told each other (with the help of an interpreter) what happened on the memorable day of January 30 on the submarine and on Gustloff.
During the second visit, Kurochkin confessed to the German guest that after their first meeting, almost every night he dreamed of women and children drowning in icy water screaming for help. At parting he said: "This is a bad thing - war. Shoot at each other, kill women and children - what could be worse! People should learn to live without shedding blood ..."
In Germany, the reaction to the sinking of "Wilhelm Gustloff" at the time of the tragedy was rather restrained. The Germans did not disclose the scale of the losses, so as not to worsen the morale of the population even more. In addition, at that moment the Germans suffered heavy losses in other places. However, after the end of the war, in the minds of many Germans, the simultaneous death of so many civilians, and especially thousands of children on board the Wilhelm Gustloff, remained a wound that even time did not heal. Together with the bombing of Dresden this tragedy remains one of the most terrible events of World War II for the German people.
Some German publicists consider the sinking of Gustlov to be a crime against civilians, the same as the bombing of Dresden. However, here is the conclusion made by the Institute of Maritime Law in Kiel: “Wilhelm Gustloff was a legitimate military target, there were hundreds of submariners, anti-aircraft guns ... There were wounded, but the status of a floating hospital was absent. and ordered to destroy everything that floats. The Soviet armed forces had the right to respond in kind. "
Disaster researcher Heinz Schön concludes that the liner was a military target and its sinking was not a war crime, as:
ships intended for the transport of refugees, hospital ships had to be marked with the appropriate signs - a red cross, could not wear camouflage colors, could not go in the same convoy with military ships. They could not carry any military cargo, stationary and temporarily placed air defense weapons, artillery pieces or other similar means on board."Wilhelm Gustloff" was a warship, being assigned to the naval forces and armed, which was allowed to climb six thousand refugees. All responsibility for their lives, from the moment they boarded the warship, lay with the respective officials of the German navy. Thus, "Gustloff" was a legitimate military target of Soviet submariners, in view of the following facts:
"Wilhelm Gustloff" was not an unarmed civilian ship: it had weapons on board that could fight enemy ships and aircraft;
"Wilhelm Gustloff" was a training floating base for the German submarine fleet;
"Wilhelm Gustloff" accompanied by a German naval battleship (the Lev destroyer);
Soviet transports with refugees and wounded during the war years repeatedly became targets for German submarines and aviation (in particular, motor ship "Armenia", sunk in 1941 in the Black Sea, carried more than 5 thousand refugees and wounded on board. Only 8 people survived. However, "Armenia", like "Wilhelm Gustloff", violated the status of a medical vessel and was a legitimate military target).
... Years passed. Most recently, a correspondent for the magazine Der Spiegel met in St. Petersburg with Nikolai Titorenko, a former peacetime submarine commander and author of the book "Hitler's Personal Enemy" about Marinesko. Here is what he told the reporter: “I do not feel a sense of vengeful satisfaction. Germany has left the path of peaceful accord with Russia indicated by Bismarck. "
Unlike the lengthy search for the Titanic, finding Wilhelm Gustloff was easy.
Its coordinates at the time of sinking turned out to be accurate, moreover, the ship was at a relatively shallow depth - only 45 meters.
Mike Boring visited the shipwreck in 2003 and filmed a documentary about his expedition.
On Polish navigational charts the place is marked as "Obstacle No. 73"
In 2006, the bell, lifted from the shipwreck and then used as a decoration in a Polish fish restaurant, was exhibited at the Forced Paths exhibition in Berlin.
On March 2-3, 2008, a new TV film of the German channel ZDF entitled "Die Gustloff" was shown
In 1990, 45 years after the end of the war, Marinesko was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Later recognition came thanks to the activities of the "Marinesco Committee", which operated in Moscow, Leningrad, Odessa and Kaliningrad. Monuments were erected in Leningrad and Kaliningrad to the C-13 commander. A small museum of Russian submarine forces in the northern capital is named after Marinesko.
Background
After the National Socialist German Workers' Party headed by Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, one of its activities was the creation of a wide system of social security and services, which would make it possible to increase the social base of support for Nazi policies among the population of Germany. Already in the mid-30s, the ordinary German worker, in terms of the level of services and benefits that he was entitled to, favorably distinguished from workers in other European countries. To spread the influence of the ideas of National Socialism and organize the leisure of the working class, organizations such as Strength Through Joy (German Kraft durch Freude - KDF), which was part of the German Labor Front (DAF), were formed. The main goal of this organization was a system of recreation and travel for German workers. To fulfill this goal, among other things, an entire fleet of passenger ships was built to provide cheap and affordable travel and cruises. The flagship of this fleet was to be a new comfortable liner, which the authors of the project wanted to call after the German Fuhrer "Adolf Hitler".
The assassination of Wilhelm Gustloff
Perhaps this liner would have remained in history under the name "Adolf Hitler" if it had not been for the murder of a few previously known Swiss Nazi activist Wilhelm Gustloff. Gustloff was assassinated in Davos on February 4, 1936 by Jewish student David Frankfurter. This story became scandalous, especially in Germany, given the nationality of the killer. The case of the murder of a German, and even the leader of the National Socialists of Switzerland, was the perfect confirmation of the Nazi theory of a conspiracy of world Jewry against the German people. Thanks to this murder, Wilhelm Gustloff turned from one of the leaders of foreign Nazis into a "symbol of suffering" (the so-called Blutzeuge). He was buried with state honors, in his honor numerous rallies were held throughout Germany in his memory, which were skillfully exploited by Nazi propaganda, a variety of objects in Germany were named after him.
In this regard, when in 1937 a cruise ship ordered from the Blom & Voss shipyard was ready for launching, the Nazis decided to take this opportunity to perpetuate the "hero of the Nazi cause and suffering for the German people." At the initiative of Hitler, it was decided to name the new liner "Wilhelm Gustloff". On the ceremonial launching on May 5, 1937, in addition to the main leaders of the Nazi regime, the widow of Gustloff also arrived, who at the ceremony, according to tradition, fortunately smashed a bottle of champagne on the side.
Specifications
Technologically, the Wilhelm Gustloff was not an exceptional ship, its engines were of medium power, and it was not built for fast travel, but rather for slow, enjoyable cruises. But in terms of amenities, equipment and recreational facilities, this ship was indeed one of the best in the world. Unlike other vessels of its class, the Gustloff, in confirmation of the "classless nature" of the Nazi regime, had cabins of the same size and the same excellent convenience for all passengers. The liner had ten decks. One of the newest technologies applied on it was the concept of an open deck with cabins that had direct access to it and a clear view of the scenery. The liner was designed for 1,500 people. They were provided with a luxuriously decorated swimming pool, winter garden, large spacious halls, music rooms, several bars ..
In addition to purely technical innovations and the best devices for an unforgettable journey, "Wilhelm Gustloff", worth 25 million marks, was a kind of symbol and propaganda tool for the authorities of the Third Reich. According to Robert Lei, head of the German Labor Front, these liners could:
For German citizens, traveling on the Gustloff was to be not only unforgettable, but also affordable, regardless of social status. For example, a five-day cruise along the coast of Italy cost only 150 Reichsmarks, while the average monthly salary of an ordinary German was 150-250 Reichsmarks. For comparison, the cost of a ticket on this liner was only one third of the cost of such cruises in Europe, where only representatives of the wealthy and nobility could use them. Thus, "Wilhelm Gustloff" with its conveniences, level of comfort and accessibility not only consolidated the disposition of the German people to the Nazi regime, but also demonstrated the advantages of National Socialism to the whole world.
The flagship of the cruise fleet
After the ceremonial launching of the ship, 10 months passed before the "Wilhelm Gustloff" passed sea trials in May 1938. During this time, the finishing and arrangement of the interior of the liner was completed. As a gratitude to the builders, the ship was taken on a two-day cruise in the North Sea, which qualified as a test. The official first cruise took place on May 24, 1938, and almost two-thirds of its passengers were citizens of Austria, which Hitler intended to soon join Germany. Thus, the unforgettable journey was aimed at stunning the level of service and convenience of the Austrians - the cruise participants - and to convince others of the advantages of an alliance with Germany. The cruise was a real triumph, a testament to the achievements of the new government in Germany, the world press enthusiastically described the experience of the cruise participants and the extraordinary luxury on board the ship. Even Hitler himself arrived on the ship, which symbolized the best in the country during his leadership. When the excitement around this achievement of the Hitler regime subsided somewhat, the liner began to fulfill the task for which it was built - to provide affordable, comfortable cruises to the workers of Germany.
Propaganda tool
Although the Wilhelm Gustloff offered truly memorable and cheap travel and cruises, it has also remained in history as a powerful propaganda tool for the Nazi regime. The first unplanned incident occurred during the rescue of the sailors of the English ship "Pegway", which sank on April 2, 1938 in the North Sea. The bravery and determination of the captain, who left the procession of three ships to save the British, was noted not only by the world press, but also by the British government - the captain was awarded, and a memorial plaque was later installed on the ship. Consequently, when on April 10 "Gustloff" was used as a floating polling station for the Germans and Austrians of Great Britain participating in the plebiscite on the annexation of Austria, not only the British, but also the world press wrote about it favorably. During the plebiscite, nearly 2,000 citizens from both countries and a large number of correspondents sailed into neutral waters off the coast of Great Britain to take part in a plebiscite in which only four voters abstained. The Western, and even the British communist press was delighted with the liner and the achievements of Germany. The participation of such a perfect vessel in the plebiscite symbolized the new that the Nazi regime introduced in Germany.
Cruises and troop transport
As the flagship of the cruise fleet, Wilhelm Gustloff spent only a year and a half at sea and made 50 cruises under the Power through Joy program. It was visited by about 65,000 tourists. Usually, during the warm season, the liner offered trips to the North Sea, the coast of Germany, and the Norwegian fjords. In winter, the liner went on cruises along Mediterranean Sea, the coast of Italy, Spain and Portugal. For many, despite minor inconveniences such as being banned from going ashore in countries that did not support the Nazi regime, these cruises remained unforgettable and the best time of the entire period of Nazi rule in Germany. Many ordinary Germans took advantage of the services of the Strength through Joy program and were sincerely grateful to the new regime for providing recreational opportunities incomparable with other European countries.
Despite these achievements, "Wilhelm Gustloff" remained a state-owned vessel, and as such took part in all activities and activities of the German government. So on May 20, 1939, "Wilhelm Gustloff" for the first time transported troops - German volunteers of the "Condor" legion, who took part in the Spanish Civil War on the side of Franco. The arrival of the ship in Hamburg with "war heroes" on board caused a great resonance throughout Germany, and a special welcoming ceremony was held at the port with the participation of state leaders.
Military service
The last cruise of the liner took place on August 25, 1939. Suddenly, during a planned voyage in the middle of the North Sea, the captain received a coded order to urgently return to port. Cruise time was over - less than a week later, Germany invaded Poland and World War II began.
Military hospital
With the outbreak of war, almost all KDF ships were in military service. "Wilhelm Gustloff" was converted into a hospital ship (German. Lazarettschiff) and assigned to the German Navy. The liner was repainted white and marked with red crosses, which was supposed to protect it from attack according to the Hague Convention. The first patients began arriving on board during the war against Poland in October 1939. Even in such conditions, the German authorities used the ship as a means of propaganda - to show the humanity of the Nazi leadership, most of the first patients were wounded Polish prisoners. Over time, when German losses also became significant, the ship was sent to the port of Gottengaffen (Gdynia), where it takes on board even more wounded, as well as the Germans (Volksdeutsche) evacuated from eastern Poland, which was annexed to the USSR.
With the war spreading to much of Europe, Wilhelm Gustloff first received casualties during the capture of Norway in the summer of 1940 and then prepared to transport troops in the event of an invasion of Britain. However, due to the failure of German attempts to conquer her, these plans were not implemented, and, together with the reorientation of German attention to the east, the ship was sent to Danzig, where the last 414 wounded were treated, and "Wilhelm Gustloff" was awaiting assignment for further service. However, the ship's service as a military hospital ended - by decision of the leadership of the Navy, it was assigned to a submariner's school in Gottengaffen (Gdynia). The liner was again repainted in a gray camouflage color, and he lost the protection of the Hague Convention, which he had before.
Naval Floating Barracks
Transformed from a liner into a floating barracks for a submariner's school, "Wilhelm Gustloff" spent most of its short life in this capacity - almost four years. The school of submariners trained personnel for the German submarine war at an accelerated pace, and the longer the war lasted, the more personnel passed through the school, the shorter the study period became and the younger the age of the cadets. The chance of survival in the submarine war, which Germany began to lose, for the cadets was 1 in 10. This, however, did not affect the fate of "Wilhelm Gustloff", since he was away from the front line for a long time. With the end of the war approaching, the situation began to change not in favor of Germany - many cities suffered from raids by allied aviation. On October 9, 1943, Gottengaffen (Gdynia) was bombed, as a result of which another ship of the former KDF was sunk, and the "Wilhelm Gustloff" was damaged. In the second half of 1944, even this did not seem to be the worst - the front approached very close to East Prussia.
Panic and evacuation of the population
The Germans of East Prussia had certain reasons to fear revenge on the part of the Soviet Army - the great destruction and killings of civilians in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union were known to many. In addition, as Soviet propaganda skillfully used information about the atrocities of the Germans to strengthen the fighting spirit of Soviet soldiers and calls for revenge, so the German depicted (often falsely) "the horrors of the Soviet offensive."
In October 1944, the first detachments of the Soviet Army were already on the territory of East Prussia. The first German city captured by Soviet troops was Nemmersdorf (modern Mayakovsk, Kaliningrad region of Russia). A few days later, the Germans managed to recapture the city for some time, and Nazi propaganda launched a wide campaign "denouncing Soviet atrocities", accusing Soviet soldiers of massacres and rape. By spreading such propaganda, the Nazis achieved their goal - the number of volunteers in the Volkssturm militia (German: Volkssturm) increased, but the propaganda also led to increased panic among the civilian population as the front approached, and millions of people became refugees.
At the beginning of 1945, a significant number of people were already fleeing in panic from the advancing Soviet Army. Many of them followed to ports on the Baltic Sea coast. To evacuate a huge number of refugees, on the initiative of the German admiral Karl Dönitz, a special operation "Hannibal" was carried out, which went down in history as the world's largest evacuation of the population by sea. During this operation, almost 2 million civilians were evacuated to Germany - on large shipslike "Wilhelm Gustloff", bulk carriers and tugs.
Development of events
Thus, within the framework of Operation Hannibal, on January 22, 1945, Wilhelm Gustloff began to take refugees on board. At first, people were accommodated with special passes - first of all, several dozen submarine officers, several hundred women from the naval auxiliary division, and almost a thousand wounded soldiers. Later, when tens of thousands of people gathered in the port and the situation became more complicated, they began to let everyone in, giving an advantage to women and children. Since the projected number of seats was only 1,500, refugees began to be accommodated on decks, in passages; military women were even placed in an empty pool. In the last stages of the evacuation, the panic intensified so much that some women in the port, in despair, began to hand over their children to those who managed to get on board, hoping to save them at least in this way. By the end, on January 30, 1945, the ship's crew officers had already stopped counting refugees, the number of which exceeded 10,000.
According to some German estimates, there should have been 10,400 passengers on board, of which about 8,800 civilians, including children, and about 1,500 military personnel). When the Wilhelm Gustloff finally departed at 12:30, accompanied by two escort ships, disputes arose between the four senior officers on the bridge. In addition to the commander of the ship, Captain Peterson, called up from retirement, the commander of the 2nd training division of submariners and two captains of the merchant fleet were on board, and there was no agreement between them as to which fairway to lead the ship and what precautions to take with respect to submarines and aircraft of the allies ... The outer fairway was chosen (German designation Zwangsweg 58). Contrary to the recommendations to go in a zigzag fashion, in order to complicate the attack by submarines, it was decided to go on a straight course at a speed of 12 knots, since the corridor in the minefields was not wide enough and the captains hoped in this way to get to safe waters faster. In addition, due to technical problems, one of the escort ships had to return to the port, and only one destroyer Löwe remained in escort. At 18:00, a message was received about a convoy of minesweepers, which was supposedly going towards, and when it was already dark, it was ordered to turn on the running lights to prevent a collision. In reality, there were no minesweepers, and the circumstances of the appearance of this radiogram have remained unclear to this day. According to other sources, the minesweeper section was trawling towards the convoy, and appeared later than the time given in the notification.
Drowning
When the commander of the Soviet submarine S-13, Alexander Marinesko, saw the brightly lit, contrary to all the norms of military practice, "Wilhelm Gustloff", then for two hours he followed him on the surface, choosing a position for an attack. Even here, fate failed the Gustloff, as submarines were usually unable to catch up with surface ships, but Captain Peterson was slower than design speed, given the significant overcrowding and uncertainty about the ship's condition after years of inactivity and repairs after the bombing. At 19:30, without waiting for the minesweepers, Peterson gave the command to extinguish the lights, but it was too late - Marinesco worked out a plan of attack.
At about nine o'clock, the S-13 entered from the coast, where it could least be expected, and from a distance of less than 1,000 m at 21:04 she launched the first torpedo with the inscription "For the Motherland", and then two more - "For the Soviet people" and " For Leningrad ". The fourth, already cocked torpedo "For Stalin", got stuck in the torpedo tube and nearly exploded, but it was neutralized, the hatches of the vehicles were closed and the boat was submerged.
At 21:16 the first torpedo hit the bow of the ship, later the second blew up the empty pool, where the women of the naval auxiliary battalion were, and the last hit the engine room. The passengers' first thought was that they had run into a mine, but Captain Peterson knew it was a submarine, and his first words were: Das war's (That's all). Those passengers who did not die from the three explosions and did not drown in the cabins of the lower decks rushed to the lifeboats in panic. At that moment, it turned out that by ordering to close, according to the instructions, the watertight compartments in the lower decks, the captain inadvertently blocked part of the team that was supposed to start lowering the boats and evacuating the passengers. Therefore, in panic and stampede, not only many children and women died, but also those who made it to the upper deck died. They could not lower the lifeboats, because they did not know how, moreover, many davits were iced up, and the ship had already received a strong list. By the joint efforts of the crew and passengers, some of the boats were launched, and yet there were many people in the icy water. An anti-aircraft gun came off the deck of the ship's strong heel and crushed one of the boats, already full of people. An hour and 10 minutes after the attack, the Wilhelm Gustloff completely sank.
It is noteworthy that just two weeks later, on February 9, 1945, the S-13 submarine under the command of Alexander Marinesko sank another large German transport, General von Steuben, as a result of which about 3,700 people died.
Rescue of the survivors
The only escort ship "Leve" was the first to arrive at the scene of the tragedy and began to rescue the surviving passengers. Since in January the temperature was already -18 ° C, there were only a few minutes before irreversible hypothermia occurred. Despite this, the ship managed to save 472 passengers from boats and from the water. The escort ships of another convoy also came to the rescue - the cruiser "Admiral Hipper", which, in addition to the crew, also had about 1,500 refugees on board. For fear of an attack by submarines, he did not stop and continued to retire to safe waters. Other ships managed to save another 179 people. A little more than an hour later, the new ships that came to the rescue were able to fish only dead bodies from the icy water. Later, a small messenger ship, which arrived at the scene of the tragedy, unexpectedly found, seven hours after the sinking of the liner, among hundreds of dead bodies, an unnoticed boat and in it a living baby wrapped in blankets - the last rescued passenger of "Wilhelm Gustloff".
As a result, it was possible to survive, according to various estimates, from 1,200 to 2,500 people out of more than 10 thousand on board. According to the maximum estimates, the loss is estimated at 9,343 lives.
Legal assessment of the sinking
From a legal point of view, the actions of Commander Marinesko are impeccable. Ships intended for the transport of refugees, hospital ships must be marked with the appropriate signs - a red cross, cannot wear camouflage, cannot go in the same convoy with military ships. They may not carry any military cargo, stationary and temporarily placed air defense weapons, artillery pieces, or other means. In legal terms, the Wilhelm Gustloff was a battleship that allowed six thousand refugees to board. All responsibility for their lives, from the moment they embarked on a battleship, rests with the relevant officials of the German navy.
During the Cold War, Marinesco was considered a war criminal in Germany until the Institute of Maritime Law (Kiel, Germany) made a decision that fully justified Marinesco and recognized that Wilhelm Gustloff was a legitimate military prey for Soviet submariners. It was based on the following:
- "Wilhelm Gustloff" was not an unarmed civilian ship: it had weapons on board that could fight enemy ships and aircraft;
- Wilhelm Gustloff served as a training floating base for the German submarine fleet;
- The Wilhelm Gustloff was escorted by a German warship;
- Soviet transports with refugees and wounded during the war years repeatedly became targets for German submarines and aviation (in particular, the motor ship "Armenia", sunk in 1941 in the Black Sea, carried on board more than 5,000 refugees and wounded. Only 8 people survived. , “Armenia”, like “Wilhelm Gustloff”, violated the status of a medical vessel and was a legitimate military target). Therefore, the Soviet side was recognized the right to retaliate adequate actions in relation to the German courts.
Reaction to tragedy
The reaction to the sinking of "Wilhelm Gustloff" at the time of the tragedy was rather restrained. The Germans did not disclose the scale of the losses, so as not to suppress and worsen the morale of the population even more, in addition, at that moment the Germans suffered heavy losses in other places. However, at the end of the war, in the minds of many Germans, the simultaneous death of so many civilians and especially thousands of children on board the Wilhelm Gustloff remained a wound that even time did not heal. Together with the bombing of Dresden, this tragedy remains one of the most terrible events of the Second World War for the German people. Of the four captains who escaped after the sinking of the ship, the youngest, Kohler, could not bear the feeling of guilt for the tragedy of "Wilhelm Gustloff", soon after the war, committed suicide.
In Soviet historiography, this event was called "Attacks of the Century" - Alexander Marinesko was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Monuments were erected to him in Kaliningrad, in Kronstadt, and in St. Petersburg, he is considered Soviet submariner No. 1.
Researching the wreckage of the ship
Unlike the lengthy search for the Titanic, finding Wilhelm Gustloff was easy. Its coordinates at the time of drowning ( 55 ° 07'00 ″ s. sh. 17 ° 41'00 "in. etc. (G)) were surprisingly accurate; in addition, the ship was at a relatively shallow depth - only 45 meters. After the war, Soviet specialists visited the remains of the ship - there is a version that they were looking for a well-known The amber room... During these visits, the middle part of the sunken ship was blown up, leaving only the stern and bow. During the post-war years, some items from the ship ended up in private collections as souvenirs. The Polish government proclaimed this place a mass grave by law and prohibited private visits to the remains. An exception was made for the explorers, the most famous of whom is Mike Boring, who visited the shipwreck in 2003 and filmed a documentary about his expedition. On Polish nautical maps, the place is designated as “Obstacle No. 73 ".
In 2006, the bell, raised from a shipwreck and then used as a decoration in a Polish fish restaurant, was exhibited at the Forced Paths exhibition in Berlin.
"Wilhelm Gustloff" in literature and cinema
In 1959, the feature film "Night over Gotenhafen" (German: Nacht fiel über Gotenhafen) about the tragedy of the shipwreck was shot in Germany. The German occupation authorities called Gotenhafen the Polish city of Gdynia, from where “Wilhelm Gustloff” set off on his last voyage.
The novel "Trajectory of the Crab" (Im Krebsgang, 2002) by the German writer, Nobel Prize laureate Gunter Grass received a great response. The book is narrated on behalf of a journalist, a resident of modern Germany, who was born aboard the "Gustloff" on the day of the shipwreck. The disaster of "Gustloff" does not let the hero of Grasse go, and the events of more than half a century ago lead to a new tragedy.
A wonderful work about the history and death of a German passenger liner, which was used during the Second World War as a floating hospital, and which went down in history as one of the most disastrous, if not the most disastrous disaster in the history of navigation. The sinking of the ship "Wilhelm Gustloff", torpedoed on January 30, 1945 by the Soviet submarine S-13 under the command of A. I. Marinesko, is considered one of the largest disasters in maritime history - according to official data alone, 5,348 people died in it, and, according to estimates a number of historians, real losses could be from eight to nine thousand victims. "Wilhelm Gustloff" (German: Wilhelm Gustloff) is a German passenger liner belonging to the German organization "Strength through Joy" (German: Kraft durch Freude - KdF), since 1940 a floating hospital. Named after the assassinated Nazi party leader Wilhelm Gustloff. Unlike other ships of its class, the Gustloff, in confirmation of the "classless nature" of the Nazi regime, had cabins of the same size and the same excellent convenience for all passengers. "Wilhelm Gustloff", which cost 25 million Reichsmarks, was a kind of symbol and means of propaganda for the authorities of the Third Reich.
For German citizens, traveling on the Gustloff was to be not only unforgettable, but also affordable, regardless of social status. For example, a five-day cruise along the coast of Italy cost only 150 Reichsmarks, while the average monthly salary of an ordinary German was 150-250 Reichsmarks (for comparison, the cost of a ticket on this liner was only a third of the cost of such cruises in Europe, where they could only be afforded representatives of the wealthy strata of the population and the nobility). Thus, "Wilhelm Gustloff" with its conveniences, level of comfort and accessibility not only consolidated the disposition of the German people to the Nazi regime, but also had to demonstrate to the whole world the advantages of National Socialism.
As the flagship of the cruise fleet, Wilhelm Gustloff spent only a year and a half at sea and made 50 cruises under the Power through Joy program. It was visited by about 65,000 tourists. Usually, during the warm season, the liner offered trips to the North Sea, the coast of Germany, and the Norwegian fjords. In winter, the liner went on cruises in the Mediterranean Sea, the coast of Italy, Spain and Portugal. For many, despite minor inconveniences such as the ban on landings in countries that did not support the Nazi regime, these cruises remained unforgettable and the best time of the entire period of Nazi rule in Germany. Many ordinary Germans used the services of the Strength through Joy program and were sincerely grateful to the new regime for providing recreational opportunities that were not comparable to other European countries.
In addition to cruising, the Wilhelm Gustloff remained a state owned vessel and was involved in various activities carried out by the German government. So on May 20, 1939, "Wilhelm Gustloff" for the first time transported troops - German volunteers of the "Condor" legion, which took part in the Spanish civil war on the side of Franco. The arrival of the ship in Hamburg with "war heroes" on board caused a great resonance throughout Germany, and a special welcoming ceremony was held at the port with the participation of state leaders.
With the outbreak of war, almost all KDF ships were in military service. "Wilhelm Gustloff" was converted into a hospital ship (German. Lazarettschiff) and assigned to the German Navy. The liner was repainted white and marked with red crosses, which was supposed to protect it from attack according to the Hague Convention. The first patients began arriving on board during the war against Poland in October 1939. Even in such conditions, the German authorities used the ship as a means of propaganda - as evidence of the humanity of the Nazi leadership, most of the first patients were wounded Polish prisoners. Over time, when the German losses became significant, the ship was sent to the port of Gotengafen (Gdynia), where it took on board even more wounded, as well as the Germans (Volksdeutsche) evacuated from East Prussia.
With the war spreading to much of Europe, Wilhelm Gustloff first received casualties during the capture of Norway in the summer of 1940 and then prepared to transport troops in the event of an invasion of Britain. However, due to the abandonment of Operation Sea Lion, these plans were not implemented, and, together with the reorientation of German attention to the east, the ship was sent to Danzig, where the last 414 wounded were treated, and the Wilhelm Gustloff was awaiting assignment for further service. However, the ship's service as a military hospital ended - by decision of the leadership of the Navy, it was assigned to the submariners' school in Gotenhafen. The liner was again repainted in a gray camouflage color, and he lost the protection of the Hague Convention, which he had before.
within the framework of Operation Hannibal on January 22, 1945, the Wilhelm Gustloff in the port of Gdynia (then called by the Germans Gotenhafen (German Gotenhafen) began to take refugees on board. First, people were placed on special passes - primarily several dozen hundreds of women from the naval auxiliary division and almost a thousand wounded soldiers.Later, when tens of thousands of people gathered in the port and the situation became more complicated, they began to let everyone in, giving priority to women and children.As the projected number of seats was only 1,500, refugees began to be placed on the decks, During the last stages of the evacuation, the panic intensified so much that some women in the port in despair began to give their children to those who managed to get on board, hoping to save them in this way. On January 30, 1945, the ship's crew officers had already stopped counting refugees, the number of which exceeded 10,000.
When the commander of the Soviet submarine S-13, Alexander Marinesko, saw the brightly lit, contrary to all the norms of military practice, "Wilhelm Gustloff", for two hours he followed him on the surface, choosing a position for an attack. Typically, submarines of the time were unable to catch up with surface ships, but Captain Peterson went slower than design speed, given the significant overcrowding and uncertainty about the state of the ship after years of inactivity and repairs after the bombing. At 19:30, without waiting for the minesweepers, Peterson gave the order to extinguish the lights, but it was too late - Marinesco worked out a plan of attack.
At about nine o'clock, the S-13 entered from the coast, where it could least be expected from a distance of less than 1,000 m at 21:04, fired the first torpedo with the inscription "For the Motherland", and then two more - "For the Soviet people" and "For Leningrad ". The fourth, already cocked torpedo "For Stalin", got stuck in the torpedo tube and almost exploded, but it was neutralized, the hatches of the vehicles were closed and the boat was submerged.
At 21:16, the first torpedo hit the bow of the ship, later the second blew up an empty pool, where the women of the naval auxiliary battalion were, and the last hit the engine room. The passengers' first thought was that they ran into a mine, but Captain Peterson realized that it was a submarine, and his first words were: Das war’s (That's it). Those passengers who did not die from the three explosions and did not drown in the cabins on the lower decks rushed to the lifeboats in panic. At that moment, it turned out that by ordering to close, according to the instructions, the watertight compartments in the lower decks, the captain inadvertently blocked part of the crew, which was supposed to start lowering the boats and evacuating passengers. Therefore, in the panic and crush, not only many children and women died, but also many of those who made it to the upper deck. They could not lower the lifeboats, because they did not know how to do this, besides, many davits were iced up, and the ship had already received a strong list. By the joint efforts of the crew and passengers, some of the boats were launched, and yet there were many people in the icy water. An anti-aircraft gun came off the deck of the ship's strong heel and crushed one of the boats, already full of people. Approximately an hour after the attack, the Wilhelm Gustloff sank completely.
The destroyer "Lion" (a former ship of the Dutch Navy) was the first to arrive at the scene of the tragedy and began rescuing the surviving passengers. Since in January the temperature was already −18 ° C, there were only a few minutes left before irreversible hypothermia occurred. Despite this, the ship managed to rescue 472 passengers from boats and from the water. The escort ships of another convoy also came to the rescue - the cruiser Admiral Hipper, which, in addition to the crew, also had about 1,500 refugees on board. For fear of an attack by submarines, he did not stop and continued to retire to safe waters. Other ships (under "other ships" is meant the only destroyer T-38 - the GAS did not work on the "Lion", the "Hipper" left) managed to save another 179 people. A little more than an hour later, the new ships that came to the rescue were able to fish only dead bodies from the icy water. Later, a small messenger ship, which arrived at the scene of the tragedy, unexpectedly found, seven hours after the sinking of the liner, among hundreds of dead bodies, an unnoticed boat and in it a living baby wrapped in blankets - the last rescued passenger of "Wilhelm Gustloff".
As a result, it was possible to survive, according to various estimates, from 1200 to 2500 people from a little less than 11 thousand who were on board. According to the maximum estimates, the losses are estimated at 9,985 lives.
In Germany, the reaction to the sinking of "Wilhelm Gustloff" at the time of the tragedy was rather restrained. The Germans did not disclose the scale of the losses, so as not to worsen the morale of the population even more. In addition, at that moment the Germans suffered heavy losses in other places. However, after the end of the war, in the minds of many Germans, the simultaneous death of so many civilians and especially thousands of children on board the Wilhelm Gustloff remained a wound that even time did not heal. Together with the bombing of Dresden, this tragedy remains one of the most terrible events of the Second World War for the German people. Of the four captains who escaped the sinking of the ship, the youngest, Kohler, could not bear the feeling of guilt for the tragedy of "Wilhelm Gustloff", soon after the war, committed suicide.
In Soviet historiography, this event was called "Attacks of the Century". Alexander Marinesko was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Monuments were erected to him in Kaliningrad, Kronstadt, St. Petersburg and Odessa. In Soviet military historiography, he is considered submariner number 1.
Many people know about the death of the "Titanic" thanks to numerous publications and the famous film of the same name, which broke box office records. Having collided with an iceberg, the Titanic sank under the water claimed the lives of many people -1 513. During the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff during the 2nd World War, over 9,000 people died.
The Wilhelm Gustloff was launched on May 5, 1937. The ship was 208.5 m long and 23.5 m wide. The motor ship could carry 1,463, with a crew of 417 people. It had 10 landing decks. In terms of its comfort, the liner was one of the best ships of that time. At the passengers' service there was a magnificent swimming pool, a beautiful winter garden, several music salons, and bars. The plane tickets were affordable for all social strata of the German population. The ship not only aroused the love of the German people for the Nazi regime, but was also a means of promoting the "advantages" of the National Socialist system throughout the world.
The authors of the project planned to give it the name "Adolf Hitler", but on February 4, 1936. in Davos, an unremarkable Swiss NSDAP activist Wilhelm Gustloff was killed. And he was killed by a Jewish student David Frankfurter. For propaganda purposes, the state leader of the foreign Nazis was immediately turned into a victim of a conspiracy of world Jewry against the peaceful and hardworking German people, and a ship was named after him.
Sea trials and interior finishing were completed in May 1938. and on 24 May the ship embarked on its first cruise.
The ship was originally intended to propagate the Nazi regime. April 2, 1938 the crew of "Wilhelm Gustloff" will rescue British sailors in distress in the North Sea. The British reward the captain, and the name of the ship gets into all the world's media. The world is choking with delight over the achievements of Nazi Germany.
About 65 thousand people have traveled on cruise flights on the Wilhelm Gustloff. In addition, he transported volunteers of the Condor Legion to participate in the Spanish Civil War.
August 25, 1939 the ship embarked on another cruise, but in the North Sea the captain received a coded order to return to the port. A week later, World War II began.
With the outbreak of war, "Wilhelm Gustloff" was converted into a floating hospital. It was repainted white and marked with red crosses. According to the requirements of the Hague Convention, attacks on ambulances were prohibited.
But already in the summer of 1940. the leadership of the German navy assigned the ship to the school of submariners in Gotenhaven. The motor ship was repainted in camouflage color and the red crosses were removed. It was used as a floating barracks for a diving school for about four years.
The ship received the first damage on October 9, 1943. during an aerial bombardment by American aircraft of Gotenhaven, in the port of which it was located.
At the beginning of 1945, when the fighting took place in Germany, panic broke out among the population. Crowds of refugees moved towards Gotenhafen (now the Polish port of Gdynia).
January 22, 1945 the loading of servicemen and refugees on board the Wilhelm Gustloff began. The first were several dozen submarine officers, then several hundred women serving in the naval auxiliary division, about a thousand wounded soldiers, and then they began to let refugees in, giving priority to women and children. By January 30, over 10 thousand refugees were taken on board. At about 12.30 the ship set off on its last journey.
Usually large ships are escorted by convoy ships capable of providing protection against attacks, but evil doom had already spread its black wings over the "Wilhelm Gustloff". One of the escort ships, TF-19 torpedoes, returned to the port with damage to the hull as a result of a collision with a stone. The convoy of minesweepers, which allegedly went towards, did not reach the liner. And the doomed "Wilhelm Gustloff" went to the place of his death in guarding the only escort ship - the destroyer "Lion". Set off on a straight course, at a speed of 12 knots. He did not have enough fuel to follow the recommendations to go in a zigzag to complicate possible torpedo attacks. The ship made an excellent target. Moreover, hoping for a meeting with a convoy of minesweepers, the captain gave the order to turn on all the lights.
The brightly lit liner was spotted by the Soviet submarine C - 13, under the command of Captain Third Rank Alexander Marinesko. For two hours, the boat followed the ship, choosing a position convenient for the attack. When the captain of the "Wilhelm Gustloff" Peterson, having lost hope of waiting for the convoy of minesweepers, at 19.30 gave the command to put out the lights, it was already too late.
At 21.04, from a distance of less than one kilometer, C - 13 launched the first torpedo, and then two more. The fourth torpedo got stuck in the torpedo tube, almost sinking the boat, but, fortunately, did not explode.
At 21.16 the first torpedo ripped the bow of the liner, the second hit the pool, and the third hit the engine room.
Some of the passengers died from the explosions, some drowned in the cabins of the lower decks, and the survivors rushed to the lifeboats. Another part of the passengers died due to the resulting panic and crush. Most of them are women and children. By ordering to block the watertight compartments, Peterson also blocked the part of the crew that was supposed to lower the boats, and the passengers did not know how to do this. Nevertheless, several boats were launched. By that time, the ship had given a strong list. Because of the roll, an anti-aircraft gun fell off the deck and crashed onto one of the boats. Near the sinking liner in the icy water swam people mad with horror.
The destroyer "Lion" began to rescue. In total, the ship managed to save 472 passengers. The cruiser "Admiral Hipper", which had on board one and a half thousand passengers, passed by the scene of the tragedy. He passed without stopping, as he feared a torpedo attack. The only ship of his convoy, the destroyer T - 38, managed to get 179 people out of the water. The ships that arrived a little over an hour later for rescue were not found alive. Only corpses and debris floated in the icy water.
According to the maximum data, the losses were estimated at 9,343 people. Approximately 2,000 people survived.
The death of more than 9,000 people, mostly women and children, was the reason for conferring the title of Hero of the Soviet Union on Captain Marinesco. However, posthumously.
The most expensive motion picture so far was released a few weeks ago and brought record box office receipts. This film is, of course, Titanic, and it is about the sinking of the ocean liner Titanic on April 15, 1912, which killed 1,513 people after the ship hit an iceberg in the North Atlantic and sank.
There are many superlative adjectives in this film. The Titanic was the largest ship ever built. It was the most luxurious ship ever built for the comfortable, fast transatlantic voyages of the rich and jaded. This implies that the sinking of the Titanic was the greatest maritime disaster of all time. I'm sure the vast majority of Americans believe that this is the case, but it is not. Everyone has heard of the sinking of the Titanic, but few have heard of the sinking of the ship Wilhelm Gustloff, which was the greatest maritime disaster.
It is easy to see why everyone has heard of the Titanic: it was a very large, very expensive vessel, allegedly virtually unsinkable, that sank on its very first voyage with a record number of celebrity tycoons on board. The irony of the flooding caused a public outcry and widespread media coverage. On the contrary, when the Wilhelm Gustloff sank, killing over 7,000 people, the controlled media took the deliberate position that nothing special to write or even mention had happened. Like the Titanic, the Wilhelm Gustloff was a large passenger sea liner, relatively new and luxurious. However, it was a German passenger liner. He was sunk in the Baltic Sea on the night of January 30, 1945 by a Soviet submarine. It was packed with nearly 8,000 Germans, most of them women and children fleeing the advancing Soviet Army.
Many of these German refugees lived in East Prussia, a part of Germany that the Communists and their democratic allies decided to take from Germany and hand over to the Soviet Union at the end of World War II. Others lived in Danzig and surrounding areas, which the Democrats and Communists decided to take from Germany and give to Poland. All these refugees were fleeing the terror of the Reds, who had already shown what was in store for those Germans who would fall into their hands.
When Soviet military units intercepted columns of German refugees fleeing to the west, they did something that had not been seen in Europe since the Mongol invasion in the Middle Ages. All men - most of whom were peasants or Germans, engaged in vital occupations and thus exempt from military service - were usually simply killed on the spot. All women, almost without exception, were gang raped. This was the fate of eight-year-old girls, eighty-year-old women, and women in the last stages of pregnancy. Women who resisted rape had their throats slit or shot. Often, after gang rape, women were killed. Many women and girls were raped so many times that they died from this alone.
Sometimes Soviet tank columns simply crushed fleeing refugees with caterpillars. When parts of the Soviet Army occupied settlements East Prussia, they began such a bestial, bestial orgy of torture, rape and murder that it is not possible to fully describe it in this program. Sometimes they castrated men and boys before killing them. Sometimes they gouged out their eyes. Sometimes they burned them alive. Some women, after being gang raped, were crucified by being nailed to barn doors while they were still alive and then being used as targets for shooting.
This brutal behavior of the communist troops is partly due to the nature of the communist system, which, under the leadership of the Jews, overthrew Russian society and the Russian government with the hands of the scum of Russian society - embittered losers, incapable of envy and criminals. They were pitted against the more successful and fortunate, noble and prosperous, with promises to the mob that if they overthrew the best of their people, they would take their place: the first would be the last, and the last would be the first.
And it was from among such a rabble, these scum of Russian society, that the heads of local Soviets and workers' collectives were recruited, if these posts were not yet occupied by Jews. The Soviet soldiers of 1945 grew up under this worst power; for 25 years they lived under commissars chosen from the scum of Russian society. Any tendency towards nobility or elevation was ruthlessly rooted out. Stalin massacred 35,000 Red Army officers, half of the Russian officer corps, in 1937, just two years before the start of the war, because he did not trust the gentlemen. The officers who replaced those executed during the 1937 purge were by no means more civilized in their behavior than the commissars themselves.
But a much more immediate and direct cause of the atrocities against the German population of East Prussia was the Soviet misanthropic propaganda, which deliberately incited Soviet troops to rape and kill - even young German children. The chief of Soviet propaganda was a Jew drenched in animal hatred by the name of Ilya Ehrenburg. One of his addresses to the Soviet troops said:
“Kill! Kill! In the German race there is nothing but evil; neither among those who are already living, nor among those who have not yet been born, only one evil! Follow the precepts of Comrade Stalin. Destroy the fascist beast once and for all in its lair. Trample the racial pride of these German women. Take them as your legal prey. Kill! Moving forward uncontrollably, kill, valiant soldiers of the Red Army. "Of course, not all Soviet soldiers were rapists and butcher-killers: only most of them. Some of them retained a sense of decency and morality that even Jewish communism could not destroy. Alexander Solzhenitsyn was one of them. When the Red Army entered East Prussia in January 1945, he was a young captain. He later wrote in his Gulag Archipelago:
We all knew very well that if the girls were German, then they could be raped and then shot. It was almost a mark of military distinction.In one of his poems, Prussian Nights, he describes a scene he witnessed in a house in Neudenburg, East Prussia:
Heringstrasse, house 22. It is not burnt, only plundered, devastated. Sobbing against the wall, half muffled: a wounded mother, barely alive. Little girl on the mattress, dead. How many were on it? Platoon, company? A girl turned into a woman, a woman turned into a corpse ... Mother pleads, "Soldier, kill me!"For the fact that he did not take to heart the directives of Comrade Ehrenburg, Solzhenitsyn was reported to the political commissar of his unit as politically unreliable, and he was thrown into the Gulag, a Soviet concentration camp.
So, the German civilian population fled East Prussia in terror, and for many of them the only escape was through the icy Baltic Sea. They packed into the port of Gotenhaven, near Danzig, hoping to sail westward. Hitler ordered the use of all available civilian ships in the rescue operation. "Wilhelm Gustloff" was one of them. A passenger liner with a displacement of 25,000 tons, before the war it was used by the organization "Strength through Joy", which organized low-cost travel and excursions for German workers. On January 30, 1945, when she sailed from Gothenhaven, she carried 1,100 crew officers and sailors, 73 seriously wounded soldiers, 373 young women from the Women's Auxiliary Marine Service, and over 6,000 distraught refugees, most of them women and children.
Soviet submarines and aircraft were the main threat to this rescue operation. They viewed the refugee ships in the light of Ehrenburg's genocidal propaganda: the more they killed the Germans, the better, and they didn't care if their victims were soldiers, women or children. Immediately after 21:00, when the Wilhelm Gustloff was 13 miles off the coast of Pomerania, three torpedoes from the Soviet submarine S-13 under the command of Captain A. I. Marinesko hit the ship. Ninety minutes later, he plunged under the icy waters of the Baltic. Despite the heroic efforts of other German ships to pick up the drowning, barely 1,100 people were saved. The rest, more than 7,000 Germans, died that night in the freezing water.
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| Scheme of torpedo hits in the corps of Wilhelm Gustloff |
A few days later, on February 10, 1945, the same Soviet submarine sank the German hospital ship General von Steuben, and 3,500 wounded soldiers on board, evacuated from East Prussia, drowned. For the Soviets, incited by Jewish misanthropic propaganda, the sign of the Red Cross meant nothing. On May 6, 1945, the German ship "Goya", also taking part in the rescue operation, was torpedoed by a Soviet submarine, and more than 6,000 refugees from East Prussia were killed.
The lack of awareness of these terrible 1945 maritime disasters is widespread, even among people who consider themselves versed in maritime history. And this ignorance comes from the contrived politics of the controlled media, the politics that categorized these disasters as meaningless events. The reason for this media policy was originally the same reason why Jewish media bosses accused the Germans of killing 15,000 Polish officers and intellectuals in the Katyn forests in 1940. They knew it was the Soviets who wanted to “proletarize” Poland and make Poles more susceptible to communist rule, but they didn’t want to tarnish the image of our “valiant Soviet ally,” as the controlled American media called it during the war. They wanted the Americans to think of the Germans as the bad guys and the Soviets as the good guys, so they lied about the Katyn massacre.
Likewise, even in the final months of the war, they didn’t want the Americans to know that our "gallant Soviet ally" had killed and raped civilians in East Prussia and deliberately sunk civilian ships carrying refugees across the Baltic Sea. This could negatively affect America's enthusiasm for continuing to destroy Germany with the help of our "gallant Soviet ally." This is why the controlled media did not report these things.
After the triumph of the democratic and communist allies and the unconditional surrender of Germany, this reason, of course, lost its relevance. But by then another motive had taken its place. The Jews began to write their own history of the "Holocaust", and demand sympathy from the whole world, as well as reparation money from everyone from whom they could get it. When they began to lament about their allegedly killed six million tribesmen in the "gas chambers" by bad Germans, and portrayed themselves as innocent and harmless victims of the greatest crime in history, they did not want any facts that could interfere with their enterprise. And, of course, they didn’t want Americans to be aware of both points of view on this conflict; they did not want the Germans to be considered victims either. All Germans were evil, as Comrade Ehrenburg said; and all the Jews were good; and that's the point. Jews suffered, but Germans did not suffer, and therefore the whole world owes money to Jews for not stopping the "Holocaust."
This could seriously damage their "holocaust" propaganda if the American public learned about what was happening in East Prussia or the Baltic Sea - or learned that our "valiant Soviet ally" exterminated a layer of the best people of the Polish nation in the Katyn Forest, and that some of the murderers who took part in this monstrous atrocity were Jews. This is why there was a conspiracy of silence among the Jewish media bosses in America. This is why Hollywood spent $ 200 million to direct the movie Titanic, but it will never make a movie about the sinking of Wilhelm Gustloff. And the point is not that such a film would not have made a profit - I think that a film about East Prussia and Wilhelm Gustloff would have been a huge success - but that there should be no sympathy for the Germans. There should be no reconsideration of the reasons why America fought the war against Germany, there should be no doubt whether we did the right thing to ally with communism in the interests of the Jews. And beyond these considerations, the truth does not count, at least for the Jews who control our media.
This page of history - the reasons for America's involvement in the war in Europe, which was completely unrelated to the war in the Pacific, despite the alliance between Germany and Japan - this page of history has always amazed me. And the reluctance of many Americans to explore this page is curious. I understand how the Clinton elements feel. For this sort of people who voted for Clinton, the Soviets were the good guys and the Germans the bad guys, for ideological reasons. Gang rapes, massacres and sinking of ships by refugees are not crimes in the eyes of subjects like Bill and Hillary if committed by communists against "Nazis".
But among the Americans who fought in Europe, there were also many decent people, American anti-communists, and many of them do not want to think and admit the fact that they fought on the wrong side. People like the American Legion and VFU don't want to hear about who actually killed the Polish intellectuals and Polish leaders in the Katyn Forest. They don't want to know what happened in East Prussia in 1945. They really do not like it when I ask them why we fought with Germany in the name of freedom, and at the end of the war gave half of Europe to communist slavery? They get angry when I suggest that Franklin Roosevelt may have been the same kind of deceitful Jewish accomplice and traitor as Bill Clinton, and that in exchange for media support he pulled us into a war on the Jewish side with lies, just as Clinton is drawing us into a war. us in the war in the Middle East on the side of the Jews.
I was too young to be in the military during the Second World War, but I am sure that if I had fought in that war, I would have been even more interested in what was behind it. I believe that knowing the truth about these things is much more important than a carefully guarded conviction that our cause was supposedly right. I am confident that we need to understand how we have been deceived in the past so as not to be deceived in the future.
William Pierce, March 1998
William Luther Pierce - Sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff
