Wilhelm Gustloff

Recently I heard a group of people discussing the tragedy in Haiti. Conversation turned to other disasters, including ship wrecks, and eventually someone posed a question as to what was the worst-ever maritime disaster. Most felt it was the Titanic, although one thought more people might have perished on the Lusitania. No one in the group made mention of the Wilhelm Gustloff.

This is understandable. Books, movies, documentaries and countless articles have memorialized the Titanic and Lusitania, but the Gustloff has been largely forgotten. 

The ship went down 65 years ago last month, taking nearly 8,000 lives, and the anniversary passed without notice.

The date was January 30, 1945. Germany was losing the war but Hitler refused to concede. The systematic demolition of his country, spearheaded by ruthless Russian forces, continued. Citizens were fleeing Germany in droves, their initial destination port cities on the Baltic. An ocean cruise ship named the Wilhelm Gustloff was pressed into service for the evacuation. Originally designed for about 1,600 passengers plus crew, the Gustloff prepared to take on far more. On January 29 more than 10,000 evacuees were approved to board for the trip to Kiel. The Gustloff sailed the next day, picking her way through a heavily mined harbor.     

A Russian submarine, the S13, commanded by Aleksandr Marinenko, was patrolling the Baltic under orders to sink any German ship they encountered.   Marinenko was considered by some in the Russian high command to be inefficient and prone to drunkenness, but on this day he was neither. His sub fell in behind the Gustlofff. 

Coincidences abound. The man after whom the ship was named was born exactly 50 years earlier, on January 30, 1895. Wilhelm Gustloff was a Hitler supporter and became a Nazi community organizer. His fervor for the Nazi cause was a factor in bringing about the ruin, financial and otherwise, of a good many Jewish citizens. One of them, David Frankfurter, was so incensed by the indignities and poverty Gustloff forced upon his family that he sought him out and killed him. Nazis hailed Gustloff a martyr and when they commissioned an elegant cruise ship in 1938 it was named after him. 

The S13 followed the liner undetected for several hours, Marinenko maneuvering his sub into point-blank firing position. Three torpedoes struck the Gustloff broadside and within minutes 10,000 evacuees, most of them women and children, were adrift in the frigid waters. Marinenko surfaced to survey the damage, then left to seek another victim.  

Approximately 8,000 drowned—a staggering figure, but the worst maritime disaster in recorded history was largely overlooked in the carnage taking place as the war in Germany came to an end.  

           

 

Roy Marshall is a local historian. E-mail him at news@redoakexpress.com.