January 30, 1945. The Second World War in European territory was about to end. German forces had launched Operation Hannibal, a massive maritime evacuation of civilians in Courland, East Prussia, and the Polish Corridor, who were trying to escape the relentless advance of the Red Army. One of the ships used was the MV Wilhelm Gustloff, a transport originally designed as a luxury cruise ship, which thousands of people boarded to cross the Baltic Sea. But the Soviet submarine S-13 was in the area...
It was a game over that lasted four months. The German forces were defeated. Operation Nordwind, the last major offensive of the Nazi army, had been a failure. The brutal Battle of the Bulge tipped in favor of the allies The Red Army was entering Auschwitz. Rumors (true ones) about murders and rapes by Soviet soldiers spread like wildfire among the German population. Operation Hannibal aimed to evacuate civilians across the Baltic Sea. The so-called “Polish Corridor” was about to explode...
The Ship and Its Final Voyage
In the port city of Gotenhafen (now Gdynia) was the MV Wilhelm Gustloff. Its history tells us that it began as a luxury cruise ship under the Nazi organization Kraft durch Freude, but in 1939 it came under the control of the Kriegsmarine as a hospital, armed transport, and floating barracks. Thousands of people flooded and saturated the city, trying to get a small place on the Wilhelm Gustloff. Official records indicate that at the time of its departure at noon on January 30, 1945, a little over six thousand people were traveling... but a later analysis suggests the actual number of passengers was close to 10,500. The Wilhelm Gustloff had been designed to carry fewer than 2,000 people, including the crew.
An inadequate escort (barely two torpedo boats, and one of them broke down), four captains on board who couldn't agree, and a dilemma: Stay in shallow waters and face the mines, or avoid them completely and roll the dice with submarines. Despite the recommendations made by military officials, the captain of the Wilhelm Gustloff, Friedrich Petersen, decided to head into deep waters with navigation lights on to improve visibility. From the perspective of a submarine, the ship was a Christmas tree.
The Attack
That submarine was the S-13, under the command of Alexander Marinesko. Marinesko was considered a brilliant commander, but his recurring problems with alcohol had ruined his reputation, and he was on the brink of a court-martial. The Wilhelm Gustloff thus became a golden opportunity for the devalued Marinesko, and after positioning himself, he ordered the firing of four torpedoes: “For the Motherland,” “For Leningrad,” “For the Soviet People,” and “For Stalin.” One of them got stuck in the tube (Stalin), but the other three struck the cruise ship on the left side (port).
Survivor testimonies are unanimous and blunt: After the attack, the Wilhelm Gustloff became a slaughterhouse. People fighting for a place in the lifeboats, dead and crushed children (more than five thousand were aboard the cruise ship), oars turned into weapons to push away those who jumped onto the boats and tried to climb aboard. A father (still with the swastika on his arm) killing his wife and child before throwing himself into the icy sea.
The Aftermath
The rescue ships found they had the same problems as the Wilhelm Gustloff: lack of capacity, and the threat of the S-13 underwater. By the next morning, the area of the attack was a cemetery. Lifeboats were not a guarantee either, and many died in them. Of those 10,500 passengers, barely a thousand escaped alive.
And no one talked about it at first. The last thing Nazi Germany needed was to announce such a disaster, and the Soviet Union had no interest in reporting the death of 9,500 civilians. A couple of mentions reached the United States, but nothing more than that. Why? In essence... because they were Nazis. After what Hitler and his band of psychopaths had done in Europe, talking about German suffering or showing empathy for their population did not rank high on the list of priorities. Thus was recorded the greatest maritime disaster in history: just another entry among all German wartime losses.
Source: Smithsonian Magazine
