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The Wilhelm Gustloff was a passenger ship constructed by the Blohm and Voss shipyards. She was named after the assassinated German leader of the Swiss NSDAP (Nazi) party, Wilhelm Gustloff. She was launched on May 5, 1937, measured 208.50 meters (684 feet) long by 23.59 meters (77.39 feet) wide, and weighed 25,484 GRT.

During Operation Hannibal, while evacuating German soldiers and refugees trapped by the Red Army in East Prussia, she was hit by three torpedoes from the Soviet submarine S-13 in the Baltic Sea on the night of January 30, 1945. She sank in under 45 minutes, taking possibly as many as 9,400 people with her^[1][2] — probably the largest loss of life in a single sinking in maritime history.^[3]

Contents 1 History 2 Sinking 2.1 Final voyage 2.2 Controversy 3 Wreckage 4 Movie and novel 5 See also 6 External links 7 Further reading 8 References 9 Footnotes

The ship was the first purpose-built cruise liner for the Nazi Kraft durch Freude (KdF) ("Strength Through Joy") labor organization, which provided recreational and cultural activities for German functionaries and workers, including concerts, cruises, and other holidays. The Wilhelm Gustloff was the flagship of the KdF cruise fleet until the spring of 1939. That was her last civilian role.

From then on she served the needs of the German military.

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

From September 1939 to November 1940, she served as a hospital ship, her official designation being Lazarettschiff D. On her first mission to the Baltic Sea, she treated 650 wounded Polish soldiers. Later in the Second World War, as a consequence of the British blockade of the German coastline, she was used as an accommodations ship for U-boat trainees in the Baltic port of Gdynia (called at times Gdingen in German, or Gotenhafen during the World War II occupation of Poland) by Nazi Germany.

The ship's final voyage was to evacuate civilians, Nazi officials, Kriegsmarine sailors, and wounded German soldiers from Gdynia near Danzig (Gdańsk) to Kiel. The ship's complement and passenger lists totaled 6,050 people on board, but this did not include many refugees who boarded the ship without being recorded in the ship's official embarkation records. Heinz Schön, who carried out extensive research into the sinking during the 1980s and 1990s, concluded that the Wilhelm Gustloff was carrying a crew of 173 (naval armed forces auxiliaries), 918 officers, NCOs, and men of the 2nd Submarine Training Division (2.Unterseeboot-Lehrdivision), 373 female naval auxiliary helpers, 162 badly wounded soldiers, and 8,956 refugees, for a total of 10,582 passengers and crew.^[2] Although the ship was built for 1,465 passengers, she had the capacity to board many more for a short trip by utilizing her public recreation spaces to accommodate people, but she was carrying less than 50% of the rescue equipment necessary for the extra passengers.^{[citation needed]}

The ship left Gdynia early on 30 January 1945, accompanied by the passenger liner Hansa, also filled with refugees and soldiers, and two torpedo boats. The Hansa and one torpedo boat developed problems and could not continue, leaving the Wilhelm Gustloff with only one torpedo boat escort, the Löwe.^[4] The ship had four captains on board, three civilian and one military, and they could not agree on the best course of action to guard against submarine attacks. Against the advice of the military commander, Lieutenant Commander Wilhelm Zahn (a submariner who argued for a course in shallow waters close to shore and without lights), the senior civilian captain, Friedrich Petersen, decided to head for deep water. When he was informed by radio of an oncoming German minesweeper convoy, he decided to activate his ship's red and green navigation lights so as to avoid a collision in the dark, making the Wilhelm Gustloff easy to spot in the night. As the ship's equipment included antiaircraft weapons, it had been travelling blacked-out, it was not marked as a hospital ship, and it was transporting combat troops, it did not have any protection as a hospital ship under the international accords governing this.

The ship was soon sighted by the Soviet submarine S-13, under the command of Captain Third Class Alexander Marinesko, which fired three torpedoes at the Wilhelm Gustloff about 30 km (20 miles) offshore between Großendorf and Leba soon after 21:00 (CET) — hitting her with all three.^[2] In the panic that followed, many of the refugees were trampled in the rush to lifeboats and life jackets. Some equipment was lost as a result of the panic. The water temperature in the Baltic Sea at this time of year is usually around 4°C; however, this was a particularly cold day, with an air temperature of -10° to -18°C and ice floes covering the surface. Many deaths were either caused directly by the torpedoes or by instant drowning in the onrushing water. Others were crushed in the ensuing panic on the stairs and decks, and many jumped into the icy, dark Baltic. Reports talk about children clinging onto adults and women trying to save their babies, though constant waves dragged them away from them, most never to be seen again. Small children fitted with life jackets for adults drowned because their heads were under water while their legs were in the air.

Less than 45 minutes after being struck, the Wilhelm Gustloff sank in a depth of 44 meters (150 feet). German forces were able to rescue some of the survivors from the attack: torpedo boat T-36 rescued 564 people; torpedo boat Löwe, 472; Minesweeper M387, 98; Minesweeper M375, 43; Minesweeper M341, 37; the steamer Gottingen saved 28; torpedo-recovery boat (Torpedofangboot) TF19, seven; the freighter Gotland, two; and Patrol boat (Vorpostenboot) V1703 was able to save one baby. These figures are from the research of Heinz Schön, and that would make the total lost in the torpedoing and subsequent sinking to be 9,343 men, women, and children. This would make it the largest loss of life in a single sinking in maritime history.^[2]

In an article in the magazine "Sea Classics", Irwin Kappes mentions that "there were over 6,000 passengers on board". He also states that the escort ship Löwe was alongside within 15 minutes, taking off as many survivors as she could carry, and that when Captain Henigst of the cruiser Admiral Hipper, herself carrying 1,500 evacuees, received reports from her lookouts that she was under torpedo attack, he chose not to stop to pick up survivors. Kappes gives a precise total of those lost in the sinking as 5,348. The source of this information was the German book "Die Gustloff Katastrophe" written by Heinz Schön, who later revised his original numbers.^[1]

Heinz Schön's more recent research is backed up by estimates made by a different method. The Discovery Channel program Unsolved History has undertaken a computer analysis (using software called maritime EXODUS) of the sinking, which estimated 9,400 dead -85% (among over 10,600 on board); this analysis considered the load density based on witness reports and a simulation of escape routes and survivability with the timeline of the sinking.^[5][6][7]

Many ships carrying civilians were sunk during the war by both the Allies and Axis.^[8] However, based on the latest estimates of passenger numbers and those known to be saved, the Wilhelm Gustloff remains the largest loss of life resulting from the sinking of one vessel in maritime history. Gunter Grass, in an interview published in the New York Times on Tuesday April 8 2003 said "One of the many reasons I wrote Crabwalk was to take the subject away from the extreme right, ... They said the tragedy of the Gustloff was a war crime. It wasn’t. It was terrible, but it was a result of war, a terrible result of war."^[9]

55.07° N 17.41° E is the resting place of the Gustloff. This is 30 km offshore, east of Łeba (17.33E) and west of Władysławowo (18.24E). It has been designated as a war memorial site (off-limits to salvage crews). On Polish navigation charts it is noted as "Obstacle No. 73".^[10] It is one of the largest shipwrecks on the Baltic sea floor.

In 2006, a bell recovered from the wreck, and subsequently used as decoration in a Polish fish restaurant, was loaned to the "Forced Paths" exhibition in Berlin.^[11] In 2007, the ship's bell was placed on display at the Gdańsk Museum in Krantor.

In 1959, it was the subject of the film Nacht fiel über Gotenhafen.^[12] The Gustloff disaster was also the subject of the 2002 novel Im Krebsgang (English translation: Crabwalk) by Danzig-born German author and Nobel prize winner Günter Grass.

Author Clive Cussler uses this incident to give historical context to his 2005 novel Polar Shift.

• Cap Arcona
• Goya
• Steuben
• Iosif Stalin
• Deutschland
• Thielbek
• HMT Rohna , sunk by Germans in November 1943, estimated over 1,138 deaths with 1,015 of them American troops and this still constitutes the largest loss of US troops at sea
• Armenia, sunk by Germans in November 1941, estimated over 5,000 deaths
• Alexander Marinesko
• List of shipwrecks

• Location of the wreck
• Wilhelm Gustloff Shipwreck Expedition May 2003 on Deep Image.co.uk (English)
• Wilhelm Gustloff: The Deadliest Shipwreck, interactive text (English)
• Site dedicated to Wilhelm Gustloff (English)
• Pomnik ofiar tragedii Wilhelma Gustloffa, Goyi i Steubena (Polish)
• ВИЛЬГЕЛЬМ ГУСТЛОВ, ЧЕЛОВЕК и ТЕПЛОХОД (Russian)
• First Gustloff rescue mission as hospital ship

• Bishop, Leigh; Shipwreck Expedition May 2003, led by Mike Boring, 2003

• www.wilhelmgustloff.com
  A bibliography on the Wilhelm Gustloff
• The submarine that sank the Third Reich
• Maritimequest Wilhelm Gustloff Photo Gallery

• The Cruellest Night by Christopher Dobson, John Miller & Ronald Payne (1979, Hodder & Stoughton, London) ISBN 0 340 22720 6 (a book on Germany's Dunkirk, estimates c7,000 dead).
• Kappes, Irwin J.; The Greatest Marine Disaster in History... and why you probably never heard of it. 2003. — The website militaryhistoryonline.com is included in the Military History - Web sources by theCentral Michigan University Libraries.
• Leja, Michael; Die letzte Fahrt der "Wilhelm Gustloff"; ZDF, 1 August 2005 reports that earlier estimates of approximately 6000 drowned have been revised upwards in more recent sources to about 9300. An article in German on the website of a public service German television channel.
• Pipes, Jason; A Memorial to the Wilhelm Gustloff — The website www.feldgrau.com is listed as an external link by the Department of German at the University of Wales
• Schön, Heinz; Die Gustloff Katastrophe (Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart, 2002)
• Williams, David; Wartime Disasters at Sea (Patrick Stephens Limited, Nr Yeovil, UK, 1997) ISBN 1 85260 565 0.

1. ^ ^{a b} Irwin J. Kappes References states 5,348. He does not cite his sources but recommends: A. V. Sellwood, The Damned Don't Drown: The Sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff (a fiction title about the tragedy); and Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans 1944-1950.
2. ^ ^{a b c d} Jason Pipes, References citing Heinz Schon References (no page number) claims the loss of life was 9,343
3. ^ The Goya, also torpedoed in 1945, sank with the loss of about 6,000 passengers and crew.
4. ^ Löwe Torpedoboot 1940 - 1959 Sleipner Class
5. ^ "Discovery Channel Unsolved History – Wilhelm Gustloff 2003"
6. ^ maritime EXODUS
7. ^ Michael Leja, References (a source in German)
8. ^ George Martin Maritime Disasters of World War II
9. ^ Crabwalk by Gunter Grass review on RedDot Books Ltd website.
10. ^ Irwin J. Kappes References
11. ^ Mark Landler Poles riled by Berlin exhibition originally published in The New York Times, August 30, 2006 republished in the International Herald Tribune
12. ^ "Nacht fiel über Gotenhafen" DVD information