THIS WEEK IN HISTORY: 1945
The greatest loss of life in maritime history occurred when an estimated 9,300 Germans died in the torpedoing of the Wilhelm Gustloff
Gerhard Eichel was supposed to be among 10,500 German soldiers and refugees that boarded the MV Wilhelm Gustloff on Jan. 30, 1945. But the 18-year-old was too ill, so he was left behind. It probably saved his life. Just after 9 p.m., a Russian submarine hit the former luxury liner with three torpedoes. The Wilhelm Gustloff sank in under an hour, killing an estimated 9,300 people. It was the largest loss of life in maritime history, but is virtually unknown in North America. “It is very interesting, but it is entirely a German thing,” said Eichel, 88, who lives in Pitt Meadows. “It is commemorated in Germany every year, but there is nothing written in the English press.” In fact, there was no mention of the ship in Vancouver newspapers at the time. The Second World War was still raging in Europe — the big headline in the Jan. 30 Sun was “Reds 80 Miles From Berlin in Terrific New Offensive.” The Soviet offensive was the reason so many refugees were trying to leave eastern Prussia for northern Germany. On Jan. 21, the head of the German navy, Admiral Karl Doenitz, ordered German ships to evacuate as many people as they could. The German magazine Der Spiegel said an estimated two million Germans were evacuated in “Operation Hannibal,” the largest naval evacuation of all time. The Wilhelm Gustloff was one of the ships earmarked to transport refugees. The 208-metre-long (680-foot) ship had been launched as a cruise liner in 1937. It was named after a Nazi leader who was assassinated in Switzerland in 1936. When war broke out on Sept. 1, 1939, it was requisitioned by the German navy and turned into a hospital ship. In late 1940, it was converted to a floating barracks, and docked at Gotenhafen, a port on the Baltic Sea. (Gotenhafen is now Gdynia, Poland, near Gdansk.) Hospital ships were painted with an identifying stripe so they were easily recognizable and safe from attack. But as a floating barracks, the Wilhelm Gustloff was painted grey, which is why the Russian submarine thought it was a troop carrier. Estimates of how many people were on the Wilhelm Gustloff when it sank vary. A 2005 story in Der Spiegel said so many people crammed onto the ship that authorities counting the passengers ran out of paper. Seven thousand, nine hundred and fifty-six passengers were counted before the paper ran out, but another 2,500 were probably on board. About 9,000 refugees were probably on the ship, 5,000 of them children. The Wilhelm Gustloff was supposed to sail for Kiel, Germany with another passenger liner, the Hansa, and two torpedo boats. But the Hansa and one of the torpedo boats had engine trouble, so it set off with only one torpedo boat as an escort. There were four captains on board, and they disagreed about which route to take. A U-boat commander thought the ship should sail in shallow water, where there would be no submarines. But the Wilhelm Gustloff’s captain, Friedrich Petersen, was worried about mines, and chose to go out in deeper water that had been cleared of mines. Petersen was also worried that the ship’s engines might fail if he ran them flat out, so he slowed down. The ship might still have made it if not for a mysterious radio message that said a German minesweeper convoy was approaching. Petersen turned on the navigation lights, so the convoy could spot the Gustloff and avoid a collision. There was no convoy, but there was a Russian submarine, which spotted the ship, tracked it, then launched three torpedoes. All three hit, with devastating results. Some people were trapped inside the ship by water flooding in, but most drowned in the icy cold waters of the Baltic after the Wilhelm Gustloff sank. About 1,200 people were rescued, which means the death toll was probably 9,300. But no one knows for sure, because there were so many undocumented refugees on board. By comparison, 1,503 people were killed in the sinking of the Titanic.