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70 years on, little known about the Wilhelm Gustloff sinking (deadliest ever shipwreck anniversary)
Deutsche Welle ^

Posted on 02/01/2015 2:57:53 AM PST by Paid_Russian_Troll

Over 9,000 people died in the Baltic Sea on January 30, 1945, in an attempt to evade the Red Army. The Wilhelm Gustloff was the largest shipwreck in history, but little is known about the catastrophe seven decades on.

At around 9 p.m. on January 30, 1945, Adolf Hitler was speaking to the German people. In the packed dining hall of the luxury liner "Wilhelm Gustloff," as in most of the rest of the country, a radio was broadcasting Hitler's address, but the thousands of refugees from Pomerania and East and West Prussia who had struggled onto the ship weren't listening to the Führer now.

They wanted one thing - to be rescued. Only very few, 1,252 to be precise, made it off the steamer alive, of the well over 10,000 - mostly women and children, but also navy sailors. The ship had been hit by three Soviet torpedoes within an hour; the temperature outside was minus 18 degrees Celsius.

The solace offered by the Wilhelm Gustloff was enormous for the passengers who boarded the ship at Gotenhafen. Hundreds of thousands of German civilians had wanted to embark on ship in the port near Gdansk, in what is today Poland. The Red Army was on their heels and their thoughts were of Nemmersdorf. It was the first village in German territory reached by the Soviets and there were already rumors circulating of the draconic revenge on the part of the Soviets for German war crimes. Only the navy could rescue them now.

(Excerpt) Read more at dw.de ...


TOPICS: Germany
KEYWORDS: agitprop; astroturf; balticsea; gdansk; germany; gotenhafen; history; massmurder; mostlycivilians; nemmersdorf; paidrussiantrolls; poland; putinsbuttboys; redarmy; russia; russianstooge; russianstooges; stalinlovers; vladtheimploder; wilhelmgustloff; womenandchildren; ww2; wwii; zotted
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To: hondact200
I attended an International School in Yokohama when my dad was stationed in Japan with the US Army. Our math teacher was ex-German Army soldier on the Russian Front.
He had moved to Japan, met a Japanese woman and married her. Since her family had no male heirs, he took her family name; Najima...
21 posted on 02/01/2015 5:29:56 AM PST by Eric in the Ozarks (Rip it out by the roots.)
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To: kearnyirish2
There was one instance (possibly before the US was in the war) where people on a beach in Florida watched a U-boat sink a freighter; IIRC the U-boat was on the surface between the beach and the prey.

The particular event you're describing took place off of Daytona Beach, I believe it was.

From the Univ of South Florida Museum of WW II:

German U-Boats sank over twenty-four ships off of Florida's Atlantic and Gulf Coasts. Many ships could be seen burning from areas along the coast by Floridians and tourists. In late February 1942, German submarines attacked four merchant ships right off the east coast of Florida near Cape Canaveral.

All of these attacks took place after we entered the war. The Kriegsmarine had an insufficient number of long-range submarines to mount patrols off the U.S. coast until shortly after war was declared.

The Florida coast and off Cape Hatteras were favored hunting grounds for months, as merchant ships traveled without escorts and we weren't equipped to mount effective anti-submarine patrols.

The formation of the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) was one of the outcomes of this situation. My father, who wasn't eligible for the draft and owned a light plane, flew from Oklahoma down to Galveston, TX and was part of a patrol unit stationed there.

22 posted on 02/01/2015 5:32:38 AM PST by okie01 (THE MAINSTEAM MEDIA: Ignorance on Parade)
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To: cripplecreek

Nice picture; what was interesting in WWI (and to a lesser extent WWII) was Germany’s use of surface ships as “commerce raiders”. The use of U-boats came about because the Royal Navy made them fairly ineffective.

In an old Time/Life book my family had when I was younger, there was a story of one of them (the Emden?) and its struggle to get back to Germany at the onset of WWII (IIRC); when the war started they may have been near Australia.


23 posted on 02/01/2015 5:32:58 AM PST by kearnyirish2 (Affirmative action is economic warfare against white males (and therefore white families).)
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To: bert
The fight between the Germans and the Russians changed the genetic make up of both populations

100% agree.

Furthermore, I've two sister-in-laws. One whose mom is originally Russian, when marrying a German guy (my sister-in-law's father) was apparently asked, several yrs after the war ended, if she would be "willing to marry a German".

24 posted on 02/01/2015 5:33:21 AM PST by odds
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To: odds

Lots of crazy things went down as that war was nearing its end.

Last night on AHC I watched a show about “The real Inglorious Bastards”. The nazi leadership at Innsbruck surrendered to Hans Wijnberg who they had been torturing less than 24 hours earlier.


25 posted on 02/01/2015 5:38:50 AM PST by cripplecreek ("For by wise guidance you can wage your war")
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To: okie01

Thanks for the info; I assumed they could be sinking non-neutral (non US) ships along our coast before the war. The early days of the war against us were called the “happy times” by U-boat crews; their operation “Drumbeat” involved getting as many ships over here as quickly as possible because our freighters were sitting ducks.

When my father was a child in NYC they had blackouts; officially they were told it was to prevent ships from being silhouetted against the city lights. After the war it was revealed that it had been done to prevent NYers from seeing the damaged ships come in (with the related implications for public morale).


26 posted on 02/01/2015 5:41:34 AM PST by kearnyirish2 (Affirmative action is economic warfare against white males (and therefore white families).)
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To: LS

The General Slocum.


27 posted on 02/01/2015 5:42:33 AM PST by IronJack
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To: kearnyirish2
I have no problem with the Soviets considering the ship a legitimate target at that point; the war in the east had no rules anyway.

Anything and everything was, well, if not necessarily "fair game", at least "game".

In any event, an enemy-flagged ship sailing in a declared war zone (which the Baltic certainly was) was presumably (almost certainly) carrying military personnel or material.

As, indeed, the Wilhelm Gustloff was doing.

The loss of civilian life was regrettable but one of those so-called collateral costs of war. In fact, the Soviet submarine commander probably didn't give it a moment's thought.

28 posted on 02/01/2015 5:42:45 AM PST by okie01 (THE MAINSTEAM MEDIA: Ignorance on Parade)
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To: kearnyirish2
Operation Drumbeat was exactly the operation I was referring to. Upon our entry into WW II, the KM had the plans for Drumbeat in hand, but didn't have the subs.
29 posted on 02/01/2015 5:45:27 AM PST by okie01 (THE MAINSTEAM MEDIA: Ignorance on Parade)
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To: cripplecreek

Yeah, well, am glad I don’t live in those times.. and I meant “sisters-in-law” not “sister-in-laws”! — late at night here :)


30 posted on 02/01/2015 5:47:37 AM PST by odds
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To: 1rudeboy
"Sinking a civilian ship packed with civilians is a war crime."

This is the Wilhelm Gustloff marked as a hospital ship. I don't know how easily this would have been seen by a sub commander at night. All the Allied hospital ships I've seen have large crosses amidships near the waterline.

31 posted on 02/01/2015 5:48:25 AM PST by PLMerite (Shut the Beyotch Down! Burn, baby, burn!)
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To: Paid_Russian_Troll
Thanks for posting this. My great grandparents lived in the Langfuhr district of Danzig from the 1890s until the end of the war. I'm surprised they didn't try to evacuate when the Russians were approaching from the east.. They could have been on the Wilhelm Gustloff as Gotenhafen was just a few miles from Langfuhr. The Russians evicted them either in the winter or early spring and they walked to Germany (better than being shot) in their mid 60s. I don't know how they made it to Cologne in 1945 with the Allies advancing from the west.

The loss of the Wilhelm Gustloff was a small part of a huge evacuation mounted by Germany called Operation Hannibal:

Wikipedia: Over a period of 15 weeks, somewhere between 494 and 1,080 merchant vessels of all types, including fishing boats and other craft, and utilizing Germany's largest remaining naval units, carried between 800,000 and 900,000 refugees and 350,000 soldiers across the Baltic Sea to Germany and German-occupied Denmark. This was more than three times the number of people evacuated in the nine-day operation at Dunkirk.

In addition to the Goya, Wilhelm Gustloff, and General von Steuben, 158 other merchant vessels were lost during the 15-week course of Operation Hannibal (January 23 – May 8, 1945).


32 posted on 02/01/2015 5:54:10 AM PST by ProtectOurFreedom (Buzzards gotta eat, same as worms.)
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To: bert

I remember when the JAG added to the battle staff. Glad I was retired by then.


33 posted on 02/01/2015 5:54:47 AM PST by Redleg Duke ("Madison, Wisconsin is 30 square miles surrounded by reality.", L. S. Dryfusbutcher)
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To: Paid_Russian_Troll

No wonder that no one knows about it. The commies did the dirty deed. If the US has done this, there would be no end to it.


34 posted on 02/01/2015 6:10:59 AM PST by caver (Obama: Home of the Whopper)
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To: PLMerite
This is the only photograph I've been able to find showing the Gustloff marked like the above drawing:

By 1945 the ship had been painted naval gray and was sitting idle as a barracks ship for sub tenders.

35 posted on 02/01/2015 6:13:14 AM PST by PLMerite (Shut the Beyotch Down! Burn, baby, burn!)
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To: okie01

I have sort of looked into CAP and hopefully go try to get a pilot’s license going into spring or summer depending on the money situation.


36 posted on 02/01/2015 6:16:04 AM PST by wally_bert (There are no winners in a game of losers. I'm Tommy Joyce, welcome to the Oriental Lounge.)
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To: 1rudeboy
Sinking a civilian ship packed with civilians is a war crime.

As is shooting down a civilian airliner filled with hundreds of innocent men, women, and children. The Ruskis haven't changed their stripes much in seventy years.

37 posted on 02/01/2015 6:16:09 AM PST by Spartan79 (I view great cities as pestilential to the morals, the health, and the liberties of man. Jefferson)
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To: okie01

If the Soviet commander was aware of what the Axis had done in the USSR (I don’t know what was concealed from them), I’d think he couldn’t care less about the civilians.


38 posted on 02/01/2015 6:18:59 AM PST by kearnyirish2 (Affirmative action is economic warfare against white males (and therefore white families).)
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To: okie01

I understand; I didn’t know the timing of the sub attack along the beach in terms of oue entry into the war (and didn’t assume the victim was a US ship).

The economic war at sea was fascinating; the Germans must have known they were finished when convoys launched their own planes - game over.


39 posted on 02/01/2015 6:21:47 AM PST by kearnyirish2 (Affirmative action is economic warfare against white males (and therefore white families).)
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To: Paid_Russian_Troll

40 posted on 02/01/2015 6:25:11 AM PST by mowowie (`)
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