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 ...
Tell Vlad "hi" for me.
5.56mm
Just read on Wiki that there was an estimated 5,000 children on board and it was -18C that night.
“Sinking a civilian ship packed with civilians is a war crime.”
There is no such thing as a crime in war. Liberals want you to think that, so I guess they succeeded. “War crimes” has led to wars being fought in the fashion of Korea and Vietnam, and now Iraq and Afghanistan, whereby the military is used as meals-on-wheel and other silly nonsense.
If you don’t like war then don’t wage war. War is killing people and breaking things, not lawyers and courts.
Not exactly.
Two issues: first, minimizing the suffering of the innocent is the way to wage just war; second, proportionality is a consideration when targeting and civilians may be hurt.
What is the military gain when compared to the suffering to the innocent. That is a key question that is asked.
Therefore, not all “enemy flagged” ships are a legitimate target.
See Post 44.
“Most don’t talk about 20 mil Russians (conservative estimates) killed in WW2.”
Not to mention the, what, 40 mil Russians killed by Stalin. . .
And I believe the CAP was credited with sinking two subs.
Post 44.
There are no rules in war. Besides, who gets to make such rules? Your enemy?
the SULTANA.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Sultana
Funny no one has mentioned the firebombing of German and Japanese cities.
Your point is?
There are such rules in war as all combatants agree to abide by, which is why even the Nazis fed and housed Allied P.O.W.’s in accordance with the Geneva Conventions of which Germany was a signatory.
So they were. But my dad was not involved in either. Never saw one (that he knew of).
We trace our entire concept of Just War to St Thomas Aquinas, http://ethics.sandiego.edu/Books/Texts/Aquinas/JustWar.html
Hardly an enemy.
We are not barbarians. We are not uncivilized, immoral muslims. They act with deliberate, anti-Christian evil. We do not. . .and Christianity wrote the rules, not the enemy.
Stalin was a butcher. . .seems many on the left foget that.
My Mom was a german refugee in Gdansk. She was 7 years old at the time and they had tickets on the Wilhelm Gustloff. At the last second, my grandmother decided not to go and decided to take a train. Pretty amazing..then at the train station.. a Russian soldier grabbed her and told my grandmother Germany is finished and said he was taking her back with him to Russia. After screaming in panic, a Russian Officer grabbed her and gave her back. they took the train and settled in Hamelin.
The Germans treated the German eastern rufugees with absolute disdain..and my mom emigrated to Canada when she was 18 and made her way by herself to the united States.
There is a difference between genocide and war.
In war people get killed, the larger the war (and WWII was the largest) the more die.
Genocide is murder. People are rounded up on the basis of their religion, names entered into ledgers, photographs taken, and they are fed into a vast mechanism designed to murder them in cold blood. All done as a formal part of deliberate government policies and actions.
Don’t you think six million killed in the prosecution of a war is quite different than six million murdered one-by-one by an organized government with specific policies, based on either their religion, ethnicity, or color of skin?
Sure, a dead person is a dead person, but don’t you think 50,000 men, women, and children of all races and creeds killed in automobile accidents in the USA has quite a different meaning than 50,000 people getting a bullet in the back of the head, courtesy of a government, because they are Jewish?
I don’t mean to lecture here, so I apologize if it comes off that way, but there IS a significant difference.
The death of non-combat humans in warfare is tragic, sometimes necessary, sometimes not, and occasionally evil.
The orchestrated death of humans by a government because of their religious belief or color of skin is always evil. Always.
What is the military gain when compared to the suffering to the innocent. That is a key question that is asked
The problem is: how is a submarine commander to determine this? Or, for that matter, a bomber pilot or an artillery officer?
As I recall, every belligerent in WW II operated on the principle of "Unrestricted Submarine Warfare" -- which presumed that an enemy-flagged ship operating in a war zone was carrying military personnel and/or materiel. And, was, thus fair game. The only exception was hospital ships -- which were painted white and adorned with a red cross.
Civilians traveled thereon at their own risk...and were warned accordingly at the ports of embarkation.
At the same time, though, the principle of "Unrestricted Submarine Warfare" was a murky area within the international laws of war. Recall the >Lusitania incident in WW I. For that reason, I recollect that WW II public dispatches never identified submarine captains or crewmen by name.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.