Sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff

War crime leads to loss of life SIX times worse than Titanic

- John Hamer

On January 30, 1945, with the brutal, rampaging Red Army rapidly bearing down on them, the German civilians of East Prussia, desperate to escape, fled to the Baltic ports hoping to be evacuated by sea.

Many of those caught in the maelstrom of the Soviet advance had already been raped, murdered or both.

The Wilhelm Gustloff A Luxury Cruise Liner

The cruise ship, Wilhelm Gustloff, along with many other serviceable ships, was pressed into service to aid the evacuation of German civilians from the Eastern zone. With forty-eight hours' notice before departure, there were scenes of chaos and blind panic in the frozen German port of Gotenhafen as people, frantic for a place, fought on the dock and surged aboard the ship.

Wilhelm Gustloff, weighing 25,000 tons and almost 700 feet in length, was an impressive sight, and could carry almost 2,000 passengers and crew.

Launched in 1937, it began its life as a luxury cruise liner for the German workers of Hitler's Third Reich. For the first year of the war she had served as a hospital ship before being held in dock in the port of Gotenhafen on the Baltic coast where, until early 1945, it had served as barracks for U-boat trainees.

Appalling Weather Conditions