Torpedoing of the motor ship Gustlov what flag was it flying? The sinking of 'Wilhelm Gustloff'. Shipwreck exploration

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Background

History of the name

Characteristics

Launching the liner "Wilhelm Gustloff". Photo, 1937

From a technological point of view Wilhelm Gustloff was not an exceptional vessel. The liner was designed for 1,500 people and had ten decks. Its engines were of medium power and it was not built for fast travel, but rather for slow, comfortable cruising. And from the point of view of amenities, equipment and recreational facilities, this liner was truly one of the best in the world. One of the newest technologies used on it was the principle of an open deck with cabins that had direct access to it and a clear view of the scenery. At their service were provided a luxuriously decorated swimming pool, a winter garden, large spacious halls, music salons, and several bars. Unlike other ships of this class, Wilhelm Gustloff, in a testament to the "classless character" of the Nazi regime, had cabins of the same size and the same excellent amenities for all passengers.

In addition to purely technical innovations and the best equipment for an unforgettable trip, Wilhelm Gustloff, which cost 25 million Reichsmarks, was a kind of symbol and means of propaganda for the authorities of the Third Reich. According to Robert Ley, who led the German Labor Front, liners like this could " ...to provide the opportunity, by the will of the Fuhrer, to mechanics of Bavaria, postmen of Cologne, housewives of Bremen, at least once a year, to make an affordable sea voyage to Madeira, along the Mediterranean coast, to the shores of Norway and Africa.»

For German citizens, travel by ship Wilhelm Gustloff it had to be not only unforgettable, but also affordable, regardless of social status. For example, a five-day cruise along the coast of Italy cost only 150 Reichsmarks, while the average monthly salary of an ordinary German was 150-250 Reichsmarks (for comparison, the cost of a ticket on this liner was only a third of the cost of similar cruises in Europe, where only representatives of the wealthy strata of the population and the nobility). Thus, Wilhelm Gustloff with its amenities, level of comfort and accessibility, it not only cemented the disposition of the German people towards the Nazi regime, but also had to demonstrate to the whole world the advantages of National Socialism.

The flagship of the cruise fleet

After the ceremonial launching of the ship, 10 months passed before Wilhelm Gustloff passed sea trials in May 1938. During this time, the finishing and arrangement of the interior of the liner was completed. As a thank you to the builders, the ship was taken on a two-day cruise in the North Sea, which qualified as a test cruise. The first official cruise took place on May 24, 1938, and almost two-thirds of its passengers were citizens of Austria, which Hitler intended to soon annex to Germany. The unforgettable trip was intended to stun the Austrians on the cruise with the level of service and amenities and convince others of the benefits of an alliance with Germany. The cruise was a real triumph, evidence of the achievements of the new German government. The world press enthusiastically described the impressions of the cruise participants and the unprecedented luxury on board the ship. Even Hitler himself arrived on the liner, which symbolized all the best achievements of the country under his leadership. When the excitement around this symbol of the Hitler regime subsided somewhat, the liner began to fulfill the task for which it was built - to provide affordable, comfortable cruises to the workers of Germany.

Propaganda tool

Passenger airliner "Wilhelm Gustloff". Photo, ok. 1938

Although Wilhelm Gustloff offered truly unforgettable and cheap travel and cruises; it also remained in history as a prominent means of propaganda for the Nazi regime. The first successful, although unplanned, incident occurred during the rescue of the sailors of the English ship Peguey, which was in distress on April 2, 1938 in the North Sea. The courage and determination of the captain, who left a procession of three ships to save the British, was noted not only by the world press, but also by the English government - the captain was awarded, and a memorial plaque was later installed on the ship. Thanks to this occasion, when April 10 Wilhelm Gustloff used as a floating polling station for the Germans and Austrians of Great Britain participating in the plebiscite on the annexation of Austria, not only the British but also the world press have already written favorably about it. To participate in the plebiscite, almost 2,000 citizens of both countries and a large number of correspondents sailed to neutral waters off the coast of Great Britain. Only four of the participants in this event abstained. The Western and even the British communist press were delighted with the liner and Germany's achievements. The use of such a sophisticated vessel in the plebiscite symbolized the new things that the Nazi regime was introducing in Germany.

Cruises and troop transport

Like the flagship of a cruise fleet Wilhelm Gustloff spent only a year and a half at sea and completed 50 cruises as part of the Strength Through Joy (STF) program. About 65,000 vacationers visited it. Typically, during the warm season, the liner offered travel around the North Sea, the coast of Germany, and the Norwegian fjords. In winter, the liner went on cruises along the Mediterranean Sea, the coasts of Italy, Spain and Portugal. For many, despite such minor inconveniences as being prohibited from going ashore in countries that did not support the Nazi regime, these cruises remained an unforgettable and the best time of the entire period of Nazi rule in Germany. Many ordinary Germans took advantage of the Strength Through Joy program and were sincerely grateful to the new regime for providing recreational opportunities incomparable to other European countries.

In addition to cruise activities, Wilhelm Gustloff remained a state-owned ship and was involved in various activities carried out by the German government. So May 20, 1939 Wilhelm Gustloff for the first time transported troops - German volunteers of the Condor Legion, who took part in the Spanish Civil War on the side of Franco. The arrival of the ship in Hamburg with “war heroes” on board caused a great stir throughout Germany, and a special welcoming ceremony was held in the port with the participation of state leaders.

Military service

floating hospital, July 1940

The liner's last cruise took place on August 25, 1939. Unexpectedly, during a planned voyage in the middle of the North Sea, the captain received a coded order to urgently return to port. The time for cruises was over - less than a week later, Germany attacked Poland and World War II began.

Military hospital

As the war spread to most of Europe Wilhelm Gustloff first received wounded during the Norwegian campaign in the summer of 1940 ( on illus.), and then prepared to transport troops in the event of an invasion of Great Britain. However, the invasion did not take place and the ship was sent to Danzig, where the last 414 wounded were treated, and the ship awaited assignment to subsequent service. However, the ship's service as a military hospital ended - by decision of the Navy leadership, it was assigned to the submariner school in Gotenhafen. The liner was again repainted in gray camouflage, and it lost the protection of the Hague Convention that it had previously had.

Floating barracks

The ship served as a floating barracks for the Kriegsmarine submarine school for almost four years, most of this time being away from the front line. As the end of the war approached, the situation began to change not in Germany's favor - many cities suffered from Allied air raids. On October 9, 1943, Gotenhafen was bombed, as a result of which another ship of the former KDF was sunk, and itself Wilhelm Gustloff received damage [ ] .

Evacuation of the population

According to modern estimates, there should have been 10,582 people on board: 918 junior cadets of the 2nd training submarine division (2. U-Boot-Lehrdivision), 173 crew members, 373 women from the auxiliary naval corps, 162 seriously wounded military personnel, and 8,956 refugees, mostly old people, women and children. When at 12:30 Wilhelm Gustloff accompanied by two guard ships, finally departed; disputes arose on the captain's bridge between the four senior officers. In addition to the commander of the ship, Captain Friedrich Petersen (German) Friedrich Petersen), called up from retirement, the commander of the 2nd Submarine Training Division and two merchant marine captains were on board, and there was no agreement between them as to which channel to navigate the ship and what precautions to take regarding enemy submarines and aircraft. The outer fairway (German designation Zwangsweg 58) was chosen. Contrary to recommendations to go in a zigzag to complicate the attack by submarines, it was decided to go straight at a speed of 12 knots, since the corridor in the minefields was not wide enough and the captains hoped to get out into safe waters faster this way; In addition, the ship lacked fuel. The liner could not reach full speed due to damage received during the bombing. In addition, the TF-19 torpedo boat returned to port, having received damage to its hull when it collided with a reef, and only one destroyer remained on guard Lowe. At 18:00, a message was received about a convoy of minesweepers that was supposedly heading towards them, and when it was already dark, it was ordered to turn on the running lights to prevent a collision. In reality, there were no minesweepers, and the circumstances of the appearance of this radiogram have remained unclear to this day. According to other sources, a group of minesweepers was trawling towards the convoy and appeared later than the time specified in the notification.

Sinking

At 21:16, the first torpedo hit the bow of the ship, later the second blew up the empty swimming pool where the women of the naval auxiliary battalion were, and the last hit the engine room, the engines stalled, but the lighting continued to work due to the emergency diesel generator. The passengers' first thought was that they had hit a mine, but Captain Peterson realized it was a submarine, and his first words were: Das war's(That's all). Those passengers who did not die from the three explosions and did not drown in the cabins on the lower decks rushed to the lifeboats in panic. At this moment it turned out that by ordering the watertight bulkheads in the lower decks to be closed, according to the instructions, the captain blocked part of the team, which was supposed to lower the boats and evacuate passengers. In the panic and stampede, not only many children and women died, but also many of those who climbed to the upper deck. They could not lower the lifeboats because they did not know how to do this, besides, many of the davits were iced over, and the ship was already heavily listing. Through the joint efforts of the crew and passengers, some boats were able to be launched, but many people still found themselves in the icy water. Due to the strong roll of the ship, an anti-aircraft gun fell off the deck and crushed one of the boats, already full of people. About an hour after the attack, the Wilhelm Gustloff sank completely.

Rescue of survivors

Destroyer Lowe(a former ship of the Dutch Navy) was the first to arrive at the scene of the tragedy and began rescuing the surviving passengers. Since the temperature in January was already −18 °C, there were only a few minutes left before irreversible hypothermia set in. Despite this, the ship managed to rescue 472 passengers from the lifeboats and from the water. The guard ships of another convoy, the cruiser Admiral Hipper, which also, in addition to the crew, also had about 1,500 refugees on board, also came to the rescue. Due to fear of attack from submarines, he did not stop and continued to retire to safe waters. Other ships (by “other ships” we mean the only destroyer T-38 - the sonar system did not work on the Lion, the Hipper left) managed to save another 179 people. A little more than an hour later, new ships that came to the rescue could only fish dead bodies from the icy water. Later, a small messenger ship that arrived at the scene of the tragedy unexpectedly found, seven hours after the sinking of the liner, among hundreds of dead bodies, an unnoticed boat and in it a living baby wrapped in blankets - the last rescued passenger from the ship Wilhelm Gustloff .

As a result, it was possible to survive, according to various estimates, from 1200

January 30, 1895 born in Schwerin William Gustloff, future middle-level functionary of the National Socialist Party.
January 30, 1933 came to power Hitler; this day became one of the most significant holidays in the Third Reich.
January 30, 1933 Adolf Hitler appointed Gustloff Landesgruppenleiter of Switzerland based in Davos. Gustloff conducted active anti-Semitic propaganda, in particular, contributed to the dissemination of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” in Switzerland.
January 30, 1936 medical student Frankfurter came to Davos with the aim of killing Gustloff. From a newspaper bought at a station kiosk, he learned that the governor was “with his Fuhrer in Berlin” and would return in four days. On February 4, a student killed Gustloff. Next year name "Wilhelm Gustloff" was assigned to a sea liner laid down as "Adolf Gitler".
January 30, 1945 years, exactly 50 years after birth Gustloff, Soviet submarine S-13 under the command of captain 3rd rank A. Marinesko torpedoed and sent the liner to the bottom "Wilhelm Gustloff".
January 30, 1946 Marinesko was demoted in rank and transferred to the reserve.

He began his working life as a small bank employee in the city of the seven lakes of Schwerin, and Gustloff compensated for his lack of education with diligence.
In 1917, the bank transferred its young, diligent clerk, who was suffering from pulmonary tuberculosis, to its branch in Davos. The Swiss mountain air completely cured the patient. While working at the bank, he organized a local group of the National Socialist Party and became its leader. The doctor who treated Gustloff for several years spoke of his patient as follows: “Limited, good-natured, fanatical, recklessly devoted to the Fuhrer: “If Hitler orders me to shoot my wife at 6 o’clock tonight, then at 5.55 I will load the revolver, and at 6.05 I will the wife will be a corpse." Member of the Nazi Party since 1929. His wife Hedwig worked as Hitler's secretary in the early 1930s.

On February 4, 1936, Jewish student David Frankfurter entered a house marked W. Gustloff, NSDAP. He left for Davos a few days earlier - January 30, 1936 Without luggage, with a one-way ticket and a revolver in my coat pocket.
Gustloff's wife showed him into the office and asked him to wait; the frail, short visitor did not arouse any suspicion. Through the open side door, next to which hung a portrait of Hitler, the student saw a two-meter giant—the owner of the house—talking on the phone. When he entered the office a minute later, Frankfurter silently, without getting up from his chair, raised his hand with a revolver and fired five bullets. Quickly walking to the exit - amid the heartbreaking screams of the murdered man's wife - he went to the police and stated that he had just shot Gustloff. Called to identify the killer, Hedwig Gustloff looks at him for a few moments and says: “How could you kill a man! You have such kind eyes!”

For Hitler, Gustloff's death was a gift from heaven: the first Nazi killed by a Jew abroad, moreover, in Switzerland, which he hated! The all-German Jewish pogrom did not take place only because the Winter Olympic Games were being held in Germany in those days, and Hitler could not yet afford to completely ignore world public opinion.

The Nazi propaganda apparatus made the most of the event. A three-week period of mourning was declared in the country, national flags were lowered at half-mast... The farewell ceremony in Davos was broadcast by all German radio stations, the melodies of Beethoven and Haydn were replaced by Wagner's "Twilight of the Gods"... Hitler spoke: "Behind the murderer stands the hate-filled force of our Jewish enemy, trying to enslave the German people... We accept their challenge to fight!" In articles, speeches, and radio broadcasts, the words “a Jew shot” sounded like a refrain.

Historians view Hitler's propaganda use of Gustloff's murder as a prologue to the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question."

Gustlov is dead, long live Wilhelm Gustlov!

The insignificant personality of V. Gustloff, almost unknown before the assassination attempt, was officially elevated to the rank of Blutzeuge, a holy martyr who fell at the hands of a mercenary. It seemed that one of the main Nazi figures had been killed. His name was given to streets, squares, a bridge in Nuremberg, an air glider... Classes on the topic were held in schools "Wilhelm Gustloff, killed by a Jew".

In the name "Wilhelm Gustloff" was named the German Titanic, the flagship of the fleet of an organization called Kraft Durch Freude, abbreviated KdF - "Strength through joy".
Led it Robert Ley, head of the state trade unions "German Labor Front". He was the one who invented the Nazi salute Heil Hitler! with an outstretched hand and ordered that it be carried out first by all civil servants, then by teachers and schoolchildren, and even later by all workers. It was he, a famous drunkard and “the greatest idealist in the labor movement,” who organized a fleet of ships KdF.

The Nazis, led by Adolf Hitler, having come to power, in order to increase the social base of support for their policies among the German population, outlined the creation of a broad system of social security and services as one of their activities.
Already in the mid-1930s, the average German worker, in terms of the level of services and benefits that he was entitled to, compared favorably with workers in other European countries.
A whole flotilla of passenger ships to provide cheap and affordable travel and cruises was conceived for construction as the embodiment of the ideas of National Socialism and their propaganda.
The flagship of this fleet was to be a new comfortable airliner, which the authors of the project planned to name after the German Fuhrer - "Adolf Gitler".

On May 5, 1937, at the Hamburg shipyard, Blum and Voss solemnly launched the world's largest ten-deck cruise ship, commissioned by KdF. Gustloff's widow, in the presence of Hitler, broke a bottle of champagne on the side, and the ship received its name - Wilhelm Gustloff. Its displacement is 25,000 tons, length is 208 meters, cost is 25 million Reichsmarks. It is designed for 1,500 vacationers, who have glazed promenade decks, a winter garden, a swimming pool...

Thus began a short happy time in the life of the liner; it would last a year and 161 days. The “floating holiday home” worked continuously, the people were delighted: the prices for sea travel were, if not low, then affordable. A five-day cruise to the Norwegian fjords cost 60 Reichsmarks, a twelve-day cruise along the coast of Italy - 150 RM (the monthly earnings of workers and employees were 150-250 RM). While sailing, you could call home at an ultra-cheap rate and vent your delight to your family. Vacationers abroad compared living conditions with their own in Germany, and the comparisons most often turned out to be not in favor of foreigners. A contemporary reflects: “How did Hitler manage to take control of the people in a short time, to accustom them not only to silent submission, but also to mass rejoicing at official events? A partial answer to this question is given by the activities of the KdF organization.”

Gustlov's finest hour fell in April 1938, when, in stormy weather, the team rescued the sailors of the sinking English steamer Pegaway. The English press paid tribute to the skill and courage of the Germans.

The inventive Ley used the windfall propaganda success to use the liner as a floating polling station for the popular vote on the annexation of Austria to Germany. On April 10, at the mouth of the Thames, Gustlov took on board about 1,000 German and 800 Austrian citizens living in the UK, as well as a large group of journalist observers, left the three-mile zone and anchored in international waters, where the vote was held. As expected, 99% of voters voted yes. British newspapers, including the Marxist Daily Herald, were lavish in their praise of the union ship.

The ship's last cruise took place on August 25, 1939. Unexpectedly, during a planned voyage in the middle of the North Sea, the captain received a coded order to urgently return to port. The time for cruises was over—less than a week later, Germany attacked Poland and World War II began.

With the outbreak of war, almost all KdF ships ended up in military service. "Wilhelm Gustloff" was converted into a hospital ship and assigned to the German Navy - Kriegsmarine. The liner was repainted white and marked with red crosses, which was supposed to protect it from attack in accordance with the Hague Convention. The first patients began to arrive on board during the war against Poland in October 1939. Even in such conditions, the German authorities used the ship as a means of propaganda - as evidence of the humanity of the Nazi leadership, most of the first patients were wounded Polish prisoners. Over time, when German losses became noticeable, the ship was sent to the port of Gothenhafen (Gdynia), where it took on board even more wounded, as well as Germans (Volksdeutsche) evacuated from East Prussia.

Already the autumn of '43 showed that the quiet life was ending - on October 8 (9), the Americans covered the harbor with a bomb carpet. The floating hospital Stuttgart caught fire and sank; this was the first loss of a former KdF ship. The explosion of a heavy bomb near Gustlov caused a one and a half meter crack in the side plating, which was brewed. The weld will still remind itself on the last day of Gustlov’s life, when the S-13 submarine will slowly but surely catch up with the initially faster floating barracks.

In the second half of 1944, the front came very close to East Prussia. The Germans of East Prussia had certain reasons to fear revenge from the Red Army - the great destruction and killings among civilians in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union were known to many. Germanpropaganda depicted the “horrors of the Soviet offensive.”

In October 1944, the first detachments of the Red Army were already on the territory of East Prussia. Nazi propaganda began a widespread campaign to “expose Soviet atrocities,” accusing Soviet soldiers of mass murder and rape. By spreading such propaganda, the Nazis achieved their goal - the number of volunteers in the Volkssturm militia increased, but the propaganda also led to increased panic among the civilian population as the front approached, and millions of people became refugees.

On January 21, Grand Admiral Doenitz gave the command to begin Operation Hannibal - the largest evacuation of the population by sea of ​​all time: more than two million people were transported to the West by all the ships at the disposal of the German command.

At the same time, the submarines of the Soviet Baltic Fleet were preparing for the war-ending attacks. A significant part of them was blocked for a long time in the Leningrad and Kronstadt ports by German minefields and steel anti-submarine nets deployed by 140 ships in the spring of 1943. After breaking the blockade of Leningrad, the Red Army continued its offensive along the shores of the Gulf of Finland, and the capitulation of Finland, an ally of Germany opened the way for Soviet submarines to the Baltic Sea. Stalin's order followed: submariners based in Finnish harbors to detect and destroy enemy ships. The operation pursued both military and psychological goals - to complicate the supply of German troops by sea and to prevent evacuation to the West. One of the consequences of Stalin’s order was Gustlov’s meeting with the submarine S-13 and its commander, Captain 3rd Rank A. Marinesko.

Nationality: Odessa.

Captain of the third rank A. I. Marinesko

When life in Odessa returned to normal, foreign ships began to arrive at the port. Dressed and cheerful passengers threw coins into the water, and Odessa boys dived after them; Few people managed to get ahead of the future submariner. He left school at the age of 15, knowing how to read, write somehow and “sell his vest sleeves,” as he later often said. His language was a colorful and bizarre mixture of Russian and Ukrainian, flavored with Odessa jokes and Romanian curses. A harsh childhood hardened him and made him inventive, teaching him not to get lost in the most unexpected and dangerous situations.

He began life at sea at the age of 15 as a cabin boy on a coastal steamer, graduated from a nautical school, and was called up for military service. Marinesko was probably a born submariner; he even had a naval surname. Having started his service, he quickly realized that a small ship was most suitable for him, an individualist by nature. After a nine-month course, he sailed as a navigator on the submarine Shch-306, then completed command courses and in 1937 became the commander of another boat, M-96 - two torpedo tubes, 18 crew members. In the pre-war years, M-96 bore the title "the best submarine of the Red Banner Baltic Fleet", putting emergency dive time record - 19.5 seconds instead of 28 standard, for which the commander and his team were awarded a personalized gold watch.

By the beginning of the war, Marinesko was already an experienced and respected submariner. He had a rare gift for managing people, which allowed him to move without loss of authority from “comrade commander” to an equal member of the feast in the wardroom.

In 1944, Marinesko received under his command a large submarine of the Stalinets series, S-13. The history of the creation of boats in this series deserves at least a few lines, as it is a vivid example of secret military and industrial cooperation between the USSR and the Third Reich before the war. The project was developed by order of the Soviet government in an engineering bureau owned jointly by the German navy, Krupp and the shipyard in Bremen. The bureau was headed by the German Blum, a retired captain, and it was located in The Hague - in order to circumvent the provision of the Versailles Peace Treaty, which prohibited Germany from developing and building submarines.

At the end of December 1944, the S-13 was in the Finnish port of Turku and was preparing to go to sea. It was scheduled for January 2, but Marinesko, who had been on a spree, appeared on the boat only the next day, when the “special department” of the security service was already looking for him as a defector to the enemy’s side. After evaporating the hops in the bathhouse, he arrived at headquarters and honestly told about everything. He couldn’t or didn’t want to remember the names of the girls and the place of the “spree,” he only said that they drank Pontikka, Finnish potato moonshine, compared to which “vodka is like mother’s milk.”

The S-13 commander would have been arrested if not for the acute shortage of experienced submariners and Stalin’s order, which had to be carried out at any cost. Divisional commander Captain 1st Rank Orel ordered the C-13 to urgently put to sea and wait for further orders. On January 11, the fully fueled C-13 headed along the coast of the island of Gotland into the open sea. For Marinesco, returning to base without a victory was tantamount to being court-martialed.

As part of Operation Hannibal, on January 22, 1945, the Wilhelm Gustloff in the port of Gdynia (then called Gotenhafen by the Germans) began accepting refugees on board. At first, people were accommodated with special passes - primarily several dozen submarine officers, several hundreds of women from the naval auxiliary division and almost a thousand wounded soldiers. Later, when tens of thousands of people gathered in the port and the situation became more difficult, they began to let everyone in, giving priority to women and children. Since the planned number of places was only 1,500, refugees began to be placed on decks, in the passages. Women soldiers were even placed in an empty swimming pool. In the last stages of the evacuation, the panic intensified so much that some women in the port, in desperation, began to give their children to those who managed to get on board, in the hope of at least saving them in this way. In the end , January 30, 1945, the ship's crew officers had already stopped counting the refugees, whose number had exceeded 10,000.
According to modern estimates, there should have been 10,582 people on board: 918 junior cadets of the 2nd training submarine division (2. U-Boot-Lehrdivision), 173 crew members, 373 women from the auxiliary naval corps, 162 seriously wounded military personnel, and 8,956 refugees, mostly old people, women and children.

Attack of the century.

Captain Gustlov Peterson is 63 years old; he has not driven ships for many years and therefore asked for two young sea captains to help him. The military command of the ship was entrusted to an experienced submariner, corvette captain Tsang. A unique situation has arisen: on the ship’s command bridge there are four captains with an unclear distribution of powers, which will be one of the reasons for Gustloff’s death.

On January 30, accompanied by a single ship, the torpedo bomber Lev, Gustloff left the port of Gotenhafen, and a dispute immediately broke out among the captains. Tsang, who knew more than the rest about the danger of attacks by Soviet submarines, proposed to go in a zigzag with a maximum speed of 16 knots, in which case slower boats would not be able to catch up with them. “12 knots, no more!” - Peterson objected, recalling the unreliable weld in the side plating, and insisted on his own.

Gustloff walked along a corridor in minefields. At 19:00 a radiogram was received: a formation of minesweepers was on a collision course. The captains gave the command to turn on the identification lights to avoid a collision. The last and decisive mistake. The ill-fated radiogram remained forever a mystery; no minesweepers appeared.

At about 19 o'clock the boat surfaced, just at that time the lights on Gustloff came on. In the first seconds, the officer on duty could not believe his eyes: the silhouette of a giant ship was glowing in the distance! He appeared on the Marinesco bridge, wearing the non-standard, oily sheepskin sheepskin coat known to all Baltic submariners.

At 19:30, Gustloff's captains, without waiting for the mystical minesweepers, ordered the lights to be turned off. It’s too late - Marinesko has already grabbed his cherished goal with a death grip. He could not understand why the giant ship did not zigzag and was accompanied by only one ship. Both of these circumstances will make the attack easier.

A joyful mood reigned on Gustloff: a few more hours and they would leave the danger zone. The captains gathered in the wardroom for lunch; a steward in a white jacket brought pea soup and cold meat. We rested for some time after the arguments and excitement of the day, and drank a glass of cognac for success.

On the S-13, four bow torpedo tubes are prepared for attack, on each torpedo there is an inscription: on the first - "For the Motherland", On the second - "For Stalin", on third - "For the Soviet people" and on the fourth - "For Leningrad".
700 meters to the target. At 21:04 the first torpedo is fired, followed by the rest. Three of them hit the target, the fourth, with the inscription "For Stalin", gets stuck in a torpedo tube, ready to explode at the slightest shock. But here, as often with Marinesko, skill is complemented by luck: the torpedo engine stalls for an unknown reason, and the torpedo operator quickly closes the outer cover of the apparatus. The boat goes under water.

At 21:16 the first torpedo hit the bow of the ship, later the second one blew up the empty swimming pool where the women of the naval auxiliary battalion were, and the last one hit the engine room. The passengers' first thought was that they had hit a mine, but Captain Peterson realized it was a submarine, and his first words were:
Das war's - That's all.

Those passengers who did not die from the three explosions and did not drown in the cabins on the lower decks rushed to the lifeboats in panic. At that moment, it turned out that by ordering the watertight compartments in the lower decks to be closed, according to the instructions, the captain had accidentally blocked part of the team, which was supposed to lower the boats and evacuate passengers. Therefore, in the panic and stampede, not only many children and women died, but also many of those who climbed to the upper deck. They could not lower the lifeboats because they did not know how to do this, besides, many of the davits were iced over, and the ship was already heavily listing. Through the joint efforts of the crew and passengers, some boats were able to be launched, but many people still found themselves in the icy water. Due to the strong roll of the ship, an anti-aircraft gun came off the deck and crushed one of the boats, already full of people.

About an hour after the attack, the Wilhelm Gustloff completely sank.

Dozens of rescue boats and rafts lowered from the decks floated around the sinking ship. Overloaded rafts are surrounded by people frantically clinging to them; one by one they drown in the icy water. Hundreds of dead children's bodies: life jackets keep them afloat, but the children's heads are heavier than their legs, and only their legs stick out of the water.

Captain Peterson was one of the first to leave the ship. A sailor who was in the same rescue boat with him would later say: “Not far from us, a woman was floundering in the water screaming for help. We pulled her into the boat, despite the captain’s cry of “Leave us alone, we are already overloaded!”

More than a thousand people were rescued by the escort ship and seven ships that arrived at the scene of the disaster. 70 minutes after the first torpedo exploded, Gustloff began to sink. At the same time, something incredible happens: during the dive, the lighting that failed during the explosion suddenly turns on, and the howl of sirens is heard. People look in horror at the devilish performance.

S-13 was lucky again: the only escort ship was busy rescuing people, and when it began to throw depth charges, the “For Stalin” torpedo was already neutralized, and the boat was able to leave.

One of the survivors, 18-year-old administrative trainee Heinz Schön, collected materials related to the history of the liner for more than half a century, and became a chronicler of the greatest ship disaster of all time. According to his calculations, on January 30 there were 10,582 people on board Gustlov, 9,343 died. For comparison: the disaster of the Titanic, which ran into an underwater iceberg in 1912, cost the lives of 1,517 passengers and crew members.

All four captains escaped. The youngest of them, by the name of Kohler, committed suicide shortly after the end of the war - he was broken by the fate of Gustloff.

The destroyer "Lion" (a former ship of the Dutch Navy) was the first to arrive at the scene of the tragedy and began rescuing the surviving passengers. Since in January the temperature was already −18 °C, there were only a few minutes left before irreversible hypothermia set in. Despite this, the ship managed to rescue 472 passengers from the lifeboats and from the water.
The guard ships of another convoy, the cruiser Admiral Hipper, which also, in addition to the crew, also had about 1,500 refugees on board, also came to the rescue.
Due to fear of attack from submarines, he did not stop and continued to retire to safe waters. Other ships (by “other ships” we mean the only destroyer T-38 - the sonar system did not work on the Lev, the Hipper left) managed to save another 179 people. A little more than an hour later, new ships that came to the rescue could only fish dead bodies from the icy water. Later, a small messenger ship that arrived at the scene of the tragedy unexpectedly found, seven hours after the sinking of the liner, among hundreds of dead bodies, an unnoticed boat and in it a living baby wrapped in blankets - the last rescued passenger of the Wilhelm Gustloff.

As a result, according to various estimates, from 1200 to 2500 people out of a little less than 11 thousand on board managed to survive. Maximum estimates place losses at 9,985 lives.

In Germany, the reaction to the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff at the time of the tragedy was rather restrained. The Germans did not disclose the scale of losses, so as not to worsen the morale of the population even further. In addition, at that moment the Germans suffered heavy losses in other places. However, after the end of the war, in the minds of many Germans, the simultaneous death of so many civilians and especially thousands of children on board the Wilhelm Gustloff remained a wound that even time did not heal. Along with the bombing of Dresden this tragedy remains one of the most terrible events of the Second World War for the German people.

Some German publicists consider the sinking of Gustlov a crime against civilians, the same as the bombing of Dresden. However, here is the conclusion made by the Institute of Maritime Law in Kiel: “Wilhelm Gustloff was a legitimate military target, there were hundreds of submarine specialists, anti-aircraft guns on it... There were wounded, but there was no status as a floating hospital. The German government on 11/11/44 declared the Baltic Sea an area of ​​​​military operations and ordered the destruction of everything that floats. The Soviet armed forces had the right to respond in kind."

Disaster researcher Heinz Schön concludes that the liner was a military target and its sinking was not a war crime, because:
ships intended for transporting refugees, hospital ships had to be marked with the appropriate signs - a red cross, could not wear camouflage colors, could not travel in the same convoy with military ships. They could not carry any military cargo, stationary or temporarily placed air defense guns, artillery pieces or other similar equipment on board.

"Wilhelm Gustloff" was a warship, being assigned to the navy and armed forces, on which six thousand refugees were allowed to board. The entire responsibility for their lives, from the moment they boarded the warship, lay with the appropriate officials of the German navy. Thus, the Gustloff was a legitimate military target of Soviet submariners, due to the following facts:

"Wilhelm Gustloff" was not an unarmed civilian ship: it had weapons on board that could be used to fight enemy ships and aircraft;
"Wilhelm Gustloff" was a training floating base for the German submarine fleet;
"Wilhelm Gustloff" was accompanied by a warship of the German fleet (destroyer "Lion");
Soviet transports with refugees and wounded during the war repeatedly became targets for German submarines and aircraft (in particular, motor ship "Armenia", sunk in 1941 in the Black Sea, was carrying more than 5 thousand refugees and wounded on board. Only 8 people survived. However, “Armenia”, like "Wilhelm Gustloff", violated the status of a medical ship and was a legitimate military target).

Unlike the lengthy search for the Titanic, finding the Wilhelm Gustloff was easy.
Its coordinates at the time of sinking turned out to be accurate, and the ship was at a relatively shallow depth - only 45 meters.
Mike Boring visited the wreck in 2003 and made a documentary about his expedition.
On Polish navigation maps the place is marked as "Obstacle No. 73"
In 2006, a bell recovered from a shipwreck and then used as decoration in a Polish seafood restaurant was exhibited at the Forced Paths exhibition in Berlin.

On March 2-3, 2008, a new television film was shown on the German channel ZDF called “Die Gustloff”

In 1990, 45 years after the end of the war, Marinesko was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Later recognition came thanks to the activities of the Marinesko Committee, which operated in Moscow, Leningrad, Odessa and Kaliningrad. In Leningrad and Kaliningrad, monuments were erected to the S-13 commander. A small museum of Russian submarine forces in the northern capital bears Marinesko’s name.

The newest German motor ship was sunk by a Soviet submarine. There were about 9 thousand Nazis on board, of which 3,700 were trained submariners. According to various sources, from 6 to 7 thousand people died in this disaster.

This disaster is called the greatest maritime disaster in all centuries of navigation. “If we consider that incident a disaster,” wrote in the book “The Death of Wilhelm Gustlov,” which was published in Germany, Hitler’s officer Heinz Schön, who was on board the liner and survived, “then it was undoubtedly the biggest disaster in the history of navigation , compared to which even the death of the Titanic, which collided with an iceberg in 1912, is nothing.” As you know, 1,517 people died on the Titanic. The Wilhelm Gustlov had significantly more enemy manpower. The attack of a German liner by a submarine under the command of Marinesko on January 30, 1945 plunged Nazi Germany into mourning. It was the attack of the century...

Alexander Marinesko was born in Odessa. At the age of 14, he began working on the Sevastopol steamship, which made regular voyages between the ports of the Black Sea. In 1933 he graduated from the Odessa Marine College and worked in the merchant fleet. But the brightest pages of his life are connected with his service in the Red Banner Baltic Fleet, where he managed to prove himself even in the pre-war years.


In 1939, Alexander Marinesko took command of the submarine M-96, the so-called “baby”. For excellent performance of torpedo firing, the People's Commissar of the Navy in 1940 awarded Lieutenant Commander Marinesko with a gold personalized watch.

In August 1942, the M-96 torpedoed a fascist transport with a displacement of 7 thousand tons. Having traveled about 900 miles (of which 400 miles were underwater), the “baby” returned to base victoriously. Marinesko was awarded the Order of Lenin, and the crew members were awarded other government awards.

In 1943, Marinesko took command of the submarine S-13. And on the very first military campaign, in October 1944, another enemy transport was sent to the bottom by artillery fire. But the main victory, which became legendary, was ahead.


On January 9, the S-13 submarine received a combat order from the commander of the submarine brigade, Rear Admiral S.B. Verkhovsky, according to which she was to take a position in Danzing Bay by January 13 with the task of destroying enemy ships and transports on enemy communications. Exactly at the appointed time, S-13 arrived at the position and began searching for convoys, usually doing it at night on the surface and during the day under a periscope. However, a persistent search at first did not give the desired results: apart from anti-submarine defense ships, Marinesko was unable to find anything.

Meteorological conditions during this campaign were extremely unfavorable for the actions of S-13. The first half was hampered by stormy weather and bright moonlit nights, the second was accompanied by snowfalls and rains that limited visibility.

It is not known what played the main role - your own, unknown calculations, intuition? But Marinesko decided to leave the area.

On the evening of January 30, the S-13 was on the surface. At about 20 o'clock, hydroacoustic foreman of the 2nd article Shnaptsev reported that he heard distant noises of propellers. The submarine's navigator, Lieutenant Commander Redkoborodov, quickly calculated the course for approaching enemy ships and reported it to the commander. Captain 3rd Rank Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko immediately ordered to increase the speed to full and set on a course of approach with the enemy convoy.

Cutting the steep wave with its bow, the boat rushed towards the enemy. Soon, among the many noises, the hydroacoustic discerned the noise of the propellers of a large ship. And at 21 hours 10 minutes, the commander of the steering sections, foreman of the 2nd article Vinogradov, who was on signal watch, discovered two masthead lights, and then darkened side lights. They belonged to a large liner that was escorting warships.

At first, Marinesko thought that he was dealing with a light cruiser of the Nuremberg type - these lights were moving too quickly to the side, in a westerly direction. Warships usually have such speeds.


At 21:15 a combat alarm sounded throughout the compartments. Marinesko decided to attack the liner from the surface. Having determined the direction of the enemy’s movement, the S-13 set a course parallel to the liner in order to overtake it and take a position advantageous for a torpedo salvo.

The boat was chasing the enemy ship in the dark, on the surface, at top speed. The liner was so huge that Marinesco now mistook it for a floating ship repair plant.

At 22:08, the S-13 crossed the convoy’s course astern and took a parallel course from the shore. This attack position - between the shore and the enemy - often ensures success, since the enemy expects an attack mainly from the sea and maintains intense surveillance from the sea. The danger is that if the boat is spotted, it will be impossible to escape.

It was still not possible to achieve complete secrecy of the S-13: Morse code flashes of light flashed from one of the security ships. The Nazis, mistaking the cabin of the boat for one of their security boats, made a request. The signalman on duty Vinogradov was not at a loss. Previously, he had watched the light negotiations of two fascist ships and remembered their identification, given by the flashes of the lantern. Now, on the orders of the commander, Vinogradov clearly responded to the request of the Nazi signalman with the identification of the fascist ship and thereby disoriented the enemy, allowing him to get closer to him at a distance of 12 cables.

An hour later, S-13 broke through the guards and, having taken an advantageous position, at 23:08 fired a salvo of four bow torpedo tubes. Three powerful explosions followed: one torpedo exploded in the bow, the second in the middle and the third in the stern of the transport. Due to a malfunction, the fourth torpedo remained in the apparatus and did not come out.

The liner began to sink quickly. Security ships rushed to the aid of the dying nine-deck giant. The rays of enemy searchlights flickered feverishly over the surface of the sea. The submarine immediately sank to depth. Marinesko decided to dive under the convoy so that the noise of the boat’s propellers would not be recognized by Hitler’s acoustics among the many scurrying ships, then, when the boat reached great depths, break away from the enemy and go to sea.


However, this plan was only partially implemented: as soon as the S-13 began to move away from the convoy, it was found by enemy sonars. Maneuvering, the boat evaded pursuit. The commander sent her to the dive site of the attacked liner with the goal of lying down next to it on the ground and resting.

But the enemy did not allow this intention to be realized. At 23 hours 26 minutes, the submarine's acoustician reported that a destroyer liner, four patrol ships, two minesweepers and many patrol boats were approaching the sinking site, which established hydroacoustic contact with the submarine and began pursuing it.

The pursuit continued until four o'clock in the morning on January 31. The Nazis dropped more than two hundred depth charges on the boat, and only thanks to the skillful maneuvering of the commander the boat broke away from the pursuit, receiving almost no damage.

According to the commander's report, on January 30, the boat sank a transport with a displacement of 20 thousand tons. However, Marinesko, who quite accurately determined the elements of the target’s movement, made a mistake in determining the displacement of the transport...

On January 30, 1945, one of the largest ships in Germany, the Wilhelm Gustlow, sailed into the Bay of Danzig in the Baltic Sea. The tourist and excursion ship was built at the Hamburg shipyard in 1938. It was an unsinkable nine-deck ocean liner with a displacement of 25,484 tons, built with the latest technology. Two theaters, a church, dance floors, swimming pools, a gym, restaurants, a cafe with a winter garden and artificial climate, comfortable cabins and Hitler’s personal apartments. Length - 208 meters, fuel capacity - up to Yokohama: half the world without refueling. It could not sink, just as a railway station could not sink.

The ship was named and built in honor of Wilhelm Gustlow, the leader of the Swiss Nazis, one of Hitler's assistants. One day, a Jewish youth from Yugoslavia, David Frankfuter, came to his headquarters. Having identified himself as a courier, he entered Gustlov’s office and pumped five bullets into him. Thus Wilhelm Gustlow became a martyr of the Nazi movement. During the war, "Wilhelm Gustlov" became a training base for the Higher School of Submariners.

It was January 1945. The railways are clogged, the Nazis are fleeing and taking out the loot by sea. On January 27, at a meeting of representatives of the Wehrmacht fleet and civilian authorities, the commander of the Wilhelm Gustlov announced Hitler’s order to transport the crews of newly minted submarine specialists to Western bases. This was the flower of the fascist submarine fleet - 3,700 people, crews for 70-80 of the latest submarines, ready for a complete blockade of England.

High-ranking officials - generals and senior officers, an auxiliary women's battalion - about 400 people - also embarked. Among the chosen ones of high society are 22 Gauleiters of the lands of Poland and East Prussia. It is also known that when the liner was loading, cars with red crosses drove up to it. And according to intelligence data, bandaged dummies were unloaded onto the liner.

At night, civilian and military nobility were loaded onto the liner. There were both wounded and refugees there. The figure of 6470 passengers is taken from the ship's list.

Already at the exit from Gdynia, when on January 30, four tugboats began to take the liner out to sea, it was surrounded by small ships with refugees, and some of the people were taken on board. Then the liner went to Danzig, where it received wounded military personnel and medical personnel. There were up to 9,000 people on board.

Many years later, the German press discussed: if there had been red crosses on the ship, would it have been sunk or not? The dispute is pointless; there were no hospital crosses and there could not have been. The ship was part of the German naval forces, was under escort and had weapons - anti-aircraft guns. The operation was prepared so secretly that the senior radio operator was appointed just a day before the exit.

During the transition, conflict broke out between senior officials. Some suggested going in zigzags, constantly changing course, throwing Soviet submarines off the scent. Others believed that there was no need to be afraid of boats - the Baltic was filled with mines, there were 1,300 German ships at sea, and one should be afraid of airplanes. Therefore, they proposed to go directly, at full speed, in order to quickly avoid the dangerous air zone.

After three torpedoes hit the liner, in a strange way, all the lamps in the cabins and all the illumination on the decks suddenly lit up. Coast Guard ships arrived, one of which captured a photograph of the sinking ship.

The Wilhelm Gustlow sank not in five or fifteen minutes, but in one hour and ten minutes. It was an hour of horror. The captain tried to reassure the passengers by announcing that the ship had simply run aground. But the sirens were already wailing, drowning out the captain’s voice. Senior officers fired at junior officers as they made their way to the lifeboats. The soldiers fired into the maddened crowd. With full illumination, the Wilhelm Gustlov sank to the bottom.


The next day, all foreign newspapers reported about this disaster. "The Greatest Disaster at Sea"; “The death of the Titanic in 1912 is nothing compared to what happened in the Baltic on the night of January 31,” wrote Swedish newspapers.

On February 19 and 20, the Finnish newspaper Turun Sanomat published the following message: “According to Swedish radio, on Tuesday the Wilhelm Gustlow, leaving Danzig with a displacement of 25,000 tons, was sunk by a torpedo. On board the ship there were 3,700 trained submariners en route to participate in the operations of the German fleet, and another 5,000 evacuees. Only 998 people were saved. After being hit by torpedoes, the liner fell on board and sank within 5 minutes.”

The death of the liner alarmed the entire Nazi Reich. Three days of mourning were declared in the country. An emergency report from Berlin radio said that the commander of the submarine that torpedoed the liner was sentenced to death in absentia and declared a “personal enemy of Germany.” Those close to Hitler say in their memoirs that he kept a special record of “personal enemies of Germany” who caused damage to the “Third Reich.” Marinesko was included in this list.

Hitler, in a fit of rage, ordered the convoy commander to be shot. In 1938, when this “miracle of German technology” was launched from the stocks in Hamburg, the Fuhrer personally took part in its “baptism” and at the banquet raised a toast to the greatness of Germany.

A special commission was hastily created to investigate the circumstances of the ship's sinking. The Fuhrer had something to lament. More than six thousand members of the military elite evacuated from Danzig, who were ahead of the retreating Nazi troops in their flight, died on the liner.

The sinking of the Wilhelm Gustlow liner was the largest, but not the only victory of the S-13 in the January-February campaign. Having broken away from the pursuers, the commander ordered the damage received during the bombing by depth charges to be repaired, after which the submarine continued to search for the enemy.

On February 9, C-13 continued combat operations in the southern Baltic. A fierce storm with snowfall prevented observation. It seemed that in such weather hardly anyone would dare to go to sea. But by evening the snowstorm subsided a little.

At 22:15, the hydroacoustic Shnaptsev picked up the noise of the propellers of a large ship. Marinesko determined the direction of the enemy's movement and began to approach him, giving 18-knot speed with diesel engines. The bow torpedo tubes were prepared to fire.

At this time, visibility improved slightly, and the silhouette of a huge ship was clearly defined directly in the direction of the boat. In order not to be prematurely noticed, Marinesko changed course with the expectation of going into the dark part of the horizon.

2 am, almost forty minutes of intense maneuvering. Finally, S-13, again from the shore, as when attacking the liner, took an advantageous position for the salvo.

At the moment when the command was already given to prepare for the attack, the target suddenly turned to a new course. Marinesko realized that the enemy, fearing to be attacked, was moving in an anti-submarine zigzag. The commander increased the speed of the boat to 19 knots and began preparing to torpedo with stern devices.

2 hours 49 minutes. Marinesko orders to stop the diesel engine. Firing with stern devices allows you to fire a salvo at a speed of 19 knots. The stern torpedo tubes have no drag, but it is still better to fire at the submarine's low speed. Then the command “Fire!” sounds.

Torpedoes from the feed tubes rush towards the target. Marinesko's calculations were unmistakable. Two torpedoes hit the target almost simultaneously, and a few seconds later three more strong explosions were heard. Ammunition detonated or boilers exploded. A strong flame, like lightning during a thunderstorm, illuminated the battlefield.

Security destroyers rushed towards the sinking ship. Illuminating the entire area with searchlights and flares, they tried to approach it, but it capsized over its left side, stayed on the water with its keel up for a minute, and then sank to the bottom.

Only after the war it became known that on the night of February 10, 1945, at 2 hours 50 minutes Moscow time, the auxiliary cruiser General von Steuben with a displacement of 14,660 thousand tons was sunk. There were 3,600 Nazi soldiers and officers on it, hurrying from the Courland bridgehead to defend Berlin. The German destroyers that approached the site of the destruction of the transport were able to lift only 300 people from the water.

And this time the S-13, thanks to the skillful maneuvering carried out by Marinesko, managed to escape from the enemy.

Unfortunately, the fate of the commander of the legendary submarine was tragic. Immediately after the end of the war, Marinesko was arrested. And subsequently his name and his feat undeservedly remained in oblivion.

Time, however, put everything in its place. On May 5, 1990, a Decree was published conferring the title of Hero of the Soviet Union to Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko, captain of the 3rd rank. Posthumously...

Comment:

- Marinesko sank the floating hospital "General von Steuben" in the same military campaign...

And of course, the debate about whether or not the Gustloff was a legitimate military target due to the submarine cadets on board, meaningless- firstly, the USSR did not pay attention to the red crosses, secondly, the Gustloff was sunk precisely because of refugees as part of an operation directed specifically against refugees, thirdly, to “General von Steuben” and “Stuttgart” (and others "fascists") the red crosses did not help in any way, and in this case Marinesko would have to attack in accordance with the assigned combat mission, regardless of what was painted on the Gustloff, and fourthly, if the Gustloff was legal military purpose, then I would like to hear your attempt to get out by answering a simple question - why did you have to lie so openly:

“The Gustloff is not a defenseless civilian ship, but a military transport sailing under powerful cover. It was a fair fight!” (Alexander Marinesko);

"...The commander of the submarine S-13 accomplished his main feat on January 30, 1945, sinking the German transport Wilhelm Gustloff with a torpedo attack, on board which were 7,000 fascists, including the SS battalion, 4,000 thousand evacuated German submariners, highly qualified specialists, major Nazi bosses, high ranks of the fleet..."

“...Marinesko attacked underwater, firing torpedoes almost point-blank, and this in front of the strongest German convoy of the entire war!”

"... Further, the presentation talked about another masterful attack and sinking of one large ship - the military transport "General von Steuben". Displacement of about 15,000 tons. The transport carried 3,600 tankers. There would be enough of them to staff several tank divisions! That's all on the same trip..."

“Thus, in just one campaign, Alexander Marinesko destroyed eight thousand Nazis. A full-fledged division! And what a division! Selected officers, first-class specialists - submariners, SS men, fascist bosses...”

“Alexander Marinesko managed to break through the dense encirclement of the ships guarding the transport, and the four torpedoes he fired reached their target: the transport with Nazi submariners sank to the bottom. After a successful attack and a long pursuit of the submarine by enemy convoy ships, the submarine returned safely to base...”

“It was a brilliant military operation, thanks to which the initiative for dominance in the naval war in the Baltic was firmly seized by Soviet sailors,” says Yuri Lebedev, deputy director of the Museum of Russian Submarine Forces named after A.I. Marinesko: “By its actions, the submarine “S-13” brought the end of the war closer. It was a strategic success for the Soviet navy, and for Germany - the largest naval disaster. Marinesko's feat is that he destroyed the seemingly unsinkable symbol of Nazism, a dream ship promoting the "Third Reich"..."

COMMENT:

-
From a legal point of view, the actions of commander Marinesko were impeccable. Ships intended to transport refugees and hospital ships had to be marked with the appropriate red cross insignia, could not wear camouflage colors and could not travel in the same convoy with military ships. There could not be any military cargo, stationary or temporarily placed air defense guns, artillery pieces or other equipment on board. In legal terms, the Wilhelm Gustloff was a warship on which six thousand refugees were allowed to board. The entire responsibility for their lives, from the moment they boarded the warship, rests with the appropriate officials of the German navy.

During the Cold War in Germany, Marinesko was considered a war criminal, until the Institute of Maritime Law (Kiel, Germany) made a decision that completely exonerated Marinesko and recognized that the Wilhelm Gustloff was a legitimate war booty of Soviet submariners. The decision was based on the following:

1. “Wilhelm Gustloff” was not an unarmed civilian ship: it had weapons on board that could be used to fight enemy ships and aircraft;
2. "Wilhelm Gustloff" was a training floating base for the German submarine fleet;
3. "Wilhelm Gustloff" was accompanied by a warship of the German fleet;
4. Soviet transports with refugees and wounded during the war repeatedly became targets for German submarines and aircraft (in particular, the motor ship "Armenia", sunk in 1941 in the Black Sea, was carrying more than 5,000 refugees and wounded on board. Only 8 survived However, “Armenia”, like “Wilhelm Gustloff”, violated the status of a medical ship and was a legitimate military target). Therefore, the Soviet side was recognized as having the right to take adequate retaliatory actions against German courts.

COMMENT:

- // “Wilhelm Gustloff” was not an unarmed civilian ship: it had weapons on board that could be used to fight enemy ships and aircraft.
Lie. Studies of the hull of the sunken ship by independent experts have proven this repeatedly. The last time was in 2004.

//"Wilhelm Gustloff" was a training floating base for the German submarine fleet.
Lie. At the time of the torpedoing he was not one, having a completely different legal status.

//"Wilhelm Gustloff" was accompanied by a warship of the German fleet;
Lie. The ship left the harbor accompanied by three ships: the Hansa passenger liner, also filled with refugees, and two torpedo boats. Due to problems, both Hansa and one torpedo boat remained in the harbor - they simply leaked in such a storm, and the second torpedo boat, Löwe, was left as an escort. But he also fell behind the ship due to problems with the engine and at the time of the torpedoing Gustloff escort didn't have.

//in particular, the motor ship "Armenia", sunk in 1941 in the Black Sea, was carrying more than 5,000 refugees and wounded on board. Only 8 people survived. However, the Armenia, like the Wilhelm Gustloff, violated the status of a medical ship and was a legitimate military target).
Lie. In 1941, the USSR declared unlimited submarine warfare (I hope there is no need to tell you what this means?) and could not count on anything other than a completely similar response. But the Germans delayed their response, but in vain. As for Armenia, which they love to cite as an example for not having others, there is NO evidence that the ship was hit by German torpedoes. The ship has still not been found.

COMMENT:

Did the Gustloff have the insignia of a hospital ship? NO
DA servicemen were on board Gustloff

These two facts alone make the ship a completely legitimate military target.

COMMENT:

- “At the same time, in violation of the status of a medical ship”
So what? :-) Hitler actually attacked the USSR, violating the non-aggression pact, that’s how bad it is.

And Marinesko’s actions could simply be revenge for the sinking of the Armenia.
“Moreover, there is NO evidence of the defeat of Armenia by German torpedoes.”
When torpedoes float, they announce their nationality loudly and in three languages. belonging. And after the explosion, they throw out a buoy with the flag of the producing state.
Hmmm...

Comment:

- //Engels describes this phenomenon, incomprehensible to European perception, as follows: “And the Russian peasant, taking up an ax, defended his slavery with desperate frenzy.” Short and clear."
I'm not sure it was Engels, but the quote is great. Thank you.

S-13 was lucky again: the only escort ship was busy rescuing people, and when it began to throw depth charges, the “For Stalin” torpedo was already neutralized, and the boat was able to leave.

One of the survivors, 18-year-old administrative trainee Heinz Schön, spent more than half a century collecting materials related to the history of the liner and became a chronicler of the greatest ship disaster of all time. According to his calculations, on January 30 there were 10,582 people on board Gustlov, 9,343 died. For comparison: the disaster of the Titanic, which ran into an underwater iceberg in 1912, cost the lives of 1,517 passengers and crew members.

All four captains escaped. The youngest of them, by the name of Kohler, committed suicide shortly after the end of the war - he was broken by the fate of Gustloff.

The destroyer "Lion" (a former ship of the Dutch Navy) was the first to arrive at the scene of the tragedy and began rescuing the surviving passengers. Since the temperature in January was already −18 °C, there were only a few minutes left before irreversible hypothermia set in. Despite this, the ship managed to rescue 472 passengers from the lifeboats and from the water.
The guard ships of another convoy, the cruiser Admiral Hipper, also came to the rescue, which, in addition to the crew, also had about 1,500 refugees on board.
Due to fear of attack from submarines, he did not stop and continued to retire to safe waters. Other ships (by “other ships” we mean the only destroyer T-38 - the sonar system did not work on the Loew, the Hipper left) managed to save another 179 people. A little more than an hour later, new ships that came to the rescue could only fish dead bodies from the icy water. Later, a small messenger ship that arrived at the scene of the tragedy unexpectedly found, seven hours after the sinking of the liner, among hundreds of dead bodies, an unnoticed boat and in it a living baby, wrapped in blankets, the last rescued passenger of the Wilhelm Gustloff.

As a result, according to various estimates, from 1200 to 2500 people out of a little less than 11 thousand on board managed to survive. Maximum estimates place losses at 9,985 lives.

Gustlov's chronicler Heinz Schön in 1991 found the last survivor of the 47 people of the S-13 team, 77-year-old former torpedo operator V. Kurochkin, and visited him twice in a village near Leningrad. Two old sailors told each other (with the help of a translator) what happened on the memorable day of January 30 on the submarine and on Gustloff.
During his second visit, Kurochkin admitted to his German guest that after their first meeting, almost every night he dreamed of women and children drowning in icy water, screaming for help. When parting, he said: “War is a bad thing. Shooting at each other, killing women and children - what could be worse! People should learn to live without shedding blood...”