Six times more severe than the Titanic
Born 30 January 1945 A Soviet submarine S-13 detected the German vessel Wilhelm Gustloff. After receiving the order of Marina captain Alexander to shoot at the boat, three torpedoes reached the hull of Wilhelm Gustloff and the boat sank in less than an hour. A total of 9,434 people died, most of them - with the exception of crews - civilians.
The vessel Wilhelm Gustloff, with a capacity of 1,865 passengers, has been authorised by the Maritime Authority to transport more than 6,000 persons. The Red Army was making progress on the East Front and the need to relocate the German refugees who had left their homes led them to make this decision. After the sinking of the ship, they learned that they had managed to put another 5,000 refugees in hiding. At the time of the shipwreck, a total of 10,582 people were on board, according to the sources. Of these, about 1,000 were saved at first, although several hundred died of hypothermia, after waiting for rescue in the cold Baltic (northeast) waters.
Even though the ship was carrying swastika on the bow, Marine Alexander's captain already knew he was carrying the refugees. But the captain's career had faded: he was stubborn, drank too much, and negative notes were accumulating in his dossier. With the help of the torpedoes, Marino tried to reverse the situation and get the Soviet Union's Hero Trophy. Despite being a candidate for the prize, the high-level Soviet authorities did not award him the medal and tried to disseminate the version he attributed to Luftwaffe, which had been guilty of the sinking. Marinesco did not benefit from the most serious maritime tragedy in history.
As for the greatest marine tragedy of all time, most of us would probably mention the Titanic. But compared to what happened in the Baltic during the Second World War, the Titanic disaster was much smaller; according to the list of deaths, six times lower, as in the shipwreck of the Titanic, 1,514 people died.
But on the one hand, literature and film have made a huge publicity for the tragedy of the Titanic in the last century. On the other hand, the Soviets tried to distort what happened to Wilhem Gustloff and the rest of the allies despised the terrible consequences of the attack. After all, the Soviets were also allies, the winners of the war. And on the contrary, those 9,000 civilians drowned in the Baltic, most of them older, women and children, had a wrong side. Losing sides.
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