Wilhelm Gustloff (ship)

Wilhelm Gustloff

The Wilhelm Gustloff as a hospital ship in Gdansk , 1939

Ship data flag  German Empire Ship type Cabins - passenger ship Callsign DJVZ Owner German labor front Shipping company Hamburg South Shipyard Blohm & Voss , Hamburg Build number 511 building-costs approx. 25 million Reichsmarks Launch May 5, 1937 Commissioning March 15, 1938 Whereabouts Sunk on January 30, 1945

Ship dimensions and crew length 208.5 m ( Lüa ) width 23.5 m Draft Max. 7.0 m measurement 25,484 GRT   crew 424 people, possibly 2 pilots

Machine system machine four two-stroke - diesel engines , type MAN G8Z 52/70 ( license- Blohm & Voss), two each, on a wheels rigidly coupled -Untersetzungsgetriebe connected to a propeller Machine performance a total of 9500 PSe (6987 kW) Service speed 15.5 kn (29 km / h) Top speed 16.5 kn (31 km / h) propeller 2

Transport capacities Permitted number of passengers 1,471

The Wilhelm Gustloff was a cabin - passenger ship of the Nazi organization German Labor Front (DAF). The motor ship was used for cruises by the Office for Travel, Hiking and Vacation (RWU) of the DAF sub-organization NS-Gemeinschaft “ Kraft durch Freude ” (KdF) . After the beginning of the Second World War on September 1, 1939 , like the other KdF ships, it was used by the Navy as a hospital ship , barracks ship and as a troop transport .

When it was sunk by the Soviet submarine S-13 off the coast of Pomerania on January 30, 1945, between 4,000 and more than 9,000 people were killed. In relation to a single ship, its sinking is considered to be one of the most lossy ship catastrophes in human history.

Construction and equipment

Model of Wilhelm Gustloff in the Laboe Naval Memorial

The new cruise ship of the KdF fleet was commissioned by the German Labor Front at Blohm & Voss in Hamburg under the hull number 511 to set keel . The ship owner was thus the DAF; However was Wilhelm Gustloff from the Hamburg-South American Dampfschiffahrtsgesellschaft (HSDG) bereedert , d. H. managed, manned and maintained.

A large model of the ship was used as a moving van on a KdF move in Hamburg in May 1937. The launch took place on May 5, 1937: The baptism took place in the presence of Adolf Hitler by Hedwig Gustloff, the widow of Wilhelm Gustloff , who was stylized as a martyr by the National Socialists . On March 15, 1938, the ship was completed. Its maiden voyage took place on March 23 of the same year.

Cabins

The architect Woldemar Brinkmann was commissioned to design the interior . As a “ship without classes”, the equipment in the cabins for passengers and crew members was essentially the same. There were 224 two- and 233 four-bed cabins with one or two bunk beds for the passengers . In addition, three cabins with three bunk beds were provided for larger families. Each cubicle had a wardrobe for each resident, one or two (four- and six-bed cubicles) washbasins with hot and cold running water, and a seating area made up of a table, chairs and a sofa. As was common on the passenger ships of that time, toilets, showers (called “showers” ​​at the time) and bathtubs were shared outside the cabins, but were separate for passengers and crews. All passengers and crew were accommodated exclusively in outside cabins, only on the E-deck, which was already below the waterline , there was a large lounge with 60 seats in the middle in front of the swimming pool and a total of six bedrooms without portholes on both sides . There were five bunk beds each, which served the Hitler Youth (HJ) and the Association of German Girls (BdM) as a "floating youth hostel ".

40 individual cabins were available to members of the ship's command, engineers / mechanics, radio operators, doctors and tour guides. The rest of the crew lived in 39 two-bed and 77 four-bed cabins.

On the B-deck on the port side behind the front staircase there was the “Führer rooms”, which Hitler and his entourage never used. Two four-bed cabins were provided for the escort , followed by the dictator's suite . In addition to a living room of around 25 square meters, this had a spacious bedroom with a single bed and a bathroom with shower and tub. To the aft (left) was a smaller suite of rooms with a bathroom, which was reserved for the NSDAP Reichsleiter Robert Ley . The two suites or cabins with the max. 13 beds were usually not occupied.

So there were beds for max. 1471 passengers (including HJ / BdM bedrooms and the “driver's rooms”) and 426 (including two pilots ) crew members. The 22 lifeboats were also designed for these 1,897 people. Davits for ten motorized lifeboats (MRB) and a rowboat were installed on each side . The MRB built by the shipyard were designed for 95 people each; two of them were smaller and only held 39 people. The two rowing boats, which were suspended at the very front, could each hold 65 people. There was thus room for 1918 people in the lifeboats. On the last voyage of the Gustloff, however, not all davits were occupied with boats.

The Wilhelm Gustloff was designed as a passenger ship , but from the outset it was also designed to be used as a hospital ship. So were z. For example, the elevators were designed for the transport of hospital beds and there was complete piping in the cabins for the oxygen supply.

Decks

• Navigating bridge
• Sun deck (with arbor / dance floor, gym, lifeboats, emergency dynamo room)
• upper promenade deck (with cabins)
• lower promenade deck (with music and theater hall)
• A-deck, bridge deck (with front and rear dining room, kitchen and dentist / hospital)
• B-Deck, I. Deck (with cabins, "guide rooms", laundry, darkrooms and ladies / gentlemen's hairdresser)
• C-deck, II. Deck / bulkhead deck (with cabins, bakery and slaughterhouse)
• D deck, III. Deck (with cabins, dining room for crew and workshop)
• E-deck (with swimming pool, HJ / BdM accommodation, engine / auxiliary engine room, fuel oil tanks, luggage rooms, stores and provisions)
• Storage space / double floor (with machine / auxiliary machine room, fuel oil tanks, provisions and cooling rooms, swimming pool as well as ballast and fresh water tanks)

Machine system

For the size of the ship, the engine system had a comparatively low output, in accordance with its intended use on cruises where high speed is not required. A total of four two-stroke - diesel engines , more precisely eight-cylinder - plunger - line engines type MAN G8Z 52/70 ( hole 52 cm, stroke 70 cm) than under license were manufactured by the yard, put a wave combined capacity of 9500  PSe (6987 kW) ready . Two of these motors were coupled to a propeller via a reduction gear . The electrical energy for the on- board network (220 volts DC voltage ) was generated by five generator sets. Two of these were installed in the main engine room and three in the auxiliary engine room in front of it. They consisted of one six-cylinder diesel engine is 570 PSe power, a DC generator 380 k VA drive. If the power supply failed , a power generator located in the emergency dynamo room on the sun deck provided the emergency lighting .

Use until 1945

The Wilhelm Gustloff in Stettin as a hospital ship , recognizable by the white paint and the approx. 1.8 m wide green band that runs around the hull below the railing. In addition, the chimney bears the symbol of the Red Cross , 1939

German wounded in the Battle of Narvik on the Wilhelm Gustloff , which serves as a transport for wounded , July 1940

Report about the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff in a US propaganda leaflet: "3700 submarine crews and 5000 fugitive Nazi officials were on board."

1988 porthole of Wilhelm Gustloff recovered from the Baltic Sea

On its first regular voyage, the ship called at London on April 2, 1938 , in order to offer Germans and Austrians living in England the opportunity to participate in the Reichstag elections on April 10, as part of a Nazi propaganda campaign , as well as the four weeks before made annexation of Austria agreed to the German Reich. From April 21st to May 6th 1938 the spring Lisbon - Madeira trip took place from Hamburg . It was advertised as the “maiden voyage of the KDF steamer Wilhelm Gustloff ”. On the second day, Captain Carl Lübbe died at sea at the age of 57 and Captain Friedrich Petersen (1882–1960) took over the command that he held on the last voyage of the Gustloff. On the maiden voyage, 3,752 nautical miles (6,739 kilometers) were covered.

Up until the beginning of the Second World War on September 1, 1939, the Wilhelm Gustloff was used as a cruise ship by the DAF subsidiary "Kraft durch Freude". From Genoa she made six ten-day trips around Italy, an ally of the Third Reich . Six five-day cruises went to Norway . In May 1939 the ship brought soldiers from the Condor Legion , with which Hitler had supported the putsch- General Franco in the Spanish Civil War , back from Vigo (Spain) to Hamburg. From 19 to 25 August 1939 she went again from Hamburg on the 50th voyage of the MS. Wilhelm Gustloff under the direction of Captain Heinrich Bertram on their last cruise to Norway.

After the start of the war, the Wilhelm Gustloff was handed over to the Navy as a hospital ship on September 22, 1939 . During the occupation of Norway in the spring of 1940, it served as a transport for the wounded. From November 20, 1940, the Wilhelm Gustloff was used as a residential ship for the 2nd submarine training division in Gotenhafen . Because of this use, it was camouflaged in navy gray in early 1941.

The sinking

The National Socialist regime, especially Gauleiter Erich Koch , had refused to evacuate East Prussia early . After the breakthrough of the Red Army on the Eastern Front, many inhabitants of the province found themselves cut off from the rest of the Reich at the beginning of 1945. On January 21, 1945, Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg ordered Hannibal to move the 2nd submarine training division to the west. This was the beginning of a series of transport companies , as part of which wounded soldiers were to be transported to the western Reich territory with all available ships. In the meantime, civilians had been allowed to take along, allowing 2.5 million people to escape across the Baltic Sea.

The Wilhelm Gustloff should also take part in the evacuation. On January 30, 1945 (the 50th birthday of the eponym), she left Gotenhafen at around 1:10 p.m. with an estimated 10,000 people on board. The exact number of passengers and crew members could never be determined with absolute certainty, as their flight was hasty. According to an embarkation officer 50 years later, 7,956 people were officially registered, but at the end of the official count, about 2,500 more passengers were crowding on board. In total, there were around 10,300 people on the Wilhelm Gustloff : around 8,800 civilians, including a large number of children, and around 1,500 members of the Wehrmacht , including 162 wounded, around 340 naval helpers and 918 marines from the 2nd submarine training division, which should go back to war from Kiel . The Wilhelm Gustloff had only light escort from initially two escort ships, then only from the torpedo boat Löwe .

On this last voyage of the Wilhelm Gustloff, three other captains were on board in addition to ship's captain Petersen. They knew the threat posed by Soviet submarines, but could not agree on an appropriate course of action. The military commander, Korvettenkapitän Wilhelm Zahn, suggested driving through shallow coastal waters in the dark, in which submarines could not operate. However, he did not prevail against Captain Friedrich Petersen, who, in view of the overloading of the ship, decided on a route through deep water north along the Stolpe Bank . An alleged radio message from the Navy also caused him to set position lights in order to reduce the risk of collision with an allegedly oncoming mine sweeping squadron. Therefore the ship could be made out in the dark. In fact, there was no mine sweeper on the opposite course to the Wilhelm Gustloff . The cause and sender of the radio message could not be clarified.

At the height of Stolpmünde was Wilhelm Gustloff to 21 clock from the Soviet submarine S-13 sighted. At 9:16 p.m., its commander, Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko , fired four torpedoes from a distance of about 700 meters . One torpedo jammed, three hit the Wilhelm Gustloff at the bow, under the E-deck and in the engine room. After a little over an hour, around 10:15 p.m., the ship sank about 23 nautical miles from the Pomeranian coast.

Emergency calls

Immediately after the torpedoing, Captain Petersen ordered the radio operators on duty of the submarine training division to send out an emergency radio call. The Wilhelm Gustloff had three radio systems with a longer range from Wehrmacht stocks, which had only been installed in the shipyard in Gotenhafen three days before the sinking. But the systems went silent after the power failure. The tubes of the transmitters and receivers were also damaged by the explosions. An emergency call by radio from the radio station was therefore impossible, partly because the batteries for emergency operation were not charged. A portable VHF intercom was located on the bridge, but it had a very short range of a few thousand meters and was only used for communication within a convoy. The 20-year-old corporal Rudi Lange sent emergency calls over this radio device, but initially the radio messages were not received by anyone. Although the torpedo boat Löwe had reception facilities, the station was not manned at the time of the sinking. Only after the Gustloff had fired red flares did the Löwe contact the Gustloff and broadcast the radio message at 9:30 p.m. on the frequency of the submarine weapon, but not on the frequency of the responsible control center Oxhöft of the 9th Security Division . Due to the use of this frequency, the control center and the connected ships did not find out about the distress of the Wilhelm Gustloff until much later.

Rescue attempts

Ships approaching were only able to save 1,252 people, including all four captains and the marine painter Adolf Bock , whose reports and pictures were later published in Stern , among others . The torpedo boat Löwe , which had accompanied the Wilhelm Gustloff , saved 472 people, the newly added T 36 fleet torpedo boat under Lieutenant Robert Hering saved another 564 survivors from boats, rafts and the water. T 36 was also attacked by S 13 during the rescue operation , but defended itself with the use of depth charges, whereupon the Soviet submarine turned. The minesweeper M 341 rescued 37 people, the marine tender TS II 98, the minesweeper M 375 43 and the freighter Göttingen saved 28 people. Two were rescued from the freighter Gotenland in the morning hours , seven from the torpedo catcher TF 19 , and a small child from the outpost boat Vp 1703 .

Only a few minutes after the torpedo hits, the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper passed the sinking Wilhelm Gustloff . However, the commander of the Admiral Hipper decided not to stop to take part in the rescue of the castaways. His reasoning, that torpedo runways were seen and therefore not stopped, was questioned by experts. Since a submarine takes a long time to reload, the Admiral Hipper was able to reach Kiel without any problems.

If the estimated number of more than 9,000 dead is correct, the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff would be the greatest catastrophe in maritime history to date related to a single ship.

The death toll

Several factors contributed to the high number of victims: In order to prevent a haphazard escape from the ship and the outbreak of panic, around 1,000 people were ordered into the winter garden of the ship and held there by officers at gunpoint. When the ship sank, they found that the windows of the winter garden were made of bulletproof glass and prevented any escape. More serious was that the Wilhelm Gustloff had far too few lifeboats. Quite a few had been brought off board in Gotenhafen in order to use them in the fogging of the harbor. They were replaced by smaller row boats that quickly overcrowded. To make matters worse, on the night of the sinking the outside temperature was as low as −20 ° C, so that many of the boats still in existence were blocked in their icy davits and could not be made clear to sea. However, even the larger lifeboats belonging to the ship would never have been sufficient to save over 10,000 people; the ship and its life-saving appliances were only designed for around 1,900 passengers and crew members.

The number of 1,239 survivors determined by Gustloff expert Heinz Schön is now considered certain. Although 1,252 people were rescued, 13 died soon after as a result of the accident. The exact number of fatalities was given, depending on the time and source, in some cases considerably diverging information. Here is a list with the time, number of dead and people on board (PaB), type of source and documentary evidence:

date	dead	People on board	source
January 30, 1945		4,749 PaB	Radio message, Brustat-Naval 1970
1945	approx. 4,000 dead		Ktb Seetra, Brustat-Naval 1970
February 19, 1945	7,700 dead	8,700 PaB	Press, Reuters
February 21, 1945	9,000 dead	10,000 PaB	Press, correspondent in Gotenhafen
1952	almost 5,000 dead	6,000 PaB	Later memory of the captain of Wilhelm Gustloff without documentary evidence, Schön (1952) foreword
1952	5,196 dead	6,100 PaB	Later memory without documentary evidence, Schön (1952)
1964		6,100 PaB	Source ?, Dmitriev 1964
1984	5,348 dead	6,600 PaB	Later memory without documentary evidence, Schön until 1997
1999	9,343 dead	10,582 PaB	Later memory without documentary evidence, Schön 1999, Schön 2008

Classification under international law and further subsidence

The sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff complied with the applicable international law of war . As a troop transport, it had the legal status of a warship , which the Soviet submarine crew could only perceive as such: As a floating barracks of the Wehrmacht , it had a gray camouflage, it drove dimmed through the war zone at the time of the torpedoing and was from accompanied by another warship. In addition, the Wilhelm Gustloff was armed with anti-aircraft guns and had combat-ready soldiers on board. Each and every one of these points made them a legitimate target of enemy attacks, covered by martial law at the time.

The submarine S-13 also sank the Steuben on February 9, 1945 with about 4,000 people on board. Another submarine, the L-3 , torpedoed the Goya troop transport on April 16, 1945 , which also had numerous refugees on board. About 7,000 people probably died in the process. Marinesko , the commander of S-13 , was dishonorably discharged from the navy after the war, but not because of the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff and other ships. Nevertheless, in 1990 he was posthumously awarded the " Hero of the Soviet Union " order and a memorial was erected on the upper Königsberg castle pond.

Commemoration

remains

Exhibition of Life Signs / Post-War Period and the Fifties - Abresch Collection in the Prussian Museum NRW Wesel : Photo album and hat ribbon from 1939

The wreck of the sunken Wilhelm Gustloff lies at a depth of 42 meters in Polish territorial waters (position 55 ° 4 ′ 12 ″  N , 17 ° 24 ′ 36 ″  E, coordinates: 55 ° 4 ′ 12 ″  N , 17 ° 24 ′ 36 ″  E ) and is now a protected monument as a naval war grave.

Museums

Polish coast guard divers recovered the ship's bell in 1979. In 2007 it was loaned to the exhibition Forced Paths - Flight and Expulsion in Europe of the 20th Century , but had to be returned early at the request of the Polish government. It can now be seen in the Museum of World War II in Gdansk .

In the Prussian Museum Wesel in the citadel , the Abresch collection of the exhibition Life Signs / Post-War and Fifties shows several z. Some of the unique exhibits from Wilhelm Gustloff are on display.

The International Maritime Museum Hamburg is showing a model of the Gustloff over a meter long as well as two memorabilia: a menu and a lifebuoy.

Documentation on the sinking of the Gustloff can be found in the “Escape via Sea” memorial room in the historical hall of the Laboe Marine Memorial .

Graves

German war cemetery in Pillau / Baltijsk

204 dead from the sinking of the refugee ship Wilhelm Gustloff are also buried at the German war cemetery in Baltijsk .

literature

Non-fiction

• Heinz Schön : The sinking of the "Wilhelm Gustloff". Factual report from a survivor . Göttingen 1952, DNB 454444680 .
• Heinz Schön: sinking of Wilhelm Gustloff. The “ship of joy” becomes the “ship of death” . Pabel-Moewig Verlag , Rastatt 1960.
• Clay Blair : The Submarine War . Vol. II, 2002, p. 936 ( Hitler's U-Boat War , New York 1998).
• Fritz Brustat-Naval: Rescue company . 1970.
  • Fritz Brustat-Naval: Rescue company . 5th edition, Koehler, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-7822-0829-3 .
• Heinz Schön: SOS Wilhelm Gustloff. The greatest shipping disaster in history . Motorbuch Verlag , Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-613-01900-0 .
• Heinz Schön: The “Gustloff” disaster . 2nd edition, Motorbuch, Stuttgart 1985, ISBN 3-613-01027-5 .
• Heinz Schön: The last voyage of the Wilhelm Gustloff. Documentation of a survivor . Motorbuch, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-613-02897-5 .
• Christopher Dobson, John Miller, Ronald Payne: The sinking of Wilhelm Gustloff . Ullstein, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-548-23686-3 .
• Lutz Bunk: Wilhelm Gustloff. On a dream ship into the inferno . In: Ships. From Noah's Ark to Cap Anamur . Hildesheim 2004, pp. 230-235, ISBN 978-3-80672-548-3 .
• Armin Fuhrer : The Gustloff's death journey . Olzog, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-7892-8235-5 .
• Bill Niven (Ed.): The "Wilhelm Gustloff". History and memory of a downfall . Mitteldeutscher Verlag, Halle 2011, ISBN 978-3-898-12781-3 .
• Cathryn J. Prince: Death in the Baltic. The World War II Sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff . Palgrave macmillan, New York 2012. ISBN 978-0-230-34156-2 .
• Klaus Willmann: Screams of the drowning: From the Eastern Front to the sinking of the Gustloff . Edition Förg, Rosenheim, 2019. ISBN 978-3-933708-94-6 . The author reproduces the life story of Hans Fackler (1926–2019) according to the preface "as faithfully as possible". Fackler was therefore on board as a wounded pioneer corporal.

Fictional literature

• Günter Grass : In the crab . Steidl Verlag, Göttingen 2002, ISBN 3-88243-800-2 .
• Tanja Dückers : Heavenly Bodies . Construction Verlag, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-351-02963-2 .
• Detlef Michelers: Wilhelm Gustloff - From the flagship to the iron coffin . Audiobook, DAV, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-89813-193-9 .
• Willi Fährmann : The year of the wolves . Arena Verlag, Würzburg 1962, (13th edition 1999, ISBN 3-401-02528-7 ).
• Peter Weise : Hurdles . Verlag BS, Rostock 2006, ISBN 3-89954-202-9 .
• Ruta Sepetys : Salt To The Sea . Philomel, New York 2016. German translation: Salt for the sea . Translated from the English by Henning Ahrens. Carlsen Verlag, Hamburg 2016, ISBN 978-3-551-56023-0 .

Movie and TV

• Ship without classes - The Wilhelm Gustloff (1938) in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Night fell over Gotenhafen , directed by Frank Wisbar , D 1959 S / W
• Triumph and tragedy of Wilhelm Gustloff (documentary by Karl Höffkes and Heinz Schön, D 2000)
• Die Gustloff (TV two-parter, ZDF ), directed by Joseph Vilsmaier , D 2008
• The Last Voyage of Wilhelm Gustloff , film by James Younger and Robert M. Wise

Web links

Commons : Wilhelm Gustloff (Schiff)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Wilhelm Gustloff in the catalog of the German National Library .
• Chronicle of the naval war (Württembergische Landesbibliothek Stuttgart).
• Henrik Schmitz: Memories That Don't Go Down ( Der Spiegel , January 30, 2008).
• Andreas Kossert : The Fall of East Prussia ( Die Zeit , February 28, 2008).
• Wilhelm Gustloff (Military History Online, English).
• Wilhelm Gustloff Museum (private museum, English, German and Polish).

Remarks

1. ↑ * July 1, 1880 in Hamburg-Reitbrook † April 22, 1938 at sea, on: deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de
2. ↑ * March 14, 1882 in Keitum (Sylt) † April 26, 1960 ibid, on: Sylt family database
3. ↑ Report by a survivor.
4. ↑ Ten of the last surviving contemporary witnesses are reporting for the first time about their fate. Where did they come from How did you experience the war? How did they survive the downfall? How did they come to terms with what they experienced later?
5. ↑ The novella tells the story of Wilhelm Gustloff in a mixture of facts and fiction, but describes the downfall very precisely and in detail.
6. ↑ The author describes the fate of Wilhelm Gustloff in many original tones, interviews with survivors and recordings from a reading by Günter Grass .
7. ↑ The author, the youngest survivor of the Gustloff catastrophe, describes his fate and the search for his origin.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Hamburg 1937 - KdF move. May 1937, accessed on June 24, 2020 (at 6min 2s). 
2. ↑ The radio message said “that a minesweeping squadron is approaching and for safety reasons position lights should be set.” ... “Then I went to the bridge and asked: It doesn't work for them to send a radio message and we should lights put. Did the captain say: Take care of your things! ”Filmed statement by Albert Schirra, radio operator on the Wilhelm Gustloff , in: Die Gustloff - The Documentation , Part 2, ZDF, March 3, 2008, 9: 45–22: ​​30 Clock.
3. ↑ www.seefunknetz.de WILHELM GUSTLOFF radioed SOS and nobody heard it
4. ↑ Günter Grass, s. u., emphasizes that especially men were rescued and children and old people were often trampled to death by the crowd in a panic on the stairs.
5. ↑ Harald Fock: Z-before! International Development and War Operations of Destroyers and Torpedo Boats, Vol. 2. During World War II: 1940-1945. Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-7822-0762-9 , p. 110.
6. ↑ Lieutenant Robert Hering in Die Gustloff. The documentation (2/2) . Escape across the Baltic Sea, Germany 2008.
7. ^ As Heinz Schön found out in 1990 at a congress with Russian veterans, S-13 (Marinesko) was no longer ready for action after the attack on the Wilhelm Gustloff and no other submarine was nearby. The fourth torpedo, already in action, had jammed in the barrel. The boat had to surface and repair the damage over water. According to Schöns, this explains the initially strange reports from survivors that they had seen a submarine tower with a hammer-and-sickle emblem. Interview statement by Heinz Schön in Wortwechsel , SWR TV, March 2, 2008, 23: 30–24: 00.
8. ^ Irwin J. Kappes: Wilhelm Gustloff - The Greatest Marine Disaster in History . 2003. First published in a military magazine, see web link below.
9. ↑ Schön, 2008, p. 174.
10. ↑ Telex FDU training G 93 of January 30, 1945, "that Wilhelm Gustloff passes the Hela watch ship leaving at 3:15 pm with 4,749 people on board under the escort of T-Boot Löwe." In: Ktb of the 10th Security Division of January 30 , 1945 , printed in Brustat-Naval (1970), p. 44. Schön mentioned that Wilhelm Gustloff had sent a radio message with the PaB number, broken down according to the groups of people (see under “1984”) on January 30, 1945 at around 1.30 p.m. (Schön , 2002, p. 240). In the foreword from 1999, where he now assumes a PaB number of 10,482 for the first time, he writes:

    “Obviously, the ship's management also had no knowledge of the actual number of passengers on board. This proves the fact that after the departure, Captain Friedrich Petersen, in consultation with Korvettenkapitän Wilhelm Zahn, the military transport manager, sent a radio message in which u. a. the number of people on board was given as a total of 6600. ”(Schön, 2002, p. 10) The“ approx. ”information in Schön (1952) shows that these numbers for the 1952 book were reconstructed from memory were. The real text of the radio message was never published by Schön (until today, 2008) and was probably never available to him. The PaB number from the Ktb is therefore the only authentic one from 1945 to date.

11. ↑ Source: Diary of Korvettenkapitän Eschricht (Brustat-Naval (1970), p. 246,) Eschricht was the head of the maritime transport (Baltic Sea sports department) and “processes sea transports down to the smallest detail and keeps detailed diaries with his helpers according to various aspects:…” Brustat -Naval (1970), p. 33.
12. ↑ "3700 submarine men and almost 5000 refugees" on board, "About 1000 of the passengers were rescued", according to Finnish Radio , this according to "reports that reached Stockholm", Reuters message "German Liner Reported Sunk In Baltic" in The Times , February 19, 1945. Facsimile in Schön (2002), p. 407.
13. ↑ "At least 10,000 people on board, ... 950 saved", source: Correspondent of the Sydsvenska Dagbladet fran Gdynia , printed under "9000 i djupet med" Gustlow "" in Dagens Nyheters Klipparkiv of February 21, 1945. Facsimile in Schön (2002 ), P. 407.
14. ↑ Verbatim reproduction from Schön (1952) p. 136f: According to the documents of the paymaster's office and the houseboat officer's office in which the Gustloff passenger lists were drawn up, the "Gustloff" was on board during the last voyage:
    • Military personnel: Navy members of the II. Department of the 2nd Submarine Training Division Gotenhafen approx. 1000 people.
    • Regular civilian crew approx. 165 people.
    • Wehrmacht assistants , including the naval assistants belonging to the 2nd submarine training division, approx. 375 people.
    • Serious war injuries (army) approx. 160 people.
    • Refugees, main part from the Gotenhafen-Danzig, Sopot, Elbing, Memel area approx. 4400 people.
    So a total of 6100 people. It may be that during the last hours of embarkation some refugees did not register on the passenger lists. However, their number is unlikely to exceed 200, so that more than 6300 people were hardly on board on the night of the accident.
    • ... a total of 904 survivors
    All of the above verbatim reproduction from: Schön (1952) p. 136 f.
15. ↑ "6100 Hitlerists on board, including 3700 NCOs and sailor specialists who are evacuated from the training center of the Hitler fleet in Gotenhafen." (VI Dmitriev: Atakujut podvodnikim , p. 249/53). It is a standard Russian work by Vladimir Ivanovich Dmitriev on naval war history, especially submarine operations 1939-45. First published in Moscow in 1964. The English translation has not yet been published. German translation printed in excerpts in: Brustat-Naval (1970), p. 44 f.
16. ↑ In his book from 2002 Heinz Schön gives detailed information in the appendix on p. 436f. As he says in the foreword, this comes from the 1984 edition and was the status until 1997. Apparently he refers to the embarkation list, which gives him 4369 names in the archive (2002, p. 437). But after a reconstruction it should be 6050. (Schön, 2002, p. 236)
    • The auxiliary paymaster was nice on board, the PaB number fell within his range. Looking back, Schön writes that a few hours before the sinking he thought about the rescue equipment: “I have the last numbers on the embarkation lists well in my memory. 6050 was the final number, followed by a transporter for the wounded, and later the refugees from the Reval . A total of 6600, in no case less, at most a few more are on board. ”(2002, p. 266) In his first book in 1952 such a memory is not mentioned. Instead he spoke of 6000 PaB and is certain that more than 6300 were not on board (p. 137).
    • The figures given in Appendix 2002 are apparently from the reconstructed embarkation list. According to this, at noon on January 30, 1945 there were on board: 4974 refugees, 918 submarine men, 173 crew, 162 seriously wounded (army), 373 naval helpers, a total of 6600 people. Nice to continue:
    • “The total number of 6600 passengers who were on board on the night of the accident is not an absolute number, but it seems very realistic. It may be that during the last hours of embarkation, some refugees were not entered on the embarkation list, or were not counted, but their number is unlikely to have exceeded 100. "
    • "The often published statement that more than 7000 people, in some publications even the number from 8000 to 10,000, would have witnessed the sinking of M / S Wilhelm Gustloff, is certainly greatly exaggerated and cannot be proven by any facts."
    • “The published number of 904 survivors, according to the investigations I carried out up to December 31, 1950, is no longer correct either; it has been proven that over 1200 castaways were rescued. "(PaB statistics by gender)
    • "The partially preserved embarkation list of M / S Wilhelm Gustloff, which is in the GUSTLOFF ARCHIVE HEINZ SCHÖN, 4902 Bad Salzuflen 1, Auf dem Sepp 19 (partly in the original, partly in a photocopy), contains the letter A– M 1704 names, in part II letters N – Z 2665 names, a total of 4369 names of refugees. "
    • "The names of the officers, non-commissioned officers and men of the 2nd ULD, the crew members of the merchant navy, the naval helpers and the wounded taken on board are not included in these embarkation lists." So Schön means that these persons are not listed by name, but only listed numerically been (see above). As can be seen from Schön (1952, p. 136f), the documents with these figures have not been preserved, but were reconstructed from memory after the war.
    • There is a contradiction with the list number of "a total of 4,369 names of refugees" (see above) in the foreword: "... almost completely preserved passenger list of the Gustloff, which contained the names of the refugees taken on board - a total of 4,974." This number does not include military personnel and without the crew. (Schön, 2002, p. 10). It is unclear why there were now 605 more refugees.
    • The number of deaths (up to 1997) is not mentioned in the entire 2002 book. But on p. 391 there is talk of 1252 survivors. Together with the frequently mentioned PaB number of 6600, this results in a death rate of 5348.
17. ↑ In Schön (2002), p. 10 is his foreword to the 5th edition. In it, Schön describes how, at the beginning of 1997, after 50 years of research, he accidentally made contact with the last "embarkation officer", Dr. med. Waldemar Terres, got. He could safely remember that the Wilhelm Gustloff had registered 7,956 refugees on board by January 29, 1945 at 5 p.m. Documents on this are no longer available, but he "kept them for many years after the end of the war". He assured this in writing and in a video recording.
    • At around the same time, Schön got in touch with Eva Rotschild-Dorn. She was employed on board the Wilhelm Gustloff at the reception where the refugees entered the ship. She reported that on the afternoon of January 29th, "our notebooks were full" and there were no other empty registry books. From then on, the others were no longer recorded by name, but only counted. "I estimate that over 2000 people came on board."
18. ↑ The figure of 10,482 PaB, printed in 2002 in the foreword by Schön in 1999, is an obvious typographical or calculation error in 1239 survivors and the 9343 deaths mentioned there several times. In Schön 2008, p. 174, it is correctly given as 10,582.
19. ↑ Spiegel history: sinking of Wilhelm Gustloff - memories that do not perish
20. ↑ Jens Meyer-Odewald: How I survived the "Gustloff" sinking. In: Hamburger Abendblatt, January 30, 2015, p. 9.
21. ^ Letter to the editor from Karl Heid, President of the German Navy Federation: Memorial room in Laboe. In: Hamburger Abendblatt, February 2, 2015, p. 2.
22. ↑ Armin Jäger: "Peace is a very vulnerable good." In: Peace needs courage: 100 years of the Volksbund. Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e. V., Kassel 2020, p. 107.