Company Walpurgis Night

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The company Walpurgisnacht was an evacuation company of the German Navy towards the end of the Second World War in the Baltic Sea .

procedure

In January 1945 the Red Army brought the German Eastern Front to collapse in the Vistula-Oder operation . On February 2, she crossed the Oder near Küstrin . Millions of people had fled East Prussia to the west, mainly to Danzig and Gotenhafen .

During the Soviet March offensive , the Red Army pushed from the south through Pomerania , in many places as far as the coast, so that cauldrons formed there that were leaning against the sea and had to be evacuated.

On March 23, the Red Army broke through to the sea between Sopot and Koliebken , thus separating Danzig and Gdynia (Gotenhafen), which fell on March 28. To the north of it, on the Oxhöfter Kämpe , a high ground directly on the coast, the remnants of the German VII Panzer Corps under General Mortimer von Kessel were still fighting . Thousands of refugees were also staying here at the time.

Despite orders to the contrary from the Führerbunker, the Commander-in-Chief of the 2nd Army , General von Saucken, finally gave the order for the "Walpurgis Night Operation". This evacuation operation was carried out by the 9th Security Division under frigate captain Adalbert von Blanc .

25 fishing trawlers, 25 naval ferry frames , five heavy artillery carriers and five other ships transported around 30,000 refugees and 10,000 wounded and soldiers as well as the remains of the VII Panzer Corps to the elongated, wooded Hela peninsula off the Gdańsk Bay during the night from April 4th to 5th . The narrow, 34 kilometer long strip of land served as a transshipment point for refugees who were shipped further west from here.

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