Topic

The Wilhelm Gustloff (1945):

The deadliest shipwreck in
history
 On January 30, 1945, some 9,000 people perished aboard this German
ocean liner after it was torpedoed by a Soviet submarine and sank in the
frigid waters of the Baltic Sea. The Gustloff, named for a Nazi leader in
Switzerland assassinated in 1936, was constructed as a cruise ship for the
Nazis’ “Kraft durch Freude” (“Strength through Joy”) program, which
provided recreational activities for working-class Germans. Adolf Hitler
launched the 684-foot-long, 25,000-ton vessel in 1937. However, its cruising
career was brief; after World War II began in 1939, the German military
converted the Gustloff into a hospital then later used it as a U-boat training
school.
 In January 1945, as the Soviet army advanced on East Prussia, the Nazis
launched Operation Hannibal, a mass naval evacuation of German military
personnel and civilians from the region. On January 30, as part of Operation
Hannibal, the Gustloff left the East Prussian port of Gotenhafen (which
today is the Polish city of Gdynia) bound for Kiel, Germany. The Soviet
submarine S-13 soon spotted the Gustloff and blasted it with three
torpedoes. The German liner sank within 90 minutes, about 12 nautical
miles off Stolpe Bank near present-day Poland. Historians now estimate
that only about 1,000 of the approximately 10,000 people aboard the
Gustloff survived, making it the deadliest maritime disaster in history.
 In the aftermath, the world learned little about the disaster for a variety of
reasons. The Nazi regime kept news of the sinking out of the headlines and
censored survivors, and some survivors kept quiet because they felt guilty
about their German heritage and the atrocities Nazi Germany had inflicted
on millions of people.
THANK YOU
By

Vijay Krishna.v
B.tech cse S5
Roll no. 36