How many died on the wilhelm gustloff

It presented an easy target for a commander who could use a boost to his reputation. Shortly after 9 p. The Gustloff was soon the scene of a mad scramble for survival. Even for those who could get off the mortally wounded ship and seek safety in the open water, the sheer number of passengers far exceeded the capacity of the life rafts. Survivor Horst Woit, who was just 10 years old, saw people—many of them children—trampled to death in an effort to get up the stairs and on to an available lifeboat the ship was tilted toward the port side, so none of the lifeboats on the starboard side were accessible.

Most of them died. Mere feet separated the spared and the doomed. For those who remained on deck, it was becoming apparent that death in the freezing water was imminent. He ran out of bullets when he put the gun to his own head. They, too, were at risk from the S Torpedo boat commander Robert Hering, aboard the T , had to make the decision to leave many more behind when his boat was at full capacity. As Wilhelm Gustloff steamed slowly to the west, Marinesko shadowed it, then, at 9 pm, fired a spread of four torpedoes.

Three of them hit home, striking Wilhelm Gustloff on the bow, stern, and amidships. The jam-packed ship was soon a scene of horror, with explosions, fires, children blown overboard, passengers slipping and sliding on the icy deck, and tumbling into the sea.

No help was at hand. Not that it would have mattered much. Wilhelm Gustloff sank within an hour. Those who had not been killed by the initial blast or by the chaos on board after the attack froze to death in the icy Baltic. The dead numbered between 6,, Once again, the figure depends on the initial figure for those on board. Choose either number, in fact, and the result is the same: even with 1, survivors picked up by rescue vessels, the sinking of Wilhelm Gustloff was the worst disaster in maritime history, at least four times bigger, in terms of human life, than the sinking of the Titanic.

The war almost ended a year earlier: On June 20, , a group of German officers led by Claus Schenk Count von Stauffenberg tried to overthrow Hitler. But the assassination attempt failed and the officers involved were executed. With about one million visitors annually, the documentation center Topography of Terror on Niederkirchnerstrasse is one of the most visited memorial sites in Berlin.

From to , this was the site of the headquarters of the Secret State Police Office and the SS — in other words, where the Nazi regime's system of terror was planned and managed. A wave-shaped field of 2, pillars commemorates the approximately 6.

Directly underneath the Holocaust Memorial, changing exhibitions document the discrimination, persecution and systematic extermination of the Jewish people in the Nazi concentration camps. The Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church on Breitscheidplatz was severely damaged in bombing raids in When it was to be completely demolished and rebuilt in the postwar years, Berliners protested. As a result, the meter-high foot-high tower ruins were preserved as a highly visible memorial against war and destruction, for peace and reconciliation.

Seventy-five years on, some details of the disaster still remain a mystery, however. Was sabotage to blame when a suspicious radio message warning of sea mines reached the command bridge, just before the first torpedo hit? In order to avoid a collision amid heavy snowfall, Captain Peterson then turned on the ship's position lights: 90 minutes with bright lighting, but no minesweepers.

The Gustloff was a sitting duck. There is evidence to support the unproven theory that German POWs — who had been "turned" by their Soviet captors and then dropped behind enemy lines using parachutes — were behind the false radio warnings to the ship.

He was 18 years old at the time, aboard the Gustloff as an aspiring naval pay clerk. Although he was one of the very few survivors, and wrote a book about his experiences, he was always reticent to call the sinking of the Gustloff a war crime.

It was ultimately carrying soldiers, sailing under enemy colors and lightly armed, making it a valid target for Soviet subs. Seventy years ago, the Soviet Red Army liberated Auschwitz. DW's Naomi Conrad was on hand as politicians, survivors and their families gathered at the camp to remember the horrors committed by the Nazis. On the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the world remembers the millions of victims of the Holocaust.

Three torpedoes caused the deaths of an estimated 7, people. Torpedo two turned out to have got jammed and had not been fired. It is curious that so few people in the Netherlands are aware of this historic wreckage. And what became of the Oranje? The Dutch ship survived the war but sank to the seabed in following a major fire on board. Fortunately, no lives were lost.

Het Scheepvaartmuseum uses cookies. Want to know more? Read our cookie policy. Het Scheepvaartmuseum Tickets. The Hitler? Photograph credits: German Maritime Museum Bremerhaven. Fleeing for their lives While the Oranje sailed in relatively safe and quiet seas between New Zealand, Australia, and Suez carrying the wounded from war zones, the Wilhelm Gustloff in the Baltic Sea was right in the danger zone.

Propaganda on torpedoes On 30 January, the Russian S submarine captain Marinesko brought his vessel up to the surface. Bright lights and darkness On board the Wilhelm Gustloff, alarms sounded following the first explosion, and the watertight connecting doors were closed. Change Accept.