THE SUBMARINE THAT SANK THE THIRD REICH

World War II ended in May, 1945, but it could have lasted even longer if, on January 30, 1945, a crucial and today nearly forgotten incident had not occurred: at Stolpe Bank off the Polish coast, the Russian submarine "S-13" sank the German steamer "Wilhelm Gustloff" and thereby Hitler's last hopes.

Swedish newspapers were the first to break the story of this military sensation. On February 2, the Aftonbladet reported that the German vessel went down with 7,000 people on board.

Shaken by the news, the Führer declared the captain of the Russian sub, Aleksander Marinesko, to be his personal enemy as well as an enemy of the Third Reich. In spite of the critical moment and the great losses striking the Germans in this period, they were well aware of the disaster this sinking was to them. Germany declared a three-day period of national mourning.

Who were the passengers on board the "Wilhelm Gustloff"?
In the winter of 1944-45, the Soviet-German front had been pushed forward to East Prussia and Pomerania, the Russians being by far the superior party. The fast Russian drive let to a panicky escape by the Germans. Hitler gave orders to evacuate forces from Memel and Danzig in order to let them carry out the defence of vital centres in the very heart of Germany: Berlin, Hamburg and Kiel.

In the harbour of Danzig, the enormous "Wilhelm Gustloff" (25,000 G.R.T.) was cleared for sailing. The very pride of the German fleet was to participate in a convoy with other vessels under military escort, Kiel being the port of call. According to an eyewitness, the German Heinz Schön, a large crowd of people had flocked on the quay near the "Gustloff": women, children and elderly. But on the local Gauleiter's orders, only party members were to board the ship. The passes for the "unsinkable floating fortress" became valuable documents, which were traded at high prices in the black market.

Despite the authorities' attempts to limit the rush, three times as many people than expected were packed into the ship: cabins, passages and even the emptied swimming pool were used.

At 12:30 PM on January 30, the "Wilhelm Gustloff" took off with more than 6,000 passengers on board.

Without escort! Cajus Bekker, historian in the German Navy, offers an explanation in his book The Baltic. German destiny 1944-1945: officers of high ranks from the U-boat fleet to which the "Wilhelm Gustloff" belonged did not want to wait any longer. They had been ordered to leave their bases in the Bay of Danzig and go west. Bekker mentions the interesting detail that after the ship had left the harbour, one could see from the shore that a ferry and several other small vessels were approaching the steamer. The "Wilhelm Gustloff" stopped and brought on board a couple of hundred more people.

It was a stormy night on the Baltic. According to the Germans, the heavy snowfall and sea would afford protection against attacks from enemy planes and torpedo boats.

The Russian submarine captain's direct hit
No one on the ship had any suspicion that, late in the night, they had been chased for more than two hours by a Russian sub. The captain of the sub was taking a vast risk: the submarine was approaching the coast with its engines forced to the limit and the tower sticking up out of the water. The tower's hatch was closed, and, in case it would be necessary to submerge rapidly, the captain and the one standing next to him would be killed.

At full pace, the unobserved submarine steered for the steamer. Finally, the sub was in attack position. All three torpedoes launched from the "S-13" were direct hits. The steamer heeled over and went down in less than half an hour.

The chase for the "S-13" began. German ships were attempting to track the submarine and they dropped no less than 200 depth charges at it. The only thing saving the crew from death was the experience and intuition of the Russian captain.

In the German standard work on the World War, Chorik deutscher Geschichte, in which the most important events are diligently referred to on a day-to-day basis, the following is reported in connection with the events taking place on January 30, 1945: "Out of the transports that were to evacuate the civilian population from the Eastern regions, the Soviet submarine "S-13" sinks the Kraft-durch-Freude (Power-through-Joy) ship "Wilhelm Gust-loff" (25,484 G.R.T.). Only approximately 200 of the almost 6,000 people on board can be saved".

The German version
An almost similar description is found in the book The Gustloff-disaster written by the above-mentioned Heinz Schön, who is regarded as the leading German authority in this area today. He throws the moral responsibility of causing the death of innocent people on the captain of the Russian submarine, Aleksander Marinesko. However, he conceals the responsibility of the German U-boat officers who, despite the fact that they were being warned, decided to let the ship sail unescorted well aware that women and children were on board.

Schön's book brings to light that, after Grand Admiral Dönitz had reported to Hitler, the Germans tried to keep the disaster a secret. However, this was unsuccessful: "24 hours later, people were talking about it in every Baltic port, from Kiel to Königsberg, even though no paper nor newsreader reported about it, and no announcement, official nor unofficial, was made in Germany".

Paradoxically, the Germans did not take the opportunity to include the death of "innocent women and children" in their propaganda.

In the Swedish press, it came out, however, that on board the vessel was a large number of submarine soldiers. This very fact makes the torpedoing of the "Wilhelm Gustloff" a first-rate military event. How come?

Hitler's U-boat strategy
Already in November, 1940, the "Wilhelm Gustloff" had been transferred to the U-boat Service. The 2nd U-boat Training Division used it as barracks and accommodation ship. The education centre for German U-boat crew, from which Hitler and Dönitz expected great things, was situated in the Danzig area with command posts in Pillau and Memel.

It was these very U-boat crews, who had finished their training completely or partly in the beginning of 1945, whom Hitler primarily wanted to save, and he specifically gave orders to evacuate the most valuable men with the help of the "Wilhelm Gustloff".

Since 1943, Germany had been working on a secret programme for the production of a completely new U-boat called "type 21". Radical improvements were made compared to the existing U-boats: larger radius of action, three times higher pace, state-of-the-art radar system and batteries that could be charged without the U-boat having to surface. It was a terrifying weapon. Suddenly, the Germans had a fair chance of gaining the upper hand in the battle at sea.

And now that the programme was nearly completed and the Germans' plans of total war at sea about to be realised, the torpedoing of the "Wilhelm Gustloff" buried it all on the bottom of the Baltic. The loss Hitler experienced on his twelfth anniversary of his takeover was no less than disastrous.

In the Russian sources the following figures are quoted: on board the "Wilhelm Gustloff" were approximately 5,000 soldiers and officers from the Wehrmacht, among these about 1,500 specially trained U-boat soldiers and more than 100 U-boat commanders and picked officers in the U-boat Service, who had been working as instructors at the training centres.

Viewed in the light of these facts, it is understandable why the Germans were only able to send into action two of the approximately 120 type 21 U-boats that they, according to Cajus Bekker, were in possession of in May, 1945. The type 21 U-boat crews had gone down with the "Wilhelm Gustloff".

In May, 1945, Churchill stated in the House of Commons: "We now know that the Germans were about to resume the submarine warfare with completely new U-boats. I believe that, in spite of our outstanding means of defence, we would have had a very hard battle, which, as to severity and losses, could bear comparison with the battle of 1942".

British naval officers, who inspected the German shipyards right after the War, even believed that the battle against the new German weapons would have caused even greater problems than in 1942.

Marinesko - the unknown hero
Had the British known about Aleksander Marinesko, they quite possibly would have honoured him for having spared the British Fleet from enormous losses. After all, the Western Powers were the ones profiting from the disablement of the ship as the Russians primarily made land warfare.

But not only in Britain, also in the Soviet Union, his name was known merely in a very narrow circle. Marinesko's person and character might not have fitted into the ideological conceptions that his native country had of a true Soviet hero. Under any circumstances, most of his fate after the War is shrouded in fog. Due to slander, he was put on trial and sentenced to three years' imprisonment in Siberia. He ended his days in absolute poverty.

The taboo surrounding Marinesko's name was not raised until 1990 when Gorbatjov made a statutory instrument 27 years after Marinesko's death assigning him the title of Hero of the Soviet Union and the highest military order, the Gold Star.

It remains a mystery
The secrets surrounding the "Wilhelm Gustloff" are still not fully unravelled. It is unknown what is hidden in the armour cases and deep holds of the steamer. What secret documents or treasures are buried at Stolpe Bank, and will they remain there forever? According to one version, among the treasures which the Germans had stolen systematically in Russian churches, palaces and museums, they also brought on board the world-famed "Amber Chamber", which was a gift from King Frederik the 1st of Prussia to Tsar Peter the Great. This unique work of art was robbed from the great Tsar's Palace in Tsarskoje Selo in the neighbourhood of Leningrad during the German siege.

A couple of years ago, Polish divers, who were participating in the search for the Amber Chamber, went down to the ship that had suffered a disastrous fate. Due to the lack of technical aids and the difficulties in working at such depths, they only made a quick inspection of the ship. And to their surprise, they discovered that somebody else had already been working actively in the wreck: it turned out that the ship's safe had been forced open...

The war between Germany and the Soviet Union is not a closed chapter: there are still a lot of sensitive points. Only an open dialogue and the release of all documents from the time of the War may make it possible to look at the events from both sides and in time reveal the truth of the matter. The presentation of the above-mentioned information from German and Russian sources shows that the story of "Wilhelm Gustloff" has not yet seen its final chapter.

by S. W., april 1996.

in English by Lars Ottesen, december 2001.