![]() Millions of Germans and Japanese were forcibly expelled from territories they called home. War crimes trials took place in Europe and Asia, leading to many executions and prison sentences. ![]() Efforts were made to permanently dismantle the war-making abilities of those nations, as factories were destroyed and former leadership was removed or prosecuted. Allied forces now became occupiers, taking control of Germany, Japan, and much of the territory they had formerly ruled. In less than a decade, the war between the Axis the Allied powers had resulted in 80 million deaths - killing off about 4 percent of the whole world. ![]() When the war began in the late 1930s, the world's population was approximately 2 billion. But the massive efforts to rebuild had just begun. Borders were redrawn and homecomings, expulsions, and burials were under way. Choose either number, in fact, and the result is the same: even with 1,200 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.At the end of World War II, huge swaths of Europe and Asia had been reduced to ruins. Once again, the figure depends on the initial figure for those on board. 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. Indeed, most of the ship’s actual crew was trapped in the forecastle, behind watertight doors that had locked automatically upon impact. 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. Three of them hit home, striking Wilhelm Gustloff on the bow, stern, and amidships. As Wilhelm Gustloff steamed slowly to the west, Marinesko shadowed it, then, at 9 pm, fired a spread of four torpedoes. Lying in wait in the dark waters of the Baltic Sea was the Soviet submarine S-13 under Captain Alexander Marinesko. The recorded numbers contradict one another, and we probably never will know how many people were on board the ship. The ship, built to carry a few thousand people, was now bulging with some 7,000-10,000 people, including 4,000-5,000 children. Even as it was preparing to depart the harbor, the ship was still picking up more human cargo, another 600 from the steamer Reval, for example. While officials argued, refugees kept pouring into the port, until by mid-January, Pillau was bulging with some 100,000 desperate civilians.Ĭommand squabbles delayed the departure of Wilhelm Gustloff until midday January 30, escorted only by a pair of torpedo boats. When trains arrived from Danzig with the families of 500 high ranking Nazis in the civil administration, Koch wanted them prioritized for the evacuation ships, but Dönitz refused. Admiral Karl Dönitz felt that the earlier the evacuation took place, the better its chance of success, a reasonable assumption. He wanted the evacuation postponed as long as possible. The local “Reichs Defense Commissar,” Gauleiter Eric Koch, was an ardent Nazi who didn’t want to appear weak in the eyes of the Führer. Nazi Party officials haggled with the Navy over who was in charge of Hannibal, about the precise start date, even about who was to be rescued first. The last months of the Third Reich featured scenes of unimaginable confusion, and this was no exception. When they arrived in Pillau, these refugees found not salvation, but chaos. This was human misery on a grand scale, reminiscent of what had happened to Soviet civilians during the German invasion of 1941. The trek was a harrowing one, replete with sub-zero temperatures, blizzards, and Soviet air attacks. Here, rumor had it, they would be evacuated to the west. They were making for the coast, for the safety of the ports Pillau or Gotenhafen. German refugees were on the road in the winter of 1944-45, great columns of men, women, and children, desperate to flee as the onrushing Soviets overran their homes. Image courtesy of the Wilhelm Gustloff Museum. The Wilhelm Gustloff underway not long after it was launched in May 1937.
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