How the Wilhelm Gustav ship was sunk.  Documentary "Wilhelm Gustloff's Last Campaign"

"Wilhelm Gustloff" (German: Wilhelm Gustloff) is a German passenger liner owned by the German organization "Strength through Joy" (German: Kraft durch Freude - KdF), since 1940 a floating hospital. It is named after party leader Wilhelm Gustloff, who was killed by a Jewish terrorist.

Launched May 5, 1937. During the Second World War, it was used as an infirmary and hostel. The death of the ship, torpedoed on January 30, 1945 by the Soviet submarine S-13 under the command of A. I. Marinesko, is considered the largest disaster in maritime history - only according to official data, 5,348 people died in it people, and according to a number of historians, real losses could be from eight to more than nine thousand victims.

Submarine type "C"

background

After the National Socialist German Workers' Party, led by Adolf Hitler, came to power in 1933, one of its activities was the creation of a wide network of social security and services for the German population. Already in the mid-1930s, the average German worker, in terms of the level of services and benefits that he was entitled to, favorably differed from workers in the capitalist countries of Europe. To organize the leisure of the working class, organizations such as Strength through Joy (German: Kraft durch Freude - KDF), which was part of the German Labor Front (DAF), were created. The main goal of this organization was to create a system of recreation and travel for German workers. To realize this goal, among other things, a whole flotilla of passenger ships was built to provide cheap and affordable travel and cruises. The flagship of this fleet was to be a new comfortable liner, which the authors of the project planned to name the name of the German Fuhrer - "Adolf Hitler".

Assassination of Wilhelm Gustloff

On February 4, 1936, the Swiss NSDAP leader Wilhelm Gustloff was assassinated in Davos by the Jewish terrorist David Frankfurter. The story of his death has gained wide publicity, especially in Germany. The assassination of the leader of the Swiss National Socialists was a clear confirmation of the fact that the world organized Jewry declared an open war against the German people, who had gone out of their control. Wilhelm Gustloff was buried with state honors, numerous rallies were held in his honor throughout Germany, and a wide variety of objects in Germany were named after him.

In this regard, when in 1937 the cruise liner ordered from the Blom & Voss shipyard was already ready for launching, the German leadership decided to perpetuate his name in the name of the ship.

On the solemn launching on May 5, 1937, in addition to the statesmen of the country, the widow of Gustloff also arrived, who traditionally broke a bottle of champagne on the side of the liner at the ceremony.

Characteristics

From a technological point of view, the Wilhelm Gustloff was not an exceptional ship. it was built for comfortable cruising. However, in terms of amenities, equipment and leisure facilities, this liner was indeed one of the best in the world. Unlike other ships of this class, the Gustloff, in confirmation of the "classless character" of the National Socialist system, had cabins of the same size and the same excellent comfort for all passengers. The liner had ten decks. One of the latest technologies applied on it was the principle of an open deck with cabins that had direct access to it and a clear view of the landscape. The liner was designed for 1,500 people. They were provided with a chicly decorated swimming pool, a winter garden, large spacious halls, music salons, and several bars.

In addition to purely technical innovations and the best adaptations for an unforgettable journey, the Wilhelm Gustloff was a kind of maritime symbol of the Third Reich, as the first national socialist state in history. According to Robert Ley, who headed the German Labor Front, liners like this could: provide an opportunity for the mechanics of Bavaria, the postmen of Cologne, the housewives of Bremen, at least once a year, to make an affordable sea voyage to Madeira, along the Mediterranean coast, to the shores of Norway and Africa

For German citizens, a trip on the Gustloff was not only unforgettable, but also affordable, regardless of social status. For example, a five-day cruise along the coast of Italy cost only 150 Reichsmarks, while the average monthly income of an ordinary German was 150-250 Reichsmarks. For comparison, the cost of a ticket on this liner was only a third of the cost of similar cruises in Europe, where only representatives of the wealthy and the nobility could afford them. Thus, "Wilhelm Gustloff" with its amenities, level of comfort and accessibility not only personified the successes and achievements of a new, truly people's state system, but also clearly demonstrated to the whole world the advantages of National Socialism.

Passenger liner "Wilhelm Gustloff"
Flagship of the cruise fleet

The first official cruise took place on May 24, 1938, and almost two-thirds of its passengers were citizens of Austria, whose people considered themselves part of Germany. The cruise was a real triumph, a testament to the achievements of the new German government. The world press enthusiastically described the impressions of the cruise participants and the excellent service on board the liner. Even the Chancellor of Germany himself arrived on the liner, which symbolized all the best achievements of the country under his leadership. After this event, the liner began to fulfill the task for which it was built - to provide affordable, comfortable cruises to the workers of Germany.

Descent to the water. "Wilhelm Gustloff".

"Wilhelm Gustloff", in the course of its passenger cruise activity, also turned out to be a rescue ship. The first successful, though not planned, incident occurred during the rescue of the sailors of the English ship Pegway, which was in distress on April 2, 1938 in the North Sea. The courage and determination of the captain, who left the procession of three ships to save the British, was noted not only by the world press, but also by the English government - the captain was awarded, and a commemorative plaque was later installed on the ship. Thanks to this occasion, when on April 10 the Gustloff was used as a floating polling station for the Germans and Austrians of Great Britain participating in the plebiscite on the annexation of Austria, not only the British, but also the world press already wrote favorably about it. To participate in the plebiscite, almost 2,000 citizens of both countries and a large number of correspondents sailed to neutral waters off the coast of Great Britain. Only four of the participants in this event abstained. The Western, and even the British, communist press was delighted with the liner and Germany's achievements. The involvement of such a perfect vessel in the plebiscite symbolized the new that was then everywhere in Germany.

As the flagship of the cruise fleet, the Wilhelm Gustloff spent only a year and a half at sea and made 50 cruises under the Strength through Joy program. About 65,000 vacationers were on board. Usually, in the warm season, the liner offered trips along the North Sea, the German coast, and the Norwegian fjords. In winter, the liner went on cruises in the Mediterranean, the coast of Italy, Spain and Portugal. For many, these cruises have remained unforgettable and the most best time from the entire period of National Socialism in Germany. Many ordinary Germans used the services of the Strength Through Joy program and were sincerely grateful to the country's leadership for providing recreation opportunities that are incomparable with other European countries.

In addition to cruise activities, the Wilhelm Gustloff remained a state-owned ship and was involved in various activities carried out by the German government. So on May 20, 1939, the Wilhelm Gustloff transported troops for the first time - the German volunteers of the Condor Legion, which took part in the Spanish Civil War. The arrival of the ship in Hamburg with German volunteers on board caused a great resonance throughout Germany, and a special welcoming ceremony was held in the port with the participation of state leaders.

Military service

The last cruise of the liner took place on August 25, 1939. Unexpectedly, during a scheduled voyage in the middle of the North Sea, the captain received an encrypted order to urgently return to port. The time for cruises was over - less than a week later, the Second World War began.

Military hospital

With the start of the war, almost all KDF vessels found themselves in military service. "Wilhelm Gustloff" was converted into a hospital ship (German: Lazarettschiff) and assigned to the German Navy. The liner was repainted white and marked with red crosses, which was supposed to protect it from attack in accordance with the Hague Convention. The first patients began to arrive on board as early as October 1939. A remarkable fact is that most of the first patients were wounded Polish prisoners. Over time, when German losses became tangible, the ship was sent to the port of Gotenhafen (Gdynia), where it took on board even more wounded, as well as Germans (Volksdeutsche) evacuated from East Prussia.

The service of the ship as a military hospital ended - by decision of the leadership of the Navy, it was assigned to the school of submariners in Gotenhafen. The liner was again repainted in gray camouflage, and she lost the protection of the Hague Convention, which she had before.

Transformed into a floating barracks for a school of submariners, the Wilhelm Gustloff spent most of her short life in this capacity - almost four years. With the end of the war approaching, the situation began to change not in favor of Germany - many cities suffered from Allied air raids. On October 9, 1943, Gotenhafen was bombed, as a result of which another ship of the former KDF was sunk, and the Wilhelm Gustloff herself was damaged.

Evacuation of the population

In the second half of 1944, the front came very close to East Prussia. Communist military propaganda in every possible way fanned the anti-German psychosis and called on its soldiers to take just revenge on the German "fascists".

In October 1944, the first detachments of the Red Army were already on the territory of East Prussia. The first German city captured by the communists was Nemmersdorf (now the village of Mayakovskoye, Kaliningrad region). A few days later, he was recaptured for a while, but the picture of massacres and rape that appeared shocked all of Germany and Europe. These terrible atrocities of the communists caused a backlash - the number of volunteers in the Volkssturm militia (Narld squads) increased, but with the approach of the front, millions of people turned out to be refugees.

Poster: "For freedom and life".

At the beginning of 1945, a significant number of people were already fleeing in panic. Many of them followed to the ports on the coast of the Baltic Sea. To evacuate a huge number of refugees, on the initiative of the German Admiral Karl Dönitz, a special operation "Hannibal" was carried out, which went down in history as the largest evacuation of the population by sea in history. During this operation, almost 2 million civilians were evacuated to Germany - on large ships like the Wilhelm Gustloff, as well as bulk carriers and tugboats.

In those days, the communists were rapidly advancing to the West, in the direction of Koenigsberg and Danzig. Hundreds of thousands of German refugees moved towards the port city of Gdynia - Gotenhafen. On January 21, Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz gave the order: "All available German ships must save everything that can be saved from the Soviets." Operation Hannibal was the largest evacuation of the population in the history of navigation: over two million people were transported to the west.

Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz

Gotenhafen became the last hope for many refugees - there were not only large warships, but also large liners, each of which could take on board thousands of refugees. One of them was Wilhelm Gustloff.

Development of events

Thus, as part of Operation Hannibal, on January 22, 1945, the Wilhelm Gustloff began taking on board refugees. When tens of thousands of people gathered in the port and the situation became more complicated, they began to let everyone in, giving preference to women and children. Since the planned number of seats was only 1,500, refugees began to be placed on decks, in passageways. Women soldiers were placed even in an empty pool. In the last stages of the evacuation, panic increased so much that some women in the port, in desperation, began to give their children to those who managed to board, in the hope of at least saving them in this way. In the end, on January 30, 1945, the officers of the ship's crew already stopped counting the refugees, whose number exceeded 10,000.

According to modern estimates, there should have been 10,582 people on board: 918 cadets, 173 crew members, 373 women from the auxiliary naval corps, 162 seriously wounded military personnel, and 8956 refugees, mostly old people, women and children. When at 12:30 "Wilhelm Gustloff", accompanied by two escort ships, finally withdrew.

Contrary to the recommendations to zigzag to complicate the attack of submarines, it was decided to go straight ahead at a speed of 12 knots, since the corridor in the minefields was not wide enough and the captains hoped to get out to safe waters faster in this way; in addition, the ship was running out of fuel. The liner could not reach full speed due to the damage received during the bombing. In addition, the TF-19 torpedoes returned to the port of Gotenhafen, having received damage to the hull in a collision with a stone, and only one destroyer "Lion" (Löwe) remained in guard. At 18:00, a message was received of a convoy of minesweepers that was allegedly moving towards them, and when it was already dark, they were ordered to turn on their navigation lights to prevent a collision. In reality, there were no minesweepers, and the circumstances of the appearance of this radio message have remained unclear to this day.

sinking

When the commander of the Soviet submarine S-13 Marinesko saw the Wilhelm Gustloff brightly lit, contrary to all norms of military practice, he followed him on the surface for two hours, choosing a position for attack. Even here, fate failed the Gustloff, as submarines were usually unable to catch up with surface ships, but Captain Peterson was moving slower than design speed, given the significant overcrowding.

At about nine o'clock S-13 entered from the coast, where she was least likely to be expected, and from a distance of less than 1,000 m at 21:04 fired three torpedoes.

At 21:16 the first torpedo hit the bow of the ship, later the second blew up the empty pool where the women of the naval auxiliary battalion were, and the last one hit the engine room. The passengers' first thought was that they had hit a mine, but Captain Peterson realized it was a submarine and his first words were: Das war's (That's it). Those passengers who did not die from three explosions and did not drown in the cabins of the lower decks rushed to the lifeboats in a panic. At that moment, it turned out that by ordering to close, according to the instructions, the watertight compartments in the lower decks, the captain inadvertently blocked part of the team, which was supposed to launch the boats and evacuate passengers. Therefore, in the panic and stampede, not only many children and women died, but also many of those who got out on the upper deck. They could not lower the lifeboats, because they did not know how to do it, moreover, many of the davits were covered with ice, and the ship had already received a strong heel. With the joint efforts of the crew and passengers, some boats were launched, and yet there were many people in the icy water. From the strong roll of the ship, an anti-aircraft gun came off the deck and crushed one of the boats, already full of people. About an hour after the attack, the Wilhelm Gustloff completely sank.

Two weeks later, on February 10, 1945, the S-13 Marinesko submarine sank another large German transport, General Steuben, with refugees, killing about 3,700 more people.

German transport "General Steuben"

Survivor Rescue

The destroyer "Lion" was the first to arrive at the scene of the tragedy and began rescuing the surviving passengers. Since in January the temperature was already -18 ° C, there were only a few minutes left before irreversible hypothermia of the body set in. Despite this, the ship managed to rescue 472 passengers from boats and from the water. The escort ships of another convoy, the cruiser Admiral Hipper, also came to the rescue, which, in addition to the crew, also had about 1,500 refugees on board. For fear of a submarine attack, he did not stop and continued to retire to safe waters. Other ships (under "other ships" is understood the only destroyer T-38 - the GAS did not work on the Leva, the Hipper left) managed to save another 179 people. A little more than an hour later, the new ships that came to the rescue were only able to fish the dead bodies out of the icy water. Later, a small messenger ship that arrived at the scene of the tragedy unexpectedly found, seven hours after the sinking of the liner, among hundreds of dead bodies, an unnoticed boat and a living baby wrapped in blankets in it - the last rescued passenger of the Wilhelm Gustloff.

Cruiser "Admiral Hipper"

As a result, it was possible to survive, according to various estimates, from 1,200 to 2,500 people out of more than 10,000 on board. Maximum estimates put losses at 9,343 lives.

Soviet transports during the war with refugees and the wounded on board also became targets for enemy submarines and aircraft (in particular, the ship "Armenia", sunk in 1941 in the Black Sea, carried more than 5 thousand refugees and the wounded on board. Survived only 8 people. However, "Armenia", like "Wilhelm Gustloff", violated the status of a sanitary vessel and was a legitimate military target).

motor ship "Armenia", sunk in 1941

Reaction to tragedy

In Germany, the reaction to the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff at the time of the tragedy was rather restrained. The Germans did not disclose the extent of the losses, so as not to worsen the morale of the population even more. In addition, at that moment the Germans suffered heavy losses in other places. However, at the end of the war, in the minds of many Germans, the simultaneous death of so many civilians and especially thousands of children on board the Wilhelm Gustloff remained a wound that even time did not heal. Together with the bombing of Dresden, this tragedy remains one of the most terrible events of the Second World War. Of the four captains who escaped after the death of the ship, the youngest, Kohler, unable to bear the feeling of guilt for the tragedy of the Wilhelm Gustloff, committed suicide shortly after the war.

In Soviet historiography, this event was called the “Attacks of the Century”. Marinesko posthumously received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Monuments were erected to him in Kaliningrad, in Kronstadt, in St. Petersburg and in Odessa. In Soviet military historiography, he is considered submariner No. 1.

"Wilhelm Gustloff" in literature and cinema

In 1959, a feature film "Night over Gotenhafen" (German: Nacht fiel über Gotenhafen) was filmed in Germany about the tragedy of the shipwreck.

The novel The Trajectory of the Crab (Im Krebsgang, 2002) by the German writer and Nobel Prize winner Günther Grass received a great response. The narration in the book is conducted on behalf of a journalist, a resident of modern Germany, who was born aboard the Gustloff on the day of the shipwreck. The Gustloff catastrophe does not let go of the hero Grass, and the events of more than half a century ago lead to a new tragedy. The book extremely negatively describes Marinesko, a submariner who sent 13,000 refugees to the bottom.

On March 2-3, 2008 a new television film by the German channel ZDF called "Die Gustloff" is shown

The Wilhelm Gustloff was sunk by the Soviet submarine S-13 under the command of Marinesko on January 30, 1945.

The most expensive movie to date was released to the screens a few weeks ago and brought a record box office. This film is, of course, "Titanic" and it is about the sinking of the ocean liner "Titanic" on April 15, 1912, when 1513 people died, after the ship collided with an iceberg in the North Atlantic and sank.

There are a lot of superlative adjectives in this movie. The Titanic was the largest ship ever built. It was the most luxurious vessel, designed for comfortable, fast transatlantic travel by the rich and jaded. This implies that the sinking of the Titanic was the greatest maritime disaster of all time. I am sure that the vast majority of Americans believe that this is true, but it is not. Everyone has heard about the sinking of the Titanic, but few have heard of the sinking of the ship "Wilhelm Gustloff" (Wilhelm Gustloff), which was the greatest maritime disaster.

It's easy to see why everyone has heard of the Titanic: it was a very large, very expensive ship, said to be virtually "unsinkable" that sank on its very first voyage with a record number of celebrity tycoons on board. The irony of the sinking caused a public outcry and wide press coverage. On the contrary, when the Wilhelm Gustloff sank, killing over 7,000 people, the controlled media took the deliberate position that nothing much worth writing about or even mentioning happened. Like the Titanic, the Wilhelm Gustloff was a large passenger ocean liner, comparatively new and luxurious. However, it was a German passenger liner. It was sunk in the Baltic Sea on the night of January 30, 1945 by a Soviet submarine. It was jam-packed with nearly 8,000 Germans, most of them women and children fleeing from the advancing Soviet Army.

Many of these German refugees lived in East Prussia, the part of Germany that the communists and their democratic allies decided to take from Germany and turn over to the Soviet Union at the end of World War II. Others lived in Danzig and the surrounding areas, which the Democrats and Communists decided to take from Germany and give to Poland. All these refugees were fleeing the terror of the Reds, who had already shown what was in store for those Germans who fell into their hands.

When Soviet military units intercepted columns of German refugees fleeing to the west, they did things that had not been seen in Europe since the invasion of the Mongols in the Middle Ages. All the men—most of whom were peasants or Germans employed in vital occupations and thus exempt from military service—were usually simply killed on the spot. All women, almost without exception, were subjected to gang rape. Such was the fate of eight-year-old girls, and eighty-year old women, and women in the last stages of pregnancy. Women who resisted being raped had their throats cut or shot. Often, after gang rape, women were killed. Many women and girls were raped so many times that they died from it alone.

Sometimes Soviet tank columns simply crushed the escaping refugees with caterpillars. When units of the Soviet Army occupied the settlements of East Prussia, they began such a bestial, bestial orgy of torture, rape and murder that it is not possible to fully describe it in this program. Sometimes they castrated men and boys before killing them. Sometimes they gouged out their eyes. Sometimes they burned them alive. Some women, after being gang-raped, were crucified by nailing them still alive to barn doors and then using them as shooting targets.

This brutal behavior of the communist troops is partly due to the nature of the communist system, which, under the leadership of the Jews, overthrew Russian society and the Russian government by the hands of the dregs of Russian society - embittered losers, incapable of anything envious and criminals. They were set against the more successful and fortunate, noble and prosperous, with promises to the mob that if they overthrew the best of their people, they would take their place: the first would be last, and the last would be first.

And it was from among such a rabble, these dregs of Russian society, that the heads of the local Soviets and workers' collectives were recruited, if these posts were not already occupied by Jews. The Soviet soldiers of 1945 grew up worse under this regime; for 25 years they lived under commissars chosen from the scum of Russian society. Any tendency to nobility or loftiness was ruthlessly eradicated. Stalin massacred 35,000 Red Army officers, half of the Russian officer corps, in 1937, just two years before the start of the war, because he didn't trust gentlemen. The officers who replaced those shot during the purge of 1937 were by no means more civilized in their behavior than the commissars themselves.

But a much more immediate and direct cause of the atrocities against the German population of East Prussia was Soviet misanthropic propaganda, which deliberately incited Soviet troops to rape and kill - even underage German children. The chief of Soviet propaganda was a Jew imbued with animal hatred named Ilya Ehrenburg. One of his appeals to the Soviet troops said:

"Kill! Kill! There is nothing but evil in the German race; neither among those who are already living, nor among those who have not yet been born, only one evil! Follow the precepts of Comrade Stalin. Destroy the fascist beast once and for all in its lair. Trample the racial pride of these German women. Take them as your lawful prey. Kill! Irresistibly moving forward, kill, valiant fighters of the Red Army.

Of course, not all Soviet soldiers were rapists and murderous butchers: only most of them. Some of them retained a sense of decency and morality that even Jewish communism could not destroy. Alexander Solzhenitsyn was one of them. When the Red Army entered East Prussia in January 1945, he was a young captain. He later wrote in his Gulag Archipelago:

We all knew very well that if the girls were German, they could be raped and then shot. It was almost a mark of military distinction.

In one of his poems "Prussian Nights", he describes a scene he witnessed in one of the houses in the city of Neidenburg, East Prussia:

Heringstrasse, house 22. It was not burned, only looted, devastated. Sobs against the wall, half muffled: a wounded mother, barely alive. Little girl on the mattress, dead. How many were on it? Platoon, company? A girl turned into a woman, a woman turned into a corpse... The mother pleads, "Soldier, kill me!"

Because he did not take Comrade Ehrenburg's directives to heart, Solzhenitsyn was reported to the political commissar of his unit as politically unreliable, and thrown into the Gulag, a Soviet concentration camp.

So the German civilian population fled East Prussia in horror, and for many of them the only way out was through the icy Baltic Sea. They crowded into the port of Gotenhafen, near Danzig, hoping to swim across to the west. Hitler ordered that all available civilian ships be used in the rescue operation. "Wilhelm Gustloff" was one of them. Passenger liner with a displacement of 25,000 tons, before the war it was used by the organization "Strength through Joy", which organized cheap travel and excursions for German workers. On January 30, 1945, when she sailed from Gotenhafen, she was carrying 1,100 officers and sailors of the crew, 73 seriously wounded soldiers, 373 young women from the Women's Auxiliary Naval Service, and over 6,000 distraught refugees, most of them women and children.

Soviet submarines and aircraft were the main danger for this rescue operation. They viewed the refugee ships in the light of Ehrenburg's genocidal propaganda: the more Germans they killed, the better, and they didn't care if their victims were soldiers, women, or children. Immediately after 21:00, when the Wilhelm Gustloff was 13 miles off the coast of Pomerania, three torpedoes from the Soviet submarine S-13 under the command of Captain A. I. Marinesko hit the ship. Ninety minutes later, he plunged under the icy waters of the Baltic. Despite the heroic efforts of other German ships to pick up the drowning people, barely 1,100 people were saved. The rest, over 7,000 Germans, perished that night in the freezing water.

Scheme of torpedo hits in the body of Wilhelm Gustloff

A few days later, on February 10, 1945, the same Soviet submarine sank the German hospital ship General von Steuben and drowned the 3,500 wounded soldiers on board, evacuated from East Prussia. For the Soviets, incited by Jewish misanthropic propaganda, the sign of the Red Cross meant nothing. On May 6, 1945, the German ship "Goya", also taking part in the rescue operation, was torpedoed by a Soviet submarine, and more than 6,000 refugees from East Prussia died.

The lack of awareness of these terrible maritime disasters of 1945 is widespread, even among people who consider themselves versed in maritime history. And this ignorance stems from the contrived politics of the controlled media, the politics that dismissed these catastrophes as meaningless events. The reason for this media policy was originally the same reason Jewish media bosses accused the Germans of killing 15,000 Polish officers and intellectuals in the Katyn Woods in 1940. They knew it was the Soviets who wanted to “proletarianize” Poland and make the Poles more receptive to communist rule, but they didn’t want to tarnish the image of our “valiant Soviet ally,” as the controlled American media called the Reds during the war. They wanted the Americans to think of the Germans as the bad guys and the Soviets as the good guys, so they lied about the Katyn Massacre.

Likewise, even in the last months of the war, they did not want the Americans to know that our "valiant Soviet ally" was killing and raping the civilian population of East Prussia and deliberately sinking civilian ships carrying refugees across the Baltic Sea. This could have negatively affected America's enthusiasm to continue to destroy Germany with the help of our "valiant Soviet ally." That's why the controlled media didn't report these things.

After the triumph of the democratic and communist allies and the unconditional surrender of Germany, this reason, of course, lost its relevance. But by that time another motive had taken its place. The Jews began to make up their story of the "holocaust", and demand sympathy from the whole world, as well as reparation money from anyone they could get it from. When they started lamenting about their six million compatriots supposedly killed in the "gas chambers" by bad Germans, and portrayed themselves as innocent and harmless victims of the greatest crime in history, they did not want the presence of any facts that could interfere with their undertaking. And, of course, they did not want the Americans to be aware of both points of view on this conflict; they did not want the Germans to be seen as victims as well. All Germans were evil, as Comrade Ehrenburg said; and all the Jews were good; and that's the point. The Jews suffered, but the Germans did not, and therefore the whole world owes money to the Jews for not stopping the Holocaust.

It could seriously damage their "holocaust" propaganda if the American public found out about what was happening in East Prussia or the Baltic Sea - or would find out that our "valiant Soviet ally" exterminated a layer of the best people of the Polish nation in the Katyn forest, and that some of the murderers who took part in this monstrous atrocity were Jews. That's why there was a conspiracy of silence among the Jewish media bosses in America. That's why Hollywood spent $200 million to make Titanic, but will never make a movie about the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff. And it's not that such a film would not make a profit - I think that a film about East Prussia and "Wilhelm Gustloff" would be a huge success - but that there should be no sympathy for the Germans. There should be no reconsideration of the reasons why America waged war against Germany, there should be no doubt whether we did the right thing in allying ourselves with communism in the interests of the Jews. And besides these considerations, the truth does not count, at least for the Jews who control our media.

This page of history is the reasons for America's participation in the war in Europe, which was completely unrelated to the war in pacific ocean Despite the alliance between Germany and Japan, this page of history has always amazed me. And the reluctance of many Americans to explore this page is a curious phenomenon. I understand how the Clintonist elements feel. For this sort of people who voted for Clinton, the Soviets were the good guys and the Germans were the bad guys, for ideological reasons. Gang rapes, massacres, and ship sinkings by refugees are not crimes in the eyes of subjects like Bill-and-Hillary if committed by communists against "Nazis."

But among the Americans who fought in Europe, there were also a lot of decent people, American anti-communists, and many of them do not want to think and admit the fact that they fought on the wrong side. People like the American Legion and the WFU don't want to hear about who really killed the Polish intellectuals and Polish leaders in the Katyn Forest. They don't want to know what happened in East Prussia in 1945. They really don't like it when I ask them why we fought Germany in the name of freedom, and at the end of the war gave half of Europe into communist slavery? They get angry when I suggest that maybe Franklin Roosevelt was the same sort of lying Jewish collaborator and traitor as Bill Clinton, and that in exchange for media support, he lied us into the war on the side of the Jews, just as Clinton lures us into the war on the side of the Jews with lies. us into the war in the Middle East on the side of the Jews.

I was too young to have been in the military during World War II, but I am sure that if I had fought in that war, I would have been even more interested in what was behind it. I am sure that knowing the truth about these things is much more important than the carefully guarded belief that our cause was supposedly right. I am sure that we need to understand how we have been deceived in the past in order not to be deceived in the future.

William Pierce, March 1998

William Luther Pierce - Sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff

On January 30, 1945, one of the largest German ships, the Wilhelm Gustloff, entered the Danzig Bay of the Baltic Sea. Tourist and excursion boat was built at the Hamburg shipyard in 1938. It was an unsinkable nine-deck ocean liner, with a displacement of 25,484 tons, built with the latest technology. Two theaters, a church, dance floors, swimming pools, a gymnasium, restaurants, cafes with a winter garden and artificial climate, comfortable cabins and Hitler's private apartments. Length - 208 meters, fuel - to Yokohama: half a world without refueling. He could not sink, just as the railway station could not sink.

The ship was named and built in honor of Wilhelm Gustlov - the leader of the Swiss Nazis, one of Hitler's assistants. One day a Jewish youth from Yugoslavia, David Frankfuter, came to his headquarters. Calling himself a courier, he entered Gustlov's office and shot five bullets into him. Thus Wilhelm Gustlow became a martyr of the Nazi movement.

During the war, "Wilhelm Gustloff" became the training base of the higher school of submariners.

It was January 1945. Railways packed, the Nazis flee and take out the loot by sea. On January 27, at a meeting of representatives of the Wehrmacht fleet and civilian authorities, the commander of the Wilhelm Gustloff announced Hitler's order to send crews of newly minted submarine specialists to western bases. It was the color of the fascist submarine fleet - 3700 people, crews for 70-80 of the latest submarines, ready for a complete blockade of England. High-ranking officials also plunged - generals and senior officers, an auxiliary women's battalion - about 400 people. Among the chosen ones of high society are 22 Gauleiters of the lands of Poland and East Prussia. It is known that when loading the liner, cars with red crosses drove up to it. And according to intelligence data, bandaged dummies were unloaded onto the liner. At night, civilian and military nobility were loaded onto the liner. There were both wounded and refugees. The figure of 6470 passengers is taken from the ship's list.

Already at the exit from Gdynia, when on January 30 four tugboats began to take the liner out to sea, it was surrounded by small ships with refugees, and some people were taken on board. Then the liner went to Danzig, where he received the wounded soldiers and medical staff. There were up to 9,000 people on board.

Many years later, the German press discussed: if there were red crosses on the ship, would they sink it or not? The dispute is meaningless, there were no hospital crosses and could not be. The ship was part of the German naval forces, sailed under escort and had weapons - anti-aircraft guns. The operation was prepared so secretly that a senior radio operator was appointed a day before the release.

During the transition between the higher ranks, a conflict broke out. Some suggested going in zigzags, constantly changing course, knocking Soviet submarines off the trail. Others believed that there was no need to be afraid of boats - the Baltic was stuffed with mines, 1300 German ships were cruising the sea, planes should be afraid. Therefore, it was proposed to go directly, at full speed, in order to quickly bypass the dangerous air zone.

After being hit by three torpedoes from the S-13 submarine, all the lamps in the cabins, all the illumination on the decks suddenly flared up in a strange way. Coast Guard ships arrived, one of which took a picture of the sinking ship. The Wilhelm Gustloff sank not for five or fifteen minutes, but for one hour and ten minutes. It was the hour of terror. The captain tried to calm the passengers by announcing that the ship had simply run aground. But the sirens were already howling, drowning out the voice of the captain. The senior officers fired on the juniors, making their way to the lifeboats. The soldiers fired into the maddened crowd.

With full illumination, the Wilhelm Gustloff sank to the bottom.

The next day, all foreign newspapers reported on this catastrophe.

"The Greatest Disaster at Sea"; "The sinking of the Titanic in 1912 is nothing compared to what happened in the Baltic on the night of January 31," the Swedish newspapers wrote.

On February 19 and 20, the Finnish newspaper "Turun Sanomat" posted a message: "... according to Swedish radio on Tuesday, the Wilhelm Gustloff, which left Danzig with a displacement of 25 tons, was sunk by a torpedo. On board the ship were 3,700 trained submariners following for participation in the operations of the German fleet, and another 5,000 evacuees ... Only 998 people were saved ... After being hit by torpedoes, the liner fell on board and sank 90 minutes later.

The death of the liner alarmed the entire Nazi Reich. A three-day mourning was declared in the country.

A special commission was hastily created to investigate the circumstances of the death of the ship. The Fuhrer had something to lament. On the liner, more than six thousand representatives of the military elite evacuated from Danzig, who in their flight outstripped the retreating Nazi troops, died.

"Wilhelm Gustloff"

In the second half of the 1930s. The German organization "Kraft Dyurch Freude" ("Strength through Joy"), designed to provide a good rest for workers and employees, decided to take up sea cruises. For this purpose, ships of various German companies were first chartered, and in 1935 Kraft Dürch Freude ordered two first-class cruise ships for itself - Wilhelm Gustloff and Robert Ley. The first of them was laid down in May 1937 at the Blom und Voss shipyard in Hamburg. The new ship was named after the Nazi party leader, founder and head of the Swiss branch of the NSDAP. He was killed by Jewish student David Frankfurter in 1936, after which he was declared a "martyr" in the Third Reich.

"Wilhelm Gustloff"

The main data of the two formally similar vessels were somewhat different. The gross tonnage of the Wilhelm was 25,484 GRT, length - 208.5 m, width - 23.5 m, draft - 7 m, the power plant consisted of four eight-cylinder Sulzer diesel engines with a total capacity of 9500 hp, speed - 15.5 knots, crew - 417 people. During the cruise voyage, the ship could take on board 1463 passengers.

In terms of tourist accommodation, the liners were very democratic: they had only one class, and the level of comfort was considered quite high. Both ships were equipped with, for example, indoor swimming pools. Wilhelm and Ley can be considered the prototypes of modern cruise ships: they had a shallow draft that allowed them to enter most European ports. An economical power plant made it possible to do without bunkering for a long time. True, the new liners could not boast of high speed, which, however, was not a significant drawback. In addition, diesels had a fairly high level of vibration.

In March 1938, the Wilhelm Gustloff set off on her maiden voyage. The ship was relocated to the Mediterranean Sea and began to make weekly cruises around Italy, where vacationers from the Reich were delivered by train. Already on the very first voyage, the Wilhelm, its captain and crew had a chance to become deservedly famous - in the most difficult storm conditions, an operation was carried out to rescue the crew of the perishing English steamer Pegaway.

August 26, 1939 "Wilhelm" was recalled from a cruise to Hamburg. As an ambulance and evacuation transport, he was involved in the Norwegian campaign. Until the end of November 1940, the ship made four voyages to Norway and one to the Baltic, transporting more than 7,000 wounded. When the need for the active use of the Wilhelm disappeared, the ship was transferred to Gotenhafen (Gdynia) and turned into a hostel for cadets of the 2nd diving training division. Several classrooms were also equipped on board the liner, and practical exercises - for example, in diving - were held in the ship's swimming pool. After training, school graduates were sent to the newly formed submarine crews. During his stationary service, "Wilhelm" twice - on October 9, 1943 and December 18, 1944 - fell under the bombing of the allied aircraft, but was able to avoid damage.

In January 1945, after the successes of the Soviet army in Poland and East Prussia, the Hannibal plan came into effect. It provided for the transfer of training units of the German submarine stationed in the Eastern Baltic regions to the ports of the Kiel Bay.

On January 21, the captain of the Wilhelm Gustloff, Friedrich Petersen, received an order to prepare to go to sea. Four days later, after checking all the systems of the ship that had stood idle for a long time, the liner was ready to sail. On board were 173 crew members, 918 officers and sailors of the submarine school under the command of Corvette Captain Wilhelm Zahn and 373 female servicemen of the Kriegsmarine auxiliary service. By January 30 - the day of sailing - "Wilhelm" received more than 4,000 refugees from East Prussia, as a result of which, at the time of going to sea, about 6,600 people were accommodated on the ship, of which approximately 2,000 women and 3,000 children.

On the evening of the same day, at 23:08, the Wilhelm Gustloff was torpedoed by the Soviet submarine S-13 under the command of third-rank captain A.I. Marinesko. Three torpedoes hit the port side of the vessel: one in the bow, the second in the captain's bridge area, and the third in the midship area. Despite the fact that all the watertight doors of the ship were immediately closed, it immediately became clear that it would soon sink. The third torpedo disabled the power plant of the liner, which led to its complete blackout. The distress signal was sent from the side of the torpedo torpedo "Löwe" accompanying the "Wilhelm" in this campaign. The Wilhelm Gustloff began to sink forward, with an increasing list to port. In the very first seconds after the explosions, refugees from the lower decks began to rush upward, to the lifeboats and rafts. As a result of the crush that arose on the stairs and in the passages of an overloaded ship, as it turned out later, about a thousand people died. Many, desperate to get to life-saving equipment, committed suicide or asked to be shot.

Many members of the crew of the liner, assigned to the boats, died in the explosions, and the submariners took over the rescue operation. They allowed only women and children to board the launching boats. Naturally, there was no talk of any rowing in the boats equipped in this way, the boats began to be carried across the cold winter sea. Only a few lucky ones were removed from the decks of the Wilhelm and picked up from the boats of the Loewe and the large T-36 destroyer that approached the crash site.

Around midnight, when the list of the liner reached 22 degrees, Captain Petersen gave the order to leave the ship and escape. In anticipation of loading into boats, a huge number of refugees crowded on the glazed promenade deck. When water appeared in the forward part of the deck, the crush began again in the passages to the boat deck. Attempts to knock out thick triplexes of glazing did not lead to anything. Only one of the armored glasses, which was already below the water level, eventually burst, and through the gap formed, several people were thrown to the surface of the sea. About 2,500 more people died on board before the liner was completely submerged. The Wilhelm Gustloff sank with a list of about 90° shortly after midnight. The agony of the liner lasted only about an hour. With an air temperature of minus 18 °, the people in the boats had little chance of surviving. A lot of people died of hypothermia. According to rough estimates, after boarding the rescue vehicles, about 1,800 people died. The exact number of victims of the disaster has not been fully clarified - according to researchers, depending on the assessment of the information at their disposal, it ranges from 5340 to 9343 people, including about 3000 children. "Wilhelm Gustloff" still lies in the place of his death near Gdynia.

In the USSR, and even in modern Russia, propaganda declared the S-13 attack "the attack of the century." A number of legends were associated with the sinking of the "Wilhelm": allegedly, there were formed and trained crews for new German submarines on board (although there were only "training" cadets there) and Nazi bosses, in Germany, after the death of the ship, a three-day mourning was declared, and Hitler called A.I. Marinesco as his "personal enemy". But throughout the war, three-day mourning was declared only for the 6th Wehrmacht Army destroyed in Stalingrad, and Soviet publications confuse mourning declared in 1936 after the death of the Swiss Nazi V. Gustloff with supposedly declared after the sinking of the ship. Hitler did not declare Marinesco his personal enemy either. The myth about bonzes is explained by the fact that the evacuation documents of most passengers were certified by the local party leadership (a similar practice existed in the USSR when the population was moved from the front-line areas to the rear). However, the other extreme is also untenable - accusing Marinesco of committing a war crime. By attacking the Wilhelm, the S-13 commander was doing his duty. The transport was not officially declared a hospital ship, and besides, it was accompanied by a warship. Therefore, it is simply impossible to accuse Marinesko of excessive cruelty.

This text is an introductory piece. From the book Technique and weapons 2002 03 author

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Liner "Wilhelm Gustloff". Why did this ship, not adapted for war, put to sea? Why was the liner, which was the pride of Germany, so poorly guarded? Recently, a sensational version has appeared that the Germans themselves framed "Gustloff" for the attack. But why get rid of your people? This secret for many years was buried at the bottom of the Baltic. The TV channel conducted its own documentary investigation.

The death of "Gustloff"

On January 30, 1945, the most successful naval operation of the Second World War took place. The Nazi liner "Wilhelm Gustloff" was sunk in the Baltic. Later it will be called the German Titanic. About 10,000 people were on board.

“This is not just an attack of the century, many say it was lucky, that’s how it turned out. Behind this luck is a sophisticated commanding skill that helped him to finish this goal,” says Nikolai Cherkashin, captain of the 1st rank of the reserve.

This catastrophe shocked Hitler, what happened, he ordered to be kept secret, and the submarine commander Alexander Marinesko declared his personal enemy number one. The Soviet Union, thanks to this attack, gained an advantage in the war at sea. But they hastened to get rid of the hero of those events in the fleet. Why? What lies behind the destruction of the Gustloff?

On a stormy January night in 1945, the dormant atmosphere of the S-13 submarine is broken by the onboard signalman. He notices the enemy ship right on the course. According to him, this is a light cruiser. However, the crew is on alert.

“Marinesco took the binoculars, looked carefully and said: “No, guys, this is a transport, this is a large transport, for 20 thousand tons of displacement.” And he was right, the Gustloff has 25 thousand tons, it is accompanied by a warship, a destroyer. You really need to have some kind of falcon's vision in order to see and understand the exact silhouettes of ships at night, in bad weather, in pitching, to determine their displacement and Marinesko gave the command to start an attack, a torpedo, "says Nikolai Cherkashin.

The crew began to move, but they were unable to attack immediately: the military outposts were too close to the liner. Marinesco waits, and in the meantime, the Gustloff does not suspect that they are being hunted, the passengers feel safe.

In the past, submarine officer Nikolai Cherkashin knows this operation to the smallest detail. It is listed in the textbooks of the Navy. Now that he is not in the service, he himself conducts various historical investigations of events at sea. He managed to find several unique pictures of "Gustloff".

The Gustloff in its prime years as a pleasure cruise ship. How many decks are on board this ship, how many windows. There are promenade decks and sunbathing decks, the perfect ship for long-distance sea ​​voyages", - says Nikolai Cherkashin.

"Sea Katyn"

Miroslav Morozov is writing a book about the tragedy that took place off the coast of Poland. A retired colonel and a leading member of the Institute of Military History of the Ministry of Defense, he has access to classified documents on this case. In his opinion, an important detail is the fundamental difference between the Gustloff and passenger ships of the Titanic type. There were no first, second or third class cabins on the Gustloff. Everyone is equal here.

"Movie and concert halls, dance halls, for holding some kind of general meetings, if you like, talk shows, in modern terms, and others. They are 1,060 seats, that is, two-thirds of the passengers, except for the cabins, were provided with the opportunity for some kind of cultural recreation That is, they could at the same time, there was a deck on which there were five different halls, ranging from holding some kind of song festivals, ending with dancing, running in bags, "says historian Miroslav Morozov.

German propaganda called this ten-deck liner a "workers' paradise", but the proletarians did not enjoy it for long. The Wilhelm Gustloff, named after a murdered Nazi party member, is launched in 1938. With the outbreak of war, the ship was used as a floating training base for the submarine fleet.

“There were apartments of Hitler himself, but at the same time very Spartan. A living room, a bedroom and a bath with a toilet - these are four small rooms, that’s all. All the rest were of the same, so to speak, middle class,” says Miroslav Morozov.

During the years of the war, Gustloff would never go on sea voyages. They are afraid to take him out of the port: too large, a convenient target. So he stands like a floating barracks in occupied Norway. But in January 1945, the German command in desperation orders the crew to prepare to go to the open sea.

The Red Army is advancing, in the port of the Polish Gdynia, thousands of wounded and refugees are begging to be rescued. They decide to take people to Germany, including a group of high-ranking officers. The Gustloff will be escorted by three escort ships.

“The wounded were also taken out there, children, women were taken out, but, allegedly. The “amber room” was allegedly taken out. And they even plunged on the “Wilhelm Gustloff” sunk, just recently, they were looking for this “amber room”. And many people call this a crime " , - says the captain of the 1st rank of the reserve Viktor Blytov.

Atonement

So did Marinesko commit a crime or a feat that January night? Why was he so aggressively pursuing the liner? It turns out that the commander of the C-13 submarine was fleeing from the tribunal.

“There were many different violations, and in order to prevent even more, it was necessary to punish someone exponentially. Moreover, this should, of course, not be an ordinary sailor, but a person with a name. Such a process was appointed precisely according to Marinesko,” says Miroslav Morozov.

What was Marinesko guilty of, why is he sent on a penal trip, and does the submarine team know about this? After all, he takes risks, pursuing a protected enemy ship. In addition, shortly before going to sea, the crew becomes aware that of all the Soviet submarines of the "C" type, only they survived, number thirteen.

Alexander Marinesko's daughter Tatyana still remembers how her father's team gathered in their house after the war. The day of the attack on the Gustloff celebrated this event as Victory Day. From these meetings, she learned what preceded the legendary campaign.

“They even wanted to give the team a new commander, replace Marinesko. But the team said that she would simply not go to sea with another commander. that we believe only him. Us that you will kill us now, that someone else will kill us in the sea. So Marinesko remained on the boat, the team defended him, "says Tatyana Marinesko.

The team, together with their commander, is sent to serve his sentence. Alexander Marinesko is far from the image of an ideal submariner. Nevertheless, the crew enjoys authority, and for the authorities, on the contrary, it is a headache.

He can afford to be delayed after being fired, he can disobey an order if he believes it is wrong, he can drink alcohol on board. More than once his behavior will be discussed at party meetings. Marinesco is even expelled from the party, and warnings are entered again and again in a personal file and notes about insincere repentance are made.

For the sinking of the Gustloff, he was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union posthumously only in 1990. The order will be personally signed by President Mikhail Gorbachev. And in 1945, the rebel captain will pay for a passionate affair with a Swede.

"It was in Finland, it was on new year holidays, he and his friends, also with two submarine captains, went to a restaurant to celebrate New Year. There he met the owner of the hotel. By the way, she was Swedish, but of Russian origin. Dad met her, he was a young man, by that time already divorced, by the way, from his first wife, so nothing prevented him from having an affair with her. Finland had already left the war then, it was no longer considered an enemy country, why not," says Tatyana Marinesko.

The hostess of the hotel Marinesko stays for a week. It turns out that she also has a fiancé. He even comes to his fiancee on the morning of the first of January, but she kicks him out. Therefore, when colleagues come for Marinesko, the beauty will not let him leave, ashamed that she ruined her life for him.

“Some boss arrived, apparently not celebrating the New Year to the end, and asked where the commander was. then scheduled minor repairs on the boat. Naturally, they began to look for him, sent for him, when a sailor ran to the hotel for him, he told him: you didn’t see me, that’s it, go away and say that you didn’t find me. He appeared in the evening, not in the morning, as the sailor ran after him, but in the evening he appeared. Nothing extraordinary happened here, absolutely. But he was blamed for it: oh, so, where were you, where were you wandering?", - says Tatyana Marinesko.

Given that this happened after the next party meeting over Marinesko, the authorities are furious. There is only one thing left for him - to atone for absenteeism.

Race to the bottom

Mikhail Nenashev shows a map of the movement of the S-13 submarine. It intersects with the Gustloff in the area of ​​the Danzig Bay.

“The Baltic at that time is the Baltic stormy. Secondly, he had already been on a military campaign for many days, and these days ended with almost nothing, that is, the psychological mood in the crew was already so, you know, extremely intense. And suddenly this opportunity to attack the world's largest transport," says Mikhail Nenashev, chairman of the All-Russian Fleet Support Movement.

Marinesco gives the order to attack, but does not act recklessly. To remain undetected, C-13 must first dive. This decision almost became fatal for the submarine.

"Marinesco understood perfectly well that this ship was being guarded and in such darkness, in a blizzard, it could easily become a victim of a ram attack by any of the escort ships. Therefore, he gave the absolutely correct order to urgently dive. And they plunged, went under water, but at the same time, they sharply lost speed and the target was gone," Nikolai Cherkashin believes.

How to catch up with a fast ocean liner? It is not easy for a medium-tonnage submarine to do this. What will Marinesco do?

"This is where all his purely commanding delights begin, because this is not just an attack of the century, many say - lucky, that's how it happened - behind this luck is the most sophisticated commanding skill that helped him still achieve this goal. In fact, it is already she left, and maybe the other commander just waved his hand, there was nothing to do, it was unthinkable to catch up with her, but Marinesko tried to do it," says Cherkashin.

To catch up with the Gustloff, Marinesko puts the S-13 in a semi-submerged position. An unprecedented chase begins, at night, in the conditions of a storm and a snow storm.

“He didn’t have many chances to catch up, and then, when Marinesko realized that he was lagging behind again, the ship was leaving, then he decided to take extreme measures: he blew out all the tanks, the boat surfaced completely, it became much lighter, the ballast water disappeared, "They increased speed and began to catch up, the target began to approach. But it was approaching too slowly. Now, if we talk about luck, then, probably, Marinesko was lucky only that there was not much fuel on the liner, they saved fuel and went in a straight line, without committing anti-submarine zigzag," says Nikolai Cherkashin.

Did luck or Marinesko play along? But why would Gustloff do this, put himself under attack?

Victor Blytov - sailor of the surface fleet. Marinesko also moved from the surface fleet to the submarine. In many ways, this determined his uniqueness and success as a commander. He had a better idea of ​​how passenger ships maneuvered.

"He attacked the Germans from an unexpected side, from where, firstly, they did not expect this attack. He attacked them from the side of the coast, from the side of the guarding ship, that is, where they did not expect. And he succeeded," Viktor Blytov believes.

Last torpedo

Photo: TASS Newsreel/Alexey Mezhuev

How is this possible? What happened to the convoy? It turns out that the German torpedo, one of the guard ships, returned to base as soon as the storm began. He suddenly jams the steering wheel. The second torpedo - soon discovers a leak. Only the destroyer remains. But because of high waves, it lags behind the liner. Nevertheless, the captain of the Gustloff is calm, as if he is sure that in such weather no one will dare to attack them. Not from the air, not from the water.

“Marinesco had a very complex formula for this attack, in this regard, algebraic. He needed, firstly, to overtake this transport, then turn around and fire a salvo with his torpedoes. But there was not enough power to overtake this transport. Then Marinesco went to extreme measure - he ordered the mechanic to give a forced move, that is, to squeeze out the maximum of what can be squeezed out of diesel engines. This is a very risky move, you can screw up a diesel engine, and generally remain without a move. On enemy shores, this is actually tantamount to death, but there has already been such a real risk, excitement... Weighted - not weighted, but, nevertheless, S-13 overtook Gustloff, - says Nikolai Cherkashin.

Painful seconds before the explosion. A torpedo, unlike a bullet, needs time to reach its target. There are three explosions, one after the other. The shells hit the Gustloff's most vulnerable spots: in the center, in the bow and in the stern area. His fate is sealed.

"But the fourth torpedo did not come out of the torpedo tube, and they could not close it, and it stuck out so slightly, creating a terrible danger for the submarine. Because then, when Marinesko began to leave and they began to bomb him, then from the hydraulic impact of a depth charge, this torpedo could have exploded on its own,” Cherkashin says.

The scheme of that battle and minute-by-minute records of the actions of the crew are stored in the St. Petersburg Museum of the Submarine Fleet, the Marinesko Museum. It follows from the surviving documents that the S-13 commander never saw how the liner was sinking.

“According to various sources, there were from 7 to 9 thousand people on this liner, that is, the figures are different. This is precisely due to the fact that, in addition to German submariners, there were also a certain number of refugees on the liner, who could not be properly recorded somehow, count, that's why the figure is so floating," says Mikhail Zharkov, the guide of the Marinesko Museum of the History of Russia's Submarine Forces.

Only years later does Marinesco learn that the Gustloff has been submerged under water for an hour. According to some reports, there were about 5,000 women with children on board. Few survived. Many passengers chose to shoot themselves rather than die slowly in the icy water. lifeboats remained standing on deck. It turned out that Captain Peterson, having battened down the hatches on the lower decks, automatically blocked part of the crew there as well.

The passengers themselves could not launch the boats. Was it an accident, or did Peterson do it on purpose? According to the recollections of one of the surviving passengers, three more torpedo explosions, a minute later, were followed by two more. That night, Marinesco himself barely survived.

“In general, the most difficult maneuver after the attack is separation from the target. But, nevertheless, the Germans spotted, sooner or later they caught on, realized that the blow had been delivered from the shore, called in additional destroyers and began to look for the S-13 submarine.

The situation, again, is very difficult for the commander: you can’t swim up - they will immediately find out, the depth is 40 meters, the safe depth from a ramming strike is 20 meters, you can’t get close to the ground, since there are bottom mines. That is, for maneuvering, there was a 20-meter corridor in depth up and down, and it was necessary to clearly withstand it, "explains Nikolai Cherkashin.

Hero or criminal?

And yet, historians do not stop arguing - the hero of Marinesko or the criminal. His daughter Tatyana claims that her father was not worried when he learned the details of that disaster. For him, it was a combat mission.

"They burned us, drowned us, killed us, they attacked us first. He took revenge for all his people, for relatives, for the Motherland. He had no pity. Women and children crowded onto the ship themselves, they should not have been there be. The ship was under a war flag, there was no Red Cross. It was not a peaceful or merchant ship, it carried 70 crews for submarines of the latest type of the 21st series, these boats could then crush England, and he all these he sank the carriages, for which, by the way, there is a monument to him in England," says Tatyana Marinesko.

“There are German documents, an investigation was carried out into the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff, despite the fact that it was already the 45th year. By mid-April, Admiral Doenitz was informed of the results published in Germany, the name lists of all those 418 submariners who died on board "Wilhelm Gustloff". You can see that these were young people born in 1923 or even younger, who were relatively recently drafted into the submarine fleet, they did not have time to receive full training. Most likely, all these young people who were on board the Gustloff "in military uniform, they would have defended Berlin," says Miroslav Morozov.

The results of that investigation were classified for many years, who benefited from it? Why would the Nazis support the legend about the elite of the Navy of the Third Reich allegedly destroyed along with the liner?

The Soviet Information Bureau, in turn, announces that Germany is in mourning. In just a week, due to one Soviet submarine, the German people lost almost 14 thousand people. The sinking of the Gustloff will not end that campaign for Marinesko. Soon he will see another ship. And luck is on his side again.

“By the way, the sinking of the Steuben was almost more difficult in complexity than the sinking of the Gustloff. So they had to shoot the Steuben only with shells that were on the boat above, because all their torpedoes went to the Gustloff ", - says Tatyana Marinesko.

The liner "General von Steuben" during the Second World War was used as a hotel for senior officers. In early 1945, the ship was converted into a hospital. Just like the Gustloff, it takes out wounded servicemen and refugees, follows to Germany from Pillau, now the city of Baltiysk, Kaliningrad region. There are over 3,500 people on board the Steuben.

“I can’t remember any other attack made by our submariners, where the attack, overall, from the moment the target was discovered to the moment the torpedoes were launched, lasted 4.5 hours. As a rule, if it was not possible to go on the attack for 30-40 minutes, everything, the commander said: it doesn’t work, the white light didn’t converge on this target, there will be another one, I will attack it,” says Miroslav Morozov.

Victory in the Baltic

Marinesko seems to be programmed for a feat. February 10, 1945 "Steuben" goes under water in just 15 minutes. True, the C-13 commander thinks that he sank the Emden military cruiser, he clearly saw anti-aircraft guns and machine guns. The fact that it was a medical ship, he learns only upon arrival in the Finnish port of Turku from local newspapers. What benefit does the Soviet Union get from the destruction of the Gustloff and Steuben?

“After the sinking of the Gustloff and Steuben, the Germans finally surrendered in the Baltic. For them, the issue of delivering goods from Sweden, delivering various auxiliary units in this region was completed for them. Therefore, after the attack by Marinesko, by and large, the active phase of various operations of the German fleet ended in the Baltic," says Mikhail Nenashev.

In fact, Hitler, in order not to completely undermine the morale of the country and the army, hid the death of so many people. Official mourning was not declared in the country. The Soviet side also hides the name of the distinguished commander. It will become known much later. During the Cold War, Marinesko in Germany would be called nothing more than a war criminal.

“But at the same time, it is forgotten that just a few years ago, the Germans, in the same way, even more simply, sank our real ambulance transport “Armenia”, where almost no one escaped. Out of 5,000 people, only 6 people managed to get out. Here, almost a thousand people still remained afloat," says Nikolai Cherkashin.

For the Germans, it will come as a complete surprise that the institute of maritime law in the city of Kiel justifies Marinesko. Responsibility was shifted to the command of the German fleet, which allowed so many civilians to be taken on board a warship. That's just why it was done.

Thanks to declassified documents, new facts about that night have surfaced. German experts discovered that in addition to the Soviet submarine "Gustloff" was pursued by another one, and probably this boat belonged to the Nazis, it seems that it was sent after the liner on purpose and "Gustloff", even before meeting with Marinesco, was doomed.

“Here, this is its stern part, you see for yourself, it lies on an even keel, not turned over, not on board, without a roll, almost as it walked, it sat on the ground. It could be declared as if a mass grave, but the Germans they didn’t do it,” says Nikolai Cherkashin.

The Nazis will do everything to hide the details of the death of the Gustloff. It turns out that instead of 417 crew members, there were only 173 people on board the liner, less than half of the required staff. Rescue motor boats have been replaced by cheap boats.

And among the passengers, according to the documents, there are indeed high-ranking officers of the 3rd Reich. But only on paper. In fact, they are dead souls. The death on board the Gustloff was supposed to be a cover for the secret exodus of the Nazi elite, so that after that no one would start looking for them.

“Do not forget that there were German submariners, military people on the Gustloff, and first of all, the Gustloff moved them, and already peaceful, refugees - these were later added to this ship,” says Mikhail Zharkov.

Is there any other explanation for the Gustloff being overloaded with people and for the strange circumstances that precede its demise? According to one version, the liner became a victim of big politics: by the death of women and children, among whom the majority were Poles, Hitler hoped to embroil the allies of the USSR.

I hoped that they would perceive this as a "sea Katyn", and he would be a savior. Two torpedoes from a Nazi submarine should have only slightly damaged the liner. But Marinesko confused these plans.

"Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko was certainly an extraordinary commander. We say that a commander must be able to obey. But being on such a campaign, where the commander is the first after God, he must have the right to make decisions himself. And it was precisely this feature of Alexander Ivanovich that allowed him to go in such two famous attacks that made him the number one submariner in the Navy of the Soviet Union," says Viktor Blytov.

Alive from hell

How did he manage to defeat the enemy and return alive from the campaign? Many sailors are still scratching their heads over this. Indeed, until January 1945, Marinesko almost did not go on assignments. True, at one time, his team was recognized as one of the best.

"In 1940, even before the war, all these sinkings, Marinesko and his team set a diving record. Instead of 35 seconds, Marinesko was able to sink in 19 seconds. This achievement was noted," says Mikhail Zharkov.

By the end of the war, Marinesko clearly shows an internal breakdown. He is out of business, cannot help, he is blocked near Leningrad.

"The boat M-96, commanded by Marinesko, she made two trips in 1942. Then in April 1943 he was appointed commander of the S-13, and on it he next went on a campaign in early October 1944. That is, we get For 22 months in the middle of the fiercest Great Patriotic War, he was forced to do nothing," says Miroslav Morozov.

Meanwhile, the victory at Stalingrad, near Kursk, the battle for the Dnieper, the almost complete liberation of the territory of the USSR. Marinesco is forced to do nothing. The command understands his condition, so often they turn a blind eye to his disciplinary offenses.

"In order to put together the crew of a submarine, to prepare it for going to sea, it was necessary to train on the Neva River. There were no training grounds in the conditions of besieged Leningrad. - for a month and a half to be placed in a sanatorium with enhanced nutrition. But what was it like in the conditions of the besieged Leningrad - a sanatorium with enhanced nutrition: cabbage, potatoes, so they could eat, a little more than everyone else, "says Morozov.

Sailors are dying of hunger. The crew has to be updated frequently. Every now and then rumors about the death of Soviet ships reach. There are many friends of Marinesko. The Germans blocked the Gulf of Finland. The steel net is stretched to the very bottom. The submarines cannot escape. Often they don't come back.

"With the exception of one or two cases there, no one knew what happened to these boats, where they went, what happened to the crews, how their last hours, minutes passed. Maybe the enemy used some new weapon against the submariners. They leave, and this is the psychological stress, this is the feeling when you are faced with something unknown and you can die, just by chance, out of your own ignorance, and the inability to change it in some way - of course, it was very psychologically pressing,” says Miroslav Morozov.

When C-13 goes on a famous campaign, Marinesko is guided not only by the desire to save himself from the tribunal. He takes revenge: for his friends, for his breakdowns, for Leningrad.

"He acted at his own discretion, at his own choice, because he could have ended up in another area of ​​the Baltic Sea, but the instinct, intuition of the commander told him that he needed to go to the Danzig Bay area, because the Germans evacuated both their troops and the population from there, and everyone they could, the valuables were taken out," says Nikolai Cherkashin.

From sea to land

Returning to the base as a winner, he will not be ready for subsequent events. Soon, he will be written off to shore.

“He was worried, very worried. For some time he still went to sea on ships, on merchant ships, but then his health and vision became bad, and he stopped doing it,” says Tatiana Marinesko.

Marinesko had to endure not only oblivion. In 1949 he goes to prison. The former submarine commander got a job at the Leningrad Institute of Blood Transfusion. But, as in the Navy, with his character, he did not come to court.

"The director of this institution, yes, perhaps, carried out some kind of fraud related to property. Marinesko did not like this, because he, as deputy director, saw it all, could not help but notice. And then one day, allegedly with permission, oral permission, this director, Marinesko delivered peat briquettes that lay in the courtyard of this very institute to the employees' homes, and then he was blamed for the fact that there was no permission, "says Mikhail Zharkov.

He will serve two years in the Gulag, he will be released ahead of schedule. At the Leningrad plant "Maison" they will take pity on him: as a war veteran they will be given the position of a dispatcher. Marinesko will work there until the end of his life. But the sea cannot forget. Often, returning after work, he will turn to the shore of the Gulf of Finland, and until night falls, look into the distance.

“This attack is the only one that, seventy years later, sailors and submariners and surfacemen are dismantling, this is one thing. And the second, of course, is Marinesko’s attitude to this event after the war. He didn’t stick out, and the whole country already knew in the 60s, almost before his death, about what he did," says Mikhail Nenashev.

The attack of the century - this is how the German writer, Nobel laureate, Günther Grass, characterizes the story of "Gustloff". His book about these events will appear in the 2000s and immediately become a bestseller. And conversations will flare up with renewed vigor. How was Marinesko awarded after the attack? It was impossible not to note the successful exit. He will not receive a hero, but he will be awarded the Order of the Red Banner and a bonus, which the submariner will allegedly immediately spend on buying a car.

"One of the many, by the way, beautiful legends about Marinesko. In the Soviet Union, cars just like that, just didn’t drive through the streets, in the 30s and 40s. If there were personal cars, then a personal car stood out by decision Party and Government, some figures of art, culture. There were practically no cars in the Soviet Union for personal use in the 30s and 40s, "says Miroslav Morozov.

For the Germans, the death of the Gustloff is comparable to the bombing of Dresden. This prosperous city, like the luxurious liner, was a symbol of Nazi Germany. After the sinking of the ship, it became obvious that the days of the Hitler regime were numbered.

"Until now, historians, and not only historians, lawyers and anyone else, are arguing about how justified this attack was, whether Marinesko committed a crime against humanism, humanity, etc., etc. And yet according to our calculations, the attack was carried out as it should have been carried out in wartime and under those circumstances," says Nikolai Cherkashin.

In 1991, in the Kaliningrad Friendship Hall, Hines Schon, one of the surviving passengers of the Gustloff, gave his report on the events of that night. For the first time in front of a Russian audience. And after, a German film about the death of the liner was shown. An elderly veteran stood up and said: at last we know the truth. Not only Nazis were on the ship, let's honor the memory of children and women. Hall stood up. Many cried.