Death in the Baltic

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Death in the Baltic Page 6

by Cathryn J Prince


  Hitler, however, knew these 1,500 mariners had no hope of changing the situation on land. So on January 21, Dönitz gave the order for officers to redeploy student submariners and military weapons and equipment to help mitigate the growing refugee crisis. The evacuations had to be carried out under constant attack from British, American, and Russian aircraft. Russian submarines and light coastal forces threatened the German ships as they navigated in heavily mined waters.11

  Of all the ships to participate in Operation Hannibal, the Wilhelm Gustloff was the largest and most symbolic. To the Nazis, the 684-foot-long, gleaming white ship was a dream come true; a floating symbol of their ideology. The ship was named for Wilhelm Gustloff, the 41-year-old assassinated head of the Nazi Party in Switzerland.

  In February 1936, David Frankfurter, a young Yugoslav Jew and student had knocked on the door of Gustloff’s apartment in Davos, Switzerland. He pretended he had an urgent message to deliver to the party chief. Gustloff’s wife, Hedwig, invited the student inside their home. Once inside, Frankfurter shot Gustloff in the head five times.12 The assassination of one of his staunchest supporters deeply angered Adolf Hitler. He stopped short of calling for direct reprisals against Jews partly because he wanted to avoid any controversy while the Third Reich was preparing for the Summer Olympics.13 When the games ended and the international delegations and press departed from Munich, the anti-Semitic and anti-Bolshevik actions started anew.14

  Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels seized on the moment to make Gustloff a martyr to the Nazi cause. Goebbels knew the Swiss party head, a firm believer in Nazi doctrine, had dedicated himself to spreading Nazi ideology throughout the German Swiss population. Gustloff had diligently gathered information about anti-Nazi Germans living in the neutral country that could be harnessed for propaganda purposes. A known entity in Switzerland, the Swiss government had banned Wilhelm Gustloff’s Nazi newspaper Der Reichdeutsche. Yet, outside of Switzerland few Germans knew of Wilhelm Gustloff. That changed after the assassination. David Frankfurter, convicted of murder, served 9 years of his 18-year sentence in a Swiss prison.15

  Meanwhile, Adolf Hitler and his denizens made sure Gustloff’s funeral equaled, if not surpassed, that of the former president of Germany, Field Marshal Paul Von Hindenburg, who had died in 1934. A World War One veteran, Hindenburg had originally opposed Hitler; nonetheless, he had appointed him chancellor in 1933.

  Adolf Hitler presided over Wilhelm Gustloff’s February 12, 1936 funeral in Schwerin, Germany. Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, were among the Nazi leadership present. About 3,000 people lined a cobblestone street in this northern lakeside city. As the funeral procession passed the speakers’ platform, their arms extended in stiff-armed Heil-Hitler salutes. Hitler’s eulogy included a vicious rant on Jews: “Behind every murder stood the same power which is responsible for this murder; behind these harmless insignificant fellow countrymen who were instigated and incited to crime stands the hate-filled power of our Jewish foe, a foe to whom we had done no harm, but who nonetheless sought to subjugate our German people and make of it its slave—the foe who is responsible for all the misfortune that fell upon us in 1918, for all the misfortune which plagued Germany in the years that followed,” Hitler raged.16

  A rough granite monolith marks Gustloff’s grave. Gustloff’s name is deeply etched into the unpolished, charcoal gray stone. A lightning bolt carved into the stone and blackened with time is the marker’s only other design.

  Just one year after his assassination, Nazi Germany paid homage to the man Hitler called “an immortal for all time.”17 The Third Reich built the Wilhelm Gustloff, a 25-million-reichsmark flagship for Nazi Germany’s “Strength Through Joy” (Kraft durch Freude or KdF) fleet. The ship was the Reich’s pride and joy.

  In the mid-1930s Nazi Germany rolled out a large-scale social program to deliver recreation to the volk. The KdF was an arm of the DAF, the National Socialist party’s replacement for labor unions. The Deutsche Arbeitsfront (German Labor Front or DAF) was set up in 1933 after the Reichstag abolished all trade unions in Germany. Under National Socialism, workers were compelled to join the DAF and pay dues in exchange for various social programs and job security, but DAF’s real purpose was to control labor unrest and strikes and to compel loyalty. Both the DAF and its subsidiary KdF were directed by Robert Ley.

  A Nazi politician, Ley had served two years with an artillery unit during World War One. In 1917 the French shot down his aircraft over France. The then 27-year-old found himself a prisoner of war. The experience rattled Ley; he developed a stammer and became a heavy drinker. He returned from the war, received a doctorate in chemistry, and worked for IG Farben, one of Germany’s largest industrial companies. Ley moved through the ranks of the Nazi Party and often toured factories and KdF facilities with Himmler.

  In November 1933 Ley helped establish the KdF as a way to offer benefits and recreational amenities to the German working class and their families. The KdF program took a militant approach to fun. It prescribed, in detail, correct methods, time, and content of leisure allowed so that workers’ productivity would be enhanced.18 The KdF staged operas and concerts in factories. Workers had access to free physical education and gymnastics.19 The KdF also offered coaching for football, tennis, and sailing. Across the Third Reich KdF chapters organized celebrations honoring Adolf Hitler’s birthday and hosted harvest festivals. After the 1938 Anschluss with Austria, the KdF promoted the Strength Through Joy slogan, promising that all the KdF’s activities would now be available to Austrians loyal to the Reich.20

  In the Reich every Aryan citizen had the right to a vacation: The KdF’s 1936 slogan “Enjoy Your Lives!” cheered people after a decade of economic depression. Until the late 1930s, most German citizens had never ventured outside their country. Only the wealthy traveled abroad. The DAF, through the KdF, subsidized holidays in resorts across Germany and in so-called safe countries such as Italy. It showed ordinary citizens what life could be like if they worked hard and followed Nazi policies. The program’s cruises and train trips promised to give millions of Germans the chance to see the fjords of Norway or to visit Berlin. The Gustloff could comfortably transport nearly 1,500 passengers at a time on cruises through the Mediterranean and to Africa.21 Throughout 1938, the liner brought middle-class leisure activities to the masses, giving the appearance of blurring class divisions.

  Adolf Hitler wanted his cruise liners to rival British, French, and American ships. Unlike his enemies’ cruise ships, passengers traveling on KdF liners had full run of the ship. First class and third class simply didn’t exist. Rather the boats were a floating celebration of the Nazi Party faithful, all of whom were treated to luxury and glamour. The Wilhelm Gustloff boasted nearly 54,000 square feet of deck space with a gymnasium and swimming pool. A large, glass-enclosed promenade wrapped around the ship. Inside the deck were lounge chairs for passengers to relax. Passengers dined off white porcelain plates decorated with green or red stripes around the rim; they used sterling silver cutlery engraved with an eagle and swastika. From the sun deck to the cinema and everywhere in between, passengers relaxed and played.

  In the first years of these cruises, passengers wrote about how some of the travelers were a tad discomfited with this style of leisure. Having to dress up for dinner frazzled a few nerves. Initially, many of those aboard the KdF cruises were unaccustomed to such grand displays of elegance and formality. They reluctantly entered community rooms to play cards or listen to concerts.22 Publicity photos from this period show smiling, tanned German workers sunning themselves, reading, and dozing on the ship’s various recreation decks.

  The Strength Through Joy (KdF) enshrined the idea of community before individual. Germans had faith in such slogans as “Ein Volk! Ein Reich! Ein Fürher!” (“One People, One Empire, One Leader”). Propaganda was the glue to stick together the German nationalist community. If Adolf Hitler became the Third Reich’s symbol
of national unity, the KdF program provided the bread and circuses for the masses.23

  Even more than the fun, boats such as the Wilhelm Gustloff showcased the power and force of Nazi Germany.24 Blohm & Voss, the Hamburg shipyard that had also built the ill-fated battleship Bismarck, designed and built all the ships in the KdF fleet. The Gustloff had 22 lifeboats and 12 transverse bulkheads, which made 13 watertight compartments. Many of its portholes were made of armored glass to withstand bad weather and bullets. The Gustloff and all the other liners in the fleet were designed to be “absolutely secure.” After the Titanic sank in 1912, no one dared call the gleaming white vessel, or any other ship, unsinkable.

  Adolf Hitler launched the 25,484-ton liner from the seaside city of Hamburg on May 5, 1937. On the day of the Wilhelm Gustloff’s christening, Gustloff’s widow, Hedwig, broke a champagne bottle across the ship’s bow. Cheers and applause thundered. Flags and banners rippled in the breeze. Hundreds of German workers and party officials bid the ship adieu and bon voyage.25 Hundreds of passengers watched the shoreline slip away as the ship sailed down the Elbe River on its way to the Madeira Islands of Portugal, just off the Moroccan coast. Captain Karl Lübbe, smartly dressed in the double-breasted coat of a naval officer, was in command. A year later on the Gustloff’s first recreational trip, the liner had a compliment of 400 crewmembers to serve more than 1,400 passengers. Just one day into the trip, Captain Lübbe, 58, died of a heart attack.26 After a memorial service, the crew took his body ashore in Dover, England. That evening, the dinner menu for April 23 was marked “Mourning Captain Lübbe.” A new captain came aboard; he was Captain Friedrich Peterson. The 63-year-old captain, who came from the Merchant Navy, seemed to have little patience for other viewpoints. His quarrelsome nature wouldn’t bode well for the Gustloff.

  In 1937, before the Anschluss with Austria and before Germany invaded Poland, Adolf Hitler used the Wilhelm Gustloff to win hearts and minds. Between April 3 and April 4, 1938, the Gustloff rescued the 1,826-ton English cargo ship Pegaway after a furious spring storm caused it to flounder 20 miles off the Dutch island of Terschelling. The Gustloff had only recently completed her first sea trials. After receiving a distress call around 4 A.M. from the Pegaway, Captain Lübbe ordered the Gustloff to head straight to the ship, damaged from a heavy storm. In so doing, he left behind the other three KdF ships he was with: the Der Deutsche, Oceana, and Sierra Cordoba. The Gustloff pulled 19 members of the Pegaway’s crew aboard.

  Local and international newspapers praised Captain Lübbe’s efforts. In Australia, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that the Wilhelm Gustloff received a silver plaque in recognition of rescuing the Pegaway crew when “it foundered about 25 miles north-west of Leterschelling Light on April 4th during a gale of hurricane force and mountainous seas.” The article mentioned how the Gustloff crew treated the crew with “the utmost kindness by all onboard and while in Hamburg they were supplied with clothing and pocket money and were helped in other ways.”27 Naturally Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels and the entire Nazi propaganda ministry seized upon this opportunity to depict the Third Reich as a humanitarian regime.

  During a propaganda mission on April 10, 1938, the Gustloff sailed up the Thames River to serve as a floating polling station for an estimated 2,000 Germans living in England who wished to vote for the Anschluss with Austria.28 Around noontime crew members from the Wilhelm Gustloff picked up voters waiting at London’s Tilbury Docks. This was reported in a two-page photo spread in the US edition of Life magazine. “Germans From England—‘JA’ [Yes] on a Special Trip Out to Sea” showed how nearly 2,000 Germans and Austrians living in England were taken by the Germans 50 miles to sea to vote on the German plebiscite of Anschluss. “Of England’s 34,000 Germans and Austrians, mostly house servants, the first 2,000 non-Jewish applicants were accepted. They turned in a 99.4% Ja as compared with greater Germany’s 99.08% Ja the same day.”

  Passengers were treated to concerts, celebrations, and free beer. The menu for April 9, the day before ballots were cast, bore a special message for diners: “Your Thanks For Voting Yes.”

  The Wilhelm Gustloff captivated the foreign press. Several articles speculated whether there was more to the ship than sundecks and cinema. In the United States the New York Times noted the ship’s antiaircraft guns and questioned whether the Gustloff might eventually be deployed as an aircraft carrier. The article described how aerial photos of the ship “have aroused considerable speculation here whether these craft with their long upper deck, obstructed only by a funnel, could quickly be converted into aircraft carriers. The Wilhelm Gustloff, of 25,000 tons gross, is about 700 feet long and has a deck area of 53,800 square feet, claimed to be larger than any vessels of this size.”29 A shipping expert quoted in the article said the boat’s deck could easily be lengthened to form a flying deck. It also didn’t get overlooked that the ship could—and did—become a troop transport.

  In May 1939 the Wilhelm Gustloff, together with the Robert Ley, Deutsche Stuttgard, Sierra Cordo, and Oceana took part in transporting the Luftwaffe’s Condor Legion from Spain. Franco’s Nationalists were sending the men home after successfully defeating Republican forces in the Spanish Civil War. The Gustloff unloaded medical supplies and took home 1,405 men. Of course the boat’s travels involved more than public relations. It continued to offer cruises to the masses. During the winter of 1938–1939 the ship sailed to Genoa, Naples, and Palermo before depositing her passengers ashore in Venice, Italy. That March, Adolf Hitler inspected the Wilhelm Gustloff, but he never sailed on the ship. The ship’s last peacetime cruise was early summer 1939 when she sailed to Norway and Sweden.

  In September 1939, soon after Germany invaded Poland, the German military pressed the Gustloff back into service. Classified as Hospital Ship D, it became a floating hospital for the sick and wounded. Surgeons operated on patients in former cabins, and the glassed-in promenade deck became a solarium for the wounded. Heavily bandaged soldiers and sailors recuperated on stretchers and in chairs. This new mission required the ship and crew to follow strict international laws governing the sea. A wide, green band encircled the white ship’s hull and the floor of its decks, sides, and stack bore a red cross symbol. The ship could carry neither defensive nor offensive weapons. During the Polish campaign, the Wilhelm Gustloff took 685 wounded soldiers from Danzig. It also helped in relief operations for the thousands of Baltic Germans who were being brought into the official Reich under the enormous resettlement plan agreed upon in 1939.

  The Gustloff was a floating hospital until 1940. Then, when the British blockaded the German coastline, the Gustloff housed U-boat crewmen undergoing training, and it remained tethered to a pier in Gotenhafen, a German navy stronghold. For the next four years the Gustloff served as an accommodation ship for U-boat trainees, first with the 1st Submarine Training Division and then the 2nd Submarine Training Division. Its shiny white surface was concealed under a coat of gray paint, and uniformed sailors replaced bathing beauties, shuffleboard enthusiasts, and military wounded. Submariners trained in tanks on board and learned survival skills in the swimming pool.

  In November 1944, Captain Paul Vollrath, a veteran of the German navy, was posted to the 2nd Submarine Training Division in Gotenhafen.30 The Wilhelm Gustloff and the Hansa comprised this unit. “More suitable ships for the purpose they were used for during the war could not have been found. They had everything, which otherwise would have had to be built ashore; they were self-contained units, accommodation, administration, catering, light, heating, everything was available and what is more, men, fit for sea service, did not have to be employed to keep the ships running,” Vollrath wrote in his postwar memoir.31

  The crew consisted of a merchant marine crew, who at this stage in the war were deemed unfit for active duty for either health reasons or age. A fair number of Croatian merchant seamen also served as deck crew aboard both the Wilhelm Gustloff and the Hansa. The ships were tethered to opposite piers in a part of Gotenhafen harb
or set aside for training crews.

  In November 1944 the war in the east still seemed far away to Captain Vollrath, who wrote that “the thought that one day we may have to abandon Gdynia [Gotenhafen] looked like high treason to me.”32 Just one month later, in December, all training for the 2nd Submarine Training Division ceased. Rather than training new seamen, staff and old submarine crews were armed with spades and shovels. They were dispatched to Gotenhafen’s outer suburbs to dig antitank trenches per the command of Erich Koch, the administrator of East Prussia.

  Officers like Vollrath were distant from and immune to the politics and debates of the naval leadership. Captain Paul Vollrath didn’t feel any sense of urgency. He viewed their change of mission as a normal wartime precaution. Confusion was par for the military’s course. However, years later, when he considered that time again, Vollrath realized just how isolated he and others serving in East Prussia were from the true state of the war.

  “We still believed that final victory would not be far off (so much for the power of propaganda), but in spite of our eager faith we heard at the time that Russian troops had broken through the German lines and Russian tanks had been roaming at will far behind the German lines,” Vollrath wrote.33 He noted that it had become common to see distraught refugees, who were fleeing Soviet atrocities in the eastern territories, descend on Gotenhafen. No longer could he ignore the stories of rape, murder, and arson. “Their looks and the state in which they arrived obviously spoke of a severe urgency,” Vollrath wrote.34

 

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