Death in the Baltic

by Cathryn J Prince

  Allied propaganda leaflets dropped from airplanes on the retreating German troops tried to lure German officers and soldiers to desert and inform civilians that the end of the war was near. The message was simple: The German people should rise up and renounce Nazism.35 “At all fronts the enemy is advancing while we are unable to offer serious resistance to him. . . . In the East entire armies are dissolving or are hopelessly hemmed in.”36 Other bits of propaganda implored German officers and civilians to lay down their arms. It highlighted the ferocity of the Russian advance and the callousness of their own Fatherland: “Meanwhile the Cossacks and the hordes of foreign workers are turned loose on our women and children. Germany is bombed into rubble and ashes and no one will build it up again.”37

  Irene and Ellen Tschinkur never discussed the politics of war with their parents. Everyone was busy surviving. Their nighttime ritual meant never going to sleep without first putting their coats and heavy shoes next to their beds; screaming air raid sirens and runs to bomb shelters regularly interrupted dreams.

  “We had dog tags with our name and blood type on them in a little leather case that we wore all during the war. And we had gas masks that smelled terrible; we had them all the time. We were told never to pick up anything on the street—anything that looked interesting, shiny,” Ellen said.

  When darkness settled over the house at day’s end, the family lowered the heavy blackout curtains. One of their dearest possessions, somehow saved from home, is a snapshot of Irene, Ellen, and Evi. The lens captured the three girls, all wearing enormous bows in their hair. In it they are seen lighting their advent candles, encircled with a chocolate-decorated wreath. The blackout curtains sit tight against the large windows. Allied bombers flew overhead and illuminated the night sky. But those thick curtains couldn’t protect the littlest Tschinkur. In 1943 the Allied bombing of Gotenhafen intensified. One night, while their little baby sister Dorit slept in her crib a bomb blew out all the windows and French doors. Broken glass fell into the room and the baby died from a brain injury. Another time Irene remembers going to the market with her mother and seeing a hand lying next to a bomb crater.

  Then the day came for the Tschinkur sisters and their mother to leave. It was decided that Evelyn, their favorite cousin who lived in Poznan, would accompany Serafima, Irene, and Ellen. Evi was a few years older than Irene, and she looked up to Evi and wanted to be with her all the time. Evi’s mother was sick with tuberculosis and too weak to make the trip. Their father, too old for the draft and thus far not selected for the Home Guard because his job running the bakery was deemed essential, decided to stay behind and vowed to meet them as soon as possible. All Serafima took with her was a briefcase packed with jewels and money.

  In January 1945 the Allies bombed Gotenhafen more frequently and Eva Dorn remembers how the light of Russian artillery made the distant sky glow red. She never interacted with civilians now that she served on a navy base. However, Eva recalled going to the city’s hospital to help after one bombing. She saw people burned so badly only their eyes seemed alive.

  Eva Dorn had extra duties in the Women’s Naval Auxiliary once the pace of the Russian advance picked up. They were coming closer every day and her spotlight battery was ordered to dig antitank trenches.

  “Then we were given a choice—to go on a ship or stay and fight for the Fatherland. I’m not a hero,” Eva said, explaining how she ended up on the Wilhelm Gustloff.

  As hundreds upon thousands of East Prussian civilians made their way to ports on the sea, so too did concentration camp inmates from Stutthof. In January 1945 the Nazis started evacuating the concentration camps. Auschwitz-Birkenau was the first death camp to be evacuated; others quickly followed. Camp guards forced the inmates out and marched them further west; some of these marches lasted four months. The Nazis wanted to relocate prisoners to camps further west and deeper inside Germany to prevent the Allies from learning about their extermination program.

  There were nearly 50,000 prisoners left in the Stutthof camp, most of them Jews. About 5,000 prisoners were marched to the Baltic Sea, forced into the water and machine-gunned down to drown. The rest were forced to march west. The march passed through towns, and when locals saw them, they sometimes threw bread at the starving, risking their lives as well as the prisoners’. The prisoners marched until their legs could no longer move. When they fell a guard either shot the prisoner or beat the prisoner with his rifle, then he kicked the body to the roadside. About 2,000 prisoners died on the way. The Soviets cut off the forced march of the barely surviving prisoners in Lauenberg in eastern Germany, and the SS forced the inmates back to Stutthof where thousands more died.38

  “Then they evacuated our camp and we started walking,” said camp survivor Ruth Weintraub. “If you couldn’t keep up with the speed, a German would just shoot them right there or club you.”39 Near Danzig they came to a barn where they rested; there were perhaps 300 left of 1,000. “We didn’t even realize we were sleeping on dead bodies,” Ruth continued. When morning came she and her fellow inmates saw Russian tanks, and the Russian soldiers began throwing food at them.

  Prisoners suffered from scurvy and other diseases related to vitamin deficiencies. They had skin problems, diarrhea, lung and heart disease, and frostbite. Most wore tattered rags for clothes. They wrapped their legs and feet in mud-covered cloth strips or straw. Stutthof prisoners walked wearing makeshift clogs and thin blankets.

  Stutthof survivor Stanislaw Jaskolski described his march: “Then came the day the twentieth of January 1945, the year we stood for the last roll call. It was very cold, minus 4 F to minus 22 F, snow was a blizzard and snow drifts. And then they read to us that we were going to be evacuated and that no one was allowed to rush away from the road or he would be killed. They gave us shirts for the road (trip), long johns, a blanket for two, half a loaf of bread and half margarine.”40 Jaskolski continued, “When we were brought to the road to Gdansk/Danzig we looked at how so many of us remained in hell, how [in spite of] the crematorium and gas chamber, gallows, in spite of the frost and sadness, we were doing good. We marched the whole day and we arrived at the prisoner ships from Zatoke Gdanske to the Kaszub side.”

  From January through March 1945 inmates of state prisons in the eastern territories were also being marched toward penal institutions in central and western Germany. They were in better physical shape than the concentration camps’ inmates, but they had few clothes or shoes, and little to no food. Many of these prisoners also perished from cold, exhaustion, or starvation along the way. Guards and SS executed those prisoners who couldn’t keep up. Other prisoners were “methodically massacred” when the Russians broke through the East Prussian lines.41

  In 1945, when young children like Helga, Inge, and Horst left, they couldn’t know that gone were train rides to grandparents or traditional first day of school cookie coronets. When parents like Meta and Milda decided to go, they sensed life would never return to the one they knew, that this was not but a brief hiccup. Perhaps they could keep their promises and reunite with the rest of the family when the world quieted.

  Yet, for now the population embraced the notion of a German maxim: “Lieber ein Ende mit Schrecken als ein Schrecken ohne Ende”—“An end with horror is better than a horror without end.”42

  Per Admiral Karl Dönitz’s orders, Rear Admiral Conrad Englehardt was fine-tuning Operation Hannibal. The first boats had sailed from Gotenhafen to Kiel without incident. In Gotenhafen German naval officers helped to ensure the evacuation of sick and wounded troops. Civilian or merchant marine counterparts helped oversee the evacuation as well. Every day hundreds of thousands of East Prussians arrived in the Baltic port. The Russians were advancing quickly overland. By the time the refugees reached Gotenhafen, the Red Army was just outside Königsberg.

  Five

  SAVING A SCUTTLED REPUTATION

  On the night of January 25, 1945, Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko caroused in a tavern of ill repute, reaching for another dri
nk, and yet another. Normally, Marinesko favored drinking alone. Tonight was different. A Swedish woman whom he had met during a recent New Year’s Eve party in Hanko, Finland, perched on a barstool beside Marinesko.1 Heavy drinking and women had become a tonic for the dark-haired, temperamental, Soviet submarine commander. In photographs from that time period, the sailor’s eyes appear to gleam with equal parts charm and swagger, and his full lips looked capable of breaking out into a sneer at any given moment.

  Of course, plain displays of contempt for authority were a dangerous game to play in Stalin’s Soviet Union. Reports indicate that while Marinesko’s crews loved him, his high command didn’t hold the captain in high esteem. They found him to be impulsive and frequently sharp-tongued.2 His scorn earned him the suspicion of the NKVD, the Soviet internal secret police, who wondered whether the 32-year-old commander might be a counterrevolutionary in Soviet military disguise. The NKVD wielded tremendous power: its officers spied on foreigners and on its own citizens, and administered the slave-labor camps known as gulags.3 The secret police also executed thousands of political prisoners and helped organize mass deportations of Ukrainians and other non-Russians from the Baltic States. So it’s no wonder the NKVD caught up with the young commander Marinesko, who was completely drunk and seemingly unfit for duty this winter night in 1945. It was a given that the NKVD kept tabs on key military personnel to enforce the Communist Party’s political will. Those under constant scrutiny included generals, the infantry, admirals, and captains in the navy.

  That night, as the hard-boiled Marinesko was drinking with his lady friend, a group of NKVD agents came to summon him. His superiors sought the submarine commander so they could discuss strategy. The submarine commander had no choice but to accompany them forthwith. He couldn’t simply shrug off this order to come in for questioning.4

  Alexander Marinesko had a lot to be worried about. The state security apparatus fully intended to court-martial him as a deserter. Marinesko had not only failed to report for duty on New Year’s Eve 1944, but he also had broken the fraternization rule. Soviet soldiers were strictly prohibited from befriending foreigners, lest they be accused of helping foreign agents. The pretty Swedish woman he had bedded on New Year’s Eve was a clear transgression. Marinesko engaged in what the NKVD and Communist Party considered anti-Soviet behavior: overt drunkenness and barely concealed disrespect for his superiors. The fate likely awaiting Marinesko was to be sent to a camp on the frozen tundra. In winter, temperatures in this far eastern Siberian gulag regularly dipped to between minus 19 and minus 38 degrees Celsius (between minus 2 and minus 36 degrees Fahrenheit). About 30 percent of Kolyma gulag’s prisoners died each year.5

  Yet, in 1945 seasoned submarine commanders were hard to find. The Communist Party purges of the 1930s had decimated the navy’s officer ranks; on June 11, 1937, many senior leaders of the Russian military were arrested and charged with treason, tried and executed. Among them was the marshal of the Soviet Union, M. N. Tukhachevsky, considered to be innovative and capable.6 Thus by the end of 1944 the Red Army and the Soviet navy no longer had a pool of experienced soldiers and sailors from which to choose. Instead, they had to rely on poorly trained replacements. Marinesko, considered a maverick by his superiors, was one of the few submariners who could handle the rapidly changing situation in the Baltic Sea. Marinesko’s crew had complete confidence in his abilities. Marinesko was granted a reprieve but remained under scrutiny. This time, the Baltic Fleet Admiral V. F. Tributs intervened and ordered the party apparatus not to waste resources court-martialing the wayward commander. To clear his name he needed to make a significant kill.7

  When the war started in 1939, the Soviet navy boasted the largest submarine force in the world with more than 168 boats. More than two-thirds of those boats were anchored in European waters. Most of the vessels were less than 10 years old. By September 1, 1939, about one-third of the 55 Soviet submarines were stationed in the Baltic.8 Stalin ordered more than 300 submarines built between 1934 and 1943. By June 22, 1941, when Germany abrogated the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact by invading the Soviet Union, Russia had 215 submarines in service and 100 more on the factory line.

  In the late 1920s the Soviet navy had begun building a new class of submarines modeled after British boats, with technical assistance from Germany. In the 1930s the Soviet navy introduced another class of larger and faster submarines that were armed with torpedo tubes. By 1941 the Soviet Union had about 200 boats in its navy distributed among four fleets: the Northern, the Baltic, the Black Sea, and the Pacific. Many of the ships and submarines were poorly maintained. They patrolled the Baltic and Black Seas and brought supplies to the Red Army.9

  The Soviet Union drafted most of its submarine officers from the ranks of the merchant marines, which helped control transportation along some of the world’s most extensive coastline and helped protect the navy. If they had mettle and proved their qualifications, the sailors served one tour as executive officers on a submarine before assuming their own command. Even still, finding officers with adequate experience proved a continuous challenge for Soviet leaders.

  Two formidable enemies conspired to keep the Soviet navy in check during the early years of the war: the German navy and the weather. German U-boats engaged in a ruthless campaign against military and civilian targets alike. Reliant on their underwater strategy, the Germans began working on a secret program for a new U-boat in 1943. This new U-boat would be larger, faster, and equipped with the most current radar. It was designed to guard the Germans position of strength on the sea.10

  The Baltic Sea was vital to both the Reich and the Soviet Union. When Germany invaded Russia by land in the summer of 1941, only 10 of the Russian Baltic Fleet’s 69 submarines actively patrolled the seas. German U-boats kept the rest of the Baltic Fleet prisoners within their bases. The Reich used the sea’s shipping lanes to support the infantry with supplies, deliver fuel for its aircraft, and transport tanks and stockpiles of armaments. The Russians wanted control of the Baltic Sea to protect its coast.

  From September 8, 1941 through January 27, 1944, during the nearly 900-day siege of Leningrad, much of Russia’s submarine fleet was stuck in the Gulf of Finland; the German navy was able to keep the Soviet boats penned in. Landlocked, many submariners grew restless. Some cast their lot with besieged residents, wrote Victor Korzh, a captain who served aboard a Soviet submarine during World War Two.11 Malnutrition also took its toll on submarine crews; they lost their stamina and will to fight. In addition, morale declined when the key naval bases of Libava, Riga, and Tallinn were lost to ice and Germans in 1941. It wasn’t until August 1944 that the Soviet navy reached Riga and reestablished its presence in the Baltic Sea.

  In 1942 the main port of the Soviet navy at Sevastopol, Ukraine, fell to German forces. This forced the Baltic Fleet to deploy ships out of Poti, a Georgian port on the Black Sea, and Taupse, a port in the eastern Black Sea. This made it difficult for the Soviets to attack German ships. The German air force also deterred submarine attacks. Like birds of prey, the Luftwaffe picked off Soviet subs when they surfaced—until June 1944 when the Soviets finally achieved air superiority. In spite of these odds, the Baltic submarine force established a reputation for ruthlessness during one of its first missions.

  The fact that submarine commanders were needed protected Marinesko. Still, when the NKVD agents summoned him that night at the bar, Marinesko realized he needed to make a significant kill. He needed something that would redeem his military career. Sinking several German boats, or even one sizable German ship, would eventually elevate him in the eyes of his countrymen and raise the spirits of his beleaguered nation.12

  Alexander I. Marinesko was born in 1913 in Odessa, a port on the northwest shore of the Black Sea. His father was a Romanian sailor and his mother Ukrainian.13 Ever since the Tartars settled Odessa in the early 1200s it has been a major seaport, and a warm water seaport at that. French and Italian influences are apparent in the city’s architecture and wide tr
ee-lined avenues. It was a city of many nationalities and many tongues. Ukraine, one of the four original Soviet states in 1922, always retained a strong sense of nationalist and cultural identity. And it was identity that obsessed Marinesko, from how authorities perceived him to how he perceived himself. It became Marinesko’s lifelong quest to shed his Ukrainian skin and become fully Russian.

  Living and playing near the docks in Odessa schooled Marinesko in a variety of languages, and eventually he could speak a sort of patois combining the saltier notes of Russian, Ukrainian, Romanian, Greek, Bulgarian, and even Yiddish. Fluent in Russian, Marinesko changed the spelling of his last name from Marinesku to Marinesko, which shows he sought a more solid Russian identity. He likely believed that the ‘u’ ending made him Ukrainian, and because he so desperately wanted to rise through the ranks, he’d need to be more Russian. He zealously worked to rise in the Soviet fleet and prove he was as Soviet as any Russian.14

  Marinesko wanted to belong to the class of power elites. He was determined to get his share. So, before the war, the young man enlisted, knowing the military offered the best path to success.

  Joining the navy and then volunteering for submarine duty suited hardcore men on all sides of the war. Submarines were crowded and the air inside was heavy with moisture, but some men relished the close camaraderie and generally high morale in the submarine service. Their mission was often more intense and, being under the sea, they had less to fear from the German Luftwaffe.15 During World War Two, submarines were designed and operated as weapons systems; comfort never entered the equation. Each space was accounted for; even the officers’ mess doubled as a sick bay if needed. There was little variety in their daily menu; beet borscht, canned beef, and herring were ladled onto plates again and again.16 The sailors looked forward to an occasional shot of vodka.17 The men slept on bunks as narrow as pantry shelves. The noise of engines, various loud horns, and other equipment constantly rattled the inside of the vessel. They learned to sleep when they could, tuning out the unceasing noise. One submariner wrote how he “closed his eyes after the last spoonful of pudding.”18