At around 9 p.m. on January 30, 1945, Adolf Hitler was speaking to the German people. In the packed dining hall of the luxury liner "Wilhelm Gustloff," as in most of the rest of the country, a radio was broadcasting Hitler's address, but the thousands of refugees from Pomerania and East and West Prussia who had struggled onto the ship weren't listening to the Führer now.

They wanted one thing — to be rescued. Only very few, 1,252 to be precise, made it off the steamer alive, of the well over 10,000 - mostly women and children, but also navy sailors. The ship had been hit by three Soviet torpedoes within an hour; the temperature outside was minus 18 degrees Celsius.

The solace offered by the Wilhelm Gustloff was enormous for the passengers who boarded the ship at Gotenhafen. Hundreds of thousands of German civilians had wanted to embark on ship in the port near Gdansk, in what is today Poland. The Red Army was on their heels and their thoughts were of Nemmersdorf. It was the first village in German territory reached by the Soviets and there were already rumors circulating of the draconic revenge on the part of the Soviets for German war crimes. Only the navy could rescue them now.

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Red Army factions had already reached German territory by late 1944

Nazi cruise liner turned rescue ship

At 208 meters (680 feet), the Gustloff wasn't the largest ship used to transport wounded soldiers and civilians. But it was by far the most well known. It was the Nazis' luxury liner, christened by none other than Hitler in 1937. Its name came from a killed Nazi officer, and it was initially reserved for high-ranking National Socialists to take vacations in the Mediterranean or along the western Norwegian coastline. By the end of the war, however, the ship had taken on an entirely different role — for its last journey.

The civilian escape via the Baltic Sea belongs to one the most impressive chapters in German WWII military history. Historians have estimated that around 2.5 million people were rescued by ship out of the German eastern zones. A comprehensive study has been published about the operation titled "Rescue Mission Baltic Sea 1944/1945: One of Humanity's Great Deeds." One of the main German officers credited with the success of the operation is Admiral Karl Dönitz, who would succeed Hitler as chancellor following the Führer's suicide in a Berlin bunker at the close of the war.

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The tragic end of the Gustloff, just one of dozens of ships used in the Baltic rescue operation, wasn't inevitable, experts have contended, singling out three fatal decisions as responsible for the disaster. Firstly, there was no convoy to offer protection, and since the ship carrying some 1,000 soldiers was intended to reach Kiel as quickly as possible, there was also no flank protection.

A small torpedo boat was all the protection the ship was given. Sea mines were feared along the Baltic coast, so the planned route was to traverse the open sea. Finally, since the Gustloff hadn't been used in over four years, Captain Wilhelm Peterson only dared a speed of 12 knots, instead of the possible 15.

These three factors contributed to what would become a death sentence for most of the ship's passengers. If the ship were escorted by a convoy, been provided flank protection, and traveled at a faster speed, experts have said the Soviet submarine S-13 would never have been able to hit the Wilhelm Gustloff with its torpedoes.

75 years after WWII: Memorials in Berlin Reichstag parliament building On April 30, 1945, two Soviet soldiers hoisted the red flag on the Reichstag parliament building in Berlin. Even though it is now known that the scene for this photo was actually staged two days later, it remains one of the most famous images of the 20th century, symbolizing the victory over Hitler, the destruction of the Nazi party and the end of the Second World War.

75 years after WWII: Memorials in Berlin The German-Russian Museum In this officers' mess in Berlin Karlshorst, the German Wehrmacht army signed the unconditional surrender on May 8, 1945. The German-Russian Museum exhibits the document, which was drawn up in English, Russian and German. The permanent exhibition provides information about the the war of annihilation led by the Nazis against the Soviet Union from 1941, which claimed around 25 million lives.

75 years after WWII: Memorials in Berlin The Allied Museum The western allies, namely Americans, English and French, did not get to Berlin until July 1945 when they took over the western sectors of the city. The center of the US forces was the Zehlendorf district. The former Outpost Theater cinema building is now part of the Allied Museum, which covers the period of postwar Berlin, including the 1948 airlift, up to the withdrawal of the Americans in 1994.

75 years after WWII: Memorials in Berlin The Soviet War Memorial A Soviet soldier holding a rescued child on his arm and a lowered sword over a shattered swastika — this huge monument towers above the Soviel Memorial in Treptow. The military cemetery is the final resting place for 7,000 Soviet soldiers who lost their lives in the fight for Berlin in the spring of 1945.

75 years after WWII: Memorials in Berlin Commonwealth War Cemetery in Berlin Some 3,600 Air Force soldiers, mainly killed in air combat over Berlin, are buried in the British cemetery on Heerstrasse. The honorary cemetery was built between 1955 and 1957 for the fallen soldiers from Great Britain and the Commonwealth States, especially Canada. It is still under special protection by the British Crown.

75 years after WWII: Memorials in Berlin Memorial to the German Resistance The war almost ended a year earlier: On June 20, 1944, a group of German officers led by Claus Schenk Count von Stauffenberg tried to overthrow Hitler. But the assassination attempt failed and the officers involved were executed. The German Resistance Memorial Center remembers those who died while resisting the Nazi regime.

75 years after WWII: Memorials in Berlin Topography of Terror With about one million visitors annually, the documentation center Topography of Terror on Niederkirchnerstrasse is one of the most visited memorial sites in Berlin. From 1933 to 1945, this was the site of the headquarters of the Secret State Police Office and the SS — in other words, where the Nazi regime's system of terror was planned and managed.

75 years after WWII: Memorials in Berlin Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe A wave-shaped field of 2,711 pillars commemorates the approximately 6.3 million European Jews who were murdered during the Nazi era. Directly underneath the Holocaust Memorial, changing exhibitions document the discrimination, persecution and systematic extermination of the Jewish people in the Nazi concentration camps.

75 years after WWII: Memorials in Berlin Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church The Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church on Breitscheidplatz was severely damaged in bombing raids in 1943. When it was to be completely demolished and rebuilt in the postwar years, Berliners protested. As a result, the 71-meter-high (233-foot-high) tower ruins were preserved as a highly visible memorial against war and destruction, for peace and reconciliation. Author: Lisa Marie Jordan



A sitting duck

Seventy-five years on, some details of the disaster still remain a mystery, however. Was sabotage to blame when a suspicious radio message warning of sea mines reached the command bridge, just before the first torpedo hit? In order to avoid a collision amid heavy snowfall, Captain Peterson then turned on the ship's position lights: 90 minutes with bright lighting, but no minesweepers. The Gustloff was a sitting duck.

There is evidence to support the unproven theory that German POWs — who had been "turned" by their Soviet captors and then dropped behind enemy lines using parachutes — were behind the false radio warnings to the ship. For Heinz Schön, who passed away in 2013, that was a horrible thought. He was 18 years old at the time, aboard the Gustloff as an aspiring naval pay clerk. Although he was one of the very few survivors, and wrote a book about his experiences, he was always reticent to call the sinking of the Gustloff a war crime. It was ultimately carrying soldiers, sailing under enemy colors and lightly armed, making it a valid target for Soviet subs.