The Wilhelm Gustloff

In January 1945 the Red Army's winter offensive, which opened on 12 January, reached East Prussia. The Nazi Party there, under Gauleiter Erich Koch, had forbidden civilians to evacuate. Families left late, and in winter. By 25 January Soviet armour had reached the Frisches Haff and cut the roads west. On 23 January Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz had ordered the navy to evacuate by sea. That operation, Hannibal, moved more than a million people.

The Wilhelm Gustloff was launched in 1937 as a Strength Through Joy cruise ship built for 1,465 passengers. From 1939 she was a hospital ship. From November 1940 she was floating barracks at Gotenhafen for a U-boat training division: painted grey, fitted with anti-aircraft guns, no longer protected as a hospital ship. On 30 January 1945 she sailed with U-boat trainees, women naval auxiliaries, wounded soldiers, crew, and refugees in every space that had a floor. Nobody wrote all of them down.

She took the deep-water Route 58, about 20 nautical miles offshore, at 10 to 11 knots, with a weak escort. That evening the Soviet submarine S-13, commanded by Alexander Marinesko, attacked on the surface from the landward side. Three torpedoes hit: the bow, the drained swimming pool where the women auxiliaries were quartered, and the engine room. The ship's senior second officer, Paul Vollrath, timed the first hit at 21:09. She sank bow first at about 22:10, in 44 metres of water.

The air was well below freezing and the sea was near freezing, with ice on the surface. Many of the dead died in the water, not inside the ship. Rescue ships, led by the torpedo boat Löwe and later T-36, pulled people from the sea through the night and landed them at Kolberg, Sassnitz and Swinemünde.

Then families waited. Walter Salk's mother wrote to him on 1 February. The letter came back. He was listed missing in December 1945 and confirmed dead on 28 September 1946, twenty months after a sinking that took an hour.

The crowd. The ship was designed for 1,465 passengers. The three counts of people aboard in our sources run from about 7,000 to more than 10,000. Mattresses were laid wall to wall in passageways and lounges. The 373 women naval auxiliaries were quartered in the drained swimming pool; the third torpedo hit beneath it.

The cold. Survivors describe air temperatures between −10 and −18 °C. The water was near freezing with floating ice. We do not state an exact water temperature, because no primary measurement has been found.

The boats. There were not enough places in the lifeboats, and the davits were coated in ice. Horst Woit's boat hung on ropes that had frozen. In the museum's account of his interview, he handed over a jackknife and a man cut the boat free.

The stairs. People were crushed on crowded stairs inside the ship, children among them. Watertight doors sealed crew inside the bow.

The rescue. A ship that stopped to pick people up became a target. Hans Rittner's rescue ship broke off to drop depth charges after torpedoes were sighted, and left people in the water.

The people in the water were not killed by one thing. Modern cold-water research describes four overlapping stages, and the timings are rough guides, not a clock for any individual.

1. Cold shock, in the first seconds to about three minutes: an involuntary gasp and rapid breathing. A gasp under water can be fatal on its own.
2. Cold incapacitation, from about five to thirty minutes: the hands and limbs cool and stop working. Near 0 °C this can happen within five to fifteen minutes. A conscious person may be unable to grip a rope or climb into a boat.
3. Hypothermia, often after twenty to thirty minutes: core temperature below 35 °C.
4. Circum-rescue collapse: the body can deteriorate during the lift out of the water or in the hours after. Being pulled into a boat was not the same as surviving.

A life jacket keeps a person afloat. It does not stop cold shock and it does not insulate. That is why the episode says the people of the Gustloff died in the water, and does not say they all died of hypothermia. Hans Rittner, a navy doctor, reached a lifeboat three-quarters full of water and found his hands frozen solid.

Elbing, home of the Woit family, to the Bay of Danzig. Gotenhafen (Gdynia) and the route around Hela point into the Baltic. Route 58, about 20 nautical miles off the Pomeranian coast. S-13's patrol from Porkkala, Finland, to the waters off Kolberg. The sinking site in 44 metres of water off present-day Poland. The landing ports: Kolberg, Sassnitz on Rügen, and Swinemünde. Betty Falk's route on to Kiel and Selsingen.