Hitler's Titanic: World's Deadliest Maritime Disaster


The sinking of the Nazi cruise ship “Wilhelm Gustloff” killed 9,400 people in one hour (1517 on Titanic)

The sinking of Nazi cruise ship Wilhelm Gustloff. The image is taken from a 1960 German movie “Darkness Fell on Gotenhafen“. (Image: ddp images)

Titanic is the most famous shipwreck, but unfortunately, the number of people dying during the Titanic disaster doesn’t come even close to the loss of life in the sinking of the German ship MV Wilhelm Gustloff.

The sinking of Wilhelm Gustloff is a forgotten maritime tragedy. The movie about its sad end never became a blockbuster.

Same as with Titanic, the catastrophic end of the Gustloff could be avoided.

Historians agree the sinking of Gustloff was the result of three fatal decisions made by its captain.

A short biography of ship Wilhelm Gustloff

MV Wilhelm Gustloff (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

Wilhelm Gustloff was launched in 1937 and served as a cruise ship for the Nazi officials to improve the public image of Nazi Germany.

Adolf Hitler himself christened her Wilhelm Gustloff after an assassinated leader of the Swiss branch of the Nazi party.

The luxury cruise ship had no first and no second class since according to the Nazis the “master race” was equal.

The ship had a length of 208.5 meters (684 feet) and a width of twenty-four meters (seventy-seven feet). The construction cost twenty-five million Reichsmarks ($200 million in today’s value).

After the start of World War II in 1939, Wilhelm Gustloff became a hospital ship and later served as floating military barracks for U-boat trainees, before being repurposed as a transport ship.

Operation Hannibal — the largest naval evacuation in history

German refugees embarking on a ship (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

At the end of World War II, millions of German soldiers and civilians became trapped in East Prussia.

The panic spread. People were well aware of the atrocities the advancing Red Army would commit to exact revenge for the Nazi crimes in the Soviet Union.

German admiral Karl Dönitz ordered Operation Hannibal — the largest naval evacuation in history.

Operation Hannibal was far larger evacuation operation than Dunkirk.

Since the Nazis were short on ships, Wilhelm Gustloff, after sitting in a dock for four years, was activated again.

The three fatal mistakes which caused the death of thousands

A reconstruction of sinking of Wilhelm Gustloff (Image: Wilhelm Gustloff Museum)

Instead of 2,000 passengers (the original capacity), 10,582 people boarded the ship. Most of them were civilians (8,956), but there was also lots of military personnel (1,626).

The ship had four captains. The decision-making was in the hands of civilian captain Friedrich Petersen. One of the captains was Wilhelm Zahn, a skilled submarine captain, known as a “Man who almost killed Churchill”.

Fatal mistake number 1: Sailing slow and in deep waters

Wilhelm Zahn (Image: uboat.net)

Wilhelm Zahn, knowing the submarine tactics very well, advised Petersen to sail at the speed of fifteen knots which was the speed that made submarine attacks very difficult.

He also advised on a zig-zag approach and sailing in shallow waters near the coast to avoid submarines.

However, Petersen disagreed. He believed the damaged cruiser was not capable of speed larger than twelve knots and that shallow waters would increase the risk of hitting a mine.

Fatal mistake number 2: Only one escort ship

Torpedo boat escort ship Löwe (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

Gustloff had no protection convoy, contrary to standard practice.

It was accompanied by only one torpedo boat escort named Löwe.

On top of that, the ship’s submarine sensor froze thus becoming useless. Anti-aircraft guns froze as well, making Gustloff completely defenseless.

Fatal mistake number 3: Turning on the lights

Shortly before being hit, the ship received a mysterious radio message warning the captain about the minesweepers in the vicinity.

Captain Petersen turned on the ship positioning lights to avoid collision amid heavy snowfall. By doing that, the ship became easy-to-see target.

The three torpedo hits and only a few lifeboats

The recreation of a failed attempt to lower a lifeboat from Gustloff. The image is taken from a 1960 German movie “Darkness Fell on Gotenhafen“. (Image: ddp images)

The ship Wilhelm Gustloff left the port on 30 January 1945, a few hours later it was spotted by the Soviet submarine S-13 and its captain decided to attack.

At 21.00, the Soviets shot four torpedoes at Wilhelm Gustloff, three of them hit the ship.

The first torpedo hit the ship’s bow, which caused the watertight doors killing the sailors captured behind the doors.

The second torpedo hit the area of the ship’s swimming pool, causing 470 out of 473 women sleeping there to die immediately.

The third torpedo hit the engine room stopping the ship and disabling all the communications.

If after the first two torpedoes, captain hoped the ship will continue sailing, all the hope was lost after the engines were hit. The captain issued the order for evacuation.

Most of the crew responsible for lowering the lifeboats was killed during the first torpedo hit. The passengers were left on their own. They began to fight for lifeboats.

Since the ship was overcrowded and many lifeboats were replaced by smaller rowing boats before departure, there was not enough of them.

In just forty minutes after the attack, Gustloff sank.

The passengers had no real chance for a survival.

The deadliest maritime disaster in history

Bodies washed ashore along the Pomeranian coastline (Image: Wilhelm Gustloff Museum)

People were fighting for their place in the lifeboats. They hit each other, it didn’t matter whether it was a child, a woman, or a man.

Many lifeboats became traps since they froze to their davits and couldn’t be lowered into the water.

Men shot their children and wives with pistols before killing themselves to safe them from suffering.

Bodies washed ashore along the Pomeranian coastline (Image: Wilhelm Gustloff Museum)

In the late January, the temperature of Baltic Sea is around four degrees Celsius (thirty-nine degrees Fahrenheit), but on 30 January 1945, the night was particularly cold.

Consequently, most of the passengers froze to death in the cold water of the Baltic.

Out of 10,582 passengers, only 1,252 were rescued by the escorting boat Löwe and few other ships which came to the rescue.

The sinking of Gustav Gustloff was the largest loss of life in a single ship sinking in history. Almost 9,400 people died.

For weeks following the sinking, the frozen bodies from Gustloff washed ashore.

Conclusion

The Allies published the news about the sinking of Wilhelm Gustloff in their German propaganda newspapers (Image:Wilhelm Gustloff Museum)

The sinking of Wilhelm Gustloff and its infamous record of the largest loss of life is a little-known historical fact.

The Nazis suppressed the news about the sinking of Wilhelm Gustloff to prevent lowering morale among the German people.

It is important to acknowledge that the sinking of German transport ship by the Soviet submarine was not a war crime.

Gustloff was equipped with anti-aircraft guns and was transporting soldiers. Also, it wasn’t painted in white color, the color used for hospital ships.

The Wilhelm Gustloff wreckage still lies on the floor of the Baltic Sea forty-four meters (144 feet) deep. Poland forbade diving within a 500 meters (1,600 feet) of the wreckage. The area of the wreck is considered a war grave.

Why does the U.S. have a billion-pound stash of cheese?

714 Million Barrel Petroleum Reserve? Sure. But the U.S. Also has a 700,000 ton Cheese Reserve!

A dairy farmer with baby cows



Cheese mountains, milk lakes, and other surprising stockpiles


On the surface, Springfield, Missouri, looks like an ordinary city. Yet underneath, in a containment facility hidden in the hollows of former limestone mines, lie stacks upon stacks of industrial barrels. Their contents: hundreds of thousands of pounds of cheese.

This immense mound of dairy is only part of the 1.4 billion pounds the U.S. government has amassed over the last century. Essentially all of this is in the form of commodity cheese, a highly processed product sometimes referred to as “government cheese.” 

As bizarre as the American cheese mountain may be, it’s far from the only gastronomic stockpile scattered around the globe. Some have become peculiar points of national pride: When the Swiss government announced that it would do away with the country's 15,000-tonne coffee stash, the public outcry was immediate. 

Other food reserves have become politically weaponized or endlessly ridiculed. As The Washington Post reported in 1981, one USDA official suggested that the most practical option would be for the U.S. government to just fling its cheese hoard into the sea. 

Here are some of the largest—and strangest—caches of food in the world.


The United States’ Cheese Mountain
Demand for dairy in the U.S. has plummeted 42 percent since 1975, but that hasn’t stopped American farmers from producing more and more of it. Over the years, the industry has found all sorts of ways to get rid of its excess supply, from dumping 43 million gallons of milk to stockpiling cheese.

“The reason why the dairy industry gets such preferential treatment is its status as this uncontested food in the diet,” says Dr. Andrea Wiley, author of Re-Imagining Milk. With the rise of refrigeration in the early 1900s, the dairy industry consolidated and grew more powerful. 

“Basically the dairy industry was looking to expand its market, and the USDA was looking to expand the agricultural economy, and they become very intertwined,” Wiley says.

By the 1930s and ‘40s, milk was touted as essential for both growing children and adults. “Leading up to the Second World War, dairy was used in this very patriotic way—strengthening our bodies to fight the war,” Wiley says. “Then in the wake of the Second World War, [demand for milk] began to decline. So you have this super robust dairy industry, but the market can’t absorb it.” 

In 1949, the Agricultural Act allowed a government agency to buy up dairy products to stabilize prices. Within 30 years, a modest stash ballooned to more than 500 million pounds of cheese. Under the Reagan Administration, the USDA dumped 30 million pounds of commodity cheese on welfare programs and into school lunches.

Yet this Special Dairy Distribution Program barely made a dent. Partnerships with fast-food companies like Taco Bell and Domino’s—which a government agency paid millions to make cheesier products—helped, but still weren’t enough. 

In 2016, the government scooped up another $20 million worth of cheese and the stockpile grew larger still under the Trump Administration. Today, cheese mountain is bigger than ever.

“We’re still dealing with wartime policies [even though] we haven’t had a World War in over 70 years,” Wiley says. “They’re kind of just stuck with a lot of really bad cheese.”

Europe’s Butter Mountains and Milk Lakes

Europe has also been propping up its dairy industry for decades, to the extent that it's been a sticking point for conservative British politicians from Margaret Thatcher to various Brexiteers. By 1984, outrage over government-subsidized “butter mountains” and “milk lakes” led lawmakers to introduce a dairy cap.

Much like America’s cheese mountain, the European Union’s mountains and lakes of dairy aren’t literal. Instead, most of the milk lakes exist in the form of sacks upon sacks of dehydrated skim milk powder languishing in warehouses in Germany, Belgium, and France. 

While the EU swore they’d put a stop to this, these stockpiles have still grown at times. In the wake of a market crisis in 2015, the Agriculture Commission doled out more than €1 billion in aid to dairy farmers, approximately €640 million of which went to purchase skim milk powder.

Predictably, people were not happy. Politicians vowed to get rid of it and, for the time being at least, most of the supplies have dwindled. Now the wine lakes, on the other hand …

China’s Frozen Pork Reserve
In 2020, China consumed 40.3 million metric tonnes of pork—more than double than the entire European Union. Not only is the country the planet’s largest consumer of pork, but it’s also its largest producer. 

China’s pork industry is so economically critical that the government hangs onto a sizable cache in order to keep prices consistent. When prices dropped earlier this year, the government declared it would buy up extra supply from farmers at a fixed rate, adding 38,000 metric tonnes to its frozen pork reserve in March.

But this meaty mountain works as a stabilizing force in the other direction as well. For instance, a 2018 outbreak of African swine fever dealt a $130 billion blow to the industry. To help make up for the decreased supply, in 2020, the government released a staggering 670,000 metric tonnes of its supply into the market over 38 drops.

Canada’s Maple Syrup Reserve
Of course Canada has a Global Strategic Maple Syrup Reserve. Quebec is responsible for 73 percent of the world’s maple syrup, more than half of which winds up in the United States. And unlike a moldering pile of cheese, the saccharine stash is treated like liquid gold. 

It’s so valuable, in fact, that thieves made off with 9,571 barrels—or 2,700 metric tonnes—of the stuff in 2012. The Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist, as it came to be known, amounted to $18 million in pilfered tree sap. 

Not all Canadian maple syrup harvesters are thrilled about the government’s policies, which strictly regulate how much product they can sell. Still, that extra supply comes in handy. In 2021, after an alarmingly low harvest, the government released more than 22,600 metric tonnes of maple syrup from its precious supply to make up the difference. 

Fortunately, there’s still plenty to go around. Canada’s maple syrup trove is vast, with dimensions equivalent to five football fields. Given that climate change is expected to impact maple syrup production, those supplies may soon be more valuable than ever.
A large bunch of unripe bananas hangs from a tree

Sacred Granaries, Kasbahs, and Feasts in Morocco

On this Gastro Obscura trip, you will participate in North African culinary traditions and see the historic sites that shaped them, including an overlooked wonder of the world, the Amtoudi Granary, a fortress-like food vault and an early form of banking that once served as a crossroads of culinary tradition for the Berber people.Book Today