Dan Snow's History Hit - Hitler's Titanic

Episode Date: July 2, 2020

Roger Moorhouse is an historian of the Third Reich and WW2, author of The Devils' Alliance, Killing Hitler & Berlin at War. He joined me on the podcast to discuss the worst maritime disaster in history: the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff in January 1945.Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit. Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. Hello everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History. I'm just huddled now in the lee of one of the most famous stones on planet Earth, one of the giant

sarsen stones in Stonehenge in Wiltshire in the UK. There's a little breeze blowing from the west. The rain showers are coming in and I'm standing on the wide open plain here in Stonehenge right up close to the stones just before it reopens to the public in a couple of weeks time. We're here, we've seized the opportunity to make a documentary for History Hit TV. I'm looking out now, the tallest stone pointing up into the sky to the west. Absolute beauty that one. Two metres underground, about four or five metres sticking up out of the ground.

On the inner layer, the inner ring, then you get the outer ring of stars. Now the interesting thing about this outer ring is we actually don't know where they're from and there's new research now we've always assumed they're from quite close by in Wiltshire but there's new research which is going to study all of these stones it may emerge they're from as far afield as some of the other blue stones which actually come as everybody knows from south wales can you believe it they come from south world no one knows how they got here it's incredible love this site two and a half thousand BC they start building this Stonehenge it's an absolutely joyful thing so if you want the live podcasting taking place from Stonehenge from here the zoom podcast night that history hit subscribers can listen in on we're going to be talking to the

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good rate to be honest this podcast is a repeat it's a rerun of a podcast that first went out years ago it's with one of the great friends of history at podcast roger morehouse the story of the sinking of the willem gosloff which is sort of unknown to the majority of non-germans in the world it was once a cruise ship for hitler's reich but in january 1945 it was evacuating vast numbers of civilians refugees and military personnel from eastern Germany, bringing them back away from the Soviet army to the west when it was sunk by a Soviet torpedo. 10,000 passengers died, froze to death in the icy waters of the January Baltic. It is the worst

maritime disaster in history, bar none. And yet it's not known about, it's not talked about. It is this year, the 75th anniversary of the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff. So we thought we'd revisit this old podcast, I think recorded when I was the ill-fated adventurer looking for the Nazi gold train that was allegedly hidden in a tunnel in Poland. It was not there. That was a fiasco. But I recorded this podcast with Roger Morehouse from Poland instead.

So from Stonehenge via Poland to January 1945. Here's Roger Morehouse and the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff. Enjoy. Roger, did I pronounce it correctly? Just about, Dan. Yeah, that was fine. Because I know you've been going at me about my pronunciation yes forgive my uh my pedantry no it's fair enough that's what you're there for buddy now tell me this is really one of the most extraordinary stories let's talk about the ship itself and then we'll get on to the tragic circumstances of its loss at sea was this a particularly enormous

ship was it or were there just lots of people um Not especially enormous it was I think 26,000 tons off the top of my head which is about roughly half the displacement of the Titanic so it's not massive it's a good size cruise ship had space for a complement of about 500 crew and 1500 passengers so it was a good size would be a good size even by modern standards and what does it do so it's launched in 1937 then spends the next few years doing what what's peculiar about its early history we you know those that know anything about the guslov will know broadly the circumstances of its sinking which we'll talk about in a minute but what i wanted to do with this ebook is to try and look at the sort of the circumstances of its sinking which we'll talk about in a minute but what i

wanted to do with this ebook is to try and look at the sort of the history of the history of the of the vessel in the round so you know that it's not just its final voyage and its final sort of two days of its life that are interesting i think it actually tells you a much wider story um it was actually uh the first purpose-built cruise ship for the Nazi leisure time organization, which was known as Kraft durch Freude, strength through joy. They had already, by the time that the Gustloff is laid down in 36, they had already requisitioned existing ships to serve as their cruise liners. But this was the first one that they'd actually laid down and built themselves as you know purpose built for their for their organization so that that in

itself i think makes it quite remarkable so what's um what's the difference between a nazi cruise liner and a normal cruise liner are there any sort of features that they particularly want to install well i mean it's uh it sounds a slightly sort of um almost a silly question dan but it's not actually because there are some features of the Gusloff which are quite peculiar. This organization, Kraft durch Freude, is actually rather important in the history of Nazism. It's one of those aspects of the story of the Third Reich that I think to focus on the oppression, if you like, the Gestapo, the SS, the Holocaust, all of that narrative of peoples under the heel of the Nazi jackboot. There is, of course, another side to that story. Any system like that needs

to have a carrot as well as a stick. And in a sense, the KDF was part of that carrot. It was part of the appeal that the Nazis sold to their own people and said, look at all the benefits that you get from being part of this, this Nazi or the this, the German national community, as they called it. So the KDF was set up right at the beginning of the Third Reich. And it's basically providing free time activity. It was a key part of the sort of totalitarian ambition, the idea that the regime should have its fingers in absolutely every aspect of your life, from your workplace through to your free time, through to your political activity, whatever it would be, sporting activity. Everything in free time was run by the KDF and was suitably sort of Nazified.

So it was a very important part of the broader story of the Third Reich, actually, and it's one that we traditionally forget. So it's running, you know, the KDF is running after work, weekend rambles, it starts running holidays for the German people as well. And really, it's one of the sort of progenitors of the package holiday. And it's already going on in the 1930s elsewhere, but it's something that the KDF picks up and it runs with. And of course, these things are very, very much politicized. You'd make sure that all the sort of political content was there.

You'd have speeches and introductory talks and lectures and so on, as well as the free time activities. So it's quite political as well as being a free time organization so to come back to your question about what what was specific about the wilhelm guslov has said it was it was um purpose built by the nazis for this purpose and um it had for example it was a classless ship that's one of the peculiarities had no no differentiation between classes everybody paid the same everybody had a cabin that had a you know a window and an outside view

um so is that it sort of ties in with the the smallest socialist aspect of the national socialist idea you know everyone was equal as long as you win a part of the german nation and part of the german folk uh everyone's equal within that. So that was one aspect. It also had, for exampleises had Gestapo men on them so that they could inform, if necessary, on anyone who was not on message and not being sufficiently Nazi. So it does have a few features that are actually rather specific to a Nazi cruise ship. Right. And in 1939, war breaks out. Now, unfortunately for Germany's ultimate chances of victory, Britannia rules the waves. So what happens to big Nazi cruise ships like this one? Do they just return to port and sit there and rot? going on by 1939, by the autumn of 1939. It had travelled quite widely by this point. It's been up into the Baltic, it's been up the Norwegian fjords that used to do runs

into the Mediterranean and to the Azores and things like that. It's quite well travelled. By this time, the Gustav on its own would have carried about 75,000 people on its cruises. It had quite a rich career as a cruise ship. Come the autumn of 1939, obviously it gets redesignated initially as a hospital ship. It's moored off Gdynia, off what becomes known as Gorton Hafen to the Germans, what's now northern Poland, northern Polish coast,

and is used there as a hospital ship to take care of the wounded from the Polish campaign. It then plays the same role in the Norwegian campaign in 1940. So it's sort of ferried around serving that role in the opening phases of World War II. It's a bit of an ignominious sort of comedown from this ship, which was very much the most famous peacetime vessel, aside from ships like the Bismarck, the battleships and so on. It's very much the most famous peacetime vessel, aside from ships like the Bismarck, the battleships and so on. It's very much the most famous peacetime vessel of Nazi Germany. So it's very much a comedown to be serving as a hospital ship in that way. Its next sort of iteration

is later on in the war. It gets again moored in Gdynia, in Gorton Hafen, and is left there effectively as a barracks ship. But I think most people that have studied this period tend to view that, again, as sort of the ultimate ignominy, that it's left in a provincial sort of Baltic backwater and is largely forgotten. I think that's actually a rather more crucial part of the story, is that we overlook the importance of the Eastern Baltic to the German U-boat campaign. And it was actually serving a very important purpose there, as a barrack ship for one of those U-boat detachments.

At what stage does it enter infamy, if you like? Why does this name echo down the years? You have to fast forward a bit to very close to the end of the war january of 1945 and at that point the soviets are already making major inroads into they've already entered german east prussia for example they're making major inroads into occupied poland so warsaw for example is liberated in the middle of january 1945 so the Soviets are very much on the way at this point. And the Germans set up an operation which is called Operation Hannibal, which is quite remarkable.

And again, I think in Western historiography, massively understudied. It is an enormous evacuation operation from the German eastern provinces via the baltic predominantly and they use almost any ship they can get their hands on um cruise ships freighters you know anything anything they can find um to evacuate wounded military personnel um to evacuate troops that are still capable that can be shifted to another theater, but also some of the many,

many thousands, hundreds of thousands of civilian refugees who are being sort of pushed westwards on the bayonets of the Red Army at this point. And this is the operation that the Wilhelm Gustloff is called in to help with. It only makes one run. It's quite interesting that there's various ships used in Operation Hannibal, which are used much more extensively than Wilhelm Gustloff. There's one called the Deutschland, which was another cruise ship, slightly smaller than the Gustloff, which actually makes, I think, seven crossings of the Baltic Sea from Gdansk to Kedinia down to across to Kiel. Kadynia down to across to Kiel and and you know takes out tens of thousands of refugees and wounded soldiers so it's a massive operation I think it's the largest sort of seaborne evacuation in history but to western historiography it's just it's sort of irrelevant it's not really talked about at all so I try and I try and bring that into the narrative you know as much as I can as I said theuslov only makes one crossing and that one was incomplete it sets off from kadinia on the morning of the 30th of january

1945 which of course is the anniversary of hitler coming to power in 1933 so it was a date that was uh rather written in the stars i think for the for the wilhelm guslov and that night it was cruising westwards about sort of 20 miles off the north Polish coast, the Pomeranian coast, and was torpedoed by a Soviet submarine. It was hit three times across her flanks and sank in 40 minutes, which of itself was a fairly common fate.

A lot of ships, even ships used in Operation Hannibal, suffered a similar fate. What's peculiar, I think, about the Gustloff story is that when she was torpedoed and when she went down, she was carrying somewhere around 11,000 people. 11,000 people. Hang on, how many has she been built for? She was built for and designed for basically 2,000, 1,500 passengers, about 500 crew. Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History,

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now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. So there must have been people clinging on the railings. I mean, absolutely packed. It was absolutely packed to the gunnels. You know, standing room only. The vast majority of those on board were women and children. There are military personnel, packed to the gunnels, you know, standing room only. The vast majority of those on board were

women and children. There are military personnel, there are wounded military as well, but the vast majority are civilians and most of those are women and children. So you only have to imagine the sort of horrific scenes in the Baltic. The Baltic Sea is extremely cold in January 1945, as it is in any January. The ship lists very heavily to the port side. So as I said, in 40 minutes, she's basically sunk. And you're left, I mean, many of those, many of the dead from the Wilhelm Gustloff never get out of the ship, which is another sort of horrific thought. It's quite an astonishing story.

There are basically, by the time they sort of various vessels come in for a rescue operation to try and pick up survivors and all the rest of it, by the time they get to shore, they have 1,252 survivors. And it leaves us with an estimate, and it is only an estimate, because those that were letting all the refugees on the ship at Gdynia essentially stopped counting at about 8,000. refugees on the ship at Gdynia essentially stopped counting at about 8,000. So the estimate is there were about 11,000 on the ship when she sailed, which gives us a total of about 9,500 dead, which makes it the largest maritime disaster in history. Did the survivors leave harrowing accounts of the sinking? What were those last 40 minutes like before she sank beneath the waves yeah absolutely i mean you only have to imagine down there absolutely

horrific quite astonishing stories of of you know people having you know the last gasp of getting hold of their loved ones as they go over the rails and there's quite remarkable story that springs to mind is of a woman who was on the ship and it's listing heavily to port. And she hands her infant child to one of the crew who's standing there, who then promptly disappears. And she doesn't know where he's gone. She doesn't know if he's gone over the side or what. But she's obviously very distressed. She then subsequently finds herself in a lifeboat, which was a very exceptional experience. As I said,

most people didn't get that far. Subsequently onto a rescue ship, at which point a character appears out of the gloom and hands back the child. Remarkably, the two had managed to find each other at the end of the sinking. So there are a couple of stories of stories like that which are which are you know remarkable cases of sort of serendipity and chance but for the vast majority it is absolutely horrific there's one particular aspect is that there were one of the decks was completely sealed in with it was a promenade deck but it was sealed in with glass panels and a lot of those from from further down below decks as i said there was standing room only in the vessel, fought their way up through the stairwells, which of course became absolute death traps, and people were trampled in the stairwells,

fought their way up to what they thought was a deck from which they could exit the ship, and they found themselves effectively in a glass coffin. And to try and sort of force your way back out of that particular promenade deck was almost impossible. and sort of force your way back out of that particular promenade deck was almost impossible so people were just being crushed in in this as you know as i said a an eyewitness described it as a glass coffin um so the scenes on deck are absolutely horrific um and i think it's a story that's really been i wouldn't say covered up but it's certainly not it doesn't fit the narrative um of world war ii II that we conventionally have. It's not something that the Germans have tended to shout about.

Roger, was it a war crime? Was it a war crime? Technically, no. I'll tell you why. It was considered a legitimate target. It was carrying military personnel. In their wisdom, the authorities in Gdynia had lashed a couple of anti-aircraft guns to her upper decks, hoping that that would deter attack. And, of course, she was traveling periodically with lights, but often also with lights out, through a war zone, carrying military personnel, and she's armed.

So technically, no, it's not a war crime. war zone carrying military personnel and she's armed so technically no it's not a war crime this is one of the big arguments i think of of sort of uh sort of post-war historiography on this but no i don't think it is a war crime i think that rather discounts it it's one of those things that happens in war it was torpedoed if you like in in good faith by a soviet submarine crew they of course never expressed any any remorse for what they did. They saw it as a normal act of warfare in 1945. It is cruel. The vast majority of those that are killed are women and children.

It's cruel, but war is cruel, unfortunately. But I don't class it as a war crime. And obviously the Soviets never apologized apologized for it as it were but they didn't regard it as as they regarded legitimate military target absolutely and it's i mean actually the story of the captain of the submarine is very interesting as well he was a chap called marinesco who was himself very flawed character and was sort of on his last chance as a submarine commander in 1945. And then he ended up sinking the Wilhelm Gustloff, one of the sort of, you'd imagine, the greatest achievement of his career.

He was subsequently sort of stripped and went put down to the ranks for his previous misdemeanors and ended up in a succession of work camps in Siberia. It was almost his redemption, but not quite. I mean, his story is quite a remarkable one. And he's only given the highest order, the order of Lenin. He's only awarded that posthumously, actually by Gorbachev in 1989. So his story is quite an interesting one as well. But no, it's certainly not regarded by, as far as I can tell, certainly not by the Russians or by the Soviets before them, and certainly not by most sober observers. It's not regarded as a war crime. Roger, in Germany, does this stand out in what was the darkest period in German history as a uniquely awful event, or is it just swept up with all the other terrible things that were going on across central europe i think it tends to be swept up uh certainly in the german mind it tends

to be swept up with uh as you say all of the other awful events of that period um and perhaps rightly so there's you know if you look at the the death toll there it's it is quite horrific to our modern sort of peacetime eyes but in terms of 1945 it's a drop in the ocean really no pun intended but so i think i think you know partly correctly it does get sort of subsumed into that general horror of the end of the war um what i think is a bit more interesting certainly in in the german view is how this has been uh initially almost you know deliberately forgotten um so i think you used the phrase swept under the carpet um it was a little that's a little bit the case for the wilhelm gusloff because it because it falls into the category of german

victimhood and german victimhood was something that for a long time post-war actually until comparatively recently but really until the last 20 years or so, was something that really couldn't be mentioned in polite society. So the Germans were the perpetrators. They were the ones that started the war. They were the perpetrators of the Holocaust. And to talk about German victimhood at the same time in World War II was distasteful. And Germans didn't do it. So stories like this just didn't get talked about, got largely forgotten. And it's very interesting, the career of the chap

who actually did most of the sort of hard work of researching the story of the Wilhelm Gustloff, a chap called Heinz Schoen, he was actually on the ship as a young man, as an 18-year-old, and survived. And essentially spent his entire life, until he died in 2013, researching, collecting eyewitness accounts, collecting information. And he published a number of books over that period,

but was very, very much out on the fringes, was very much forgotten, considered to be someone who was slightly beyond the pale and beyond polite society. So this is where German historiography gets to. It doesn't talk about that stuff until about 20 years ago. And it's quite interesting. There is a shift that the Gustloff story is front center in Gunther Grass's novel, Crub Walk, which I think from memory came out in 2002.

And that was one of those moments where there's a general sort of almost tectonic shift in German historiography and Germany's treatment of its own history. And it suddenly becomes possible for German society to start talking about its own victims admittedly within certain parameters and in certain circumstances but it at least becomes possible and sharon at the very end of his career and at the end of his life he has this sort of swan song of being someone who is um who is uh you know considered interesting and he's he uh is invited to the conferences and and comes back in from the cold as it were So there's a very interesting sort of sub-narrative here of how Germany treats its own history and how it has done post-war. Roger, as always, it's great to have you on History Hit. Thank you so much.

The book is available as an e-book, is it? Tell us quickly how you get it. That's right. It is. It's a Kindle single, so it's an e-book available via Amazon. The title is Ship of Fate. And thank you for reminding us all about the worst maritime disaster of all time that probably most of us had never heard of. Thanks very much. I hope you enjoyed the podcast.

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Go to iTunes or wherever you get your podcast. If you give it a five-star rating and give it an absolutely glowing review, purge yourself, give it a glowing review, I'd really appreciate that. It's tough weather, the law of the jungle out there and I need all the fire support I can get. So that will

boost it up the charts. It's so tiresome. But if you could do it, I'd be very, very grateful. Thank you. Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit. Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold.