It is the largest known loss of life of any sinking in maritime history, a loss of life more than three and a half times the total of those in the sinkings of the Titanic and the Lusitania combined. All three hit the Gustloff, and within an hour she sank taking down with her as many as 9,500 people. Not long after she began her journey west, she was spotted by the Russian submarine S-13, which launched three torpedoes. The Gustloff along with other liners, fishing boats, cargo ships, pleasure craft, and other vessels had been pressed into service to evacuate these refugees and military personnel, military technicians, and wounded soldiers in an operation that has been called the German Dunkirk. The roads and railways to the west were regularly being cut.
Horses that had pulled the cars that brought them and dogs that had tagged along were abandoned and wandered through the city. Fleeing before them, refugees were streaming into the German-held Baltic ports, clogging the docks, and mingling with the wounded soldiers left by German ambulance trains. On land, Soviet armies, enraged by earlier German atrocities, were moving into Poland and Prussia from the east, avenging themselves against the military personnel and civilians they met. It was the night of January 30, 1945, and disaster awaited her. The German ship MV Wilhelm Gustloff plowed through the choppy water, her cabins, decks, saloons, and even her drained swimming pool jammed with refugees. Chunks of ice floated on the water, and lookouts shivered at their posts. Snow flurries swirled out of the darkness over the Baltic Sea.
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