The Cruelest Night

About this book

"The Cruelest Night" reveals for the first time the full story of the worst of all sea tragedies the sinking of the German ocean liner Wilhelm Gustloff in the Baltic Sea in 1945. At least 7000 military personnel and civilians in flight from the avenging Red army perished--nearly five times the number who died on the Titanic. The subsequent loss in the the same operation of two other oveladen German liners the General Steuben and the Goya brought the devastating toll to 18 000. This book describes the background of the whole the amazing episode of "Germanys Dunkirk " Admiral Doenitzs evacuation of nearly two million Germans who lay in the path of the Russian advance as the eastern front collapsed. On January 30 1945 the Wilhelm Gustloff a Nazi pleasure liner built to hold 2000 set sail from the port of Gdynia with approxiamately 8000 aboard. In part to prevent even more of the refugees clamoring at the docks from boarding the liner departed hastily--without proper escort suitable crew or enough lifeboats and so overloaded that it could not follow the precautionary zigzag course through the mine and submarine infested Baltic. The next night the Wilhelm Gustloff was torpedoed. Incorporating horrific accounts by survivors the authors provide vivid descriptions of the desperate crush to board the ship the pandemonium at sea and the remorseless struggle by soldier sailor and civilian alike for a place on the lifeboats. Dobson Miller and Payne outline the naval and political implications of the events and reveal the suppressed story of Captain Alexander Marinesko the hard drinking flamboyant Soviet submarine ace responsible for the sinking who was later disgraced and banished to the dreaded labor camp at Kolyma. Here too is the mystery of the whereabouts of the famed Prussian "Amber Room" and the extraordinary story of Gauleiter Erich Koch the Nazi was criminal whom the authors discovered alive and imprisoned in Poland. The Baltic ordeal was the greatest seaborne evacuation in history as well as the biggest sea disaster.