January 30, 1895 born in Schwerin William Gustloff, future middle-level functionary of the National Socialist Party.
January 30, 1933 came to power Hitler; this day became one of the most significant holidays in the Third Reich.
January 30, 1933 Adolf Hitler appointed Gustloff Landesgruppenleiter of Switzerland based in Davos. Gustloff conducted active anti-Semitic propaganda, in particular, contributed to the dissemination of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” in Switzerland.
January 30, 1936 medical student Frankfurter came to Davos with the aim of killing Gustloff. From a newspaper bought at a station kiosk, he learned that the governor was “with his Fuhrer in Berlin” and would return in four days. On February 4, a student killed Gustloff. Next year name "Wilhelm Gustloff" was assigned to a sea liner laid down as "Adolf Gitler".
January 30, 1945 years, exactly 50 years after birth Gustloff, Soviet submarine S-13 under the command of captain 3rd rank A. Marinesko torpedoed and sent the liner to the bottom "Wilhelm Gustloff".
January 30, 1946 Marinesko was demoted in rank and transferred to the reserve.

He began his working life as a small bank employee in the city of the seven lakes of Schwerin, and Gustloff compensated for his lack of education with diligence.
In 1917, the bank transferred its young, diligent clerk, who was suffering from pulmonary tuberculosis, to its branch in Davos. The Swiss mountain air completely cured the patient. While working at the bank, he organized a local group of the National Socialist Party and became its leader. The doctor who treated Gustloff for several years spoke of his patient as follows: “Limited, good-natured, fanatical, recklessly devoted to the Fuhrer: “If Hitler orders me to shoot my wife at 6 o’clock tonight, then at 5.55 I will load the revolver, and at 6.05 I will the wife will be a corpse." Member of the Nazi Party since 1929. His wife Hedwig worked as Hitler's secretary in the early 30s.

On February 4, 1936, Jewish student David Frankfurter entered a house marked W. Gustloff, NSDAP. He left for Davos a few days earlier - January 30, 1936 Without luggage, with a one-way ticket and a revolver in my coat pocket.
Gustloff's wife showed him into the office and asked him to wait; the frail, short visitor did not arouse any suspicion. Through the open side door, next to which hung a portrait of Hitler, the student saw a two-meter giant—the owner of the house—talking on the phone. When he entered the office a minute later, Frankfurter silently, without getting up from his chair, raised his hand with a revolver and fired five bullets. Quickly walking to the exit - amid the heartbreaking screams of the murdered man's wife - he went to the police and stated that he had just shot Gustloff. Called to identify the killer, Hedwig Gustloff looks at him for a few moments and says: “How could you kill a man! You have such kind eyes!”

For Hitler, Gustloff's death was a gift from heaven: the first Nazi killed by a Jew abroad, moreover, in Switzerland, which he hated! The all-German Jewish pogrom did not take place only because the Winter Olympic Games were being held in Germany in those days, and Hitler could not yet afford to completely ignore world public opinion.

The Nazi propaganda apparatus made the most of the event. A three-week period of mourning was declared in the country, national flags were lowered at half-mast... The farewell ceremony in Davos was broadcast by all German radio stations, the melodies of Beethoven and Haydn were replaced by Wagner's "Twilight of the Gods"... Hitler spoke: "Behind the murderer stands the hate-filled force of our Jewish enemy, trying to enslave the German people... We accept their challenge to fight!" In articles, speeches, and radio broadcasts, the words “a Jew shot” sounded like a refrain.

Historians view Hitler's propaganda use of Gustloff's murder as a prologue to the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question."

Gustlov is dead, long live Wilhelm Gustlov!

The insignificant personality of V. Gustloff, almost unknown before the assassination attempt, was officially elevated to the rank of Blutzeuge, a holy martyr who fell at the hands of a mercenary. It seemed that one of the main Nazi figures had been killed. His name was given to streets, squares, a bridge in Nuremberg, an air glider... Classes on the topic were held in schools "Wilhelm Gustloff, killed by a Jew".

In the name "Wilhelm Gustloff" was named the German Titanic, the flagship of the fleet of an organization called Kraft Durch Freude, abbreviated KdF - "Strength through joy".
Led it Robert Ley, head of the state trade unions "German Labor Front". He was the one who invented the Nazi salute Heil Hitler! with an outstretched hand and ordered that it be carried out first by all civil servants, then by teachers and schoolchildren, and even later by all workers. It was he, a famous drunkard and “the greatest idealist in the labor movement,” who organized a fleet of ships KdF.

The Nazis, led by Adolf Hitler, having come to power, in order to increase the social base of support for their policies among the German population, outlined the creation of a broad system of social security and services as one of their activities.
Already in the mid-1930s, the average German worker, in terms of the level of services and benefits that he was entitled to, compared favorably with workers in other European countries.
A whole flotilla of passenger ships to provide cheap and affordable travel and cruises was conceived for construction as the embodiment of the ideas of National Socialism and their propaganda.
The flagship of this fleet was to be a new comfortable airliner, which the authors of the project planned to name after the German Fuhrer - "Adolf Gitler".

The ships symbolized the National Socialist idea of ​​a classless society and were themselves, in contrast to the luxury cruise ships sailing on all seas for the rich, “classless ships” with the same cabins for all passengers, giving the opportunity to “perform, at the will of the Fuhrer, locksmiths of Bavaria, postmen Cologne, housewives of Bremen at least once a year have an affordable sea voyage to Madeira, along the Mediterranean coast, to the shores of Norway and Africa" ​​(R. Ley).

On May 5, 1937, at the Hamburg shipyard, Blum and Voss solemnly launched the world's largest ten-deck cruise ship, commissioned by KdF. Gustloff's widow, in the presence of Hitler, broke a bottle of champagne on the side, and the ship received its name - Wilhelm Gustloff. Its displacement is 25,000 tons, length is 208 meters, cost is 25 million Reichsmarks. It is designed for 1,500 vacationers, who have glazed promenade decks, a winter garden, a swimming pool...

Joy is a source of strength!

Thus began a short happy time in the life of the liner; it would last a year and 161 days. The “floating holiday home” worked continuously, the people were delighted: the prices for sea travel were, if not low, then affordable. A five-day cruise to the Norwegian fjords cost 60 Reichsmarks, a twelve-day cruise along the coast of Italy - 150 RM (the monthly earnings of workers and employees were 150-250 RM). While sailing, you could call home at an ultra-cheap rate and vent your delight to your family. Vacationers abroad compared living conditions with their own in Germany, and the comparisons most often turned out to be not in favor of foreigners. A contemporary reflects: “How did Hitler manage to take control of the people in a short time, to accustom them not only to silent submission, but also to mass rejoicing at official events? A partial answer to this question is given by the activities of the KdF organization.”

Gustlov's finest hour fell in April 1938, when, in stormy weather, the team rescued the sailors of the sinking English steamer Pegaway. The English press paid tribute to the skill and courage of the Germans.

The inventive Ley used the windfall propaganda success to use the liner as a floating polling station for the popular vote on the annexation of Austria to Germany. On April 10, at the mouth of the Thames, Gustlov took on board about 1,000 German and 800 Austrian citizens living in the UK, as well as a large group of journalist observers, left the three-mile zone and anchored in international waters, where the vote was held. As expected, 99% of voters voted yes. British newspapers, including the Marxist Daily Herald, were lavish in their praise of the union ship.

The ship's last cruise took place on August 25, 1939. Unexpectedly, during a planned voyage in the middle of the North Sea, the captain received a coded order to urgently return to port. The time for cruises was over—less than a week later, Germany attacked Poland and World War II began.

A happy era in the life of the ship ended during the fiftieth anniversary voyage, September 1, 1939, on the first day of World War II. By the end of September it had been converted into a floating hospital with 500 beds. Major personnel changes were made, the ship was transferred to the naval forces, and next year, after another restructuring, it became a barracks for cadet sailors of the 2nd training division of submarines in the port of Gotenhafen (Polish city of Gdynia). The elegant white sides of the ship, a wide green stripe along the sides and red crosses - everything is painted over with dirty gray enamel. The chief physician's cabin of the former infirmary occupied by a submariner officer with the rank of corvette captain, now he will determine the functions of the vessel. The portraits in the wardroom have been replaced: the smiling “great idealist” Ley gave way to the stern Grand Admiral Doenitz.

With the outbreak of war, almost all KdF ships ended up in military service. "Wilhelm Gustloff" was converted into a hospital ship and assigned to the German Navy - Kriegsmarine. The liner was repainted white and marked with red crosses, which was supposed to protect it from attack in accordance with the Hague Convention. The first patients began to arrive on board during the war against Poland in October 1939. Even in such conditions, the German authorities used the ship as a means of propaganda - as evidence of the humanity of the Nazi leadership, most of the first patients were wounded Polish prisoners. Over time, when German losses became noticeable, the ship was sent to the port of Gothenhafen (Gdynia), where it took on board even more wounded, as well as Germans (Volksdeutsche) evacuated from East Prussia.

The educational process proceeded at an accelerated pace, every three months - another graduation, replenishment for submarines - new buildings. But gone are the days when German submariners almost brought Great Britain to its knees. In 1944, 90% of course graduates expected to die in steel coffins.

Already the autumn of '43 showed that the quiet life was ending - on October 8 (9), the Americans covered the harbor with a bomb carpet. The floating hospital Stuttgart caught fire and sank; this was the first loss of a former KdF ship. The explosion of a heavy bomb near Gustlov caused a one and a half meter crack in the side plating, which was brewed. The weld will still remind itself on the last day of Gustlov’s life, when the S-13 submarine will slowly but surely catch up with the initially faster floating barracks.

In the second half of 1944, the front came very close to East Prussia. The Germans of East Prussia had certain reasons to fear revenge from the Red Army - the great destruction and killings among civilians in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union were known to many. Germanpropaganda depicted the “horrors of the Soviet offensive.”

In October 1944, the first detachments of the Red Army were already on the territory of East Prussia. Nazi propaganda began a widespread campaign to “expose Soviet atrocities,” accusing Soviet soldiers of mass murder and rape. By spreading such propaganda, the Nazis achieved their goal - the number of volunteers in the Volkssturm militia increased, but the propaganda also led to increased panic among the civilian population as the front approached, and millions of people became refugees.

“They ask the question why the refugees were terrified of the revenge of the soldiers of the Red Army. Anyone who, like me, saw the destruction left by Hitler’s troops in Russia, will not rack his brains over this question for long,” wrote the long-time publisher of the magazine Der Spiegel R. Augstein.

On January 21, Grand Admiral Doenitz gave the command to begin Operation Hannibal - the largest evacuation of the population by sea of ​​all time: more than two million people were transported to the West by all the ships at the disposal of the German command.

At the same time, the submarines of the Soviet Baltic Fleet were preparing for the war-ending attacks. A significant part of them was blocked for a long time in the Leningrad and Kronstadt ports by German minefields and steel anti-submarine nets deployed by 140 ships in the spring of 1943. After breaking the blockade of Leningrad, the Red Army continued its offensive along the shores of the Gulf of Finland, and the capitulation of Finland, an ally of Germany opened the way for Soviet submarines to the Baltic Sea. Stalin's order followed: submariners based in Finnish harbors to detect and destroy enemy ships. The operation pursued both military and psychological goals - to complicate the supply of German troops by sea and to prevent evacuation to the West. One of the consequences of Stalin’s order was Gustlov’s meeting with the submarine S-13 and its commander, Captain 3rd Rank A. Marinesko.

Nationality: Odessa.

Captain of the third rank A. I. Marinesko

Marinesko, the son of a Ukrainian mother and a Romanian father, was born in 1913 in Odessa. During the Balkan War, my father served in the Romanian navy, was sentenced to death for participating in the mutiny, fled from Constanta and settled in Odessa, changing the Romanian surname Marinescu into the Ukrainian style. Alexander's childhood was spent among the piers, dry docks and cranes of the port, in the company of Russians, Ukrainians, Armenians, Jews, Greeks, Turks; they all considered themselves first and foremost residents of Odessa. He grew up in the hungry post-revolutionary years, tried to grab a piece of bread wherever he could, and caught bulls in the harbor.

When life in Odessa returned to normal, foreign ships began to arrive at the port. Dressed and cheerful passengers threw coins into the water, and Odessa boys dived after them; Few people managed to get ahead of the future submariner. He left school at the age of 15, knowing how to read, write somehow and “sell his vest sleeves,” as he later often said. His language was a colorful and bizarre mixture of Russian and Ukrainian, flavored with Odessa jokes and Romanian curses. A harsh childhood hardened him and made him inventive, teaching him not to get lost in the most unexpected and dangerous situations.

He began life at sea at the age of 15 as a cabin boy on a coastal steamer, graduated from a nautical school, and was called up for military service. Marinesko was probably a born submariner; he even had a naval surname. Having started his service, he quickly realized that a small ship was most suitable for him, an individualist by nature. After a nine-month course, he sailed as a navigator on the submarine Shch-306, then completed command courses and in 1937 became the commander of another boat, M-96 - two torpedo tubes, 18 crew members. In the pre-war years, M-96 bore the title "the best submarine of the Red Banner Baltic Fleet", putting emergency dive time record - 19.5 seconds instead of 28 standard, for which the commander and his team were awarded a personalized gold watch.

By the beginning of the war, Marinesko was already an experienced and respected submariner. He had a rare gift for managing people, which allowed him to move without loss of authority from “comrade commander” to an equal member of the feast in the wardroom.

In 1944, Marinesko received under his command a large submarine of the Stalinets series, S-13. The history of the creation of boats in this series deserves at least a few lines, as it is a vivid example of secret military and industrial cooperation between the USSR and the Third Reich before the war. The project was developed by order of the Soviet government in an engineering bureau owned jointly by the German navy, Krupp and the shipyard in Bremen. The bureau was headed by the German Blum, a retired captain, and it was located in The Hague - in order to circumvent the provision of the Versailles Peace Treaty, which prohibited Germany from developing and building submarines.

At the end of December 1944, the S-13 was in the Finnish port of Turku and was preparing to go to sea. It was scheduled for January 2, but Marinesko, who had been on a spree, appeared on the boat only the next day, when the “special department” of the security service was already looking for him as a defector to the enemy’s side. After evaporating the hops in the bathhouse, he arrived at headquarters and honestly told about everything. He couldn’t or didn’t want to remember the names of the girls and the place of the “spree,” he only said that they drank Pontikka, Finnish potato moonshine, compared to which “vodka is like mother’s milk.”

The S-13 commander would have been arrested if not for the acute shortage of experienced submariners and Stalin’s order, which had to be carried out at any cost. Divisional commander Captain 1st Rank Orel ordered the C-13 to urgently put to sea and wait for further orders. On January 11, the fully fueled C-13 headed along the coast of the island of Gotland into the open sea. For Marinesco, returning to base without a victory was tantamount to being court-martialed.

As part of Operation Hannibal, on January 22, 1945, the Wilhelm Gustloff in the port of Gdynia (then called Gotenhafen by the Germans) began accepting refugees on board. At first, people were accommodated with special passes - primarily several dozen submarine officers, several hundreds of women from the naval auxiliary division and almost a thousand wounded soldiers. Later, when tens of thousands of people gathered in the port and the situation became more complicated, they began to let everyone in, giving priority to women and children. Since the planned number of places was only 1,500, refugees began to be placed on the decks. In the passages, women soldiers were even placed in an empty pool. During the last stages of the evacuation, the panic intensified so much that some women in the port, in desperation, began to give their children to those who managed to get on board, in the hope of at least saving them in the end. , January 30, 1945, the ship's crew officers had already stopped counting the refugees, whose number had exceeded 10,000.
According to modern estimates, there should have been 10,582 people on board: 918 junior cadets of the 2nd training submarine division (2. U-Boot-Lehrdivision), 173 crew members, 373 women from the auxiliary naval corps, 162 seriously wounded military personnel, and 8,956 refugees, mostly old people, women and children.

Attack of the century.

Captain Gustlov Peterson is 63 years old; he has not driven ships for many years and therefore asked for two young sea captains to help him. The military command of the ship was entrusted to an experienced submariner, corvette captain Tsang. A unique situation has arisen: on the ship’s command bridge there are four captains with an unclear distribution of powers, which will be one of the reasons for Gustloff’s death.

On January 30, accompanied by a single ship, the torpedo bomber Lev, Gustloff left the port of Gotenhafen, and a dispute immediately broke out among the captains. Tsang, who knew more than the rest about the danger of attacks by Soviet submarines, proposed to go in a zigzag with a maximum speed of 16 knots, in which case slower boats would not be able to catch up with them. “12 knots, no more!” - Peterson objected, recalling the unreliable weld in the side plating, and insisted on his own.

Gustloff walked along a corridor in minefields. At 19:00 a radiogram was received: a formation of minesweepers was on a collision course. The captains gave the command to turn on the identification lights to avoid a collision. The last and decisive mistake. The ill-fated radiogram remained forever a mystery; no minesweepers appeared.

Meanwhile, S-13, having unsuccessfully plowed the waters of the prescribed patrol route, on January 30 headed for the Danzig Bay - there, as Marinesko’s intuition told her, there must be an enemy. The air temperature is minus 18, snow is blowing.

At about 19 o'clock the boat surfaced, just at that time the lights on Gustloff came on. In the first seconds, the officer on duty could not believe his eyes: the silhouette of a giant ship was glowing in the distance! He appeared on the Marinesco bridge, wearing the non-standard, oily sheepskin sheepskin coat known to all Baltic submariners.

At 19:30, Gustloff's captains, without waiting for the mystical minesweepers, ordered the lights to be turned off. It’s too late - Marinesko has already grabbed his cherished goal with a death grip. He could not understand why the giant ship did not zigzag and was accompanied by only one ship. Both of these circumstances will make the attack easier.

A joyful mood reigned on Gustloff: a few more hours and they would leave the danger zone. The captains gathered in the wardroom for lunch; a steward in a white jacket brought pea soup and cold meat. We rested for some time after the arguments and excitement of the day, and drank a glass of cognac for success.

On the S-13, four bow torpedo tubes are prepared for attack, on each torpedo there is an inscription: on the first - "For the Motherland", On the second - "For Stalin", on third - "For the Soviet people" and on the fourth - "For Leningrad".
700 meters to the target. At 21:04 the first torpedo is fired, followed by the rest. Three of them hit the target, the fourth, with the inscription "For Stalin", gets stuck in a torpedo tube, ready to explode at the slightest shock. But here, as often with Marinesko, skill is complemented by luck: the torpedo engine stalls for an unknown reason, and the torpedo operator quickly closes the outer cover of the apparatus. The boat goes under water.

At 21:16 the first torpedo hit the bow of the ship, later the second one blew up the empty swimming pool where the women of the naval auxiliary battalion were, and the last one hit the engine room. The passengers' first thought was that they had hit a mine, but Captain Peterson realized it was a submarine, and his first words were:
Das war's - That's all.

Those passengers who did not die from the three explosions and did not drown in the cabins on the lower decks rushed to the lifeboats in panic. At this moment, it turned out that by ordering the watertight compartments in the lower decks to be closed, according to the instructions, the captain had accidentally blocked part of the team, which was supposed to lower the boats and evacuate passengers. Therefore, in the panic and stampede, not only many children and women died, but also many of those who climbed to the upper deck. They could not lower the lifeboats because they did not know how to do this, besides, many of the davits were iced over, and the ship was already heavily listing. Through the joint efforts of the crew and passengers, some boats were able to be launched, but many people still found themselves in the icy water. Due to the strong roll of the ship, an anti-aircraft gun came off the deck and crushed one of the boats, already full of people.

About an hour after the attack, the Wilhelm Gustloff completely sank.

One torpedo destroyed the side of the ship in the area of ​​the swimming pool, the pride of the former KdF ship; it housed 373 girls from the naval auxiliary services. Water gushed out, fragments of colorful tiled mosaics crashed into the bodies of the drowning people. Those who survived - there were not many of them - said that at the moment of the explosion the German anthem was playing on the radio, ending Hitler’s speech in honor of the twelfth anniversary of his rise to power.

Dozens of rescue boats and rafts lowered from the decks floated around the sinking ship. Overloaded rafts are surrounded by people frantically clinging to them; one by one they drown in the icy water. Hundreds of dead children's bodies: life jackets keep them afloat, but the children's heads are heavier than their legs, and only their legs stick out of the water.

Captain Peterson was one of the first to leave the ship. A sailor who was in the same rescue boat with him would later say: “Not far from us, a woman was floundering in the water screaming for help. We pulled her into the boat, despite the captain’s cry of “Leave us alone, we are already overloaded!”

More than a thousand people were rescued by the escort ship and seven ships that arrived at the scene of the disaster. 70 minutes after the first torpedo exploded, Gustloff began to sink. At the same time, something incredible happens: during the dive, the lighting that failed during the explosion suddenly turns on, and the howl of sirens is heard. People look in horror at the devilish performance.

S-13 was lucky again: the only escort ship was busy rescuing people, and when it began to throw depth charges, the “For Stalin” torpedo was already neutralized, and the boat was able to leave.

One of the survivors, 18-year-old administrative trainee Heinz Schön, collected materials related to the history of the liner for more than half a century, and became a chronicler of the greatest ship disaster of all time. According to his calculations, on January 30 there were 10,582 people on board Gustlov, 9,343 died. For comparison: the disaster of the Titanic, which ran into an underwater iceberg in 1912, cost the lives of 1,517 passengers and crew members.

All four captains escaped. The youngest of them, by the name of Kohler, committed suicide shortly after the end of the war - he was broken by the fate of Gustloff.

The destroyer "Lion" (a former ship of the Dutch Navy) was the first to arrive at the scene of the tragedy and began rescuing the surviving passengers. Since in January the temperature was already −18 °C, there were only a few minutes left before irreversible hypothermia set in. Despite this, the ship managed to rescue 472 passengers from the lifeboats and from the water.
The guard ships of another convoy, the cruiser Admiral Hipper, which also, in addition to the crew, also had about 1,500 refugees on board, also came to the rescue.
Due to fear of attack from submarines, he did not stop and continued to retire to safe waters. Other ships (by “other ships” we mean the only destroyer T-38 - the sonar system did not work on the Lev, the Hipper left) managed to save another 179 people. A little more than an hour later, new ships that came to the rescue could only fish dead bodies from the icy water. Later, a small messenger ship that arrived at the scene of the tragedy unexpectedly found, seven hours after the sinking of the liner, among hundreds of dead bodies, an unnoticed boat and in it a living baby wrapped in blankets - the last rescued passenger of the Wilhelm Gustloff.

As a result, according to various estimates, from 1200 to 2500 people out of a little less than 11 thousand on board managed to survive. Maximum estimates place losses at 9,985 lives.

Gustlov's chronicler Heinz Schön in 1991 found the last survivor of the 47 people of the S-13 team, 77-year-old former torpedo operator V. Kurochkin, and visited him twice in a village near Leningrad. Two old sailors told each other (with the help of a translator) what happened on the memorable day of January 30 on the submarine and on Gustloff.
During his second visit, Kurochkin admitted to his German guest that after their first meeting, almost every night he dreamed of women and children drowning in icy water, screaming for help. When parting, he said: “War is a bad thing. Shooting at each other, killing women and children - what could be worse! People should learn to live without shedding blood...”

In Germany, the reaction to the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff at the time of the tragedy was rather restrained. The Germans did not disclose the scale of losses, so as not to worsen the morale of the population even further. In addition, at that moment the Germans suffered heavy losses in other places. However, after the end of the war, in the minds of many Germans, the simultaneous death of so many civilians and especially thousands of children on board the Wilhelm Gustloff remained a wound that even time did not heal. Along with the bombing of Dresden this tragedy remains one of the most terrible events of the Second World War for the German people.

Some German publicists consider the sinking of Gustlov a crime against civilians, the same as the bombing of Dresden. However, here is the conclusion made by the Institute of Maritime Law in Kiel: “Wilhelm Gustloff was a legitimate military target, there were hundreds of submarine specialists, anti-aircraft guns on it... There were wounded, but there was no status as a floating hospital. The German government on 11/11/44 declared the Baltic Sea an area of ​​​​military operations and ordered the destruction of everything that floats. The Soviet armed forces had the right to respond in kind."

Disaster researcher Heinz Schön concludes that the liner was a military target and its sinking was not a war crime, because:
ships intended for transporting refugees, hospital ships had to be marked with the appropriate signs - a red cross, could not wear camouflage colors, could not travel in the same convoy with military ships. They could not carry any military cargo, stationary or temporarily placed air defense guns, artillery pieces or other similar means on board.

"Wilhelm Gustloff" was a warship, being assigned to the navy and armed forces, on which six thousand refugees were allowed to board. The entire responsibility for their lives, from the moment they boarded the warship, lay with the appropriate officials of the German navy. Thus, the Gustloff was a legitimate military target of Soviet submariners, due to the following facts:

"Wilhelm Gustloff" was not an unarmed civilian ship: it had weapons on board that could be used to fight enemy ships and aircraft;
"Wilhelm Gustloff" was a training floating base for the German submarine fleet;
"Wilhelm Gustloff" was accompanied by a warship of the German fleet (destroyer "Lion");
Soviet transports with refugees and wounded during the war repeatedly became targets for German submarines and aircraft (in particular, motor ship "Armenia", sunk in 1941 in the Black Sea, was carrying more than 5 thousand refugees and wounded on board. Only 8 people survived. However, “Armenia”, like "Wilhelm Gustloff", violated the status of a medical ship and was a legitimate military target).

... Years have passed. Most recently, a correspondent for Der Spiegel magazine met in St. Petersburg with Nikolai Titorenko, a former peacetime submarine commander and author of a book about Marinesko, “Hitler’s Personal Enemy.” This is what he told the correspondent: “I don’t feel any feelings of vengeful satisfaction. I imagine the death of thousands of people on Gustloff rather as a requiem for the children who died during the siege of Leningrad and all those who died. The Germans’ path to disaster began not when Marinesko gave the command to the torpedoists, but when Germany abandoned the path of peaceful agreement with Russia indicated by Bismarck."

Unlike the lengthy search for the Titanic, finding the Wilhelm Gustloff was easy.
Its coordinates at the time of sinking turned out to be accurate, and the ship was at a relatively shallow depth - only 45 meters.
Mike Boring visited the wreck in 2003 and made a documentary about his expedition.
On Polish navigation maps the place is marked as "Obstacle No. 73"
In 2006, a bell recovered from a shipwreck and then used as decoration in a Polish seafood restaurant was exhibited at the Forced Paths exhibition in Berlin.

On March 2-3, 2008, a new television film was shown on the German channel ZDF called “Die Gustloff”

In 1990, 45 years after the end of the war, Marinesko was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Later recognition came thanks to the activities of the Marinesko Committee, which operated in Moscow, Leningrad, Odessa and Kaliningrad. In Leningrad and Kaliningrad, monuments were erected to the S-13 commander. A small museum of Russian submarine forces in the northern capital bears Marinesko’s name.

On Thursday, we, a warm company of former officers and admirers of our guest’s authorial talent, held a creative evening with the participation of the writer Alexander Pokrovsky, the one who wrote “72 Meters” and “Shoot”.
I haven't laughed like that for a long time.
When Alexander Mikhailovich began to tell naval stories, as if in an antediluvian bathyscaphe, I plunged into the ocean of my memories.
It’s not that I was overwhelmed by nostalgia and wanted to return to that time, but it was something akin to when, after many years of absence, you return to your home and look at things so close to your heart and already completely alien.
It’s as if you’ve come on a tour of your youth, but no matter how hard you try, you can’t remember anything negative, but only funny and kind things, like from an old comic film with Charlie Chaplin.

Laughter and banter in the navy is a form of survival, without which adult, strong men, clad to the eyes in the armor of the ship's regulations, under conditions of continuous tension, under the burden of responsibility for the fate of the sailors, the ship and the performance of combat missions, would have gone crazy long ago. That's why we say:
I wouldn't serve in the Navy if it weren't funny!

And the officer does not have any personal tragedy or emergency over which they would not laugh in the wardroom.
Your mental health on the ship was determined only by whether you could laugh at yourself or not.
So, while we were musing about the past, we started talking about Alexander Marinesko.

A lot has been written and said about him, but all verbal battles usually come down to his sharp condemnation for Gustloff, for drunkenness, for prison, for his disregard for subordination and discipline, for love affairs unworthy of a Soviet officer, or to the same sharp praise for approximately the same.
The Soviet commander, to whom a monument was erected in the Museum of the Royal Navy of Great Britain immediately after the Second World War, and who sat in Kolyma in the USSR, was simply not understood by his contemporaries.
Alexander Pokrovsky here made me look at this person from a different angle.

Marinesko is a fragment of the era of the Great Seas, which fate accidentally brought into the 20th century. Pirate, privateer, adventurer to the core. A captain who had an animal sense that allowed him to escape from the German traps.
Not everyone may remember that Marinesko left the escort of the sunken Gustloff with a torpedo stuck in the torpedo compartment, and during the pursuit more than 200 depth charges were dropped on his S-13 submarine.
The entire Kriegsmarine was hunting for him, the shallow Baltic was dotted with tens of thousands of underwater mines, every day our ships and submarines were dying nearby, and only Marinesko - an old, hungry, sea wolf - brought his crew to the harbor safe and sound every time.
For this he was idolized.
The storm of the seas, the name of which German mothers frightened their children, the personal enemy of the Fuhrer, a commander with a phenomenal gift of luck, to whose good fortune not only Soviet but also German submarine officers drank, was a real “gentleman of fortune.”
And this is the whole point of it.

After all, in just one winter raid in 1945, Marinesko sank two German giant liners, the Wilhelm Gustloff with a displacement of 25 thousand tons and the General Steuben, with a displacement of almost 15 thousand tons.
This is the most successful Soviet submarine officer.
Marinesko was born in 1913. Of the 13 Soviet C-class submarines of the Baltic Fleet, only one survived during the war, the unlucky number 13.
In Scandinavian mythology, it is 13 warrior maidens who pick up the souls of fallen heroes.
When he died, the Valkyries, their swords flashing, carried him off to Valhalla to feast at the same table with Ragnar Lothbrok, Francis Drake and Henry Morgan.
For a thousand years the skalds will glorify his exploits.
***
On July 13, 1724, the cities of Altstadt, Löbenicht and Kneiphof were officially united to form Königsberg.
Otto Lyash signed the act of surrender of the city in his city in office No. 13.
If we sum up the numbers from the founding date of Königsberg (1255), we also get thirteen. Ironically, the same result when added is obtained only for two large European cities - Berlin and Moscow...

S-13 was lucky again: the only escort ship was busy rescuing people, and when it began to throw depth charges, the “For Stalin” torpedo was already neutralized, and the boat was able to leave.

One of the survivors, 18-year-old administrative trainee Heinz Schön, spent more than half a century collecting materials related to the history of the liner and became a chronicler of the greatest ship disaster of all time. According to his calculations, on January 30 there were 10,582 people on board Gustlov, 9,343 died. For comparison: the disaster of the Titanic, which ran into an underwater iceberg in 1912, cost the lives of 1,517 passengers and crew members.

All four captains escaped. The youngest of them, by the name of Kohler, committed suicide shortly after the end of the war - he was broken by the fate of Gustloff.

The destroyer "Lion" (a former ship of the Dutch Navy) was the first to arrive at the scene of the tragedy and began rescuing the surviving passengers. Since the temperature in January was already −18 °C, there were only a few minutes left before irreversible hypothermia set in. Despite this, the ship managed to rescue 472 passengers from the lifeboats and from the water.
The guard ships of another convoy, the cruiser Admiral Hipper, also came to the rescue, which, in addition to the crew, also had about 1,500 refugees on board.
Due to fear of attack from submarines, he did not stop and continued to retire to safe waters. Other ships (by “other ships” we mean the only destroyer T-38 - the sonar system did not work on the Loew, the Hipper left) managed to save another 179 people. A little more than an hour later, new ships that came to the rescue could only fish dead bodies from the icy water. Later, a small messenger ship that arrived at the scene of the tragedy unexpectedly found, seven hours after the sinking of the liner, among hundreds of dead bodies, an unnoticed boat and in it a living baby, wrapped in blankets, the last rescued passenger of the Wilhelm Gustloff.

As a result, according to various estimates, from 1200 to 2500 people out of a little less than 11 thousand on board managed to survive. Maximum estimates place losses at 9,985 lives.

Gustlov's chronicler Heinz Schön in 1991 found the last survivor of the 47 people of the S-13 team, 77-year-old former torpedo operator V. Kurochkin, and visited him twice in a village near Leningrad. Two old sailors told each other (with the help of a translator) what happened on the memorable day of January 30 on the submarine and on Gustloff.
During his second visit, Kurochkin admitted to his German guest that after their first meeting, almost every night he dreamed of women and children drowning in icy water, screaming for help. When parting, he said: “War is a bad thing. Shooting at each other, killing women and children - what could be worse! People should learn to live without shedding blood...”

Legendary commander of the submarine S-13

Historians, writers, journalists and naval veterans again began a debate regarding the identity of the commander of the S-13 submarine, Captain 3rd Rank A. I. Marinesko, and his exploits during the Great Patriotic War. On the eve of the 50th anniversary of the victory, he was called “the outstanding naval commander of the 20th century,” “submariner No. 1,” and the attack he carried out on January 30, 1945 was called “the attack of the century.” What is the statement worth that as a result of the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustlow liner, which carried more than 1,000 German submariners, the naval blockade of England was broken?! There are authors who claim that Marinesco's attack had a huge impact on the course and even the outcome of World War II! Almost all publications note that in Germany, on the occasion of the death of “Wilhelm Gustlov,” three days of mourning were declared, and Marinesko himself was included in the list of Hitler’s personal enemies (at No. 26).
I, like most Russians, admire the exploits of Soviet submariners in the last war, but I am categorically against those writers who “exploit” these exploits for their own purposes. Why was everyone silent during the life of A.I. Marinesko? Why didn’t they give him a helping hand in difficult times?
In the brochure by O. V. Strizhak “May 1945: who prevented Marinesko from attacking?” (1999) states that German submariners in the Atlantic sank large-capacity ships sailing without any security, while in the Baltic “small transports sailed with powerful security.” Let me remind you that German submariners operated in extremely difficult conditions: they had to deploy to combat areas thousands of miles away from their home bases, while overcoming the most powerful anti-submarine lines; the protection of Atlantic convoys was in no way comparable to the Baltic ones. In the Atlantic Ocean, compared to the Baltic, the security forces included hundreds of anti-submarine ships and aircraft.
Earlier, I compared submariners from different countries not in order to “shame Marinesko” (as Strizhak thinks), but in order to show the order of tonnage sunk by American and German submariners and to substantiate the absurdity of fiction like “submariner No. 1”.
As a source of data, Strizhak chose the memoirs of the helmsman of the S-13 submarine G. Zelentsov. Referring to him, he writes that “On April 27 at midnight, S-13 was attacked from under water by a group of fascist submarines. The S-13 commander avoided the maneuvers. The Germans fired several salvos. 9 enemy torpedoes passed along the sides of the S-13.” According to numerous Western publications about the combat activities of German submarines, the fact of this attack was not confirmed. In addition, during World War II, German submariners never operated in tactical groups in the Baltic.
Strizhak almost passes off as Marinesko’s heroism the fact that he was transported from Finland to Libau on the deck of a Ford submarine S-13, which “made the authorities angry to the limit.” Strizhak does not know that this is truly incompatible with maritime culture, or rather, it is a failure to comply with the basic rules of service on submarines. A self-respecting submarine commander would never allow such an act, because it contradicts the requirements of the Ship's Charter - the most important document in the fleet. The commander is obliged not only to observe it himself, but also to demand it from his subordinates.
In the domestic literature, the maneuvering scheme of the S-13 during the attack of the Wilhelm Gustlov liner has been reconstructed in detail. Overall, it was executed impeccably and deserves the highest praise. Although here, too, there are conjectures when describing it. For example, citing testimony from crew members, some researchers claim that after the attack on the liner, more than 260 depth charges were dropped on the submarine C-13, and that it was bombed from 11:15 p.m. on January 30 to 4 a.m. on January 31. This simply couldn't happen! As follows from German reference books from the Second World War, the most common German destroyers with a displacement of 1800 tons had 4 bomb droppers, and their ammunition load included 36 depth charges. It turns out that the Soviet submarine should have been pursued by at least 7 destroyers. It is a myth! From the S-13 logbook you can find out that after the attack at 23:49 a destroyer, 4 patrol ships and 2 minesweepers arrived in the area, and the boat was pursued only by 2 patrol ships and a minesweeper. During the pursuit, not 260, but only 12 depth charges were dropped. And it started not at 23:15, but at 23:49.
Let us dwell on the questions that were posed at the very beginning: on the inventions of newly minted writers and passionate admirers of Marinesco’s talent.
Has Germany declared three days of mourning in connection with the death of the liner? Was Marinesko included in the list of Hitler's personal enemies? Touching on these issues, everyone refers to the statements of Captain 1st Rank V.P. Anisimov, a participant in the Great Patriotic War, who claimed that in early February 1945 he held and read the German newspapers “Völkischer Beobachter” and “Das Schwarze Kor” , where it was officially announced that three days of mourning had been established in Germany over the death of the Wilhelm Gustlow liner. None of the domestic historians and journalists have ever seen such newspapers with similar messages. When a particularly heated controversy developed around the name Marinesko in 1988, caused by articles published in the newspapers “Izvestia” and “Guardian of the Baltic,” the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, Admiral of the Fleet V.N. Chernavin, ordered the employees of the Historical Group of the General Staff to look into this question. An official request was sent to the German archive. On March 23, 1988, we received a response from Potsdam stating that the information that A. I. Marinesko was considered a personal enemy of Hitler and that on January 30, 1945, three days of mourning was declared in Germany was not confirmed. At the same time, many materials from domestic archives and libraries were studied. I also managed to look through German periodicals from the largest libraries in St. Petersburg and Moscow, and not a single word about mourning and “Hitler’s enemy” was mentioned in any of them. For comparison, we looked through the same newspapers and magazines published during the Battle of Stalingrad, when three days of mourning were actually declared in Germany, which was officially reported in all periodicals without exception. Then in Germany flags with mourning ribbons were lowered. But on January 30 and after, nothing like this happened.
Writer V. S. Gemanov in the book “The Feat of the Thirteenth: The Glory and Tragedy of the Submariner A. I. Marinesko,” published in 1991, writes that “with his attack Marinesko saved England from defeat,” as well as some others claim that as a result of the sinking of the liner and 1000 selected submarine aces - the elite of the German fleet - the naval blockade of England was broken. Nothing like this! All this is the speculation of authors who have little understanding not only of strategy, but also of the history of the Second World War, in particular the history of the so-called Battle of the Atlantic.

According to available information, about 1,300 German naval personnel, 173 crew members, 162 wounded from the local hospital and more than 9,000 refugees, including military personnel, were on board the Wilhelm Gustlow. 1,300 representatives of the fleet constituted the personnel of the second section of the second training division of the submarine force. Some argue that these are mainly submariners who could crew 100 submarines. This may be true, but the quality of these crews was questionable. Most of these submariners did not go to sea on their own; at best, during combat training they made 1-2 trips to sea with instructors. The duration of such trips did not exceed 2 days. Most of the real aces of the German submarine fleet, who completed 5-6 combat campaigns and had up to 30 sunken ships, died in 1941-1942. The growth of anti-submarine forces and weapons of the United States and Great Britain during the Second World War acquired unprecedented proportions, and the Allies managed to win the Battle of the Atlantic. In the spring of 1943, a crisis arose in the actions of the German “wolf packs”. Having destroyed 34 transports in the North Atlantic, the Germans lost 33 submarines. Submarines became a one-shot weapon. Rarely has a submarine managed to return from a combat cruise. The main reasons for their death were the poor training of the crews and the powerful anti-submarine defense of the Anglo-American convoys.
How can we talk about the critical situation in England in 1945? Already in 1944, the British completely solved the problem of protecting their shipping. Since the spring of 1943, German submariners managed to sink less than 0.5 percent of the number of ships crossing the Atlantic. The reproduction of transport tonnage, which at that time far outweighed the losses, should not be discounted.
It turns out that it was not Marinesko who “thwarted the plan for a total submarine war” directed against England, but the allies themselves dealt with this problem.

Now about “submariner No. 1” and “attack of the century”. By what parameters of naval art does the Wilhelm Gustlov attack go beyond traditional boundaries to be considered the “attack of the century”? Nobody can explain this. During the Great Patriotic War, there were tactically more complex attacks. These include the sinking of the Japanese aircraft carrier Shinano by the American submarine Archer Fish in 1944. Firstly, it was a warship, not a hospital ship, and secondly, it was escorting 3 destroyers and was the largest ship sunk by a submarine. Its displacement was 72 thousand tons. "Wilhelm Gustlov" followed in the guard of one patrol ship. What's worse about the attack carried out by the German submariner Prien in 1939? His boat penetrated the heavily guarded English naval base of Scapa Flow at night and sank the battleship Royal Oak there. In 1939 alone, the same submarine sank 15 ships with a total tonnage of 89 thousand gross registered tons. If we talk about the attack of the century, then we must remember the German submarine U-9, which sank 3 English battleships at once in September 1914 - Hog, Cressy and Abukir. This attack did influence the views of many military experts regarding the use and effect of submarine attacks.
To call Marinesko “submariner No. 1” means to belittle the importance of other equally distinguished Soviet submariners. They say that Marinesko was first called “submariner No. 1” by Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union I. S. Isakov. Let's say! But I wonder what numbers supporters of such a strange approach to assessing military merit would assign to such outstanding Soviet submariners as P. D. Grishchenko, G. I. Shchedrin, M. I. Gadzhiev, I. I. Fisanovich, A. M. Matiyasevich and etc.? Yes, Marinesko has the largest total tonnage of destroyed ships, but in other indicators he is inferior to many Soviet submariners, for example, in the number of military campaigns, the number of destroyed ships, the consumption of torpedoes per sunken ship, the percentage of successful exits, etc. Why not the Germans, neither the Americans nor the Japanese named their submariner No. 1? Apparently they considered this unethical. For the Germans, for example, the submarine U-66 sank 26 ships with a total tonnage of 200 thousand gross registered tons in 4 military campaigns, and U-103 destroyed 29 transport ships with a total capacity of 150 thousand gross registered tons in 3 military campaigns. The Americans have more than 10 submarines approaching or exceeding 100,000 tonnage of ships sunk. Thus, the submarine “Totog” sank 26 ships, “Tanch” - 24, “Flasher” - 21, etc. For a submarine officer, such indicators as experience in service on submarines and, of course, basic training are also important. Marinesko graduated from the ship's school, the Odessa Marine College, special courses for command staff of the RKKF and the S. M. Kirov Diving Training Unit. He became a submarine commander only in 1939. In the Soviet Navy, dozens of submarine commanders graduated from the M.V. Frunze Naval School, special underwater classes, and some even from the Naval Academy and have commanded submarines since the early 30s 's Of the 6 military campaigns carried out by Marinesco, half were unsuccessful. The Central Naval Archive in the city of Gatchina contains conclusions from the commanders of the brigade and division of submarines, as well as the fleet headquarters on the last cruise of the S-13, carried out from April 20 to May 13, 1945. In them, in particular, the following is noted:

"1. During the period of being at sea, in a position, in a zone of intense enemy traffic since 04/23/45.
I detected targets for attack 7 times, but could not attack...
1. On April 24, at 23.38 on the Shp, he discovered a convoy, but, having surfaced, he could not open the hatch... The attack failed, since it was impossible to see anything through the periscope at that time.
2. 26.04 at 01.35 I discovered the operation of the search device... The opportunity to attack was missed due to the wrong actions of the commander.
3. 27.04 at 22.46 on the Shp they detected the noise of a TR and the operation of two SPDs. After 7 minutes at a distance of 35 cables. visually detected a TR guarding two TFRs and two SKAs. The commander refused the attack due to high visibility. The commander’s actions were incorrect: before that, he brought the submarine to the bright part of the horizon, and then did not follow the enemy, did not move to the dark part of the horizon...
4. 28.04 at 16.41, while under water, through the Shp he detected the noise of a TR and the operation of two UZPN... The commander increased the speed to 4 knots and after 14 minutes abandoned the attack, considering himself beyond the maximum angle of attack... The opportunity to attack was missed due to his fault a commander who did not seek to get close to the enemy, but took care of the battery, fearing that it would have to be charged several nights in a row.
5. 28.04 at 19.23 the noise of TR was detected. I didn’t see the enemy through the periscope. Nine minutes later, the commander allegedly established, without changing the three-node stroke, that he was outside the maximum angle of attack.
6. 02.05 the noise of a TR was detected over the ShP... Apparently, the commander incorrectly determined the direction of movement and therefore did not close with the enemy...
7. 03.05 at 10.45 the periscope detected a TR guarding two TFRs, but failed to attack due to improper maneuvering.
Conclusion: The submarine did not complete its combat mission. The commander's actions are unsatisfactory.
Captain 1st Rank Orel."

Here's what the other document says:
“While in position, the submarine commander had many cases of detecting enemy transports and convoys, but as a result of improper maneuvering and indecisiveness, he was unable to get close to attack...
Conclusions: 1. The commander’s actions at the position are unsatisfactory. The submarine commander did not seek to search for and attack the enemy...
2. As a result of the inactive actions of the submarine commander, the S-13 did not complete its assigned combat mission. The assessment of the combat campaign of the submarine S-13 is unsatisfactory.
Captain 1st Rank Kurnikov."

And these are excerpts from the following document, dated May 30, 1945:
“I report the conclusions and assessment of the combat campaign of the S-13 and D-2 submarines given by the commander of the Red Banner Baltic Fleet...
...The fact that both submarines did not have combat successes or even combat contacts with the enemy at that time indicates poor observation. They did not look for the enemy and completed their task unsatisfactorily...
Chief of Staff of the Red Banner Baltic Fleet Alexandrov."
As they say, comments are unnecessary. But this happened at the end of the war. By that time, it seems, every commander had acquired combat experience. On September 14, 1945, the People's Commissar of the Navy, Fleet Admiral N. G. Kuznetsov signed order No. 01979: “For neglect of official duties, systematic drunkenness and everyday promiscuity of the commander of the Red Banner submarine S-13 of the Red Banner submarine brigade of the Red Banner Baltic Fleet, captain 3rd rank Marinesko Alexander Ivanovich should be removed from his position, reduced in military rank to senior lieutenant and placed at the disposal of the Military Council of the same fleet.
Fleet Admiral Kuznetsov."
On October 18, 1945, according to the order of the commander of the Baltic Fleet No. 0708, Marinesko was appointed commander of the minesweeper T-34. On November 20, the People's Commissar signed a new order No. 02521:
“The commander of the minesweeper T-34 of the 2nd division of minesweepers of the 1st Red Banner minesweeper brigade of the Red Banner Baltic Fleet, senior lieutenant Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko, is to be transferred to the Navy reserve under Article 44, paragraph “A”, in accordance with the “Regulations on the service of command and control personnel of the Red Army” .
Then, as if repenting, in 1968, the disgraced Vice Admiral N.G. Kuznetsov wrote in the Neva magazine: “The time has come to appreciate the feat of A.I. Marinesko. We must, albeit belatedly, directly state that in the struggle for the Motherland he proved himself to be a real hero.” In 1990, A. I. Marinesko was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union (posthumously).

On November 25, 1963, the legendary commander of the S-13 submarine, Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko, died in Leningrad after a serious and long illness. He was dying painfully - esophageal cancer - but still did not lose his presence of mind. And only his third, last beloved wife Valya was always nearby. She inherited from the entire 50-year life of the great submariner - a year of cloudless happiness and two years of serious illness...


Attitudes towards Marinesko have never been unambiguous. The official authorities, represented by the commanders of the Twice Red Banner Baltic Fleet, didn’t exactly dislike him, but were rather envious of his glory. The commander of the submarine division, Alexander Orel (later the commander of the DKBF), nominated Marinesko to the Gold Star of the Hero of the Soviet Union for the destruction of two German ships, Wilhelm Gustloff and General Steuben, but the award was downgraded to the Order of the Red Banner of Battle. They explained that the Hero must be a textbook: a staunch Leninist, not have any disciplinary sanctions, and be a role model for others.

Inconvenient commander

Yes, Marinesko had a rough character, he always cut the truth in the eyes, he was principled and inconvenient when someone wanted to talk. But one little-known fact: after an incident in the Finnish city of Turku, in January 1945, Marinesko wanted to be removed from command of the S-13 submarine and generally send the boat on a combat mission with a different crew. But the crew of the submarine “revolted”, refused to go to sea with another commander, and the command was forced to give in: by that time only the S-13 was combat-ready in the Baltic Fleet. Marinesko went on a campaign, with an additional “special officer” assigned to him.


Submarine S-13

Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko was born on January 15, 1913 in Odessa. His father, the son of the blacksmith Ion Marinescu, a Romanian by nationality, was a sailor on a battle cruiser, but one day he could not stand the bullying of an officer and bloodied the offender’s nose with a mighty blow. Jonah was sentenced to death, but it turned out that the punishment cell that night (the execution was to be carried out at dawn) was guarded by Jonah’s fellow countryman, with whom he grew up in the same village. So the fellow countryman opened the cell, took Marinescu out into the common corridor and pushed him to the window. Below, the restless Danube seethed, in order to survive it, it was necessary to swim across it, which was not given to everyone. But this was the only way not to bring trouble to the guard’s head. Like, they didn’t shoot him, he drowned...

Jonah floated out, but left Romania forever, hiding first in Bessarabia, then moved to Odessa, where it was easier to disappear into the crowded crowd. They looked for him for some time, but then they stopped, thinking that he had actually drowned.

From the age of 13 at sea...

Marinesko Jr. grew up very restless, it was very difficult to keep him at home, he was always with the boys, either at sea or in the port. But Jonah secretly hoped that his son would follow in his footsteps and connect his life with the sea. And so it happened. Already from the age of 13 he studied at the school of a cabin boy, then in the naval school. Sailed on civilian ships, as one of the captain's mates. Once, in stormy weather, he showed courage and great skill and saved a cargo ship from certain death. He was awarded a valuable gift, which Jonah Marinesko was very proud of (he, after all, transferred the Romanian ending of the surname with “u” to the Ukrainian “o”).

The decision to connect his life with the army did not come to Alexander Ivanovich right away. And even at the command courses, not everything went well for him, but Marinesko “came to his senses in time” and avoided expulsion...

He started the war on the “baby”, as small submarines were called. The M-96 was also slow-moving; it was very difficult to attack large surface targets with it. Firstly, it was not possible to catch up with something fast, and secondly, after an attack it was not always possible to escape from the enemy. But Marinesko was a very risky person. Alexander Ivanovich “sank” his first ship, a heavy floating battery, in August 1942, at least, he reported to his superiors. But four years later, when the Germans transferred the surviving ships to the Baltic Fleet, this mother ship was among the trophies, which in 1942 was towed and then repaired.

But Marinesko earned his first order - the Order of Lenin - in November 1942, when he landed scouts to capture a German encryption machine. And even though there was no encryption machine (the Germans changed the route at the last moment), the submarine commander himself acted flawlessly...

In October 1944 (by that time Marinesko commanded the S-13 boat), the Siegfried transport was seriously damaged during a military campaign; as it later turned out, the “sunk” transport, as in the first case, never sank to the bottom. And Alexander Ivanovich was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Battle.

Three components of the “attack of the century”

Now directly about the events of January 30, 1945. The “Attack of the Century” might not have taken place for three reasons. Firstly, if Marinesko had not changed the “hunting area”. German intelligence worked very well, and, obviously, Admiral Doenitz’s subordinates knew where the sea hunter in the person of the S-13 boat was waiting for them. How else can one explain the fact that the transports diligently avoided the traps? All this seemed suspicious to Marinesko and he changed the area without informing the command about it.


The transport ship "Wilhelm Gustloff", sunk by the submarine "S-13"

Secondly, if so much persistence and patience had not been shown. The speed of the "Wilhelm Gustloff" was greater than that of the "S-13" and our submarine worked to the limit for several minutes, to the point of wear and tear. If the pursuit had continued for another five minutes, the boat would simply have broken down.

Thirdly, few people know that Marinesko committed another act that can hardly be called disciplined. Knowing that the “special officer” was unlikely to allow him to attack as he pleased, the submarine commander locked him in the hold. And it was not “old sins” that were the reason that Alexander Ivanovich was not given a Hero. He clashed with powerful “authorities”, who ensured that in the same victorious year of 1945, Marinesko was demoted in military rank from captain of the third rank to senior lieutenant. A reverse example: Yuri Gagarin was awarded the military rank of “major” after a space flight, also bypassing the rank of “captain”.

There is another little-known fact: one of the torpedoes that was fired at the Wilhelm Gustloff got stuck in the same way as it did 55 years later, on the Kursk submarine. But S-13 was luckier. It was possible to extract her torpedo, it did not explode... Marinesko left the German hunters in shallow water, along the shore. The Germans dropped between 150 and 200 depth charges. Some of them exploded in the immediate vicinity of the submarine. But the strong hull plating withstood...

Hitler and Marinesko

There is a beautiful myth that Hitler personally declared Marinesko his enemy No. 1, and throughout Germany there was three days of mourning on the occasion of the death of the Wilhelm Gustloff (on board, according to various sources, there were from 5 to 7 thousand not only military personnel, but also civilians). In fact, all this did not happen: it is unlikely that reporting this would have raised the morale of the Germans, who were suffering one defeat after another. And although this myth is beautiful, it is still a myth...

Every year on January 30, submariners gather at the Museum of the World Ocean. Roasted pig is a must on the table (after every victory at the submarine base they greet you this way). We remember Alexander Ivanovich and his military service. Heroes don't die...

The board of the EI-DJR aircraft, named in honor of Alexander Marinesko