The End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler’s Germany, 1944–1945

49. Hastings, pp. 328–32. Unclarity about the numbers actually on board means the death toll is uncertain. Estimates vary widely. Dieckert and Grossmann, pp. 130–31, have 904 from 5,000 surviving; Seidler and de Zayas, p. 222, indicate a complement of 6,600 on board, of whom 1,200 were saved and 5,400 drowned. Guido Knopp, Der Untergang der Gustloff, 2nd edn., pb., Munich, 2008, pp. 9, 156, reckons the losses to have been as high as 9,000, and (p. 12) that as many as 40,000 refugees lost their lives in this and other sinkings in the last months of the war. Michael Schwartz in DRZW, 10/2, p. 591, also accepts a figure of 9,000 dead, but halves the number of refugee victims in sea disasters to 20,000. One of the officers responsible for checking the passengers on board the Gustloff claimed to have noted the last figure for registrations as 7,956. This was twenty hours before the Gustloff set sail, and one estimate suggests that a further 2,000 people were allowed on board before departure, making the total number, including crew, more than 10,000.—Knopp, Die große Flucht, p. 104. Denny, pp. 202–3, has 996 from 9,000 saved. Bessel, p. 75, has 1, 239 rescued from over 10,000 on board. Beevor, p. 51, places the number of deaths between 6,600 and 9,000. Two of the subsequent worst disasters occurred almost at the end of the war, with the sinking off Lübeck through British air attack of the Thielbek (50 survivors from 2,800 on board) and the Cap d’Arcona (4,250 dead from 6,400 on board). The victims were almost all prisoners who had been evacuated by their SS guards from Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg on the approach of British forces.—David Stafford, Endgame 1945: Victory, Retribution, Liberation, London, 2007, pp. 291–301.

50. Under Gauleiter Franz Schwede-Coburg, the Pomeranian Party leadership, as elsewhere, had exacerbated the plight of the population by refusing to give timely orders for evacuation.—Noble, pp. 205–8.

51. For the above, where not otherwise indicated, Die Vertreibung, vol. 1, pp. 41E–51E, 155–201.

52. Beevor, pp. 48–9.

53. Andreas Kossert, ‘ “Endlösung on the Amber Shore”: The Massacre in January 1945 on the Baltic Seashore—a Repressed Chapter of East Prussian History’, Leo Baeck Year Book, 40 (2004), pp. 3–21 (quotations, pp. 15–17); and Andreas Kossert, Damals in Ostpreußen: Der Untergang einer deutschen Provinz, Munich, 2008, pp. 148–53; Schmuel Krakowski, ‘Massacre of Jewish Prisoners on the Samland Peninsula—Documents’, YVS, 24 (1994), pp. 349–87; Reinhard Henkys, ‘Ein Todesmarsch in Ostpreußen’, Dachauer Hefte, 20 (2004), pp. 3–21; the eyewitness account by a former member of the Hitler Youth who had been involved in the atrocity, Martin Bergau, ‘Tod an der Bernsteinküste: Ein NS-Verbrechen in Ostpreußen’, in Elke Fröhlich (ed.), Als die Erde brannte: Deutsche Schicksale in den letzten Kriegstagen, Munich, 2005, pp. 99–112; the early account, from 1952, of the former Landrat of the Samland District in Die Vertreibung, vol. 1, p. 136; Martin Bergau, Der Junge von der Bernsteinküste: Erlebte Zeitgeschichte 1938–1948, Heidelberg, 1994, pp. 108–15, 249–75; and Daniel Blatman, Les Marches de la mort: La dernière étape du génocide nazi, été 1944–printemps 1945, Paris, 2009, pp. 132–40. This terrible episode was also described in Nicholas Stargardt, Witnesses of War: Children’s Lives under the Nazis, London, 2005, pp. 284–6. Though most eyewitness accounts concur that the mass shooting took place during the night of 31 January–1 February, some imply that it was slightly later.—Henkys, p. 16. Bergau, and, based on his accounts, Kossert, reckon the number of survivors to have been as low as 15, but Blatman, p. 139, citing the conclusions reached by the court which in 1967 tried and convicted one of the perpetrators, gives an estimated figure of around 200.

54. VB, South German edn., 15.1.45; Die Wehrmachtberichte 1939–1945, vol. 3: 1. Januar 1944 bis 9. Mai 1945, Munich, 1989, p. 402 (15.1.45).

55. This was registered in British monitoring of the German press: NAL, FO 898/187, PWE, fos. 222–4, Summary of and Comments on German Broadcasts to Germany, 14.8.44–7.5.45.

56. BAB, R55/601, fos. 272–6, Tätigkeitsbericht, weekly propaganda report (24.1.45).

57. BStA, MA 106696, report of the RPvNB/OP, 9.2.45.

58. BAB, R55/793, fos. 7–8, ‘Material für Propagandisten, Nr. 25: Betr. Bolschewistische Greuel’, 16.1.45.