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hey everybody what's going on and welcome to another video and as always before we get started today i'd just like to take a quick moment to welcome all my new subscribers and to thank everybody who's been leaving me comments down below guys thank you very much and i've been reading as many of them as i can and there have been some really really good suggestions in the comments for future video ideas so stay tuned for that and before we get started as always everybody please hit that like button and please subscribe to my channel it really really helps a lot guys and hey thank you all very much okay let's get into today's topic if i were to ask all of you what you thought one of the worst shipwrecks in the history of mankind was what would you say would you say the titanic how about the sinking of the lusitania the empress of ireland the rms atlantic what about the halifax explosion this was the biggest explosion done by a man before the dropping of the atomic bomb in world war ii if you added up how many people lost their lives and all those disasters combined you'd reach a total of 6 247 people died in all those tragedies however what if i was to tell you that there was one shipwreck that has been largely forgotten by history and on this one shipwreck more people lost their lives than on all of those disasters combined on this one shipwreck a grand total of around 9400 people lost their lives on one shipwreck and that is the story of today's video the vessel that i'm referring to would be this ship right here the wilhelm gustloff built in 1937 by the german slash nazi party it was a vessel designed to offer cheap affordable vacations to the german people in the 1930s and 40s during its time operating as a cruise ship because you got to remember when the willingham gustloff was built this was before the outbreak of world war ii it was very very popular as a civilian vessel operating cheap cruises to german families however we're not here to talk about that we're going to talk about what happened to the wilhelm guslav during world war ii to make it the site of one of the worst maritime disasters in history the story of the wilhelm gustav's last voyage begins in 1945 as the german army was in full retreat in poland from the advancing russian red army the wilhelm gustloff was being prepped and ready to be used as a civilian evacuation ship in order to save german refugees from the advancing red army one of the big buildups that led to the horrible disaster of the woodham gustav were these stories that were circulating around by atrocities that were being committed by the russian red army as they were coming in you see it appeared that there were no they weren't discriminating between german slash nazi soldiers and people who had nothing to do with it there were stories of russian soldiers you know beating and raping women hurting innocent people that had nothing to do with the german nazi regime as far as they were concerned they were embarrassed of what the germans did to them during world war ii so when they finally got the counter offensive and were pushing into poland and pushing germany back they weren't discriminating they were in they were enacting full on revenge and regardless if these stories are exaggerated or not the nazi regime was also pushing these stories into their innocent people their civilian population so in the ports where the wilhelm gustloff was being prepped and ready to go there were thousands and thousands of refugees trying to get out of poland before the red army caught up with them the operation to save all these refugees would be called operation hannibal and it would involve the wilhelm gustloff and other ships that were in the area to evacuate german refugees from a town in poland called gdenya to the german city of kiel at this time the russians had already cut all the roads and railroads and stuff leading from poland into germany and the only way out was through the baltic sea by ship this map is a good analogy of the route that the gustloff was going to try to take with the german refugees it was going to leave the poland town of godinya seen on the right and dropped them off in the german city of kiel as visible on the left this route would take them through the baltic sea and cross over from poland into germany one big thing you need to understand in order to try to comprehend why so many people died when the gustloff sank was how many people were on board the gustloff when it went down just to give you a little bit of context here the goose lob was designed to have 2 000 people on board so that equivalence to about 1500 passengers about 500 crew members so 2 000 people more or less when the gustloff went down there was over 10 000 people on board some counts says around 10 400 10 500 just let that number sink in that many people on a ship designed for 2000 now the germans didn't do this intentionally they tried to sell tickets and control the flow of people that were on board the ship however there were so many refugees and so many people trying to get past the soldiers in order to get on the ship to escape the red army but they couldn't keep up it even got so bad at one point that the captain of the gustav had to pull the ship away from the dock and he wanted them to load the gust off with small tender boats in order to try to control the flow of people but even with all of these factors and all these things that they tried to do to control the flow of people still over 10 000 people ended up on board the gust when it set sail and there were still thousands of people left behind in poland and they'd have to wait for other ships to be rescued another really important thing that you need to understand in order to fully comprehend the gustloff singing is due to the unusual circumstances of the voyage of the gustav and how many people were on board the gustav had ended up with four captains on board now i only now what i mean by that is there was only one real captain his name was captain peterson but there were three other men on board who were captains of various other ships around the german fleet and they were all used to giving orders so these three men presented a challenge to captain peterson's authority which would later be a major role in what eventually caused the gust loft to sink so these three or i'm sorry these four men are in conflict with each other on what the proper course of action is now one of the men had ordered the ship's passengers to have life jackets on at all times however due to how crowded and cramped the ship was people weren't listening to it they were taking their life jackets off they weren't doing it because you got to think all these people crammed inside a ship it's really hot and stuffy in there with life jackets on it's even worse and no one could be outside the ship either because outside the conditions were rapidly deteriorating a fog was moving in and it was beginning to snow so it was very very cold outside so most pastures did not have their life jackets on even though they were ordered to not take them off under any circumstances the evening after the gustloff had set sail the captain became aware of some german minesweeper ships that were on the route that gustloff was taking so the captain ordered the gustaf's navigation lights to be turned on now with the fog the gustloff should have been pretty well hidden from russian submarines however peterson was afraid of a collision with these german warships so he ordered the lights turned on which made the gustloff very very easy to spot by a soviet submarine that was patrolling the route that gossaff was taking now several of the other captains on board the gustaf strongly disagreed with pearson's decision to turn on the ship's navigation lights they figured it would make it very very easy for them to be spotted by a russian submarine if they happen to be patrolling the area which they were however peterson was more concerned with the collision with those other ships now i think it's possible that peterson's judgment was compromised due to the fact that he felt like he had to challenge or prove his worth to these other men who thought that they all knew better i think that might have been a reason why he decided to turn the navigation lights because in my opinion he shouldn't have done that you should have left the lights off because a russian submarine seems like it'd be a much bigger threat than actually having a collision with another ship but that's my opinion anyway a little bit later the navigation lights on the gustloff were switched off but by then it was too late they had already been spotted and a russian submarine was about to fire on the gustloff just after 9 16 pm a russian submarine that had been following the gust fired not one not two but three torpedoes at the ship now all three of these torpedoes made contact with the ship and detonated like they were supposed to and just after this the ghost sloth began to rapidly sink all three torpedoes struck the gustaf on the port side so the ship immediately began to roll over in that direction which meant that all the lifeboats on the starboard side could not be launched due to the heavy list now with these three massive holes on the ship's poor side that meant that the ship was going to roll over now i want you to think about this from people inside's perspective one of the three torpedoes detonated at the gustav's engine room so that meant the ship was plunged into total darkness almost immediately it did have emergency generator lights but they were very dim in comparison to the full lights that the ship should have had and you got to also remember the gust was designed for 2 000 people not 10 000 so the stairways that give people access to the deck became bottlenecks and people were stuck they could not get out of the ship so you've got a ship that is rapidly listing and you've got ten thousand people that are frantically trying to get out i mean just think about how horrible of a situation that had to have been for the people who were there to the people who did find their way up on deck it was basically a nightmare waiting for them half the lifeboats on the ship could not be launched due to the heavy list and with each passing second the ship's list grew more and more heavy and then the few lifeboats that were able to be launched they found the davits were actually frozen due to the cold the rain the snow and the harsh conditions so that meant that it was even more work and it was even more difficult to launch the few lifeboats off the ship they could be launched to make matters worse several of the lifeboats that were being lowered away had major problems with the davits and the lines broke spilling all the occupants of this lifeboat into the cold freezing sea as the ship was rapidly sinking at just 40 minutes after the torpedo detonation the entire ship was laying completely on her side which meant no more lifeboats could be launched and anybody still stuck inside of the ship had no chance of getting out and then at just one hour after the torpedo had detonated the gusslop made her final plunge and slipped beneath the surface after the gustav had went down only five lifeboats were successfully launched from the ship the proper way there could have been more lifeboats that had fallen off the ship or got cut away but only five were properly launched from the ship and to everybody who was in the water you gotta remember the water was freezing and it wasn't the best conditions it was a very very rough night that night a lot of waves anyway the mine sweeper ships that the gustloff's crew were so worried about so they turned on the navigation lines the german minesweeper warships they were the first ships on the scene now before they even finished rescuing people in the water the minesweeper ships were worried about those submarines so they began dropping depth charges so now when these depth charges detonated they ended up killing several more or several hundred more survivors from the dislock in the water i mean seriously can you imagine surviving this shipwreck thinking you're about to be rescued only to have your own rescuer drop a bomb and it ended up killing you in the years following the gustloff sinking people wondered if the russians had committed a war crime in the sinking of the gust now remember we don't have an exact accurate count to how many people died on the ship but it is estimated that around nine thousand four hundred people died so just let that number sink in nine thousand four hundred people died and they think it was around ten thousand four hundred ten thousand five hundred were actually on the ship now the gustav had no official markings as a civilian ship or a hospital ship those are usually protected under war on their war rules and stuff like that that's one big reason why the lusitania sparked so much controversy when it sank was because it was a it was a civilian ship however the gustloff was a navy vessel it was armed and it had no markings on it signifying that it was carrying a bunch of civilians and wasn't and was innocent so officially there was no huge court-martial to the russian submarine crew and it was determined that they did not commit a war crime due to the fact the ship was not marked as carrying civilians anyway guys that's it for this video i hope you found it interesting and learned something and yeah i hope you enjoyed learning about the worst and the most forgotten about shipwreck in maritime history i mean this shipwreck is very largely forgotten about i don't even remember learning about it in school this ship has almost disappeared from history with the exception of a few ship historians that actually know about it anyway i hope i brought in dural's horizons and you all learned something and yeah and now you all know the story of the wilhelm gustla anyway everybody well hey please hit that like button if you like this video and please subscribe and to everybody who's new here and everybody who's been with me for a while thank you all so much i really really appreciate it all right everybody well hey you all stay safe out there and i'll see you in the next one