TheWilhelm Gustloff: A disaster history would like to forget

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For a background on the ship and what happened go HERE: http://www.wilhelmgustloff.com/

I find it quite amazing that the worst maritime disaster in History has been long forgotten. The crimes of the 3rd Reich cannot be used to justify the sinking of a passenger ship carrying german civilian refugees. Of course it was perpetrated by the Soviets who were very petty and out for "revenge" . Discuss...

I'm glad to see this brought up here.

I take this one very seriously as I live in the place where this ship had started it's journey and the people that were on it were mostly locals. there's quite a big group of people (me including) who have been fighting for a memorial of some sort, something that would inform about what had happened and where people could light up candles and flowers for the victims of W.G., but to no avail- the thing is, there were 1000 German recruits on this ship and it was still the time of war, so it's not considered a "civilian" tragedy. the fact that the 9000 civilians who died were mostly children has no meaning for the local authorities and they will never allow a memorial for a German ship that transported Wehrmaht troops and was destroyed by the allies.

The old Soviet Bloc countries are typically unsympathetic to the plight of German civilians during the war. As that site points out, Hitler wanted to exterminate the Slavics and settle Aryan Germans on Slavic land, so the tendency is to view all Germans, including civilians, as complicit in Nazi atrocities and eugenics attempts. Forgiveness traditionally does not exist in Slavic lands-grudges are held for centuries.

In addition, you need to read up on the way the Red Army treated Germans they encountered on the march west. Typically, Germans were brutalized and hacked to death with bayonets. Civilians as well as military. For example, when the Soviets crossed the eastern Polish border, they encountered a German women's corps camp. All of the girls were gang raped, beaten senseless, and slashed to ribbons. That set the tone, and similar stories littered Poland and East Germany. The Soviets were determined to destroy Germany forever.

After the war, scant attention was paid to rebuilding the Soviet sector. There were lots of prefabricated concrete buildings, rows of them, all identical. The goal was largely to house the remaining civilians in the cheapest possible way. The Russians didn't have the manpower to wipe out the German populace in the east as they wished, so they just did the minimum needed to hold back criticism by America. World War 2 was mindbendingly savage.

Unfortunately this does seem to be true.

The Serbs(and Greeks)are still butthurt for being ruled by the Ottoman Turks despite the fact that Serbia got its independence from Turkey in the 19th century with out much resistance from the Turkish Government.

The ship was also carrying wounded troops. Face it, war is a very nasty business and there really is not morality to it. The only issue is win the war by killing the enemy and busting up his assets and infrastructure. Combine this with revenge and the nasty gets even nastier.

So it goes. Fecum sunt Sh*t happens and it flows downhill rapidly.

ruveyn

I dont buy that for a minute! It was carrying civilian refugees fleeing the vengeful brutality of Stalin's Red Army!
I consider this as much of a crime as the massacre of 23,000 poles at Katyn. WHY on earth would you defend the actions of the Soviet Union???

Because it is war - International law provides exact measurements if you want to have a particular ship (or town/city) speared by the other side. They are laid down in the Den Haag Conventions of 1907 and Geneva Convention, those were not meet in the case of Wilhelm Gustloff.

It shall be noted that the Soviet Union was at the time not a signatory power and Germany was in breach of those conventions, so Germany did waive away its protection according to those treaties.

What you would need to prove is that the Soviet Union was deliberated in breach of Ius Cogens of International Law - aka: Rules of International Law which are by their nature supreme to all other rules and binging any state or sovereign without any further treaty or any other agreement. I think this would be very hard, if not impossible, in this case.

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In the case of the massacre in Katyn the Soviet Union was in deliberately breach of Ius Cogens - this case is much clearer.

It is even more complex: When the Red Army came closer to the eastern parts of Germany, the Hitler government did quite everything till the very last minute not evacuate the Germans out of the fighting region. They allowed such measurement only in the very last minute in Winter 1944/45.

Dussel: The soviets clearly Knew that there were german civilians on board that ship and they sunk it anyway out of pure spite. I am not familiar with international law but Im uninterested in the pedantry of it because this was a deliberate attack on civilians. Period.

Because the Soviet Union was at this time not a signatory power of any of the international conventions regarding humanitarian law, you would need to prove that this action was in breach of an Ius Cogens of international law of war. I do not think it is possible - therefore it was legal by terms of international law.

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Even if the Soviet Union would have signed the Den Haag and Geneva Conventions in 1945, it must have been made known officially to Soviets that this particular ship is in no military use (direct or indirect) at the time of the attack. Which was not the case.

LOOK, I pretty much realize by now that there is NO effing legal recourse against those responsible in an international court so as I said before international law means little to me because the statue of limitations has long since expired. The law(even if its international)is NOT a moral authority, it is a coercive authority and I could care less whether or not this was technically legal.
Are you going to try and defend the sinking of the Lusitania by a german U-Boot???

The moral question does not exist for states - for the state the law is the moral. A sovereign has no other obligation than he has against other sovereigns, never against his or other subjects.

A sovereign is not capable of binging himself to subjects; even if he does so (e.g. in a constitution), he can always void this via a revolutionary act. He can't void an obligation against other sovereign - except in the manner set in international law.



Same case.

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To say it simple: War is the most brutal game possible and shall be avoided if possible. But if a war than all legal means are justified to win the war, regardless the price.

Irrelevant from a legal p.o.v. The ship was NOT a civilian ship regardless of how many civilians were aboard. It was a ship of war because it carried troops. I am sure the commander of the Soviet sub did not give a rats patootie for the civilians aboard, but that is neither here nor there.

If we take your position, then in a war, a belligerent could line the roofs of his factories with baby carriages and cribs full of children and use them as human shields against bombings. In a real war, this would have no effect. The factories would be bombed regardless of who is on the roof because of what the factory is used for. In a major real live shooting war, the lives of civilians count for little to the opposing belligerent.

In March of 1945 the U.S. firebombed a 16 square mile area of Tokyo which consisted mainly of houses. Why? Because in each house, machinery was installed to do piece work for the Japanese war industry. That made the houses legit targets. In addition Tokyo had anti-aircraft guns which made it a non-open city. On top of that Japan was not a signatory to the Geneva Convention. On top of that Japan bombed Nanking, civilians and all. What goes around comes around. Those who sow the wind, will in due course, reap the whirlwind.

You are letting sentiment get in the way of logic and law. Besides in a real shooting war, the only effective law is to WIN the war.

ruveyn

There are so many tragedies that doesn’t get much mention. What about the atrocities of Stalin or Mao?

I used to live in Angola, which had a civil war 27 years, mostly forgotten despite being a cold war proxy war and allied and soviets where equally responsible in prolonging the conflict mostly for thier own aims.

I guess the only recourse would be to put pressure on Russia to owning up to what they did and issuing and official apology.

Russia being what it is, i doubt they'd apologize for such a thing <.< Especially nowadays, when they're longing for the Stalin days, when Russia was "feared and respected". (It has been a while since i've had info about this, but last i checked within the decade, that was the main line of thought in Russia)