Is a wartime disaster less important than in peacetime?

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Since I was a kid, I've had an interest in natural and man made disasters. We probably all know about the titanic sinking but it's not the worst ship disaster in history. The Wilhelm gustloff which was sunk by a Soviet submarine in 1945 was the largest loss of life in a ship sinking with 9,000+ people. Even though it was a German ship under the Nazis, most on board were civilians and refugees. I don't know if all of whom were Nazis. I don't think a lot of people know about that and other similar disasters. I don't know why loss of lives have to be different in times of war than in peace time. Surely it's still tragic.

I've never heard of it. Why on earth were there 9000+ people aboard? That seems an insane number.

It was filled well beyond its maximum capacity of evacuees (both civilian and military) fleeing from the Red Army. It was only originally designed for a capacity of 1,465 passengers and there only 489 cabins.

There are a number of factors that make a disaster more "newsworthy", or likely to be famous.

Specifically with regards to the Titanic:

- it was sailing from the UK to the US, both English-speaking countries, causing it to be more famous in the English-speaking world.
- it was said to be "unsinkable", but sunk anyway. This makes for a better story.
- yes, the fact that it was in peacetime made it more shocking than something taking place in WWII. That isn't because the lives were inherently "worth more", but simply because unexpected things are more shocking and memorable than expected things. During war, we become desensitised to tragedy.
- Robert Lord's book A Night to Remember sparked renewed interest in the disaster in the 1950s.
- the discovery of the wreck in the 1980s sparked further interest, including James Cameron's film.

Our perspective of history is not objective, or even very good. We are naturally biased towards our own countries. I know far more about British history than any other country. Second is the US, which shares a common language and has been the dominant global power my whole life. Speaking "objectively", I should know as much about French, Russia, or Chinese history, but I don't. I know even less about precolonial America, Africa, India, or Australia. And temporally, I know much more about the 2010s than I know about the 1910s or 1810s. That's basically an unavoidable part of being a human.