Never before or since have so many people died in the sinking of a single ship.
The novelist Günter Grass gave an interview to the NYT in 2003:
In ''Crabwalk,'' Mr. Grass addresses... the sinking by a Soviet submarine of a German ship carrying thousands of German refugees.... ''After the war, it was a taboo subject in East Germany because it was a taboo in the Soviet Union,'' Mr. Grass said. ''In West Germany, it was possible to speak of it and some documentary work was done, but not in a literary form. In general, it was the first responsibility of Germans to speak about German crimes. The question of German suffering was of secondary importance. No one really wanted to speak about it.''
No one, that is, except extreme rightist groups... ''One of the many reasons I wrote this book was to take the subject away from the extreme right,'' Mr. Grass said, lighting his ever-present pipe. ''They said the tragedy of the Gustloff was a war crime. It wasn't. It was terrible, but it was a result of war, a terrible result of war. It was not a planned act.''...
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"The Gustloff, designed to carry a maximum of 1,865 people total, was transporting 10,582 refugees, soldiers, sailors, and crew - including scores of sick and injured, as well as women, children and the elderly. All were fleeing from the terrible fate that awaited most of those left in the wake of the Soviet advance, including Germans and non-Germans alike... In under 50 minutes time, the Gustloff was gone, taken beneath the icy black waters of the Baltic, and with her, 9,343 men, women and children. Amazingly, 1,239 people were saved by the heroic and selfless work of a number of German ships in the area. Torpedoboot T-36 rescued 564 people, Torpedoboot Löwe 472 people, Minensuchboot M387 98 people, Minensuchboot M375 43 people, Minensuchboot M341 37 people, steamer Gottingen saved 28 people, Torpedofangboot TF19 saved 7, freighter Gotland 2 people, and Vorpostenboot 1703 saved one person, a 1 year-old child."
Link.
Communists don't commit war crimes. Stupid question.
What does Grass mean, "extreme right"? Nazi? Like Grass himself?
One of the most underreported episodes of modern history is the savage occupation of Germany and Prussia by the Red Army, and the mass scale rape... like nothing we can comprehend today, and brutality and mass suicides of Germans.
Also the brutal and inhuman treatment of Polish veterans of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising by the USSR after the war. They knew the very same people who gave the Nazis a hard time would be the people who gave Commies a hard time, and so they rounded them up, imprisoned them for years or decades, tortured them savagely and murdered many of them under the flimsiest of pretenses.
And then there was the Katyn Forest massacres.
I don't think the Russians would deliberately have killed that many German women and girls if they could have had a chance to rape them first.
There were also German navel personnel aboard, making it a legitimate target.
Not that a hospital ship designation would have stopped the Red Army, but just saying.
NB, the captain of the boat that sank the Gustloff also sank another refugee ship, making him one of the most deadly single men in the war.
He was never decorated because of his drinking problem (ponder THAT in Russia!) but I think got the Hero medal posthumously.
-XC
More on the Russian Captain.
http://sputniknews.com/voiceofrussia/radio_broadcast/2248764/2316400/
The depiction of the wreck at Althouse's link in the comments is fascinating. Wrecks always preserve the real evidence of events -- how things really went down.
Robin beat me to it. Thank God the Death's Head National Socialist was able to shield the actions of the Gulag Socialists from the extreme right. What a fuck-wad.
Those people were sentenced to death by the likes of Karl Dönitz and the German High Command, who waged indiscriminate submarine warfare against the Allied powers. The Nazis waged total war and got paid back in spades.
One lesson might be to not start wars you aren't going to win.
The Nazis waged total war and got paid back in spades.
One can hope the same will happen to ISIS.
Germany should have surrendered long before this happened. How many people died after the war was decided? It was the fault of the German leadership that these people died, needlessly, in a war that was lost.
The supposedly fanatical Japanese surrendered before they were invaded. They had more sense.
This one sinking killed about 1/4 of the number of people who died in the Dresden firebombing.
But you never hear about it.
A terrible event, but a tiny drop in the immense ocean of brutality, suffering and death that the Soviets and the Germans inflicted on each other from while at war June 22, 1941 until May 8 of 1945.
There's a long list of victims who never made the Official Victim List. There seems to be a bias against agricultural workers. Sharecroppers, rack rent Irish peasants, kulaks, and collective farm workers all suffered and died without anyone making much of a fuss. Blacks only reached Official Victim Status when they moved to the big city. When they were sharecroppers, they took a back seat to Italian immigrants like Sacco & Vanzetti and and the urban proletariat. The literature and songs of Ireland are far more likely to celebrate the failed rebellions of the Fenians than the failed crops of the tenant farmers. The kulaks and collective farm workers died without a single memorial to their passing.
John Lynch said...
Germany should have surrendered long before this happened. How many people died after the war was decided?
It is doubtful that the Soviets would have accepted a surrender. Certainly they were not seeking one. They were seeking revenge for the 20,000,000 Russians who died consequent to the German invasion. They also wanted to keep moving to place as large a buffer as they could under direct their military control when the war ended.
The Russians and Americans were steadfast in their joint insistence on "unconditional surrender." There is now a revisionist school of thought that this either foolishly or deliberately prolonged a war that could have been ended earlier. The Americans might have been less keen than the Russians to gobble up territory. Certainly we were far less willing to take large casualties to speed the advance than the Russians were.
And as to vengence, the Americans and British had already taken theirs through the air.
"Germany should have surrendered long before this happened. How many people died after the war was decided?" Good point. The same could be said of the Confederacy, which had lost the war in 1863 (Gettysburg) if not before, but gallantly kept fighting for almost two more years. Lee was ready to fight at Appomattox. The Germans lost WW II at Stalingrad in 1943, and arguably when they lost the Battle of Britain three years earlier; how many people died between then and 1945?
"One lesson might be to not start wars you aren't going to win." The best lesson of all, but a corollary is: Don't start a war if your successor will throw your victory away. For any US president, I think that means that you have to win the war, completely, no serious loose ends, within 4 years of your election. Or you could arrange to be succeeded by Harry Truman, not Barack Obama.
It's just as well the Germans don't spend too much time brooding over the wrongs the world has done them. That's what got them in trouble last time.....That lesson applies to others.
Wikipedia:
The first torpedo (with text written on it: "For the Motherland") struck near the port bow. The second torpedo ("For the Soviet people") hit just ahead of midships. The third torpedo ("For Leningrad") struck the engine room in the area below the ship's funnel, cutting off electrical power to the ship. Wilhelm Gustloff took a light list to port and settled rapidly by the head.
Vengeance.
William-
Yes, grievance leads to ruin. Get over it and move on.
The supposedly fanatical Japanese surrendered before they were invaded. They had more sense.
Only the A-bomb knocked that sense into their leaders. The A-bomb was intended for Hitler but was never used.
David concluded: Vengeance
Vengeance was thine?
I see you in a different light then.
Günter Grass is an unrepentant totalitarian stooge. That he traded Heinrich Himmler for the likes of Beria and Andropov is merely typical -- any port in a storm as they say. Nevertheless in the interest of truth one must point out that the cited article leaves out some important details.
The first detail was the combatant status of Wilhelm Guttsloff. German sources sometimes claim that Guttsolff was showing a red cross on her side, indicating her status as a hospital ship. This would not have been clear to a sub commander operating at night. Furthermore, according to the Geneva Convention a hospital ship must be registered with the International Red Cross and follow certain protocols to be considered as such, among these are formal registration, including copies of builders plans and silhouettes, inspection by an authorized representative of the IRC, and being painted a uniform white above the waterline with appropriate IRC recognition emblems displayed. Upon acceptance of the hospital ship designation the master must not permit installation of weapons of any kind on his ship, nor permit stowage or transport of weapons or munitions, and he must submit his ship to spot inspection whenever demanded by an authorized IRC agent to insure compliance. A hospital ship may maneuver with a combatant force of warships and may be screened by combatant escorts, but must not maneuver in any way that can be interpreted as screening or escorting -- in other words you can't use a hospital ship to protect a warship, just as it is forbidden to use schools or hospitals as shelters or storage points for weapons (not that MSNBC has ever been interested in such usages by Hamas in Gaza). Japan, a non-signatory power, tried to protect the largest aircraft carrier of WWII, HIMS Shinano by screening her with an unofficial hospital ship. It didn't work. USS Archerfish got inside the screen and deep-sixed her with a spread of six torpedoes.
By the official reckoning MV Wilhelm Guttsloff was not a hospital ship. When she was attacked Guttsloff was still wearing the camouflage paint scheme applied to her while serving as a Kriegsmarine auxiliary, nor was she fully disarmed as required by the Geneva accords.
The second detail that mitigates against the "war crime" charge is that MV Wilhelm Guttsloff was under escort (those boats and armed trawlers that rescued the survivors were not in the area by accident, they were Guttsloff's screen. Under escort and wearing camouflage bespeaks a troopship or some other kind of high-value fleet auxiliary, not a treaty-protected hospital ship.
Germans were happily devoted to their Charismatic Leader as they conquered Europe in real killing and looting sprees as they went, especially proud to be slaughtering slavs and Jews across Russia to take their lands for Germans.
So sorry, too bad. The demon possessed Great Hitler turned into ordering determined revenge actions to see that all the Germans died for failing him.
Günter Grass's claim that the sinking wasn't a war crime because "it wasn't planned" is bullshit. S-13 was operating under orders to sink anything German that came into view. Even if Guttsloff was a duly authorized and compliant hospital ship Marinesko would have attacked anyway because of the nature of the war in the East -- a nature dictated as official policy by Hitler and the OKW. The German's didn't respect Russian hospitals or combat medics. They killed soldier and civilians indiscriminately, and they treated Russian POW as animals to be starved, worked, and murdered without scruple.
We fought with the Soviets against Hitler but turned on a dime against the Russians after the war, defending the same territory and people as Hitler did. The East was lost but Roosevelt and especially his Secretary of Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, wanted to inflict punitive reparations on post war western Germany. The idea was transform Germany into a pastoral, agricultural state. Fortunately, wiser heads prevailed and the Morgenthau Plan gave way to the Marshall Plan which focused on rebuilding rather than annihilating with a vengeance.
Sharecroppers, rack rent Irish peasants, kulaks, and collective farm workers all suffered and died without anyone making much of a fuss
Ah but Lillian Hellman did her part, writing a wonderful film, "The North Star" of well-fed, dancing, happy kulaks who love love their Uncle Joe Stalin.
Good little Red she was
...and they treated Russian POW as animals to be starved, worked, and murdered without scruple.
Wiki reports that in early 1947 four million German soldiers were still being used as forced labour in the UK, France, and the Soviet Union. link
In Switzerland, I met a young man whose Wehrmacht father was held by the Soviets well into the 1950's.
The Soviets lost in the long run; the Russians are not faring much better.
chickelit said...Vengeance was thine?
I see you in a different light then.
I think vae victis is more appropriate.
chickelit said...The Soviets lost in the long run
It was a long damn run for a lot of damn people, though--poor bastards.
If only the United States could be tied to it, then a war crimes trial could get some legs.
Terrible things happen in war, that's why you don't start them carelessly.
When Sherman said "War is Hell," people believed in Hell as a place where damned souls suffered unspeakable horrors for all of eternity.
Now 'hell' and 'damn' are such mild words, like gosh and darn that we can't really get his original meaning anymore. Somebody needs to come up with a new phrase that captures the sentiment afresh.
This is why the concept of war crimes is pointless. Was My Lai planned? What kind of criteria is that?
The concept of war crimes is just one more tool of the left to advance the march of communism against states that believe in human liberty. There is never going to be a formal and unbiased accounting, after a war, that examines all of the actions taken by both sides in light of "abuse of human rights."
Those here that think that Kissinger or W should be tried for war crimes ought to read the Black Book of Communism, then look in the mirror.
1. The evacuation of East Prussia was a feat that rivaled Dunkirk. Fewer people moved, mostly women and children, over a longer distance, with fewer boats, against a greater threat.
2. Yes, The German Army should have expected the barbarism, given their behavior in Russia, but the civilians in Konigsberg didn't do those crimes.
3. The German Army sacrificed itself to get those people out.
4. The planned barbarity of the Soviet Army on the road to Berlin is likely unmatched since Genghis Khan.
5. Don't get me started on the second Warsaw uprising
I partly agree Tim. War crimes are just one more way for the winners to stick it to the losers. But there should be some standards for the treatment of non-combatants and surrendered soldiers. Even in war, it doesn't need to be a free-for-all.
But there should be some standards for the treatment of non-combatants and surrendered soldiers.
I agree, we should kill them with drones and not accept surrenders. That way we can close Gitmo with a clean conscience!
All I am really saying is that the whole concept of "international law" and "war crimes" is just a cudgel used by the left in their never ending quest to enslave us all.
We often took no prisoners in the Pacific, allowed no-one to surrender. That was a war crime and we salute with a tear in our eye the soldiers who fought there, and rightly so, I add.
All I am really saying is that the whole concept of "international law" and "war crimes" is just a cudgel used by the left in their never ending quest to enslave us a
Tim makes a bold stand against the Nuremberg trials.
Tim makes a bold stand against the Nuremberg trials
Did anybody get tried there for the firebombing of Dresden?
My point is that to pretend that there is such a thing as justice in war or after is simple minded. But there you go, comparing Kissinger to the Nazis in Europe.
Code Pinko is just about punishing Communism's enemies.
Those people were sentenced to death by the likes of Karl Dönitz and the German High Command, who waged indiscriminate submarine warfare against the Allied powers. The Nazis waged total war and got paid back in spades.
Was German submarine warfare any more indiscriminate than American submarine warfare in the Pacific?
But there should be some standards for the treatment of non-combatants and surrendered soldiers. Even in war, it doesn't need to be a free-for-all.
It only works if the standards are accepted by both sides, even if imperfectly. The Germans sometimes adhered to the standards with regards to prisoners from the Western allies. When they failed to do so, Allied troops in the vicinity tended not to adhere to the standards themselves in response, especially when dealing with SS troops. The Germans are pretty much the only people that the US has fought (at least since standards were codified) that even sometimes adhered to the standards.
Those here that think that Kissinger or W should be tried for war crimes ought to read the Black Book of Communism, then look in the mirror.
Are any of the people so calling for Kissinger to be tried on the record with more than a token attempt to hold the North Vietnamese accountable?
"Extreme rightists" you refer to would be the neo-Nazis, the rabid socialists, right?
Extremism isn't always to be associated with US conservatives, please and thank you.
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