The Sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff on 30 January 1945, the Deadliest Ship Sinking in History
Evacuating refugees and military personnel from East Prussia ahead of the Red Army, the liner Wilhelm Gustloff sailed with an estimated 10,000 people aboard — six times her design capacity. Three Soviet torpedoes sank her in the freezing Baltic in about an hour. Roughly 9,000 died, thousands of them children: the deadliest sinking of a single ship in history, and for decades one of the least discussed.
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