Background........
"Operation
Hannibal" was a German military operation involving the evacuation
by sea of German troops and civilians from Courland, East Prussia, and the Polish Corridor, that started on January
21, 1945, on the orders of Admiral Karl Donitz, withdrawing German troops and civilians from East Prussia.
The situation was becoming desperate for Germany at the beginning of 1945 - there were no munitions reserves, food,
weapons or fuel left. Communications had almost completely broken down or did not exist - Italy had surrendered
and superior Russian Forces had started to overun the Eastern Provinces of East and West Prussia.
Once the Normandy landings of June 1944 had succeeded (see OVERLORD), the Germans sent all available surface warships,
and even some submarines, into the Baltic to delay the advancing Red Army. Mines dropped by the RAF in the western
Baltic hampered this move, but the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen and the pocket battleships Lützow and Admiral
Scheer were employed to cover the German Army's retreat, and German troops and civilians were evacuated from besieged
Baltic ports.
German Grand Admiral Karl Donitz ordered General Admiral Oskar Kummetz, as Naval High Commander, Baltic, and Rear
Admiral Konrad Engelhardt, head of the Kriegmarine's shipping department, to plan and execute the Rettungsaktion
(evacuation operation). Donitz radioed a coded message to Gdynia (Gotenhafen) in occupied Poland on January 23,
1945, to begin evacuations to ports outside of the Soviet area of operations. Dönitz stated in his post-war
memoirs that his aim had been to evacuate as many people as possible away from the Soviets.
The flood of refugees turned the operation into one of the largest emergency evacuations by sea in history over
a period of 15 weeks, somewhere between 494 and 1,080 merchant vessels of all types and numerous naval craft, including
Germany's largest remaining naval units, would transport about 800,000 - 900,000 refugees and 350,000 soldiers
across the Baltic Sea to Germany and occupied Denmark. In addition to the Goya, Gustloff, and Steuben, 158 other
merchant vessels were lost during the 15-week course of "Operation Hannibal" January 23 - May 8, 1945.
According to a summary prepared by the Kriegsmarine's Naval Group East,
between 21 January and 8 May, more than a million soldiers and refugees had been thus evacuated from East Prussian
ports, whilst another 2,032,000 were taken off the East Prussian coast. Finally the U-boat training bases were
lost to the advancing Russians. Memel fell on 28 January, and the other training bases were soon threatened by
the Russian advance. Gydnia, northwest of Danzig, fell on Wednesday, 28 March, and two days later the fighting
in Danzig ended. The port city fell with forty-five U-boats and ten thousand prisoners-of-war. German troops were
trapped in Breslau and Glogau, now totally encircled. Pillau would not surrender until 25 April, by which time
460,000 refugees had managed to be evacuated from the port.
As the Kriegsmarine's surface ships plied the waters of the Baltic, to bring as many as they could to Schleswig-Holstein,
U-boat men were also involved, both as auxiliary crew aboard the transport ships, and within their own boats, which
also took as many as possible to comparative safety. As the U-boat training bases in the East were evacuated, the
westbound boats took as many as they could aboard and transported them west. In fact, the table shows the U-boats
that were listed by the U-Boat Archive in Altenbruch as confirmed in taking part in the evacuation missions in
1945 (although there may well have been others, as records are far from complete).
Ref: Black Flag
by Lawrence Paterson
By May 1945 2,401,387 people, including 1.42 million refugees escaping across the sea had been rescued, the largest
evacuation in maritime history. Losses amounted to scarcely one percent, approximately 33,082 died. Most of the
deaths were caused by the sinking of three rescue ships, including the Wilhelm Gustloff, were caused by Soviet
submarines, since the German blockade of the Gulf Of Finland had been lifted (Finland's involvement in the war
ceased on 4 September 1944). Soviet submarines caused three of the greatest maritime disasters in history when
they sank three German liners packed with troops and refugees. In the period from January to March 1945, 3,220
Allied mines were laid and they sank a total of 67 ships. But despite the mine fields, Soviet submarine and air
attacks, the Germans retained their naval supremacy, and they continued to supply their divisions trapped in the
Courland peninsula, enabling them to hold out there until the war ended. Of the 1,081 ships which put to sea, 245
were lost. This evacuation was one of the German Navy's most significant achievements during the war. By the end
of the Baltic campaign the Germans had lost 12 destroyers, 7 submarines, 67 minesweepers, and nearly 200 smaller
warships (minelayers, minesweepers, and various landing craft), and 160 merchantmen; their single biggest loss
was among their last when the old 13,000-ton battleship Schlesien was sunk by a mine on 4 May 1945.
Much of this activity has gone unreported and exact details will probably never be known because the daily chaotic
situation prevented the keeping of detailed records.
One of the least mentioned aspects of this evacuation, was the part played by German U-Boats. This chapter is barely
mentioned or not mentioned at all in conventional histories of the u-boat conflict. The U-Boat
War in the Atlantic 1939-1945 compiled by Gunther Hessler, a standard reference on the u-boat war, has only a passing reference to the evacuations
from the Eastern Front and no specifics are given.
The information that I have presented here has been gleaned from various reference sources and hopefully will add
to this important and timely chapter of U-Boat operations.......
"Operation Hannibal"- Situation
Baltic Sea 31 January 1945
General
Baltic Situation -- Ostsee 1939 - 1945 |
Many newer Type XXI U-Boats were actively involved in the evacuation of refugees during this
period:
When the Type XXI boats were moved from their training and testing sites to the West, they too took part in the
rescue of the wounded and refugees, although an explicit instruction was to let no unauthorized persons on board
these new submarines. Among other things, on the 2nd February 1945 U 2506 took 32 refugees from Gdynia to Travemunde;
U 2507 took a greater number of refugees from Gdansk to Warnemunde; on 28 March, U 2533 transported about 50 boys
of a military training camp; U 3517, on 2 March 1945, 53 students of a KLV camp*; U 3507, on 28 February 1945,
about 60 Hitler Youth from another camp; U 3505, 22-26 March (two trips), CO's wife and child and U 3020 transported
approximately 50 Hitler Youth each; on 23 March, U 3528 about 40 refugees; U 3002 on 13 March, women and children
and on 23 March, U 3529 40 refugees, including women and children; on 2 March, U 3514 eight wounded members of
the Army and refugees; and in January, February and March, U 3501, U 3522 and U 3524 took an unknown number of
refugees with them to the ports of the western Baltic Sea and Bornholm. In April, U 3013 was the last submarine
to have left Hela with 30 - 40 refugees and delivered them to Bornholm.
*The German Kinderlandverschickung (Child Land Dispatch -- KLV) ... evacuation
of children (1940-41), the German KLA evacuation and camps are little discussed. ... The actual camp for the KLV
evacuee children was known as a Lager.
An excerpt from: U-Boottyp XXI by Eberhard
Rossler, H. H. Fuchslocher & K.-W. Grutzemacher |
| 53 U-Boats Involved In Evacuations January-April 19451 |
|
U-14
|
U-17
|
U-56
|
U-57
|
U-58
|
U-59
|
U-152
|
U-236
|
U-368
|
|
U-721
|
U-746
|
U-747
|
U-778
|
U-822
|
U-828
|
U-903
|
U-924
|
U-999
|
|
U-1007
|
U-1028
|
U-1065
|
U-1110
|
U-1165
|
U-1197
|
U-1205
|
U-1306
|
U-2502
|
|
U-2503
|
U-2506
|
U-2507
|
U-2518
|
U-2521
|
U-2524
|
U-2533
|
U-3002
|
U-3010
|
|
U-3012
|
U-3013
|
U-3020
|
U-3023
|
U-3025
|
U-3501
|
U-3505
|
U-3507
|
U-3511
|
|
U-3513
|
U-3514
|
U-3517
|
U-3520
|
U-3522
|
U-3524
|
U-3528
|
U-3529
|
UD-4
|
| 1Many of these boats had not even entered active service
-- others were retired veteran boats which were serving or had served as training vessels for new U-boat crews. |