Guenter Grass - Crabwalk

Otherwise the two of them came up with nothing new on the subject of the thirtieth. Konny did have one fact with which he surprised his bosom enemy: “Did you know that our beloved Führers last speech was broadcast on all decks of the doomed ship over the PA system?”

That was true. On the Gustloff, wherever loudspeakers were mounted, Hitlers speech to his people over Greater German Radio was heard. In the maternity ward, where Mother had been advised by the head nurse to lie down on a cot, she heard that unmistakable voice proclaim, “Twelve years ago, on 30 January 1933, a truly historic day, Providence placed the destiny of the German Volk in my hands…”

Then Koch, the Gauleiter of East Prussia, spouted a dozen slogans about staying the course. Tragic music followed. But Mother mentioned only the Führers speech: “It sure gave me the creeps when the Führer went on that way about destiny and stuff like that…” And sometimes, after falling silent for a moment, she would add, “It sounded like what you'd hear at a funeral.”

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The broadcast didn't come until later. For now the ship was steaming across the relatively calm Bay of Danzig toward the tip of the Hela Peninsula.

The thirtieth fell on a Tuesday. Despite the ship's having been docked for years, the engines ran smoothly. A choppy sea and snow flurries. Soup and bread were doled out on all the enclosed decks to those with meal tickets. The two torpedo-interception boats that were supposed to escort the ship safely to Hela soon found they could not make any headway against the increasingly heavy seas and had to be authorized by radio to turn back. Also by radio came instructions as to the ship's final destination: in Kiel the future U-boat crewmen of the 2nd Training Division, the wounded, and the naval auxiliaries were to disembark or be carried off the ship; the refugees would continue on to Flensburg. Snow was still falling. The first cases of seasickness were reported. When the Hansa, likewise crammed with refugees, hove into view in the Hela roadstead, the convoy was complete, with the exception of the three escort boats that had been promised. But then an order was received to drop anchor.

I don't want to go into all the circumstances that caused the doomed ship — forgotten by the entire world, or, to be more accurate, repressed, but now suddenly roaming the Internet like a ghost ship — to continue its journey eventually without the Hansa, whose engines were damaged. The Gustloff was accompanied by only two escort vessels, of which one was soon called back. Just this much: the engines had hardly started up again when the quarreling broke out on the bridge as to who was in charge. The four captains were arguing with and against each other. Petersen and his first officer — also from the merchant marine — insisted that the ship travel no faster than twelve knots. The reason: after being docked so long, it should not be pushed to do more. But Zahn, the former U-boat commander, fearing enemy attacks from a firing position with which he was very familiar, wanted to increase the speed to fifteen knots. Petersen prevailed. Then the first officer, supported by the navigation captains Köhler and Weller, proposed that from Rixhöft they follow the coastal route, which was mined but shallow enough so they would be safe from U-boats. But Petersen, now supported by Zahn, decided in favor of the deep-water channel, which had been swept for mines. He rejected, however, the advice from all the other captains that the ship steer a zigzag course. The only thing not subject to dispute was the weather report: wind west-northwest at a force of six to seven, turning westerly and falling to five as evening approached. The swell at four, driving snow, visibility one to three nautical miles, medium frost.

Of all this — the continuing arguments on the bridge, the absence of an adequate number of escort vessels, and the increased icing over of everything on the upper deck — the antiaircraft guns had become inoperable — Mother remained oblivious. She recalled that after the “Führers speech” she received from Nurse Helga five pieces of zwieback and a bowl of rice pudding with sugar and cinnamon. From the nearby Bower the groaning of the critically wounded could be heard. Fortunately the radio was playing dance music, “cheerful tunes.” She fell asleep to the sound. No contractions yet. After all, Mother thought she was in her eighth month.

The Gustloff was not alone as it steamed along at a distance of twelve nautical miles from the Pomeranian coast. The Soviet submarine S-13 was following the same course. The submarine had waited in vain in the waters near the embattled port city of Memel, along with two other units of the Baltic Red Banner Fleet, for ships departing or bringing reinforcements to the remnants of the German 4th Army. For days nothing came into view. While he waited, the captain of 5-/J may have been brooding over the impending court-martial and the interrogation he would have to undergo at the hands oft the NKVD.

When Aleksandr Marinesko received word over the radio in the early morning hours of 30 January that the Red Army had captured Memel's port, he issued an order for a new course without informing his central command. While the Gustloff was still docked at the Oxhöft quay, taking on a few more batches of refugees — now the Pokriefkes came on board — S-13, with forty-seven men and ten torpedoes, made for the Pomeranian coast.

While in my report two boats are coming closer and closer but nothing decisive has happened yet, an opportunity offers itself for taking note of routine conditions in a Graubünden penal institution. On that Tuesday, as on every workday, the prisoners were sitting at their looms. By this time the murderer of the former Nazi Landesgruppenleiter Wilhelm Gustloff had served nine years of his eighteen-year sentence. With the war situation now radically altered — since the Greater German Reich no longer represented a threat, he had been transferred back to Sennhof Prison in Chur — he thought the moment had come for submitting a request for clemency; but it was rejected by the Swiss Supreme Court around the time of the ships' maneuvering in the Baltic. It was not only David Frankfurter but also the ship named after his victim that found no mercy.

He says my report would make a good novella. A literary assessment with which I can't concern myself. I merely report the following: on the day that Providence, or some other calendar maker, had selected as the ship's last, the downfall of the Greater German Reich had already been rung in. Divisions of the British and American armies had entered the area around Aachen. Our remaining U-boats sent word that they had sunk three freighters in the Irish Sea, but along the Rhine front, pressure on Colmar was growing. In the Balkans, the partisans around Sarajevo were becoming more aggressive. The 2nd Mountain Troop Division was withdrawn from Jylland in Denmark to reinforce sections of the eastern front. In Budapest, where supply problems were worsening from day to day, the front ran directly below the castle. Everywhere dead bodies were left behind, on both sides. Identification tags were collected, decorations handed out.

What else happened, aside from the fact that promised miracle weapons failed to appear? In Silesia, attacks near Glogau were repulsed, but around Posen the fighting intensified. And near Kulm, Soviet units crossed the Vistula. In East Prussia the enemy advanced to Bartenstein and Bischofswerder. Up to this day, which was nothing special in itself, the authorities had managed to get sixty-five thousand people, civilian and military, onto boats in Pillau. Everywhere monument-worthy heroic deeds were performed; others were in the offing. As the Wilhelm Gustloff on its westward course was approaching the Stolpe Bank, and the submarine S-13 was still prowling for prey, eleven hundred four-engine enemy bombers conducted a night raid on the area around Hamm, Bielefeld, and Kassel, and the American president had already left the United States; Roosevelt was on his way to Yalta, the conference site on the Crimean peninsula, where the ailing man would meet with Churchill and Stalin to pave the way for peace by drawing new borders.