PETER HANSEN (251-LIFE-1987) spent time working for the ABWEHR (the German Secret Service) during WW II and he has information that is known to a mere handful of people. He gives this secret information especially to SHARKHUNTERS. Here he tells us:

Regarding the WILHELM GUSTLOFF – ALFRED ECKERT (3120-1993) is mistaken when he states that the WILHELM GUSTLOFF was used as accommodation ship for the 1.U.L.D. Training Division in Pillau, now Baltysk.

EDITOR NOTE – That is the First U-Boot Lehr Division or Submarine Training Division.

It was in fact used by the 2.U.L.D. Command in Gotenhafen (now Gdingen) and was tied to the pier for almost five years in that port before it departed eventually on 30 January 1945 fully loaded for western Germany. The main accommodation ship in Pillau was the ROBERT LEY, a sistership, plus several other passenger liners for the tripulations and students of the different training flotillas in Pillau.

Regardless of the fact that the precise number of passengers and their names was never fully recorded and established, it is known that only 904 survived the sinking in the icy cold waters when quite a few people still died after being picked up due to exposure problems. While quite a few families of Nazi party functionaries were put aboard the GUSTLOFF plus other civilians who had pull and connections and were able to ‘grease’ certain people who assigned boarding passes. The fact is that a very substantial part of the passengers were U-Boat people, namely the entire II. (2nd) Abteilung (group) of the 2.U.L.D. Training Command, both the students and trainees of all grades as well as the instructors and the entire administrative staff too. Plus about 50% of the 1. (1st) Abteilung including the officer training companies.

Furthermore, about 700 female naval auxiliary girls were embarked and of these, about 50% worked for the 2.U.L.D. in various jobs and assignments, the rest for the Kriegsmarine in other offices in Danzig and Gotenhafen.

This evacuation was commanded by Richard Zapp (photo at right), former captain of U-66 and also the last chief of the 3rd U-Boot Flotilla in La Rochelle/La Pallice, France. The ship still had a civilian crew including Captain Petersen in operational command, but Richard Zapp had different ideas as to the sailing route and speed, even if the liner had not run its engines in over four years and it was uncertain even what sustained speed the GUSTLOFF could achieve under these circumstances. However it was clear that the GUSTLOFF would be unable to reach higher speed on extended basis, much less maximum speed. Consequently, not less than 50% of the embarked passengers were active Kriegsmarine personnel including a considerable number of experienced U-Boat veterans rather than entirely civilians or East Prussian refugees as is nowadays frequently claimed.

EDITOR NOTE – this is very new and startling information. The Russians claim even to today that the GUSTLOFF was carrying 6,000 highly trained U-Boat crewmen, which is not correct, but there were a lot more U-Bootfahrer aboard than once believed.

A Party member (Ortsgruppenleiter) named Wilhelm Gustloff was killed in Davos, Switzerland of all places, and Hitler ordered that the ship would be named WILHELM GUSTLOFF on impulse in order to achieve the biggest possible propaganda value of this new and sudden murder which caused all sorts of last minute complications at the shipyard because there had been another name assigned to the ship which had already been posted and press releases prepared etc. One might wonder how and why a Nazi party functionary was operating actively in Switzerland wearing his uniform of brown with all sorts of golden markings, this was why the population called these disliked party functionaries “Golden Pheasants” as they were marching around and crowing loudly, proclaiming their importance, most of them overweight and feisty.

The official story was Gustloff had to live in Davos, Switzerland because his lungs were causing him problems at lower altitudes and he was admitted to Switzerland as a semi-disabled person. Naturally the Swiss authorities became pretty disgusted and sour when, to their chagrin, Herr Gustloff abused his privileges & turned into an eager promoter of Nazi causes, wearing his uniform and pressuring other German citizens living in Switzerland, many of them retired or who had left Germany due to political reasons, to now join the party, organizing parades in Davos, generating a lot of obnoxious activity. The Swiss had already decided to kick him out from Switzerland when he was killed unexpectedly. Thus both Josef Goebbels and Hitler immediately grabbed this opportunity to create propaganda pressure and frenzied press and radio revenge activity!

Vice Admiral Lothar von Arnaud de la Perriere

Comments on the air crash that killed Vice Admiral Lothar von Arnaud de la Perriere after take off from Le Bourget Airport in Paris – but there was never any information or follow up on this. Maybe this got buried somewhere under other stuff? I do recall that the special Navy Investigators assigned to the case, one of them a chap I worked with very closely in other situations, were barred from access by both the Luftwaffe as well as the S.D. to both the crash site as well as from all files and records too.

EDITOR NOTE – Members have asked about the fate of this Skipper. He was the most successful combat submarine commander EVER, sinking some 198 ships in World War I. In World War II, he was in charge of liaison with the shipyard workers in France and at that time, there were little or no problems with sabotage or labor problems. For some reason, his plane crashed and his successor pretty well destroyed all the good rapport that was once built up and the problems began. One might wonder what caused that plane to crash, but if the Luftwaffe and the Sicherheitsdienst would not permit any investigation at all, one might get the idea that this accident………really wasn’t?

Basis Nord

“Basis NORD” actually goes back to the preliminaries negotiated with Sowjet Russia even before the treaty was signed, that Hitler thought would prevent England and France from activating their Polish guaranty and thereby general war would be again postponed and temporarily avoided. However, this Base NORD was never activated near Murmansk. Erich Raeder felt it would not be required and operationally useless due to geographic distances. After the war started, several German merchant vessels harbored there for awhile including the liner BREMEN but no Kriegsmarine ships ever did arrive there at any time. Furthermore, it was determined by the German Naval Attaché in Moscow that fuel available in the ports of Murmansk, Archangels and Polarnoye were of such inferior quality that the much more sensitive engines of German warships could not use it without serious problems.

EDITOR NOTE – We covered Basis NORD and other places where the Kriegsmarine had planned to operate secret bases in earlier issues of the KTB. There were many such plans prior to the war.

As I never was involved with the various weather ships and placing of different weather stations from Greenland to Siberia, I really can’t tell you a lot about them. As far as the landing of Abwehr trained and Party selected agents in concerned, I do not remember too many details though I am aware that many of these so-called agents were literally pushed upon the Abwehr by either Nazi Party Offices, the SS and SD, or the Foreign Office for various political reasons of their own. Things operated in Nazi Germany on the ‘Divide and Rule’ basis. Hitler preferred competition and split-up arrangements to avoid centralization and the possible creation of power centers that would be a threat to him and his party gangs. However, because it was realized by the Abwehr that many of these agents were not only completely unsuitable by background and experience but also barely trained, most of them without the necessary linguistic capabilities as many of these placements, as was possible were sidetracked, refused or delayed with the hope that the deal would sink itself eventually.

EDITOR NOTE – A glaring example of sending totally inept and unqualified agents into the field was Operation PASTORUS in which eight agents were put ashore in the USA by U-202 & U-584. One of them, Georg Dasch was such a solid Communist that he turned all his fellow agents in to the FBI almost immediately on their reaching America. The entire operation should have been cancelled when the agents got drunk in their French hotel the night before shoving off, running wild in the halls with their prostitutes and hollering so loud in English so that the German security police actually thought the hotel had been overrun by British ‘Tommies’.

Karl Dönitz also was always greatly opposed to the use of U-Boats to ferry such agents anywhere, as he felt these mostly useless activities interfered strongly with operational needs and wasted fuel, resources and interfered with contemplated patrols. In several instances, such agents even after training at Gut Quenz, a country estate located at Lake Quenz in Brandenburg Province, were not physically in shape to survive tougher conditions apart from their lack of other qualifications, most of these agents were literally sacrificed to reduce the Nazi Party pressure for such activities.

EDITOR NOTE – This is borne out by some of the crazy antics of some agents. One was put ashore on the Canadian coast from, I believe, U-518. He immediately buried his radio and other equipment and headed for the nearest town where he was one of the best customers at the local bars and whorehouses…..until he ran out of money about a year later. The only option was to turn himself in to the Canadian authorities in the hopes of getting food in jail but they would not believe that he was an agent – he was the town drunk. It was only when he took authorities to dig up his equipment that they finally believed him, and put him in jail.

Several of these people I happened to meet and interview with the intention to disqualify them by and large. However, in most cases, political considerations overruled the Abwehr because Keitel, who was placed over Canaris, insisted these activities had Hitler’s support and had to take place regardless how useless and hopeless they actually happened to be.

In addition, apart from the Foreign Office and the Propaganda Ministry of Dr. Goebbels, quite often these excessive numbers of admirals and fossilized old captains at the OKM (the Navy Ministry) were always pushing these kinds of schemes and often unrealistic deals to demonstrate their importance and justify their existence, much to the aggravation of the Abwehr both in Berlin as well as in the field. Under the prevailing circumstances, 95% of these so-called agents actually counted for nothing and were really entirely expendable, with few exceptions, that they might produce any information of value or results somehow.

One of these exceptions were the operations of sailing yachts to deliver agents to Ireland initially, later to South Africa, West Africa and South America. Here the men who crewed these carefully selected sailing boats were outstandingly competent international sailors with transatlantic yacht racing experience, all of them reservists actually. Their operation was comparatively successful, especially in South Africa. But again, the agents selected largely caused them to flop sooner or later. Several of these fellows I did talk to and instruct partially, mainly in order to ascertain their experience and competency and to make them comprehend that sailings for many weeks on endless oceanic routes was not the same as skippering around the Wannsee in Berlin in pleasure craft! If these details on these operations and sailings are of interest, I could furnish you the details and specifics.

EDITOR NOTE – You bet! Please send this information.

U-604

I think I already told you why Horst Höltring, captain of U-604, was called the “gangster”. It was because he was one of the very few naval officers who often had a pistol or revolver as sidearm under his uniform jacket, something that was very unusual – nay, exceptional even, and many satirical comments were made about it by other officers including his classmates openly or low-voiced. As far as Hans Trojer, captain of U-221 is concerned, his nick-name of ‘Count Dracula’ originated because he was born in the Siebenbürgen (Transylvania) region of Romania where Count Dracula had lived, and because Hans Trojer featured a very heavy and coal black square beard that gave him a look that scared some folks quite a bit. While there were other chaps who carried nick names, sometimes generally known, sometimes used only on the sly, there were not always widely known. Many of them originated during the times when these officers had been midshipmen in their younger days and had been given these names by their fellow classmates for one reason or another, just like it is often customary in colleges and schools.

This will continue in KTB #175 next month – and you’ll really want to read what Hans-Rudolf Rösing was called and what some of the Skippers thought of him. It isn’t complimentary!!!