99% of people you ask "what's the greatest loss of life at sea?" they would answer titanic, and rightly so as we have had books, tv programmes and even a film made telling you what happened. but, maybe 1% of you have heard of the wilhelm gustloff a german built cruise liner which was commandeered by the german navy and was taking refugees from prussia to avoid capture/rape or murder by the advancing russian army. 10,600 were onboard and a brave russian submarine captain waited for the ship to get 30km from shore before putting 3 torpedoes into its side, killing 9,400 with 5,000 children in that number. on january 30th its the 75th anniversary of this sinking. 11 days later, the same submarine captain still celebrating the death of those civilians and wounded sunk the cruise ship general von steuben full of wounded, civilians and nurses killing 4,500. how about the norwegian freighter that was used by germany to evacuate 7,000+ civilians, wounded and soldiers that was sunk on april 16th 1945 killing 6,500?. maybe you've heard of the cap arcona sunk on may 3rd 1945 by our own r.a.f? with 5,000 prisoners being killed along with another 2,000 from accompanying ships. i find it really amazing that we hear of all the allied loss of lives during this time but sweet nothing about the german losses.