Operation Hannibal
Operation Hannibal was a naval withdrawal of the Germans set in the middle of January, 1945 as the invading Soviet army advanced the Eastern Europe, mainly East Prussia. By early January of 1945 Karl Doenitz had realized that Germany was soon to be defeated and, wishing to save his submariners, had radioed a coded message on January 23 to Gdynia (Gotenhafen) to flee to the West and the operation code name Hannibal. Doenitz's avowed aim had been to evacuate as many abled people as possible away from the Soviet grab however as late as April 1945, Hitler believed the war had to go on. The flood of refugees eventually turned the operation into one of the largest evacuations by sea in history (over a period of four months some 1,100 German ships would transport over two million people across the Baltic Sea to Germany¹. The kinds of ships pressed included ore haulers, freighters, naval vessels and fishing boats.
Operation
In early March, a task force comprised of the pocket battleship "Admiral Scheer" accompanied by three destroyers and the T-36 torpedo boat were giving cover to a German bridgehead near Wollin. During that operation, naval landing crafts managed to evacuate over 75,000 refugees who had been isolated in that area. Thery were taken to larger warships and other transports laying offshore. While a number of big transports were sunk, big liners such as the "Deutschland" managed to break through and carry up to 11,000 men each. During the night of 4th to 5th April a flotilla of small boats, landing crafts etc. evacuated over 30,000 refugees from the Oxhofter Kampe and took them to Hela. It's estimated that nearly 265,000 people were evacuated from Danzig to Hela during the month of April alone². On April 15, another large convoy consisting of four liners and other transports left Hela with over 20,000 refugees. From May 1 to May 8 over 150,000 survivors were evacuated from the beaches of Hela. On the last day of the war, a convoy consisting of 65 small vessels left Libau with 15,000 men. Three hundred of them who had boarded the last of the small ships were captured by Soviet warships.