1945 жылы сүңгіген «Генерал фон Штойбен» кемесінің трагедиясы

German military transport ship; sank 1945, killing thousands

SS General von Steuben was a German passenger liner and later an armed transport ship of the German Navy that was sunk in the Baltic Sea during World War II. She was launched in 1923 as München (after the German city, sometimes spelled Muenchen), renamed General von Steuben in 1930 (after the famous German officer of the American Revolutionary War), and renamed Steuben in 1938. During World War II, the ship served as a troop accommodation vessel, and from 1944 as an armed transport. On 10 February 1945, while evacuating German military personnel, wounded soldiers, and civilian refugees during Operation Hannibal, the ship was torpedoed by the Soviet submarine S 13 and sank. An estimated 4,000 people lost their lives in the sinking.

In 1923, München became the first German trans Atlantic passenger liner to be launched, and also the first to enter New York Harbor, since the end of World War I. She arrived in July 1923 on her maiden transatlantic voyage.

On 11 February 1930, after München docked in New York City and discharged passengers and most of her crew from a voyage from Bremen, Germany, a fire broke out in a paint locker on board and quickly spread to another storage hold. The massive fire and explosion resulted in a five alarm fire and all of the city's fire equipment was sent to the burning ship. The fire could not be controlled and the ship sank next to the wharf where it had docked. Shortly afterwards, the ship's owner renamed her General von Steuben.

The ship, now called Steuben, was commissioned in 1939 as a Kriegsmarine accommodation ship. In 1944, she was pressed into service as an armed transport ship, taking German troops to eastern Baltic ports and returning wounded troops to Kiel.

Along with the and numerous other vessels, Steuben was part of the largest evacuation by sea in modern times. The Operation Hannibal evacuations surpassed the British evacuation at Dunkirk in both size of the operation and number of people evacuated. By early January 1945, Grossadmiral Karl Dönitz realized that Germany was soon to be defeated. Wishing to save his submariners, he radioed a coded message on 23 January 1945 to the Baltic Sea port of Gotenhafen (the Polish city and port of Gdynia under German occupation) to evacuate to the West, under the code name Operation Hannibal. Submariners at that point were schooled and housed in ships floating in the Baltic ports, most of them at Gotenhafen. Among the ships were , , Hansa, and Wilhelm Gustloff. Notwithstanding the losses suffered during the operation, over two million people were evacuated ahead of the Red Army's advance into East Prussia and Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland). In the winter of 1945, East Prussian refugees headed west, away from the city of Königsberg and ahead of the Soviet advance into the Baltic States and East Prussia. Thousands fled to the Baltic seaport at Pillau (now Baltiysk, Russia), hoping to board ships that would carry them to the relative safety of Western Germany. Steuben was part of the fleet sent for the purpose.