Imagine if they had shown this amount of organisational skill after France fell in 1940? "The Kriegsmarine made its last major surface effort in the Baltic during the last months of the war. Dönitz concentrated all remaining surface ships along the southern Baltic coast, covering retreat and evacuation of cut off garrisons and civilian refugees. Evacuations totaling 1 million troops and 1.5 million civilians were carried out under intense Soviet bombing and submarine attacks, altogether forming the single largest maritime evacuation in history. Soviet submarines caused three of the greatest maritime disasters in history when they sank three German liners packed with troops and refugees. Each sinking cost several times the peacetime casualties lost on the far more famous civilian ships “Titanic” and“Lusitania”: over 9,000 died in the frigid Baltic when the “Wilhelm Gustloff “ was sunk by three torpedoes. There were only 900 survivors. The Kriegsmarine continued to run the gauntlet to Courland until the end of the war, supplying the shrinking pocket and removing wounded and refugees. By the end of the Baltic campaign the Germans had lost 1 old battleship, 7 U-boats, 12 destroyers, and nearly 200 smaller warships (minelayers, minesweepers, and various landing craft)." Operation Hannibal
O I dunno - the British would have been pretty happy at doing that amount of damage if Sealion had been launched!
The evaquation reads like a horror story, the civilian losses due to the sinkings were truly horrible. Organization was not good, AFAIK the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff went unreported for hours which delayed help and probably contributed to the losses.
