nonetheless, in the area of red mercury, which is a hoax substance that was believed would contribute to, enable people to have a shortcut path to the fab bring cation of nuclear weapons. .. saddam hussein was a victim of a

red mercury hoax. we know that al qaeda was probably a victim of a red mercury hoax. but if we really put together all this material, not to explore whether or not red mercury really provides an easy way of fabricating nuclear weapons, but, rather, look at it from the point of the expectations of the buyers. and what does that tell us about those who might become potential purchasers in the future. i think -- and this is an idea i want to explore further -- thus far the route to nuclear weapons has been through an replication of a manhattan project that as one acquires the stills, one acquires the capacity to enrich

uranium, to mick make the product, and one acquires knowledge, and that's a fairly traditional route. with we get into a proliferation environment where a number of nations want to have a shortcut to nuclear weapons that do not have that technological base, that scientific base, that have ample funds, can this be acquired through unconventional means? can we see proliferation of nuclear weapon states without the precursor of a proliferation of manhattan projects through outsourcing, through in a sense

black markets, although one off black markets, unconventional path to state proliferation, to me, is a more worrisome thing that al qaeda building a nuclear bomb in their garage, which i think is an unlikely scenario. >> i -- just return briefly to the pakistan scenario and if you might walk us through -- there's lots out given that neither pakistan or the united states wants to -- [inaudible] what could pakistan be doing now to think through what it could do if a nuke or material got loose, and how could it

comfortably turn to other nations for assistance? there are things we should be thinking about now? >> i don't -- it's a good question, and certainly i cannot speak for the government of pakistan. but given that, as was pointed out by one of the previous speakers in terms of asking the question and the comment made that the knowledge of the deployment and circumstances of nuclear weapons in pakistan is limited to a very few people, which provides certainly advantages in some cases. it's also an obvious security measure against foreign

intelligence. it also can make things difficult in turbulent and -- during turbulent periods because people simply aren't going to know where everything is. but the fact that the information is held within a very close circle, the fact that we know that there are certain features of the storage of nuclear weapons, indicates that the government of pakistan. pays close attention to the issue of security. it's not as if they're not thinking about the security of nuclear weapons as we think about the security of our nuclear weapons, and they have taken a number of measures to guarantee that security. and so we know that. and there is a measure of

cooperation already between the united states and pakistan. that doesn't mean, i believe, for one minute, that they are sharing everything with us or that we are sharing everything with them. nor would one expect that. to be the case. but there is a measure of cooperation. at the same time, the weapons have to be not only protected in terms of their security, but the reason pakistan has nuclear weapons is for potential use. i mean, hough unimaginable anyone may think that is, that's why you have weapons. and, therefore, there happens to be certain conditions of being

able to move these weapons, bring components of the weapons together under certain periods in which pakistan feels threatened. i and so -- it's not the security of nuclear weapons but being able to deploy nuclear weapons and that risks certain compromises of security. yet, a concern in pakistan is that we have seen -- despite the efforts -- not at the nuclear sites but we have seen attacks by extremist elements on military facilities, naval base, another facility in alpende, these were sizable assaults by

determined units that appear, at least, to offer evidence of some internal assistance. you don't know whether that -- i mean, is that a sergeant? is that a -- one extremist in iran? that i department know. but -- that i don't know but that is a concern. there are further concerns, and i'm not picking on pakistan here, but that's a reality. this is a country that is involved in a major arms struggle internally with the taliban. there are bombings, there are attacks constantly in this. it has had only its first transfer of power from a civilian government to a civilian government. and so when we look at the

conflict, the ongoing conflict, and we look at some of the radicalization, it raises concerns. not only in the united states, islamabad, and this is for them. for us that's may be a theoretical game in the pentagon. for pakistan is it nose a the-do it is not a theoretical game. these are life issues. >> one mow question from the floor. >> good to see you. retiree from state counterterrorism office, and i want to follow up with your comment on the red mercury and purchasers. most of the discussion about nuclear weapons and proliferation september seem to centered on devices that can be delivered by aircraft or missiles, but i want to get your take on the threat or the

possibility of the so-called dirty bombs? this is when the red mercury buy are's looking for, for terrorism purposes, van packed with some kind of dirty device, serves their purposes as much as something conventional. do you see that as a danger? and what's your take on the efforts trying to thwart them. >> i think in terms of various scenarios involving involveing e disbursal of radio active material, we're talking really about a weapon of terror rather than a meaningful threat of mass casualties. unless one has massive quantities of radio active material and can spew out radio active material, as the burning

reactors in chernobyl, the idea of contaminating a city is not realistic. but you don't have to. i think terrorist work in the realm of a modest amount of violence, all that that can ascend pretty high in some circumstances. but a massive amount of terror so one can imagine a see scenario where readow active material is disbursed and casualties would be caused by an explosion if it was an explosive device but we would have the perception of contamination. detectors would sound the alarm. and that would create an atmosphere of fear and alarm, which is what terrorism is all about. so, if we think of likely

weapons of terrorism, then the disbursal scenario is the one that is more feasible, and the one that has a great deal of attractiveness to it, even though it's not the one that's going to cause the thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions of casualties that people talk about. keep in mind, in terms of back to where we started our discussion, about the united states has exaggerated notions about this. there's a difference between nuclear terrorism and nuclear terror. nuclear terrorism is the frightening possibility that terrorists might actually acquire a nuclear capable and use it. nuclear terror is our

apprehension of that event. the history of nuclear terrorism, fortunately, is there hasn't been any yet. nuclear terror is deeply imbedded in our society. it's in our fictional literature. it's in everything from james bond to jack bauer. we have fictionally and in hollywood blown up more american cities with nuclear devices. it is, as i say, part of our culture. and that becomes a problem that we deal with in terms of the nuclear terror environment. because we're dealing not with the reality of an event. we're dealing with really the reality of our fears. about this.

and despite americans -- this is fascinating. this gets out of the realm of physical issues and into the realm of psychology. despite americans' characteristic optimism, we're a nation obsessed with doom. we worry about our place in the world. we worry about being overrun by other countries, by other cultures. we worry about our power. we worry about our economy is going down. this is a nation of deep anxieties. and in that sense, the nuclear terror almost becomes kind of a condenser. for society's broader anxieties, and it enables terrorist with communication skills to become

virtual nuclear powers. i mean, i was fascinated by the fact that, in addition to your list of quotes at the beginning about our prediction, we had, in 2008 in a become speech by the director of the central intelligence agency, say that the agency's number one nuclear concern in the world is al qaeda. and i thought, gosh, we have north korea, they have nuclear weapons. i mean, a bunch of people have nuclear weapons. a bunch of people have centrifuge. how did al qaeda ascend to number one in this? this is really a reflection in many cases of our own -- they became through skillful communications -- they were treated as if they were a virtual nuclear power, and in the analytical community, in the

analytical community, the burden of proof shifted from not looking for the evidence that they were or could be, but to try to come up with the evidence that they could not possibly, and that shift, i think, was really brought about primary live by 9/11, because that simply -- it shifted our notion of -- the analysts proved that terrorists cannot acquire nuclear weapon, and if we take a 50-year time frame, then it is really an impact. and if you're inclined towards expectations of doom or if doom has political utility, if it serves agendas, or if it

confirms personal beliefs, then it is really affects us all the more. it's as much about our environment as what terrorist would do. this book is available on amazon.com in hard copy, for drew, like myself, and also on your ereader, and so i really do commend the book to you. i also just want to highlight that this is actually the first -door -- we're double teaming you. this is the first in a couple of event similar to this that we playing host. may 30th we'll be hosting christian carroll, the editor of foreign policy magazine, who will be talking about his new book, which looks at the

crossroads've religion and the modern global economy. happened in 1979. i don't want to spoil the ending but it happened in 1979. it's a wonderful book and i hope you will consider coming back to join us, but before that, please join me in thanking brian for joining us this afternoon. >> thank you very much. >> cathryn prince talks about the wilhelm gustloff that was transporting women and children in the ball -- ball tick sea in 1945. it was attacked, and caused the

death of over a thousand people. this is about 0 minutes. >> good afternoon and it's a real honor and privilege to be speaking with you here today. several years ago my father told me about a german ship sunk at the end of world war ii. he didn't knee much about it other than d he didn't know much about it other than its name and that it was incredibly devastating. so i decided to look that up. and what i discovered that it was in fact the worst maritime disaster in peace or war. more than nine thousand people died on january 30, 1945, when a soviet submarine, attacked the wilhelm gustloff, a former

cruise liner teche escape ship. so that's six times more than those who died when the titanic sank after hitting an iceberg. during the initial research into this incident, i found that few people outside of the military took note of the sinking in the immediate aftermath, and as the years went on it would gain mention in certain histories of world war ii but nothing that explored it in department. so because of that, little is known about the wilhelm gustloff. and initially i could find no information or explain asia for the death of the -- dirtno the knowledge. i wanted to know more about the thinking thinking and the people who were aboard the gustloff that night,

because the story of the wilhelm gustloff is not only the story of a ship sinking, it's a story how people came do be aboard this ship. at it about what it was like to come of age in a part of nazi germany that until the early 1940s had remained in some ways isolated from what was happening closer to berlin. the first survive was horst. he live threes hours north of toronto. he was a ten-year-old boy at the time of the sinking. so i traveled to canada to see hrrst, and sinking unlawfully -- naturally haunts him. and he thinks it every day, as desperate as the conditions were that forced horst to flee,

stories like his have remain evidence virtually unknown. i spent a few days with horst, but i new within the first hour of meeting him that his story and the story of other survivors needed to be told, and so this book is the store of what i found. it's the result of interviews with survivors and time spent in the archives, including the national archives in washington, dc. i was fortunate enough to spend time at the u.s. holocaust memorial museum, as well as obtaining records from the federal archives. at the end of 1945 the end of the war in europe want in sight. the american and british were closing in from the west and the soviets were closing in on berlin from the east. many civilians and some soldiers, chose to abandon these volatile areas of europe by any

means possible, especially those civilians living in east pressure prussia. they knew the same acts of barberrism, and the same acts would happen to them by the russians as the german army advanced in its invasion of the soviet union in 1942ful however they were not permitted to leave until the very end of 1945. the nazi government forbade anyone to leave, for to do so would have shown signs of defeatism and acknowledgment they would lose the war. finally hitler agrees and give permission to start evacuating civilians and that's operation handthe ball was born, which did ultimately save two million civilians. at that this point the refugees

are starting to mass on harbors all long the baltic sea, and -- in the final days of january, 27th, 28th, 29th, refugees are trying to get aboard the ship and the well helm gustloff is one of them. near tenly ten thousand refugees try to escape across the bat tick sea, but the met a tragic end. sometime before daybreak of january 30th, three torpedoes from a soviet submarine, struck the boat and threw passengers into the frozen water of the baltic sea. it was 12 miles off the coast of

present-day poland. those aboard the gust love included primarily women, children, elder, and some men, but also included members of the german navy and wounded soldiers aboard the gustloff. because history is defined as much by what becomes part of the official record as by what is left up recorded, you know the story. in this case, german censorship, soviet suppression, and western indifference conspired to bury the gustloff's story. refusing to let the third reich accept defeat, hitler supported the sinking. the soviet union depressed the story because it doubted the authority of the commander to fire hon the gustloff, and also

to talk about the gustloff might cast light on their own atrocities. in the west, the events were buried first because of war fatigue and then overshadowed by the cold war. so for nearly 70 years the story has been relatively hidden as the victims themselves inspired little sympathy as to their role and their country's role in world war ii. perhaps more than any other war in recent history is still creating stark lines of black and white. last winter, stopped at gettysburg, and being a reporter, i was drawn to the newspaper coverage of the battle. i came across one quote that really resonated with me because of what i had been working on, because of the gustloff, and the quote was: every man is a lightning strike to some heart

and breaks like thunder over some house and falls a long black shadow upon some heartstones. the reason this quote resonated with me, because the story of the gustloff had been quiet for so long and its victims felt, number one, unable to talk about it because of war guilt and, number two, in the west there was definitely in the immediate years little sympathy for those civilians of this part of the world. but to me, every person aboard the gust love who purrished was a lightning strike to some heart and the story of the gustloff, with all its drama, it raises provocative questions about loss, survival, and how those impacted continue on year after year and decade after decade. so now i'd like to turn your attention to some slides that will tell you the story of the

gustloff, and some of those survivors i was fortunate enough to interview the well hem gustloff was once on may 5, 18937. just one day before the german passenger airship, the behind -- behind hindenb rerg crashed and burned. the gustloff was 684 feet long. it was the pride and joy of germany's kvf, or strength through joy fleet. by way of comparison again, the titanic was actually much larger at 46,000-tons and 882 feet long. the hindenb rebg caught fire and

there were 97 people aboard and 36 died. experts -- when the gustloff wasser torpedoed killed 9,000 people. the airship also coming from the same government does not carry the weight of nazi germany the same way that they gustloff does, and for good reason. the gustloff was built especially to symbolize the spring power of the third reich, and well hem gustloff was a close personal friend of adolph hitler, and hitler decided after gustloff was assassinated in 1936, he could use this assassination for political purposes, for prop began darks and so he decided that one of

the ships in this strength in joy fleet would be named for gustloff and would also be the biggest, would also be the best, and most people in germany do not know the name of wilhelm gustloff, and this was a way to rally the people. at it also difficult to make out at the bottom of the slide, but what is a little bit sort of like fuzzy little -- are the heads of hundreds of thousands of people who had just massed to see this ship be launched from the shipyard in hamburg. >> this is the maiden voyage. initially the kdf program was a way to deliver recreation to the people. and the kdf program was started in the mid-1930s. it was large-scale social

program. it was part of the german later fund and it was after trade unions were abolished. so all of the people who took cruises aboard the gustloff were members of -- you were forced to join and forced to pay dues in return the kdf offered sporting events, operas, celebrated hitler's birthday so a very political organization, and the cruiseliners were launched and that is partly because until then most germans had never traveled outside of their own country. it was something for the wealthy, not something available to most. so, it stopped along the coast

of africa. scrapped nava, up the in fjords of norway, and the mediterranean, and just off the coast of portugal and you can see the people walking on the street in costume, and i havebroken told by one gentleman whose mother remembered the gustloff coming up the fjords and people were very upset because one, what it represented and also, too they said the germans aboard would spend no money in these up toes. they came off and looked around and then were back on their boats. but the idea behind these was there was no first or third class. the idea onboard, as on land at that time, was one people, one empire, one leader. and so the gustloff became a very effective propaganda tool.

it was used also -- facilitated a rescue of english crew after a very freak summer -- spring storm. and interestingly, a paper in australia sort offloaded -- sort of lauded this rescue. they were impressed. and german citizens living in london came to the gustloff to vote, and the evening before, during dinner, the menus essentially told people, you will vote, yes. it was very clear how they were to vote. >> by 1939, the gustloff is no longer a cruise ship. in september, after september 1st, after the start of world war ii, the government

quickly decided it's going to become a hospital ship for the sick and wounded, and becomes -- in fact it's tethered in the shipyard there and will not leave the shipyard until 1945. at that point a wide green band was painted around the hull. the hull is now painted a glooming white, and there are red cross symbols on the decks and stack as well. so by 1940, it's decided that the gustloff will serve as an accommodation ship for uboat trainees so on this slide you're seeing officers eating aboard the gustloff during his time as the accommodation ship. it's a dormitory in some sense. the sailors are learning survival tools in swimming pools, and then it state that way until 1945.

so, this photo is a photo of a street in what is now -- in russia. one of the women that i was able to meet and interview for the book. she had this photo of her family's furniture, showroom, and factory. well, just three weeks after hollywood's premiered the wizard of oz, world war ii begins on september 1, 1939. on the tenth, german ground forces are marching in from the west and the russians are coming from the east, and east prussia, most of them come from that area, remained somewhat isolated and it wasn't until a little bit later, until the early '40s

that nazi policies -- at that point the nazis took whatever they want, and the factory was no exception. and they turned it into a uniform factory, and her family was no longer able to come in and out. they had to ask for permission to gain entrance into their home and factory, and her parents toyed with the idea about leaving but their neighbor has been executed for trying to leave and they would not be allowed to leave. and helga tells tells the storyy knew there were russians forced to work in the factory, and her father was able to keep garden in the backyard, not visible, and chickens and rabbits. he was supposed to make a watery version of soup for the pows

and a better version for the officers -- not the officers -- station thread -- stationed there but he would trike to sneak a little meat and vegetables into the soup, and helga remembered once a week, her father was brought down to the police station for this display of resistance, and so her parents were obviously very, worried about what was going to happy. -- what was going to happen. here's a picture of helga. she is in the left in the polka dot swim suit and her sister on the right and this is one of their veinings own the baltic sea. this is something they looked forward to every year, as did thousands of the people. and the baltic sea was just a beautiful place to go.

it was amazing that these photographs here is that helga still has them. she tells the story when it was finally allowed for she and inga to leave, inga was the oldest sister and helga asked to be in charge of the money and identification papers and her father said, that will be inga's job. she a little older and a little more responsible than you, so, helga put in photographs in her back pocket, which was her father's -- it had a little button to secure it and amazing amazingly these photographs survived the sinking and survived the years afterwards. so, just great to provide me copies of these. this here is a model of the gustloff. the gustloff could comfortably transport just about 1500

persons all together. so that would be passengers and a full compliment, full crew. these are in the days when it was cruising along the mediterranean and scandanavia, and you can see the life boats. there will 22 life boats on the gustloff. and each life boat was designed to 70 people. so as i mentioned further, upwards of thousands people -- ten thousand people on the day it sank and they're crammed into every space imaginable. into the closets, underneath the stairwells. and there are eight decks on the gustloff, and most of the refugees below the promenade deck, which was glass-enclosed, were trapped after the torpedo struck. i've been asked, well, there's not -- there weren't clearly not enough life boats it was clear there war not enough life vests

or not enough life vests large enough for the number of children aboard, but the fact is the gustloff sank in less than 90 minutes so even if there were more life boats, it's -- was not like the titanic that took a long time to sink. so it was very difficult for people that were able teen make their way to a life boat. and those that did make their way to a life boat, that was often no guarantee of survival. because it had been one of the coldest winters on record, the jackets froze and the wrotes plummeted into the sea and capsized and those that were trying to get into a life boat, they were being knocked out by people already in the life boat. so the scene as you can imagine

was chaotic to say the least. and helga today. she lives in las vegas now. helga was one of the survivors that was able to get into a life bowl. although she actually. shimmied down the side of the boat. it was clear she would either get tossed or take her chance in the water. then she was able to get into a life boat. there were some boats in the area that night that heard a distress call they were able to get a distress call out that night. and another ship picked up most of these survivors. but there was no organized rescue operation. those that survived, like helga, were taken to the island of rugan in the baltic sea, and the island was another strength

through joy project, and it was there that hitler built a mallssive hotel and cruise ships would have no luxury accommodation versus sort of this what we consider economy today. and it was never completed. however, the german red cross set up there to take -- help the survivors. they were essentially processed and sent on their way. hell good----- -- helga's for takes another turn and the get on a train. they wanted to end up in allied hands. they were hoping to make it to the british or americans. she was on a train during the dresden fire bombing but shes to eventually make it to california where she finally arrives in 1948. and here is an official boarding

pass for the gustloff. most people aboard the gustloff didn't have any official documentation. those were handed out in the very first days of the boarding when it was still somewhat orderly and that would have been around, again, the 27th and the 28th of january, 1945. after that, the situation becomes out of control, and people are just kind of pushing their way on to the ship. and so because of that, most people don't have them, and of course many of them are destroyed in the sinking itself. this one was not, and it's -- she still has that. now we're going to go to latvia. this is the kirk family had a bakery in latvia. you can see the pretzel hanging from the corner.

irene and her sister are two other survivors i was able to get to know. they grew up in latvia, and in 1939, because of the nonaggression treaty, it was decided they -- they were deported. anyone with any german ancestry at that point was deported from the baltic sea. they were known as the baltic sermoned and sent to east prussia primarily to colonize this people who had been inhabited by other slavic people. so she girls identified very much with their russian heritage. their mother was russian, and they spoke no english, and so it was very confusing for them in the beginning when they arrived in east prussia and they're told they have to learn german, they have to join hitler youth, and

all of this is very confusing to the two of them. and they're, of course just two of the hundreds of thousands of people displaced in the early years of world war ii. so this is irene and ellen today. they live in ontario. they're holding a cookbook with them. the reason for this is -- this is one of their treasured recipes that came with them later after the war when they were able to reunite with their father. a cookbook he took with them because after the war ebbed and food was scarce -- they were fortunate enough to make it to the american lines and until the first care packages start arriving they can imagine being so hungry, and so at night they would just sort of flip through this book and look at its recipes and really just try to keep their hunger pains at bay.

and their story is also very sad. their cousin was with them and their mother was in charge of the three girls and the cousin did not survive the sinking, and the reason they're aunt wasn't with them, she was very ill, and afterwards they remember their mother having to knock on their aunt's door to tell them that her daughter did not survive. and their uncle, sinclair's uncle and cousin spent three years in a siberian labor camp, as did many of the men who had been conscripted into the german army after the war so it took some time for thieves families to be reunited. this photo shows the -- the baby in this photo is inga and with her mother melga and her

grandmother rosa lee. inning good was perhaps one of the youngest survivors on the gustloff that night so naturally she doesn't recall it. she was just about two years old the night of the sinking. but she does remember that when her mother was alive, the two often spoke about that day, and the time that followed, and melga wrote a very long-detailed letter to inga to explain why they ended up on the gustloff and what happened during the sinking. and inga, who now lives in australia, told me that one of her greatest hurts was that people laughed at the notion that she had survived the world's worst marry time disaster. and they dismissed the idea that a young mother and her baby girl were aboard the wilhelm gustloff at all. and in this picture is horst,

the baby, with his grandparents, who also lived in east prussia, and they're meeting horst, very warm feeling for his areachild childhood years. he remember his mother putting him on the train with a sign around his neck to meet his grandparents. he remembered very little about the early years of the war. he could remember soldiers starting to march in the streets. then he remembered when people started talking about the russians are coming and the red army is coming and his mother just getting more and more frantic. but yet they were not allowed to leave, and by this time, in the late' 40s, his father is forced to fight. one of the last things horst -- they finally get permission. a hitler youth boy comes knocking on the door and says you're allowed to go now. so there was not much bank and they grabbed -- not much

warning, and they grabbed what they could, and he took his uncle's jackknife with his. is uncle was off fighting and this improll -- impulsiveness of horst will save his mother's life and other people in the boat with him. the -- the knife comes in very handy for them. and this is katherine alexander of the s13. the start of the war there's not that much soviet submarine activity in the baltic sea. the german boats are pretty up have -- pretty much having their way. the soviet submarines go through several changes in the late

'20s they started a new class of submarine modeled after british boats and actually had some technical assistants from germany. by the 1930s they introduce another class of larger and faster submarines now armed with torpedo tubes. most of the submarine officers were drafted from the ranks of themer chant -- the merchant marines and these officers, if they could prove they had what it took and could serve one tour as an executive officer on a submarine, they would then get their own command. but even still finding officers with adequate experience during world war ii was challenge for soviet leaders. and that also goes back again just to jump bang -- back for a moment to the 1930s with the community party and many of the leaders had been forced out and executed from the soviet navy. so it wasn't until the latter

part of the war that the russians were able to step up their operations a little bit in the baltic sea. alexander, who grew up in a damp a could -- acha, was on the gustloff and he was definitely not the ideal officer in some ways as far as his superiors were concerned. he had a drinking problem. he was a womanizer. and he very much was insubordinate. his crews loved him. they had never-ending respect. but certainly before the gustloff he had been caught frat frat turn nicing with a swedish women in what we'll politely call a restaurant of ill repute. but is was difficult to find someone with experience so they just leave him be, but he

eventually gets these orders to fire on anything german, which he loosely interpret, and the gustloff is an opportunity for him. the soviets, in late 1945, they're closing in, they're in albania, east prussia. they do know these civilians are trying to get out. they're very aware of the civilians aboard ships like the gustloff, but for alexander, this is a target he could not resist, and again, because of the -- animosity is an understatement between germany and the soviet union at that time. this is what he considered a legitimate target. this is captain wilhelm, and one of four captains aboard the gustloff. why four captains? well, there are military aboard,

and so he was in charge of them. then there are all the civilians, and so the civilians captain is a frederick peterson. the two do not agree on anything, except perhaps their destination. zahn wanted to travel as fast as possible. he was pushing to go 15 knots per hour. peterson wanted to hold back. he was concerned that the gustloff, which had been in dry dock for almost five years at this point, wouldn't really be able to withstand going fast. they disagreed on what route to take. follow the coastal route? hug the coastline to avoid subma -- submarines. there hadn't ben many reports of submarines the area but they knew that the baltic was now filled with mines. they argued whether or not to

have navigation lights on and end up having the navigation lights on because they're concerned there's a german minesweeper operating, so they're worried about collisions that night as well. all of this enables alexander to do what decidedly a risky maneuver, which is once he spot this gustloff, he kind of sidles up in between the ship and the coastline, and strikes. after the war -- i'm sorry -- after the incident, not long after the incident, vaughn is called before a board of inquiry and testifies about what happened, and all of this came to light, and vaughan placed a lot of blame on the crew that was hired. a lot of the lower officers and just people -- he just said, we didn't have any germans, most of them were yugoslavs, and in the

end nothing would have likely fazed them. so it's difficult to tell if lights on or lights off would have helped them. so the gustloff lies off the coast of poland and few diverrers have visited the wreck. mike did get permit from the polish government, and i got to know mike through writing this book, and he shared the following slides with me. it rests in about 150 feet of water. and very striking you can see the teak from the deck and the stern and bow is very much intact. the mid-section of the boat was collapsed in on itself, and it seemed to him scavenged, and

people know that the soviets repeatedly dove this wreck. what is walk was take nothing one really knows. there's a lot of mystery and a lot of rumor going -- what they were looking for. there's speculation by some that believe that the -- amber room was on the gustloff and today there is a reproduction of the amber room. some said there was advanced rocketry on the gustloff and some said even more advanced uboats aboard the gustloff. none of that has been substantiated, but any of that was aboard. but because of the lack of remains where you would expect to see human remains, there are none, and much of the machinery or -- all of the working had been stripped and taken away, and all that -- remains a

mystery. this here is a stairwell, and i just sort of imagine -- you can just imagine that night after the torpedo strike, of any of those passengers who were below deck trying to make their way up these very narrow, crowded stairwells, to make they're way too life boats, stepping over people who just lost the energy at some point to go, who gave up, who had died in the initial attack, and so it's really remarkable to me, in fact, that any did survive this because, between, the ship went down in less than 90 minutes. and the last slide that i'll leave you with here, shows side-by-side the wilhelm gustloff, and there's a diver

just in front of the letters now who is sort of scraping away a little bit of the growth there on the letters but they're still very much intact today. so, with that, i will conclude my presentation. i'd thereof take some -- i'd love to take some questions. >> how many there were? >> there are -- again, because the numbers are so difficult actually pin town but there were a little more than a thousand survivors. [inaudible] >> no. there was no warning. so, they -- the reason that they chose what they did, they didn't expect there were submarines in the area. they were -- the civilians had

no idea. the civilians are just doing anything to watch out. someone that i had talked with sort of tried to make the comparison of the end of the vietnam war, with people just trying to get out of saigon, at the fall of saigon and that is how desperate people were to flee east prussia. so people very much looked at the gustloff as safety for them. they felt relieved to be aboard it. yes, sir? >> the last pictures of referenced hamburg. >> yes. >> as being a location for this. now, were there any of the people on shore that were there during the experience? did they contribute to your become at all? >> there are people at the point that people where the whole thing happened so it wasn't -- the shipyard was out of hamburg,

but to answer your question, in the german federal archives i was able to get documents and transcripts of people who had been on shore. for instance, the women's naval auction silly, -- auxiliary. they all died. they were in the swimming pool which had been emptied and many if their remains -- some of the bodies were recovered, and so some of the people on shore after it had the duty to try to identify. but most of the identification really was for any of the military personnel. so the civilians who are on board, many of them are lost to history. people say, i think that i grew up in -- i think my great uncle was aboard but i don't know, and it's very difficult to be able to find that out. yes, ma'am? >> was there a charge to go on board and who paid it? >> no, no charge to go on board. you werle