Over 9,000 people died in the Baltic Sea on January 30, 1945, in an attempt to evade the Red Army. The Wilhelm Gustloff was the largest shipwreck in history, but little is known about the catastrophe seven decades on.

31 January 1945 – execution of Eddie Slovik, the only US soldier executed for desertion after the American Civil War. On the same day, in the Yantarny, SS units killed the last 3,000 survivors of a death march of female concentration camp inmates by machine-gunning them into the Baltic Sea

1 February 1945 – 3 regents, 8 royal advisors, 22 former cabinet ministers, 67 MPs and 47 army officers are sentenced to death and executed on the same night in communist-ruled Bulgaria