OPERATION HANNIBAL TO RESCUE TRAPPED SOLDIERS AND CIVILIANS
Gotenhafen, German-Occupied Poland • January 23, 1945 On this date in 1945 German Grand Adm. Karl Doenitz launched Operation Hannibal, a seaborne evacuation or, as Germans called it, a rescue operation (Rettungsaktion) of well over a million people trapped by war in Latvia, East Prussia, and German-occupied Poland. Mounted by naval, merchant marine, and civilian vessels,…