Kriegsorganisationen (KO) civilian refugees Evacuations totaling 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 old battleship, U-boats, 12 destroyers, and nearly 200 smaller warships (minelayers, minesweepers, and various landing craft) When the end came, Dönitz ordered the U-boat fleet scuttled in Operation REGENBOGEN Some captains disobeyed or never got the signal They surrendered their boats in Western Allied or neutral ports Surviving U-boats were divided among the major Allied navies, including the Soviet Navy, but most were simply taken to sea and destroyed by January 1946 The few remaining German surface ships all went to the Soviet Navy, except for minesweepers, which were taken by the Royal Navy Using German naval munitions, British engineers blew up all Kriegsmarine docks, pens, yards, barracks, and even several military hospitals in a demolition and disarmament program that lasted into mid-1946 See also ace; aircraft carriers; air–sea rescue; amphibious operations; ASDIC; Athenia; auxiliary cruisers; BdU; Britain, Battle of; Channel Dash; cruiser warfare; E-boat; Enigma machine; explosive motor boats; Kleinkampfverbände; Laconia Order; London Submarine Agreement; mines; minesweepers; neutral rights and duties; Pillenwerfer; radar; radio; Replenishment-at-Sea; Schnorchel; Seekriegsleitung; shipyards; torpedoes; treaty cruisers; WESERÜBUNG Suggested Reading: Howard Grier, Hitler, Dönitz, and the Baltic Sea (2007); J P Malcolm Showell, The German Navy in World War II (1979) KRIEGSORGANISATIONEN (KO) “War organizations.” A set of German intelligence units established in 10 major neutral states The most important was in Spain, where a staff of 220 ran up to 2,000 agents and oversaw dozens of transmission and observation stations That made “Kriegsorganisationen-Spanien” the single largest German state organization outside Nazi-occupied Europe KRIMINALPOLIZEI “Kripo” or criminal police The ordinary, local German police It was subsumed into the Sicherheitspolizei under the Schutzstaffel (SS) KRIPO See Kriminalpolizei; Sicherheitspolizei 646