Foreign News: Strength Through Joy

Bread may be scarce, but there is no lack of circuses for Nazi Germany. As a respite from parades and speeches 980 good German workmen and their wives, all members of the Nazi “Strength Through Joy” Society, last week piled into excursion trains and went trundling third class across Germany from the Saar and Palatinate to Bremen. There they crowded aboard the 15,000-ton North German Lloyd liner Dresden for a cruise up the coast of Norway to the North Cape. Late into the night the Strong-Through-Joy danced, sang Nazi songs, drank fat-bellied mugs of beer. Most of them had never been to sea before.

Off Stavanger, Norway the Dresden picked up two pilots and started nosing through a light mist along the shore. They nosed a little too close. Twice in the course of the day the Dresden ran aground but was floated off under her own power. Toward evening the tired, windburned but still hungry junketers trooped down into the dining room. On the shore of Karmö Island Pilot Jacobsen’s family stood expectantly in line waiting for papa to bring the Dresden past. That he did, so close that his children could see him waving to them from the bridge beside Captain Peter Moeller in the 9 p.m. daylight.

Suddenly amid a loud crunching of steel on stone, the Dresden quivered from stem to stern. Down in the dining saloon waiters plunged head first into their platters. Decks tilted crazily while frightened Germans ran screaming from rail to rail. In a few minutes the Dresden’s first S. O. S. was picked up by the coastal steamers King Harald and Crown Princess Martha, and the French navy despatch boat Ardent. The giant British battleship Rodney, visiting Stavanger, also heard the call but was told that no further assistance was necessary.

As frequently happens in marine disasters, the first boatload of women upset while being lowered to the water. The second, sucked close to the still-thrashing propellers, was smashed. At least four women were drowned and more would have perished had not Steward Willy Bruns dived bravely from the rail of the third deck to their rescue. Apart from this accident, the rest of the survivors were landed safely.

Last to leave the ship were Captain Moeller and the wireless operator. Early next morning the Dresden, mortally wounded by jagged Norwegian rocks, rolled over and sank, leaving only a few feet of metal above the surface. Pilot Jacobsen heaped ashes on his own head.

“I take sole responsibility for the Dresden disaster,” said he. “The waters of the Karmsund are difficult to navigate, but I have piloted here for more than 30 years. . . . The disaster was caused by greater drifting than I estimated. Although I have nothing with which to pay the material damage, the moral responsibility is heavy enough.”

“The rock on which we struck was uncharted.” said Captain Moeller. “and we were using a British Admiralty chart.”