The Sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff

The luxury steam ship Wilhelm Gustloff was Christened by Hitler in 1937.  At 680 feet this ship would transition from a luxury liner to a transport for wounded soldiers a few years later. After 1943 the war began to turn on Germany.  More and more bombing missions succeeded over German industrial cities killing tens of thousands.  Then in 1945 the Red Army entered Germany.  Reports of what the Soviets were doing to German women and children spread through Berlin and other cities. Fearing for their lives, over 10,000 Germans...mostly women and children, boarded the now rescue ship, Wilhelm Gustloff.  The horrified Germans sought to escape the coming Soviet atrocities.

 On January 30, 1945, with temperatures plunging to negative 18 Celsius, as Hitler addressed Germany on radio, three Soviet torpedoes hit the Gustloff north of Gdansk.  The doomed ship was headed to Kiel, from Gdansk. Originally built to take high ranking Nazis on Mediterranean cruises, the Gustloff would be a victim of the horrors of the coming war. The German navy was so depleted as 1945 arrived that no protective convoy escorted this rescue operation.  9,000 Germans died on the ship or in the icy water, only 1,252 survived.  In a macro sense, the rescue of Germans from Soviet madness was an overall success.  2.5 million Germans were evacuated from the eastern provinces, thus avoiding God knows what.

A few months after the sinking, Hitler would commit suicide in a Berlin bunker.  Admiral Karl Donitz would succeed Hitler as chancellor.  Unlike Hitler, Donitz came into the chancellor position with some heroic military experience.  Ironically. as Hitler Christened the Gustloff, Donitz would command the rescue operation, which hauled over a thousand women and children out of the icy drink.  Eventually the Gustloff would rest on the ocean floor, about 200 feet below the surface. The victors pen the history...and Germany lost the war.  Calling the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff a war crime is a plea that will fall on deaf ears.  

The Chelyabinsk Meteor, Vladimir Putin misses an Opportunity

Founded in 1736, Chelyabinsk, Russia has eluded the headlines.  But for a fateful day on February 15, 2013, they still claim anonymity on the world stage.  At 9:20am, an object brighter than the sun raced across the southwestern Russian sky, but did not maintain elevation, eventually bursting into flames still 20 miles up. The exploded meteorite produced a huge shock wave and sent small fragments of alien rock raining onto Chelyabinsk. This explosion far surpassed the atomic bomb used on Hiroshima by President Franklin Roosevelt. Oh yes...all those scientific detection devices used to warn us against alien attacks we see in films? Useless.  The Russian peeps were taken totally by surprise.  1,500 were injured, most from glass broken by the shock wave, and eventually a rock hit the ground with a radius over 60 feet (see middle picture...kinda reminds you of "John Carpenter's The Thing"). NASA?  Useless.  Our government funded space agency was clueless.  They happily reported on the event after the fact.

Most of the injuries were minor.  Scores were temporarily blinded (a la "Day of the Triffids"), one woman suffered a broken spine, and Mr. Putin reported skin flakiness several days after examining the damage.  An hour after impact, Chelyabinsk residents began smelling a burning odor.  As the world stock markets begin to collapse, and oil prices plummet, Russia is in for some very tough times.  The Chelyabinsk meteor is, perhaps, a metaphor for those rapidly approaching difficult times.  If any nation can endure a grim period...it is Russia, as we have seen throughout history. However damaging the meteor was....no one died, and the city residents went back to work shortly after the boom.  No teddy bear memorials or national days of prayer, or blue ribbon commissions...just real people going to work to make society function.  A lost concept, nowadays.  

Now for some Monday morning quarterbacking.  Would it not have been great if Russia's propaganda system decided to have some fun with an all too tight world community?  For example...I would have loved if the media in Chelyabinsk put out sketchy reports that corpses in hospitals and morgues seemed to re-animate. Oh yes...here's one.  Russia's Minister of Defense should have relayed to the U.N. that all contact had been lost with an internationally manned weather station near the crash site (no matter that this station doesn't exist).  The reaction of the  Unites States' all too inept State Department would have been classic.  I would have payed for Wikileaks to intercept those emails Washington would have sent to our ambassador in Moscow (...does anyone even know who that is?). Finally, law enforcement entities in Chelyabinsk should have reported some unusual rioting and looting in which perpetrators seemed to be biting other residents and police.

My hat is off to the residents of Chelyabinsk.  Hard working regular people with no need for a world remembrance day every February.  In a world community heaping sickeningly sweet admiration on anyone claiming to be a victim, our Russian friends hold themselves out as adults.  They look up, when others look down.  They go to work, when others call in sick.  They walk forward, when others hide.  In the coming economic malaise, the spirit of Chelyabinsk should be emulated.

Delvecchio's Fulcrum, Excerpt from my upcoming SciFi book

After publishing a book on horror poetry ("Escaping from the Institute"), it is time to move onto my next project.  In addition to horror, I have a love for science fiction...especially if it includes elements of horror.  I am in the preliminary stages of writing a book which will include short stories and a few poems.  I expect the book will be scary, humorous at times, and thought provoking.  Enjoy the following excerpt of a story I am writing, "Delvecchio's Fulcrum."  Incidentally, if you have a subject you would like to read a short story about, send it to me at christopherzisi@gmail.com .  I will, if you wish, credit you in the book as the inspiration of that story.

Like 10,000 unfortunate creatures before him, R.C. Krug's last words, uttered before a tortuous demise, were "What's the Delvecchio Fulcrum."  Now a rotting corpse, leaking and spurting various bodily fluids, R.C. a victim of life's miserable sense of humor.  The celestial navigators needed to work fast.  One of those higher beings grabbed the end of the fulcrum....another yelled "Delvecchio!," and the third hollered "Pull!"  The fulcrum now yanked loose from the late Krug's cranium, the beings departed with the blood-soaked curious device.  As the sirens from the approaching sheriff's department cruisers neared, Delvecchio's Fulcrum returns to it's proper astral dimension. 

My book of horror poetry can be found on Amazon.com, as well as the Amazon Kindle edition.