Vesic expects 21 Nazi German shipwrecks to be cleared from Danube by end-2024

BELGRADE - Serbian Minister of Construction, Transport and Infrastructure Goran Vesic said on Friday he expected the wrecks of 21 Nazi German warships to be cleared from the bottom of the Danube by the end of this year to restore full navigability of the river near Prahovo, eastern Serbia.

The ships were sunk by the Nazis near the Port of Prahovo as WWII was drawing to a close.

Speaking to Tanjug, Vesic said two shipwrecks had been removed to date and that 19 more remained to be cleared in the first stage, with the second stage, planned for next year, to include 80 of around 200 shipwrecks.

"This is a very specific and unique historical situation," Vesic said.

"When the Soviet Red Army headed to this part of Europe, the Nazi navy set up a battlegroup called the Zieb Group, named after Admiral Paul(-Willy) Zieb, who led the group. It included hundreds of ships, thousands of sailors and soldiers and they were retreating up the Danube while, in fact, protecting German troops. But when Romania switched sides and attacked the German fleet and as the Soviets were approaching faster than was expected, the German admiral decided on September 7, 1944 to sink the entire fleet to block the Soviets' path on the Danube and, to a degree, he succeeded," Vesic explained.

The Soviets removed a certain number of shipwrecks to clear the route and even retrieved several ships they needed to continue the war against the Third Reich, he said.

"That is when several dozen ships were cleared, we do not know exactly how many. Hence the estimate that there are around 200 ships down there, but only when we clear them all will we know how many exactly there were," Vesic said.

He said the project was worth nearly 32 mln euros and that the EU had donated 16 mln for the effort.

Vesic said the warships had not been destroyed but sunk in haste with everything they were carrying, including arms and munitions.

He said it might be possible to display some of the ships at museums.

"Removing those ships is dangerous and, of course, any ship that gets taken out must be fully checked to potentially make it available for visitors to see," he said.

He noted that Uskok, a ship acquired by the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1933 and seized by the Nazis in WWII, was among the vessels.

"It was the most modern ship on the Danube at the time. Later, the Germans used it as a minesweeper on the Black Sea in 1941, but it was sunk, too."