Hello again. 
I wish I could say "Oh I'm a historian" 
but actually, I've just read a lot on the subject. Like you, I stumbled upon something/a historical event that intrigued me and I slipped down the wormhole and followed my curiosity, which led to all sorts of books and online articles and interviews. Also, as my aunt (who died last year at the age of 100) my father's sister- throughout my adulthood, began telling me things in snippets, what it was like to be a child of war, a child of the Eastern Territories, a child of a Jewish parent and a Catholic one in an unforgiving climate, my grandfather's death and the death of his entire family, my grandmother's arrival as an Eastern refugee the day of the Dresden bombing, the raping, and all that comes with being unsafe an exposed as a woman, regardless of what side your male soldiers are fighting for. In war, there are no good sides. Women in war, children of war, they pay the entire price, in my humble view. The boys become cannon fodder, the women and the children become outlets for unchecked, unleashed rage- a side effect of war turning men savage. And we see this again and again. If you read about the Killing Fields of Cambodia and the barbaric acts carried out on women and children there and again, the ethnic cleansing throughout Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge regime, the more recent trials and genocide of the Yazidis, it is really, really, really hard to have faith in a species so driven by war, brutality, and domination. But we must have some faith in humankind. If we don't, that lack of faith in itself is destructive.
I always wonder, when I read these historical accounts of atrocities carried out by people who, under different circumstances would have been normal individuals, who were you when the whole of you was still good? And what would that old version of you think, looking at what you became and what you've done?
My dad, in his teens, ended up in a prison camp, defusing landmines on a beach. He was 16. He'd spent his early years of his childhood held in a detention camp for mixed children (of Jewish and Christian heritage), then he was released to serve as a soldier. Go figure. He was Aryan enough to hold a gun, it seems. It was the better toss of a very bad coin. There's a beautiful film about this- a very tough watch- called Land of Mine. I found it incredibly painful to watch, knowing that my dad had been one of those boys (on a different beach, but same story- different outcome). But it was a great reminder that in war, there is no love or protection for the people we rally around the most in everyday life, children. We spend our lives worrying about them. In war, that care for the young, that care for anyone and everyone, goes out the window.
We had cities like Coventry and Dresden firebombed in the war. It is really hard to listen to interviews of the bombers justifying their actions while the viewer is looking at images of melted prams with the charred fingers of a baby gripping onto its side. They were just doing their job, is the attitude of some of those pilots. Others never sleep peacefully again.
Anyway, I am off on a wild tangent.
But for example, if you look at the Russian city Kaliningrad, you and most people won't know that from 1255-1945, that's over 700 years, it was a Prussian city, Koenigsburg (the well-known artist Kathe Kollwitz, came from Koeningsburg- she is an incredibly interesting woman and the stories she tells through art are painful).
And so, this is just an example of what became of previous parts of Germany. I still think of my dad's town as Breslau (Wrocklaw), for example- mainly because I can't pronounce Wroclaw, if I'm completely honest!
This is an interesting link that explains the region of Courland, from where the Wilhem Gustloff was collecting refugees fleeing the Red Army. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courland
"The Wilhelm Gustloff's final voyage was to evacuate German refugees, military personnel, and technicians from Courland, East Prussia, and Danzig-West Prussia. Many had worked at advanced weapon bases in the Baltic [14] from Gdynia/Gotenhafen to Kiel."
I find this very sad "As Wilhelm Gustloff had been fitted with anti-aircraft guns, and the Germans did not mark her as a hospital ship, no notification of her operating in a hospital capacity had been given and, as she was transporting token numbers of military personnel, she did not have any protection as a hospital ship under international accords"
If only it had been marked as a hospital ship. What a different outcome that would have been... possibly! I don't know though, those Soviets could be ruthless. Maybe being marked as a hospital ship still wouldn't have stopped them.