The Danube River, renowned as Europe’s second-longest waterway, is now revealing a stark reminder of its past. Record-low water levels, a result of severe drought, have uncovered the remains of numerous World War Two-era German warships that lay hidden beneath the surface.
These relics, emerging eerily from the Danube’s depths, serve as an unexpected point of curiosity amid the region’s pressing summer drought crisis. The river’s drastic drop has brought power plants across Central and Eastern Europe perilously close to halting operations, as governments scramble to enact energy-saving measures.
Near where the Danube divides Serbia and Romania, close to the Serbian port city of Prahovo, a rusting ship’s hull now protrudes from the water. Its broken mast, once a proud bearer of the Nazi flag, stands like a ghostly monument to a turbulent past.
Many of these sunken vessels, some still equipped with their wartime armaments, were part of Germany’s Black Sea fleet. In a strategic retreat during World War Two, the Germans intentionally sank these ships to impede the advancing Soviet forces, as Hitler’s forces withdrew from Romania.
According to historians, up to 200 German warships were scuttled in the Danube gorge near Prahovo in September 1944 under heavy Soviet attack. This desperate tactic aimed to stall the Soviet army’s progression through the Balkans, though ultimately, Nazi Germany capitulated by May 1945.
The sight of the old warships is a reminder that the Serbian government, with European Union financial support, has long been trying to do something about them. Some were removed from the river by Communist Yugoslav authorities, but most have remained because of the explosives they carried.
Now, however, authorities are trying to keep traffic flowing on the Danube, which flows through 10 nations, as the dropping water levels create dangerous conditions. Experts have linked the unusually hot weather to global warming and other factors.
Earlier this month, Romania’s army blasted a rock in a branch of the Danube River in an effort to increase the flow of cooling water to the Cernavoda nuclear power plant, where critically low water levels raised the risk of a shutdown.
The Cernavoda plant, which draws all of its cooling water from the Danube, has been threatened by the river’s sharply reduced water levels caused by drought.
Also earlier in August, mortal remains of two German Wehrmacht soldiers were exposed by the historically low water level of the Danube near Budapest. A recovery specialist from the German War Graves Commission retrieved the remains from the riverbed in the Hungarian capital.
The team also found two identification tags at the site. According to the association, the bodies were found alongside a German military motorcycle and several anti-tank mines. Consequently, bomb disposal experts were deployed.
In late July, the remains of what is believed to be an ancient mammoth were revealed in northern Bulgaria after the Danube’s water levels receded to a record low.
A local resident of the village of Ryahovo found the animal’s remains. Villagers then alerted specialists in the regional history museum in the nearby town of Ruse.
Museum director Nikolay Nenov said experts who were sent to the site recognised a lower jaw, two tusks and possibly a mammoth rib.
“I would not call it a sensation, but any discovery of such ancient remains is very important for science,” Nenov said, adding that it has long been believed that the site was a swamp where the animal probably died thousands of years ago.