Wilhelm Gustloff (30 January 1895 – 4 February 1936) was a German politician and meteorologist who founded the Swiss branch of the Nazi Party/Foreign Organization (NSDAP/AO) at Davos in 1932.

[6] Unlike Maurice Conradi, who killed a Soviet diplomat in Lausanne in 1923 with similar political motives, he was convicted and sentenced to 18 years imprisonment.

[8] Gustloff was given a state funeral in his birthplace of Schwerin in Mecklenburg, with Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Göring, Heinrich Himmler, Martin Bormann and Joachim von Ribbentrop in attendance.

His coffin, transported on a special train from Davos to Schwerin, made stops in Stuttgart, Würzburg, Erfurt, Halle, Magdeburg and Wittenberg.

Unlike the assassination of the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan in Paris in 1938, Gustloff's death was not immediately politicized to incite Kristallnacht.

The ship was sunk by the Soviet submarine S-13 on 30 January 1945 (coincidentally the 50th anniversary of her namesake's birth) in the Baltic Sea while carrying civilian refugees and military personnel fleeing from the advancing Red Army.

In 1933[citation needed] the Nazi Party created the Wilhelm-Gustloff-Stiftung ("The Wilhelm Gustloff Foundation"), a national corporation funded by properties and wealth confiscated from Jews.