Record-low water levels on the Danube River, Europe’s second-longest waterway, have exposed dozens of World War II German warships, ancient woolly mammoth bones, and historical relics amid an intense regional drought and heatwave. According to Theguardian, the extreme weather is being superintended by human-caused climate change, with temperatures reaching new records across central and eastern Europe. In Prahovo, Serbia, where the river separates the country from Romania, at least 20 World War II wrecks of various sizes are now visible to the naked eye from the riverbanks.
Record-Low Danube Water Levels Expose WWII Nazi Shipwrecks and Ancient Fossils
According to Yahoo News, historians state that up to 200 German warships from Adolf Hitler’s Black Sea fleet were deliberately scuttled in September 1944 near Prahovo in the Danube gorge. The German military sank the vessels themselves to slow down the advancing Soviet Danube Military Flotilla and make the waterway impassable before Nazi Germany surrendered in May 1945. While communist Yugoslav authorities removed some vessels, most have remained on the riverbed because of the explosives they still carry. Bluewin reported that the European Union is funding a program to gradually remove poorly situated wrecks, noting that out of 21 wrecks selected for the project, seven had been salvaged by April. Additional war-era remnants have surfaced elsewhere, including a German military motorcycle displayed at a defense ministry museum in Budapest, Hungary, and an unexploded British 1,543lb (700kg) bomb recovered by police in Slovakia.
Beyond military relics, the receded river revealed prehistoric remains in Bulgaria. Nikolay Nenov, director of the Regional Historical Museum, told AFP that bone fragments found near Ruse very likely belonged to a young woolly mammoth that lived during the Ice Age. Specialists identified a jawbone, tusk fragments, part of a shoulder blade, and a femur with its articular head on the riverbed near Ryahovo.
Energy Crisis and Trade Disruptions Threaten Central and Eastern Europe
The severe drought has heavily disrupted navigation and power generation along the Danube, which flows through 10 countries from southwestern Germany to the Black Sea. According to The Independent, Hungary’s national water authority measured the Danube’s water level in Budapest at 23cm (9 inches), falling well beneath the previous all-time low of 33cm (13 inches) set in 2018. Ferries, tourism boats, and cargo shipping operations on both the Danube and the Rhine rivers have been drastically reduced or halted, forcing cruise ships to dock far upriver.
The dropping water levels have created a severe energy crisis as power plants relying on natural water supplies for cooling face shutdown risks. Romania declared a national state of alert for August due to plummeting electricity production from drought-stricken river volumes. Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan announced that Romania cut its nuclear power production in half and would seek to import more electricity from Ukraine, Greece, and Bulgaria, alongside nuclear producer Nuclearelectrica shutting down one of its reactors.
In Hungary, Prime Minister Peter Magyar warned that the country’s Paks nuclear power plant—which generates nearly half of domestic electricity—was operating at less than 50 percent capacity across its four Russian-made reactors. The facility faces a complete shutdown for the first time in 44 years as water levels drop further. To offset lower domestic generation and rising evening electricity demand, the Hungarian government asked major industrial users to curb consumption while relying on energy imports to meet national needs.
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