SS Cap Arcona, named after Cape Arkona on the island of Rügen, was a large German ocean liner, later a ship of the Kriegsmarine, and finally a prison ship. A flagship of the Hamburg Südamerikanische Dampfschifffahrts-Gesellschaft, she made her maiden voyage on 29 October 1927, carrying passengers and cargo between Germany and the east coast of South America, and for a brief period of time she was the largest and fastest ship on the route, until one month later she was surpassed on the same Europe-South America route by the Italian liner MS Augustus.

Hamburg, officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, is the second-largest city in Germany, after Berlin, and 8th-largest in the European Union, with a population of over 1.9 million. The Hamburg Metropolitan Region has a population of over 5.1 million and is the ninth-biggest metropolitan region by GDP in the European Union.