Anne will recount the little-known escape story of two German naval officers, who spent a year on the run covering an astonishing five thousand miles and almost circumnavigating the globe. Fritz Sachsse (Korvettenkapitän} and Herbert Straehler (Oberleutnant sur Zee) were among the 4,700 Germans captured after the Siege of Tsingtao in China in November 1914 and sent to the POW camp at Fukuoka in Japan. In January 1916, five officers escaped individually from the Fukuoka camp with the aim of returning home to Germany to re-join the war effort.
Two of them - Sachsse and Straehler - met up in Shanghai and made plans to travel along the 'Silk Road' west through China, Afghanistan, Persia and Turkey. A detailed diary of the journey has recently been found by the family of one of the men, providing a fascinating insight into the experiences of German officers in Japanese captivity during the First World War and into life in China a century ago.
Talk will start at 10:30. Join us for refreshments from 09:45.
Image Credit Kai Heinrich 2016 Flicr CC licence
Professor Anne Buckley is an Associate Professor of German and Translation Studies at the University of Leeds. She has spent the last 10 years researching the First World War training and POW camp in Skipton, where she lives. She led the project to produce an English translation of the book 'Kriegsgefangen in Skipton', written by a group of the German POWs and published in Munich in 1920. She also co-translated Professor Holger Afflerbach's book: On a Knife Edge - How Germnay Lost the First World War
| Event type: | General Meeting |
| Date: | 19 November 2025 |
| Time: | 10:30am |
| Group: | Monthly meetings |
| Venue: | Castle Street Centre |
| Cost: | £2 for members, £3 for guests |