Willy Sachse (7 January 1896 – 21 August 1944) was a German socialist and communist who took part in the Sailors' Revolt at the end of the First World War. He remained politically involved during the 1920s and later became a writer. Drawn back into political activism during the early 1940s, he died by execution at the Brandenburg Prison. Life Willy Sachse was born in Leipzig. Karl Arthur Sachse, his father, was a cooper at the time of his birth, but by 1918 his parents were running a guest house in Thuringia. After attending junior school and a few years at middle school he embarked on an apprenticeship in mechanical engineering ("als Feinmechaniker") with Saalbock & Co of Leipzig. There are indications that during this period he became involved in the socialist youth movement. Little more is known of his childhood and teenage years, but the apprenticeship selected for him suggests that his parents were ambitious on his behalf, and that he himself was not without promise. Later, when he took to writing, many of his novels concerned life at sea, and were written with a descriptive clarity suggesting personal experience of seafaring far beyond anything that he would have acquired merely through serving in the navy during the war. War broke out in July 1914 and Sachse was conscripted into the navy. He served initially on the liner Friedrich der Große. He reached the rank of senior stoker (Oberheizer). During 1917 he was one of the organisers of political resistance in the navy which would culminate in the Kiel mutiny, itself a trigger for the ensuing wave of revolution across Germany. Because of the leading role he had played in organising a sailors' mutiny in the imperial high seas fleet Sachse was sentenced on 26 August 1917 to death, withdrawal of citizen's rights for the rest of his life and dismissal from the navy. Others condemned to undergo the same sentence in respect of the same charges were Max Reichpietsch and Albin Köbis. Reichpietsch and Köbis were shot by a firing squad on 5 September 1917. Willy Sachse aged 21, was younger than these others. Also, as it later transpired, a powerfully moving letter requesting mercy was sent on his behalf to the chancellor, pointing out, among other things, that he was his parents' only son, and so their only hope of avoiding destitution in old age. There is