Career
He entered the German Imperial Navy on 6 August 1914. By January 1918 he was serving on the Turkish cruiser Midilli, ex-SMS Breslau, when it sortied into the Aegean Sea to attack British troop transports. The surviving 162 crewmembers, including trainee naval engineer Hans Voss, were rescued by a British destroyer and became prisoners of war.
Voss was able to return to Germany in September 1919.
Voss remained as a naval engineer, based on Germany"s Baltic coast. I
From October 1938 to July 1943 Voss was a consultant in the Operations Department of the Seekriegsleitung (Sea Combat Command or Naval General Staff).
From August 1943 to October 1944 Voss was Chief of the Higher Shipyard Staff Ostland (the German name for the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and portions of Northern Russia). From October 1944 to March 1945 he was Higher Commander of the Warship Construction Training Department and from April–May 1945 he was Chief of the Higher Shipyard Staff, Navy High Command, Norway.
lieutenant was in Oslo, Norway that he was captured by the British in May 1945 and became a prisoner of war.
Voss subsequently spent time in the British prisoner of war camp at Island Farm, Wales, and also Grizedale Hall, in the Lake District. In February 1948 he was transferred to London Cage for Germany, in United States custody, to be a witness at the Leipzig trials, and was then released. (From Island Farm website).
After the war, Voss lived in the market town of Eutin, Schleswig-Holstein.
He was a lifelong Anglophile who enjoyed reading Shakespeare and spoke good English.