Historical Information (Source: Volksbund)

Fricourt German war cemetery is near the village of Fricourt, near Albert, in the French département of the Somme. Most of the fallen were members of the Imperial German 2nd Army. Of the 17,000 burials, about 1,000 died in the autumn of 1914 and the ensuing trench warfare; about 10,000 during the Battle of the Somme (July-November 1916); and the final 6,000 in the Spring Offensive of 1918 and the ensuing Allied counter-attack, the Hundred Days Offensive.

The cemetery was established by the French military authorities in 1920 and concentrates burials from "some 79 communes in the regions around Bapaume, Albert, Combles, the Ancre valley and Villers-Bretonneux".  About 5,000 of the burials are mostly in shared double graves; the remainder lie in four communal graves.

Among those buried there at one time was the famous German fighter pilot Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Baron, who was killed on 21 April 1918 from machine gun fire from Canadian Pilot Roy Brown who was chasing him or an Australian soldier firing from below, and buried with military honours by the Australians. Later his remains were transferred first to Fricourt, then to the Invalidenfriedhof Cemetery in Berlin, and finally to a family plot in Wiesbaden.