Erich koch biography

Primary Sources

(1) Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich (1970):

I found one of the most famous churches of Kiev a heap of rubble. A Soviet powder magazine had blown up inside it, I was told. Later. I learned from Goebbels that the church had been blown up deliberately on orders of Erich Koch, Reich Commissioner for the Ukraine; the idea had been to destroy this symbol of Ukrainian national pride. Goebbels told the story with displeasure; he was horrified by the brutal course being pursued in occupied sectors of the Soviet Union. In fact the Ukraine at that time was still so peaceable that I could drive through the extensive forests without an escort. Half a year later, thanks to the twisted policy of the eastern commissioners, the whole area was infested with partisans.

(2) Laurence Rees, The Nazis: A Warning from History (2005)

Rosenberg met Hitler on 16 July 1941 at the Fuhrer's headquarters in East Prussia, the Wolf's Lair, and voiced his view that the nationalist sentiments of the Ukrainians should be encouraged. Hitler did not obj

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Erich Koch

Erich Koch, third from left and Artur Greiser, second from right study a model of Danzig (Bundesarchiv)

Erich Koch was born on June 19, 1896, in Elberfeld. Following undistinguished military service during the First World War, Erich Koch became a railway clerk until he was dismissed in 1926, for anti-republican political activity. Having joined the Nazi Party in 1922, he was involved in the revolt against the occupation in the Ruhr and was imprisoned several times by the French authorities.

Between 1922, and 1926, he was one of the Party district leaders in the Ruhr and a supporter of the radical wing of the Nazi Party led by Gregor Strasser. From 1928, Erich Koch was Gauleiter of the Party in East Prussia and leader of its faction in the provincial area. From 1930, Koch was a member of the Prussian State Council in July 1933. Koch was appointed to the post of Oberprasident of East Prussia in September of the same year.

His autocratic rule never permitted the SA or SS to come to the fore, as in other districts, but Koch's advocacy of collectivizatio

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Koch, Erich

Koch, Erich, b 19 June 1896 in Elberfeld, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, d 12 November 1986 in Barczewo, Poland. German Nazi leader and war criminal. Koch joined the Nazi movement in the early 1920s and from 1933 served as party leader and Gauleiter (governor) of East Prussia. During the Second World War, in 1941 he was appointed Reich commissioner of the Reichskommissariat Ukraine. Until the end of 1944 he ruled most of German-occupied Ukraine with an iron fist, and then served again as Gauleiter in East Prussia (1944–5). Koch was responsible for the death of 4 million people in Ukraine by starvation or execution, including almost the entire Ukrainian Jewish population. (See Holocaust and Nazi war crimes in Ukraine.) Several villages in Ukraine were destroyed in reprisals against Ukrainian nationalist and Soviet partisan activities (see Ukrainian Insurgent Army and Soviet partisans in Ukraine, 1941–5). Under his rule, another 2.5 million Ukrainians were deported to Germany to work as slave laborers (Ostarbeiter). Koch viewed Ukrainians as an inferior race