Erich Koch

Erich Koch was born in Elbersfed on the 19 June 1896. After a relatively undistinguished military service during the Great War of 1914 -1918, Koch returned home and 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 French occupation in the Ruhr and was imprisoned by the French occupation authorities.

During the years 1922 and 1926 he was one of the Party district leaders in the Ruhr and a supporter of the radical wing of the NSDAP led by Gregor Strasser, who was murdered by the Gestapo on the infamous “Night of the Long Knives,” on the 30 June 1934.

From 1928 Koch was Gauleiter of the Party in East Prussia and from 1930 a member of the Reichstag for East Prussia and appointed a member of the Prussian State Council in July 1933 and was then made Oberprasident of East Prussia in September 1933.

His autocratic rule never allowed the SA or SS to come to the fore, as in other Gaue, but Koch’s support of collectivisation in agriculture made him unpopular with the peasants and he was ruthless in arresting his critics, or expelling them from the party.

During the Second World War Erich Koch proved himself one of Hitler’s cruellest administrators in the conquered eastern territories, his brutal rule, caused the death of untold numbers of innocent men, women and children, who were deported to concentration and labour camps, and the destruction of countless numbers of villages, which were burnt to the ground.

In addition to his stewardship of East Prussia, he was appointed head of the civil administration in Bialystok and from October 1941 to 1944 he was Reichskommissar in the Ukraine which included the control of the Gestapo and the police.

His first official act in the Ukraine was to close local schools, declaring that “Ukraine children need no schools. What they’ll have to learn later will be taught them by their German masters.”

During a speech in Kiev on the 5 March 1943 Koch was explicit about the methods he intended to use to build a slave State in the Ukraine and his complete contempt for Slav “Untermenschen, “(German term for sub-human).

Read more here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/nazioccupation/erichkoch.html

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