Erich Koch - Second World War

Second World War

At the commencement of World War II Koch was appointed Reich Defence Commissioner (Reichsverteidigungskommissar) for East Prussia (Military District I). On October 26, 1939, after the end of the Invasion of Poland, he was transferred from East Prussia to the new Reichsgau Westpreußen, later renamed to Danzig-West Prussia. East Prussia was compensated with Regierungsbezirk Zichenau (previously Ciechanów). These new areas lay approximately between the rivers Vistula and Narew.

In March 1940 Theodor Schieder, who was director in charge of Regional Office for Postwar History (Landesstelle fur Nachkriegsgeschichte), presented Gauleiter Erich Koch with a detailed plan regarding studies of territories annexed to East Prussia; Koch himself wanted to know political, social and ethnic conditions in those areas. Schieder in return sent two reports to Koch, including a population inventory conducted at the end of 19th century of the area in question, which was most relevant to Nazi policies of extermination and settlement, and provided basis for segration of Jewish and "Slavic" spouses from ethnic Germans in the German Volksliste.

Soon after the invasion of the Soviet Union, Koch was appointed "civil commissioner" (Zivilkommissar) on August 1, 1941, and later as Chief of Civil Administration in Bezirk Bialystok.

In 1942 Gauleiter Erich Koch expressed thanks to Theodor Schieder for his help in Nazi operations in annexed Poland wrtiting: As a director of 'Landesstelle Ostpreußen für Nachkriegsgeschichte' you have provided material that provided significant service in our fight against Poles and continues to help us in establishing new order today in Regierungsbezirke Zichenau and Bialystok.

On September 1, Koch became Reichskommissar of Reichskommissariat Ukraine with control of the Gestapo and the police. His domain now extended from the Baltic to the Black Sea; it comprised ethnic German, Polish, Belarus and Ukrainian areas. As Reichskommissar he had full authority in his realm, which led into conflict with other elements of the Nazi bureaucracy. Alfred Rosenberg, Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories (Reichsministerium für die besetzten Ostgebiete), expressed his disapproval of Koch's autonomous actions to Hitler in December 1941.

Koch's first act as Reichskommissar was to close local schools, declaring that "Ukraine children need no schools. What they'll have to learn will be taught them by their German masters." His brutality is best exemplified by his remark, "If I meet an Ukrainian worthy of being seated at my table, I must have him shot." Koch worked together with the General Plenipotentiary for Labour Deployment (Generalbevollmächtigter für den Arbeitseinsatz) Fritz Sauckel in providing the Reich with forced labor. He was also involved in the persecution of Polish and Ukrainian Jews. Due to his brutal actions, Nazi rule in Ukraine was disturbed by a growing number of partisan uprisings.

Koch was appointed as head of the Volkssturm of East Prussia on 25 November 1944. As the Red Army advanced into his area during 1945, Koch initially fled Königsberg to Berlin at the end of January after condemning the Wehrmacht from attempting a similar breakout from East Prussia. He then returned to the far safer town of Pillau, "where he made a great show of organizing the marine evacuation using Kriegsmarine radio communications, before once more getting away himself" by escaping through this Baltic Sea port on April 23, 1945, on the icebreaker Ostpreußen. From Pillau through Hel Peninsula, Rügen, and Copenhagen he arrived at Flensburg, where he hid himself. He was captured by British forces in Hamburg in May 1949.