Erich Koch

Germany state institutions Fascists and Nazis Counter-revolutionary forces Germany Germany 1896–1986 ○ Died in prison

Gauleiter of East Prussia and Reichskommissar for Ukraine whose rule brought mass killing and hunger to the occupied population

As Reichskommissar for Ukraine from 1941 he closed local schools and plundered the population, declaring Germans a master race, and his brutal rule fed a growing partisan uprising against the occupation.

Born in Elberfeld, he fought in the First World War and then with Freikorps Rossbach against Polish insurgents in Upper Silesia. Joining the Nazi Party in 1922, he worked in the Ruhr district and sided with the Strasser wing. Gauleiter of East Prussia from 1928 until 1945, after the invasion of the Soviet Union he became chief of civil administration in Białystok and Reichskommissar for Ukraine, where he closed schools, declaring that “Ukraine children need no schools”, and plundered the population. In 1944 he took over the Reichskommissariat Ostland. Caught by the British in 1949 and handed to Poland, he was sentenced to death in 1959 for the killing of 400,000 Poles; the sentence was commuted and he died in prison in 1986.

Activities and affiliations