Erich Koch

Erich Koch
Erich Koch, 1962
Reichskommissar for the Ukraine
Details
Date of Birth	19th June 1896
Place of Birth	Elberfeld, German Empire
Age at start	66 years old
Nationality	German
Role	Starting Leader of Reichskommissariat Ukraine
Political Party	AOdNSDAP
Ideology	National Socialism

"If I meet a Ukrainian worthy of being seated at my table, I must have him shot."

Erich Koch (born 19th June 1896) is the current Reichskommissar for the Ukraine, as well as Gauleiter and Oberpräsident of Eastern Prussia. He is the most important man in Reichskommissariat Ukraine, but probably the one that spends the least time within its borders. Koch rules Ukraine with a thorny whip, and for a while he managed just fine doing so, supposedly working towards the national-socialist ideal for this country. However, ever since the West Russian War, his methods stopped extracting adequate results. The colony stagnated, and Koch simply couldn't spare the energy to try and get it moving again.

Every factory he builds, every farm he modernizes and every bullet he orders into somebody's head; it all fails to subjugate the wild "borderland", which after more than 20 years is no less riddled with rebels and their constant terrorist attacks against his authority. For Koch, Ukraine is no Aryan paradise, and he's starting to wonder if it ever will be. These days he prefers to spend his time in East Prussia, another region he is responsible for, but one that he looks upon with pride, one that he wishes to get reassigned to permanently someday.

His three most relevant subordinates, Georg Leibbrandt, Otto Ohlendorf and Hans-Otto Bräutigam constantly pester him with childish ideas about how to solve the Reicshkommissariat's problems, all the while eyeing the big seat hes personally grown to despise for themselves.

In-Game Description

This is what Erich Koch has been left with. This is what he deserves.

At his peak of authority, Erich Koch was a thug upon a throne, brutal even by the standards of the Third Reich. His colonial policy was an endless cycle of exploitation and repression, designed to beat the Ukrainian people into submission. Under his watch, the Hunger Plan left the native population starving in fields of amber, and his quotas reduced them to slavery. In his mind, he had forged the very picture of Lebensraum: a blood diamond in Hitler's crown.

It could not last, of course. In the wake of the West Russian War, the Reichskommissariat was left with far more problems than Koch could comprehend. Above him, an army of administrators demanded more and more, hoping to prop up the Reich's ailing economy with further blood from its breadbasket. Below him, a crowd of natives screamed, demanding freedom from the abyss he had created. For the first time, Erich Koch was faced with problems which could not be solved with whips and hammers. The Reichskommissar was finally lost.

Rather than attempting major changes, the Reichskommissar has let the colony stagnate beneath him, even as terror rises and profits slow. Deep down, Erich Koch may be aware of some solution, but the man lacks the energy to change Ukraine's fate. In the name of profit, the Reichskommissar ground his colony into sand - now, he watches it blow away.

Biography

Early Life

Erich Koch was born on June 19th 1896 in a town of Elberfeld, today a part of Wuppertal. From 1915 he fought in the Great War, until its conclusion in 1918. Afterwards he continued soldiering as part of a Freikorps Rosshach in Upper Silesia until he was dismissed for "anti-Weinmar Republic activities".

Nazi Party

Koch during an unknown event

Koch joined the NSDAP in 1922 as member #90. From 1922 he worked in various party positions in the region of Ruhr, including as Business Manager. During the French Occupation of the Ruhr (1923-1925), he was a member of a local paramilitary resistance group and was imprisoned several times by French authorities.

He belonged to the left wing of the party and was a supporter of the faction led by Gregor Strasser. He became a member of the National Socialist Working Association, a short-lived group of north and northwest German regions, organized and led by Strasser, which unsuccessfully sought to amend the Party program. It was dissolved in 1926 following the Bamberg Conference.

On 22 March 1926, Koch became a Bezirksleiter of the NSDAP in Essen and, in October of that year, succeeded Joseph Goebbels as Business Manager of Großgau Ruhr. In 1927, he succeeded Viktor Lutze as the Deputy Gauleiter of the region.

In October 1928 he became Gauleiter of the Province of East Prussia and the leader of the NSDAP faction in the provincial diet. From September 1930 he was a member of the Reichstag for East Prussia. After Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933, Koch was appointed to the Prussian State Council that same year. He became Oberpräsident of East Prussia a month later replacing Wilhelm Kutscher. Koch was appointed SA-Obergruppenführer in 1938.

Gauleiter & Oberpräsident

Koch's pre-war rule in East Prussia was characterized by efforts to collectivize the local agriculture and the ruthlessness suppression of his critics inside and outside the Party. Because of Koch's long-term plans for mass-scale industrialization of the largely agricultural province, he was unpopular with the local peasants.

Through publicly funded emergency relief programs concentrating on agricultural land-improvement projects and road construction, the "Erich Koch Plan" for East Prussia allegedly made the province free of unemployment; Koch reported to Hitler that unemployment had been banished entirely from East Prussia, a feat that gained admiration throughout the Reich.

Koch's industrialization plans led him into conflict with Richard Walther Darré, who held the office of the Reich Peasant Leader (Reichsbauernführer) and Minister of Agriculture. Darré, a neopaganist rural romantic, wanted to enforce his vision of an agricultural East Prussia. When his representatives challenged Koch's plans, Koch had them arrested.

World War 2

At the commencement of the War Koch was appointed Reich Defense Commissioner (Reichsverteidigungskommissar) for Military District I (Wehrkreis I), which comprised East Prussia. After the end of the Invasion of Poland, the territory of his administrative unit was adjusted. Regierungsbezirk West Prussia was transferred from East Prussia to the new Reichsgau Westpreußen, later renamed Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia. East Prussia was compensated with Regierungsbezirk Zichenau (previously Ciechanów).

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, relevant for extermination and settlement, and provided basis for segregation of Jewish and "Slavic" spouses from ethnic Germans.

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

Reichskommissar for the Ukraine

Erich Koch (right) and
Alfred Rosenberg (center)

On September 1st 1941, Koch became Reichskommissar for the Ukraine with control of the Gestapo and the uniformed police. As Reichskommissar he had full authority in his realm, which led to 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 1941. Koch's first act as Reichskommissar was to close local schools, declaring that;

"Ukrainian children need no schools. What they'll have to learn will be taught to them by their German masters."

The Reichskommissar works with the General Plenipotentiary for Labour Deployment (Generalbevollmächtigter für den Arbeitseinsatz) in providing the Reich with forced labor. He was also involved in the persecution of Polish and Ukrainian Jews. Koch enforced the "Hunger Plan" against the "undesirables" of Ukraine. He remarked the Slavic population of the Reichskommissairat in a quote;

"We are a master race, which must remember that the lowliest German worker is racially and biologically a thousand times more valuable than the population here." 

Koch's rule was and still is characterized characterized by disturbing brutality, which gave rise to numerous and persistent resistance movements. These include the Ukrainian Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the Ukrainian National Revolutionary Army. All of which plague his fiefdom in a determined fight for the freedom of Ukraine. After the West Russian War (1955-1957), these movements gained substantially more traction, fighting fiercely against the Nazi occupiers, causing Koch enough headaches to lose faith in the prospects of the Reichskommissariat. Koch now only does the bare minimum required of him and dreams of being rid of his position as Reischkommissar.

In-Game (Spoilers)

Erich Koch is the starting leader for Reichskommissariat Ukraine. He is forced to dabble with issues of modernization and rebel busting. Though due to his short focus tree, he is unable to cause significant difference, nor does he particularly care if he did.

After the focus tree's conclusion, Koch will attempt to leave the Reichskommissariat for East Prussia, however when he turns on his car's engine, a bomb planted by one of the rebel groups will go off. While not immediately killed by the explosion, Erich Koch ends up in a coma, from which he is not expected to ever wake up from.

This assassination attempt plunges the entire Reichskommissariat into chaos, inciting the Ukrainian Civil War between the various rebel factions and the Reichskommissariat.