1. The sentence was later commuted to life in prison and Erich Koch died of natural causes in his cell at the Barczewo prison on 12 November 1986.
25 Facts About Erich Koch
1. 2.
Erich Koch was born in Elberfeld, today part of Wuppertal, as the son of foreman Gustav Adolf Erich Koch and his wife Henriette, nee Matthes.
3.
Erich Koch later fought as a member of Freikorps Rossbach in Upper Silesia.
4.
Erich Koch was dismissed from this position in 1926 for anti-Weimar Republic activities.
5.
Erich Koch belonged to the left wing of the party and was a supporter of the faction led by Gregor Strasser.
6.
Erich Koch became a member of the National Socialist Working Association, a short-lived group of north and northwest German Gaue, organized and led by Strasser, which unsuccessfully sought to amend the Party program.
7.
In October 1928, Erich Koch became Gauleiter of the Province of East Prussia and the leader of the NSDAP faction in the provincial diet.
8.
Erich Koch became Oberprasident of East Prussia on 2 June 1933 replacing Wilhelm Kutscher.
9.
Erich Koch thus united under his control the highest party and governmental offices in the province.
10.
Erich Koch had long-term plans for mass-scale industrialization of the largely agricultural province.
11.
At the commencement of World War II on 1 September 1939, Erich Koch was appointed Reich Defense Commissioner for Wehrkreis I, which comprised East Prussia.
12.
Schieder in return sent two reports to Erich 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 segregation of Jewish and "Slavic" spouses from ethnic Germans in the German Volksliste.
13.
On 1 September 1941, Erich Koch became Reichskommissar of Reichskommissariat Ukraine with control of the Gestapo and the uniformed police.
14.
Erich Koch was involved in the persecution of Polish and Ukrainian Jews.
15.
On 21 September 1944, Erich Koch succeeded Hinrich Lohse as Reichskommissar for the Ostland, overseeing the Nazi administration in the Baltic States.
16.
Erich Koch was appointed as head of the Volkssturm of East Prussia on 25 November 1944.
17.
Erich Koch was captured by British forces in Hamburg in May 1949.
18.
Erich Koch faced charges of war crimes for the extermination of 400,000 Poles, but was never indicted for his crimes in Ukraine.
19.
Erich Koch's sentence was commuted to life imprisonment due to ill health, although many believe he was spared because the Soviets thought he possessed information about art looted by the Nazis during the war; in particular, information about the whereabouts of the Amber Room of Tsarskoye Selo palace near Leningrad which was dismantled on Koch's direct orders.
20.
Erich Koch appeared in a television report on Konigsberg's history in 1986, interviewed by West German journalists in his Polish prison cell.
21.
Erich Koch remained unrepentant to the end, arguing that he would never have surrendered the city of Konigsberg as "it was a matter of honour".
22.
Erich Koch died shortly thereafter of natural causes in Barczewo prison at the age of 90, as the last war criminal to serve a term in Poland.
23.
Erich Koch was buried in an unmarked grave at the local prison cemetery.
24.
Erich Koch was one of the openly Christian Nazi Party members.
25.
Erich Koch implied that the Machtergreifung was an act of divine will and stated that both Luther and Hitler struggled in the name of belief.