page_title: Hinrich Lohse
section_title: Occupation official in the Baltic states
hierarchical_section_title: Hinrich Lohse / Occupation official in the Baltic states
context_page_description: Hinrich Lohse was a Nazi German politician and a convicted war criminal, best known for his rule of the Baltic states during World War II.
context_section_description: On 25 July 1941, after the German occupation of Baltic states from the Soviet Union, Lohse was appointed "Reichskommissar for the Ostland". Lohse retained his functions in Schleswig-Holstein and shuttled between his two seats of Riga and Kiel. As Reichskommissar for Ostland and Alfred Rosenberg's deputy, he was responsible for the implementation of Nazi Germanization policies built on the foundations of the Generalplan Ost: the killing of almost all Jews, Romani people and Communists and the oppression of the local population were its necessary corollaries. Lohse was not directly responsible for the murderous actions of police forces and Einsatzgruppen who were under the control of SS-Brigadeführer and Generalmajor der Polizei Franz Walter Stahlecker, later on Higher SS and Police Leader (German: Höhere SS- und Polizeiführer, HSSPF) and even more of SS General and HSSPF Friedrich Jeckeln, the chief organizer of the Rumbula massacre.
  Nevertheless, as the leader of the "civil" administration he implemented, through a series of special edicts and guiding principles for the general settlement plan for Ostland, many of the preparatory acts that facilitated the subsequent police Aktionen (Nazi euphemism for killing operations).
  In particular he shared with Hans-Adolf Prützmann many of the responsibilities for the enslavement and  ghettoization of the Jews of Latvia.
  When he fled the Reichskommissariat Ostland in the autumn of 1944, and reached Schleswig-Holstein, he exercised there absolute rule as Reich Defence Commissar until the end of the war.
caption: General Commissioner of Latvia Otto-Heinrich Drechsler, Reich Commissar for the Ostland Hinrich Lohse, Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories Alfred Rosenberg and SA Officer Eberhard Medem in Dobele (1942).
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