Erich Koch Erich Koch ( June 19 , 1896 – November 12 , 1986 ) was a " Gauleiter " of the Nazi Party ( NSDAP ) in East Prussia from 1928 until 1945 . Between 1941 and 1945 he was the Chief of Civil Administration ( " Chef der Zivilverwaltung " ) of Bezirk Bialystok . During this period , he was also the " Reichskommissar " in Reichskommissariat Ukraine from 1941 until 1943 . After the Second World War , Koch stood trial in Poland and was convicted in 1959 of war crime s and sentenced to death . The sentence was commuted to life imprisonment a year later . Early life and First World War . Koch was born in Elberfeld , today part of Wuppertal , as the son of foreman Gustav Adolf Koch ( 1862 – 1932 ) and his wife Henriette , née Matthes ( 1863 – 1939 ) . In World War I he served without distinction as a soldier from 1915 till 1918 and later fought as a member of " Freikorps Rossbach " in Upper Silesia . A skilled trader , Koch joined the railway service as an aspirant for the middle level of the civil service . He was dismissed from this position in 1926 for anti - republican activities . Rise in the Nazi Party . Koch joined the NSDAP in 1922 { NSDAP # 90 } . From 1922 he worked in various party positions in the NSDAP - Gau Ruhr . During the Occupation of the Ruhr , he was a member of Albert Leo Schlageter ' s group and was imprisoned several times by the French authorities . In 1927 he became " Bezirksführer " of the NSDAP in Essen and later the deputy " Gauleiter " of " Gau Ruhr " . Koch belonged to the left wing of the party and was a supporter of the faction led by Gregor Strasser . In 1928 Koch 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 the " Machtergreifung " , Koch was appointed to the Prussian State Council in July 1933 . He became " Oberpräsident " of East Prussia in September 1933 , replacing Wilhelm Kutscher . In 1938 Koch was appointed SA - " Obergruppenführer " . Gauleiter of East Prussia . Koch ' s pre - war rule in East Prussia was characterized by efforts to collectivize the local agriculture and ruthlessness in dealing with his critics inside and outside the Party . He also had long - term plans for mass - scale industrialization of the largely agricultural province . These actions made him unpopular among the local peasants . However , 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 ; on August 16 , 1933 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 R . 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 " Land " representatives challenged Koch ' s plans , Koch had them arrested . 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 uniformed 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 November 25 , 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 after unsuccessfully demanding that a U - boat take him to South America . He was captured by British forces in Hamburg in May 1949 . Trial and imprisonment . The Soviet Union demanded Koch ' s extradition , but the British government decided to pass him on to the Polish government instead . On January 14 , 1950 he was handed over by the British to a prison in Warsaw , the Mokotów Prison , where he remained imprisoned for another eight years before his trial began on October 19 , 1958 . He faced charges of war crimes for the extermination of 400 , 000 Poles , but was never indicted for his crimes in Ukraine . Found guilty of these crimes , he was sentenced to death on March 9 , 1959 by the district court in Warsaw for having planned , prepared and organized the mass murder of civilians . His 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 Tsarskoe Selo palace near Leningrad which was dismantled on Koch ' s direct orders . The Soviets believed he had ordered parts of this famous room to be hidden on board the Wilhelm Gustloff cruise liner , which was torpedoed and sunk in the Baltic whilst evacuating refugees from East Prussia in early 1945 . Salvage attempts by both Soviet and Polish diving teams in the 1950s revealed no evidence to substantiate this theory . Koch appeared in a television report on Königsberg ' s history in 1986 , interviewed by West German journalists in his Polish prison cell . He remained unrepentant to the end , arguing that he would never have surrendered as " it was a matter of honour " . He died shortly thereafter of natural causes in prison at Barczewo , Poland ( formerly Wartenburg in East Prussia ) at the age of 90 , as the last war criminal to serve a term in Poland . Koch and Christianity . Koch was one of the few Nazi party leaders to consider himself a professing Christian . In addition to his political career , Koch was also the elected praeses of Synod of the old - Prussian Ecclesiastical Province of East Prussia . Although Koch gave preference to the " Deutsche Christen " movement over traditional Protestantism , his contemporaries regarded Koch as a " bona fide " Christian , whose success in his church career could be attributed to his commitment to the Lutheran faith . Koch officially resigned his church membership in 1943 , but in his post - war testimony he stated : " I held the view that the Nazi idea had to develop from a basic Prussian - Protestant attitude and from Luther ' s unfinished Protestant Reformation " . On the 450th Anniversary of Luther ' s birth ( November 10 , 1933 ) , Koch spoke on the circumstances surrounding Luther ' s birthday . He implied that the " Machtergreifung " was an act of divine will and stated that both Luther and Hitler struggled in the name of belief . It has been speculated that Koch ' s conflicts with Rosenberg and Darré had a religious element to them : both Rosenberg and Darré were anti - Christian Nordicists who did not believe that the Nazi " Weltanschauung " ( " world view " ) was compatible with Christianity .