[1] He 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.

[2] 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.

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.

[1] 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.

[4] 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.

[5] At the commencement of World War II on 1 September 1939, Koch was appointed Reich Defense Commissioner (Reichsverteidigungskommissar) for Wehrkreis (Military District) I, which comprised East Prussia.

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.

"[10] Koch worked together with the General Plenipotentiary for Labour Deployment (Generalbevollmächtigter für den Arbeitseinsatz) Fritz Sauckel in providing the Reich with forced labor.

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 for 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"[12] by escaping through this Baltic Sea port on 23 April 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.

Found guilty of these crimes, he was sentenced to death on 9 March 1959 by the district court in Warsaw for having planned, prepared and organized the mass murder of civilians.

[citation needed] Koch appeared in a television report on Königsberg's history in 1986, interviewed by West German journalists in his Polish prison cell.

He died shortly thereafter of natural causes in Barczewo prison (formerly Wartenburg in East Prussia) at the age of 90, as the last war criminal to serve a term in Poland.

[16] 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.