Kurt Agricola was born in Döbeln, then in the Kingdom of Saxony, on 15 August 1889, into a Saxon family that traced its roots back in the 16th century.

[1] Following his father's career, 18-year–old Agricola entered army service on 1 April 1908 as officer candidate in the 12th Royal Saxon Infantry Regiment No.

On 9 January 1917 he was transferred to the staff of the 219th (10th Royal Saxon) Infantry Division, occupying a relatively quiet sector of the front line in Lorraine.

[3][5] Becoming a staff officer — a group considered the élite of the German Army — required a three–year course at the War Academy in Berlin after some years of active service.

On 12 October 1937, he was named commander of Heeresdienststelle 3, a rather obscure unit tasked with guarding the eastern borders of the Third Reich;[9] during this time, his superiors observed that "sometimes he underestimated his great concern for the troops", an indication of his caring leadership style.

[3] In his function as Landwehr commander, he had attend to the organization and the training of older reservists (35–45 years of age), some of them veterans of World War I.

[11] This was a backwater post for an officer such as Agricola, whose once–promising career came finally to an abrupt end on 31 January 1939, when he, 49 years old at the time, retired from the army and was simultaneously given the honorary rank (Charakter) of a Generalleutnant (Lieutenant General).

For a staunchly antisemitic regime such as the Nazi one, and with the implementation of racial laws, marriage with a Jewish woman could be a threat to an officer's career as well as life.

"[14] With the Battle of Moscow and the Soviet counter-offensive of the winter of 1941/42, the rear security of the occupied territory was considered by the German High Command of paramount importance, given how stretched the Wehrmacht's supply lines were.

The resistance movement and the Soviet partisans, reinforced by Red Army soldiers who had evaded capture when their units were destroyed during the initial stages of the invasion, posed the most essential threat to the control of the areas behind the front.

The main formations tasked with the protection of the supply lines and the destruction of the partisans were the Korück (acronym for Kommandant rückwärtiges Armeegebiet, Commander of the Rear Area Army Territory).

[15] Agricola was appointed Korück 580, in the rear area of the 2nd Army, with headquarters in Kromy on 19 December 1941, with the battle for Moscow in full swing, succeeding the 64-year old Generalleutnant Ludwig Müller (who had requested his relief because of a heart ailment).

German historian Christian Hartmann argued that the relatively heavy casualties of the Korück's troops — 1161 dead, wounded and missing — and the number of captured enemy weapons indicated that Agricola, in contrast with the typical occupation policy of the time, was not focused (at least exclusively) in reprisals against the civilian population, in the hope of terrorizing and weakening the partisan movement.

In February 1942, Agricola wrote that the food rations for the civilians were lower than those issued by the pre–war Soviet regime and felt that given the situation, it would be impossible to cultivate positive feelings towards the German troops, thus calling for a change.

Agricola considered the improvement of the conditions in the POW camps vital for "economic, simply humanitarian and propagandistic reasons", an extremely rare declaration for a rear area commander.

[20] After he was informed of the appalling conditions and the high mortality rates in the POW camps in January 1942, he issued orders prohibiting the maltreatment of prisoners, as well as the reduction of food rations, and sought the establishment of a minimum of medical care, ostensibly for the protection of his own troops from typhus.

[22] In conclusion, Kurt Agricola was one of the very few commanders who tried to change the occupation policies that were the norm in Nazi–occupied territories and opted to minimize resistance by treating the population humanely instead of terrorizing it.

[24] Agricola was finally promoted to Generalleutnant (Lieutenant General) z. V. (zur Verfügung, "for duties")[Note 2][25] on 1 August 1943 and also served briefly as commander of Kursk during that year.

[3] In 1944, he also commanded "Gruppe Aricola" (Group Agricola), a formation consisting of Korpsabteilung E and a cavalry brigade, which fought against the Red Army mainly in the central section of the eastern front.

A military tribunal of the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs in the Kiev Oblast found him guilty under Article 1 of Ukaz 43 (19 April 1943) and sentenced him to 25 years of hard labor on 16 November 1948.