The original version of this article is here.
I have debunked two of the most celebrated anti-Slav quotes attributed by ‘Holocaust’ historians to the Gauleiter of East Prussia and Reichs Commissar of the Ukraine Erich Koch and which are constantly wheeled out by historians and journalists alike as part of their ‘evidence’ for the ‘Slavic Holocaust’. (1)
The third extremely famous quote attributed to Erich Koch on the subject goes something like this:
‘If I find a Ukrainian who is worthy to sit with me at table, I must have him shot’
When I began digging into this quote something that I noticed very quickly was that while almost routinely reproduced and cited as real: no date, place or originating source was mentioned. This is decidedly odd in the study of the Third Reich and in modern history in general in that documentation is not generally speaking an issue and specific claims are expected to have specific evidence and if they do not then it is the rule of thumb to disregard such quotes as apocryphal or invented at a later date.
What I found however was that this Koch quote – while often stated – was never linked to a primary source, a time and/or a place which made my eyebrows go up and caused me to wonder: could it really be there is no actual primary source for this quote?
For example, Timothy Snyder – who is a fairly serious academic authority on Central and Eastern Europe during the early to mid-twentieth century – cited the Koch quote in his 2015 book on the ‘Holocaust’: ‘Black Earth’.
He writes how:
‘Erich Koch chosen by Hitler to rule Ukraine, made the point about the inferiority of Ukrainians with a certain simplicity: “If I find a Ukrainian who is worthy to sit with me at table, I must have him shot.’ (2)
The problem of course is that Snyder provides no reference for the quote and just assumes it is genuine presumably because it is ‘well known’.
When I looked at Karel Berkhoff’s 2004 academic study of Reichskommissariat Ukraine ‘Harvest of Despair’; Berkhoff also quoted a variant of same words that Koch is said to have uttered.
He writes:
‘He is said to have remarked once, “If I find a Ukrainian who is worthy of sitting at the same table with men, I must have him shot.”’ (3)
Berkhoff’s wording here is telling concerning this quote: ‘he is said to have remarked once’. The reason is because this suggests that like Berkhoff at least tried to check the quote’s origins and he is unsure if it is genuine, but he quotes it anyway with an inference that it ‘might not be genuine’ but ‘represents Koch’s views’.
The problem that Berkhoff must have run into is locating an original source for the quote in the primary source material; so Berkhoff does the easy (and lazy) thing and simply cites two academic sources for the quote being ‘real’. (4)
The first is Gerald Reitlinger’s January 1959 article ‘Last of the War Criminals’ in ‘Commentary’ which is a long and detailed if polemical article about Koch, but which doesn’t mention this quote once. (5) I even read the article twice to be sure and then checked Reitlinger’s best-selling and much cited 1956 book ‘The SS’ that mentions Koch repeatedly and it isn’t to be found in there either. (6)
The second is Alexander Dallin’s 1981 academic study ‘German Rule in Russia, 1941-1945’ which introduces the Koch quote but again like Snyder doesn’t actually provide a source and leaves it as – essentially – ‘everybody knows Koch said this’. (7)
Thus, we can see that even Berkhoff’s citations lead nowhere and we are left with the impression that this quote has come out of thin air and when checking other works that cover this aspect of German policy – for example Robert Edwin Herzstein’s 1982 ‘When Nazi Dreams Come True’ and Michael Burleigh’s 1988 ‘Germany turns Eastwards’ – as well as widely-cited histories of the Third Reich – for example William Shirer’s 1960 ‘The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich’ – the quote is also not to be found.
Now in my original discussion of this problem, I noted that I suspected that there was probably an original primary document behind this ‘quote’ somewhere and that it was fairly obscure. Happily, a reader named Richard88Wagner quickly alerted me to where this had been sourced from; which was an obscure 10th February 1944 memorandum from Gauleiter Alfred Frauenfeld to Heinrich Himmler, which Frauenfeld had written in Vienna as part of his new job advising Himmler on propaganda and recruitment in the East as well as advising the Wehrmacht’s propaganda companies on what they focus on.
The key bit of information here is that from 1942 to 1944 Frauenfeld had been the General Commissar for Crimea under Koch and when Frauenfeld wrote this memorandum he used the quoted example as the ‘wrong kind of utterance’ that ‘gets out to the local people’ and thus affects the recruitment of local Ukrainians to the German cause.
Interestingly this utterance wasn’t included in the English translation of Frauenfeld’s memorandum for the document collection for Nuremberg as it was considered ‘one of many such examples’ Frauenfeld adduced. (8)
So, before we continue this is relevant section of Frauenfeld’s report to Himmler in English (my translation from the original German):
‘As an officer serving on the Eastern Front, I witnessed the first awards of assault badges to the Ukrainian soldiers and also to Ukrainian members of local [probably meaning anti-partisan/militia/civil defence – KR] units. A few weeks later, Reichs Commissar Koch, along with the newly appointed General Commissars, undertook an informational tour to Rowne and Kiev, and on this occasion, as the final piece of wisdom he uttered the following regarding the policy he represented in the Reichskommisariat Ukraine, he stated:
“If I find a Ukrainian worthy of sitting at my table, I must have him shot.”
If such trains of thought, merely considered – for reasons I will later explain – can be disastrous, then it seems an incomprehensible delusion to utter these and similar things at every opportunity and have them repeated – at every opportunity – to subordinate officials, because it sounds so bold and boisterous that every inspector and secretary’s heart beats faster when he speaks it, then these insights cannot remain hidden from the locals for long! But since, after all, every dog has a sense for discerning whether one means well or ill, it should come as no surprise that the Ukrainian also notices this and adjusts his attitude accordingly.’ (9)
We can immediately see the following:
A) Frauenfeld is not a neutral witness and is – in effect – blaming Koch and ‘people like him’ (his language is fairly abusive in that polite but snide bureaucratic way that officials often criticise each other’s work) (10) for the Reich’s and the Wehrmacht’s failure to hold Ukraine.
B) Frauenfeld’s purpose in writing the report is primarily to discuss the recruitment of Ukrainians and other Eastern peoples into the Wehrmacht so naturally he seeks to distance himself from what he perceives the failure of Koch’s ‘heavy-handed methods’ and align himself the Reich’s Eastern Ministry – now run by the SS – who had advocated a much more conciliatory approach from 1941 onwards, while Koch – as we’ve seen in our discussion elsewhere – took a far more authoritarian and patriarchal attitude on the issue. (11)
C) Frauenfeld doesn’t specify when Koch said this – although we may reasonably assume it allegedly occurred in 1942 given the reference to the General Commissars being ‘newly-created’ – and is intentionally vague as to the exact context in which the comment allegedly occurred.
D) If Koch did state this then he likely said it in 1942 then Frauenfeld is only complaining about this statement in February 1944 and not to Koch’s boss (and Frauenfeld’s boss’ boss) Otto Brautigam at the Eastern Ministry as would normally have been the case and as we see von Altenstadt doing in March 1943 about Koch’s poor choice of language during a speech. Thus, strongly suggesting the extremely partisan nature of Frauenfeld’s 1944 memorandum to Himmler and also throwing doubt on the veracity of Frauenfeld’s sudden ‘exact recall’ of what Koch had said likely well over a year earlier. (12)
E) What Frauenfeld does say is that it was Koch’s ‘final piece of wisdom’ regarding the policy of Reichskommissariat Ukraine towards the Ukrainian people but then adds ‘it sounds so bold and boisterous that every inspector and secretary’s heart beats faster when he speaks it’.
In other words, Koch likely meant it as either rhetoric – this is similar to the March 1943 speech incidentally where Koch’s rhetoric in the immediate context of Goebbels’ famous ‘Total War’ speech has been taken out of context to mean something it did not – (13) or – as I originally hypothesised – as a kind of joke meant to make his subordinates smile, which Frauenfeld (understandably) labels as counter-productive and stupid because ‘information like this has a habit of getting out’.
If we note A, B, C and D then we can see that contrary to what proponents of this alleged quotation without its accompanying context want to claim; Koch’s alleged statement is simply unsupported hearsay from Frauenfeld who is openly hostile to him and seeking to attack/undermine Koch as well as his political patron Martin Bormann to Bormann’s powerful rival Himmler. Koch may have said it and he may not have said it all, but even if we assume that he did say it: Frauenfeld also makes clear by the accompanying context that Koch didn’t mean it to be taken literally, but rather as a joke or motivational rhetoric at the end of the ‘informational tour’ of Reichskommissariat Ukraine’s workings.
Put simply Koch has almost certainly been taken entirely out of context by Frauenfeld who has in turn been taken entirely out of context of by modern ‘historians’ who reproduce the quote but without the contextual comments of Frauenfeld. Indeed, Berkhoff comes closest to being honest when he states that Koch ‘was said to have remarked’ which alludes to the fact that this ‘quote’ is at absolute best unsupported hearsay from a hostile witness who suddenly mentions it over a year after it was allegedly said but doesn’t seem to have otherwise commented on or reported it at the time.
In other words: this alleged Koch quote is unsupported hearsay, may well have never been said at all and has been completely (and obviously) mis-represented by historians who don’t cite the context it is mentioned which makes clear it was likely meant as a joke and/or motivational rhetoric and nothing more!
References
(1) On these please see my detailed article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/is-the-erich-koch-we-are-a-master
(2) Timothy Snyder, 2015, ‘Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning’, 1st Edition, The Bodley Head: London, p. 18
(3) Karel Berkhoff, 2004, ‘Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine under Nazi Rule’, 1st Edition, Harvard University Press: Cambridge, p. 37
(4) Ibid., p. 322, n. 13
(5) Cf. Gerald Reitlinger, ‘Last of the War Criminals: The Mystery of Erich Koch’, Commentary, January 1959 (Berkhoff cites it as being on p. 32 but it is not). You can check this for yourself here: https://www.commentary.org/articles/gerald-reitlinger/last-of-the-war-criminalsthe-mystery-of-erich-koch/
(6) Cf. Gerald Reitlinger, 1981, [1956], ‘The SS: Alibi of a Nation, 1922-1945’, 1st Edition, Book Club Associates: London
(7) Alexander Dallin, 1981, ‘German Rule in Russia, 1941-1945: A Study of Occupation Policies’, 2nd Edition, Westview Press: Boulder, p. 167
(8) International Military Tribunal, ‘Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, 14 November 1945 – 1 October 1946’, Vol. 13, 1st Edition, International Military Tribunal: Nuremberg, pp. 330-335
(9) NARA, RG 242, T-175, Roll 125, p. 627 (This is available at the following address: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/273922692?objectPage=627)
(10) See International Military Tribunal, Vol. 13, Op. Cit., pp. 332-334
(11) On this please see my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/is-the-erich-koch-we-are-a-master
(12) I suspect Dr. Markull’s 23rd July 1942 letter to Georg Leibbrandt which states that ‘The Reich Commissioner for the Ukraine has expounded his views of the Ukrainian people governed by him in three successive speeches at the inauguration . . . .” — et cetera.’ (International Military Tribunal, Vol. 11, Op. Cit., p. 543) could well refer to same remark that Frauenfeld is talking about. On Markull’s letter please see my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/is-the-martin-bormann-the-fertility
(13) On this please see my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/is-the-erich-koch-we-are-a-master
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