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 on 2 June 1933 (acting until September) replacing Wilhelm Kutscher. He thus united under his control the highest party and governmental offices in the province. In November 1938 Koch was appointed SA-Obergruppenführer. 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 Richard 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 on 1 September 1939, Koch was appointed Reich Defense Commissioner (Reichsverteidigungskommissar) for Wehrkreis (Military District) I, which comprised East Prussia. On 26 October 1939, after the end of the Invasion of Poland, the territory of his Gau was adjusted. Regierungsbezirk West Prussia was transferred from East Prussia to the new Reichsgau Westpreußen, later renamed Reichsgau 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 segregation of Jewish and "Slavic" spouses from ethnic Germans in the German Volksliste. Soon after