RK Ukraine

Erich Koch lingered in his office, surrounded by the folders and maps he had not cared to examine. Outside, scattered footsteps rang out. The day was done, and Koch could leave at any moment. Yet he could not help but examine a single photo of his desk. A picture of the Reichskommissar on the first day of his assignment. Where was he now? The Reichskommissar that fateful day, when a train ripped him away from his native Prussia to serve in Rosenberg's newest colony. How hideous the land had seemed as it smeared past his cabin window. Yet when the train arrived, the air was crisp and clean; verdant fields filled his view. For a single moment, it almost felt like a home. It was shameful. How long had he strung himself along on that fleeting moment? How had he allowed this land to deceive him, to let him believe he could sculpt it into an Aryan paradise? No native starvation nor partisan massacre ever managed to bring back that sensation. When Koch came home that day, he would arrive in the stiff bed of a foreigner. Perhaps that was why the office brought more comfort. Twenty years later, the Reichskommissar remembered so little of that day. Year by year, Koch had let that world slip through his hands, as the true nature of his colony crushed him. Now, he could barely bring himself to work at all. In that moment, Koch had felt like the Earth was his to conquer. That violent, hopeful energy was gone now, and gone forever. At the end of the day, Koch only wished he had done more. He wished he had found every Ukrainian who dared to speak, every liberal who dared whine, and ripped their throats from their necks. If he had known then the world of dogs that he was being shuttled into, he wouldn't have spent a moment in that dream. He wouldn't have dared let himself be fooled. Two decades of meaningless violence, and all Koch could think of was wading further into the blood. "As if the blood didn't surround him already."