The Kochs may be looked upon by conservatives as a normal wealthy American family but they have ties to one of the most evil regimes in world history. Fred Koch created his company, Winkler-Koch, here in America, and was sued for patent infringement because of his process for turning crude oil into gasoline. Litigation put Winkler-Koch out of business in the U.S. for several years. In other words, Koch was banned. Koch then turned his focus to foreign markets, including the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany with the help of Erich Koch. A high level Nazi official in charge of Prussia, Erich Koch invited Fred Koch to sell his oil in Nazi Germany after he was banned from doing business in the US. After the fall of Nazi Germany, Erich Koch and Fred expanded the oil empire to the Soviet Union. A few years later, the Soviets took Fred Koch’s oil and prosecuted Erich for war crimes. Fred Koch returned to the US as an anti-communist, and was allowed to do business in America once again. In 1963, Fred Koch gave a speech warning of “a takeover” of America in which Communists would “infiltrate the highest offices of government in the U.S. until the president is a Communist, unknown to the rest of us”. Koch also “wrote admiringly of Benito Mussolini’s suppression of Communists in Italy, and disparagingly of the American civil-rights movement.” Fred Koch was a crazy right wing entrepreneur that was relegated to the extreme fringe of the Republican Party and as such, he had no real power. Unfortunately the same cannot be said of his sons.
With the backing of the Koch brothers, the Heritage Foundation recently provided Republican Darryl Issa a wish list of regulations they want to see repealed, including environmental regulations, consumer protections, and worker protections. Without these important protections and regulations, the Koch brothers would be free to screw over consumers, treat their workforce like slaves, and pollute the environment as much as they want. And we are seeing these attempts to eliminate protective policies play out in the halls of Congress as we speak. But it is just not in Congress, its in individual states as well.
Over the course of the 2010 elections, the Kochs poured hundreds of millions of dollars into elections around the country. Many Republicans that were swept into office are beholden to the Koch brothers. One of these Governors, Scott Walker of Wisconsin, has slammed a bill through the state legislature that effectively destroys unions in the state. The Kochs are all for this maneuver. They hate organized labor, and have a strong belief that workers have no rights and have no purpose other than to work at whatever price an owner wants them to work for. Koch Industries does not employ union workers for this reason. This anti-labor belief stems directly from the Koch familial ties in Nazi Germany. Erich Koch was a high ranking Nazi official in the Ukraine, who, in addition to having control of the Gestapo and the police, worked together with the General Plenipotentiary for Labor Deployment, to provide the Reich with forced labor. Erich Koch faced charges of war crimes for the extermination of 400,000 Poles.
Another family member, Karl Koch, was a colonel in the German SS and the first commandant of the Nazi concentration camps at Buchenwald.
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