Erhard Milch (30 March 1892 – 25 January 1972) was a GermanGeneralfeldmarschall of theLuftwaffe who oversaw its founding and development during therearmament of Germany and most ofWorld War II. Milch served asState Secretary in theReich Ministry of Aviation from May 1933 to June 1944 and asInspector General of theLuftwaffe from February 1939 to January 1945.

Erhard Milch
Milch in March 1942
Born	(1892-03-30)30 March 1892 Wilhelmshaven,Grand Duchy of Oldenburg,German Empire
Died	25 January 1972(1972-01-25) (aged 79) Düsseldorf,North Rhine-Westphalia,West Germany
Allegiance	German Empire  Weimar Republic  Nazi Germany
Branch	Imperial German Army Luftstreitkräfte Luftwaffe
Years of service	1910–1922 1933–1945
Rank	Generalfeldmarschall
Commands	Luftflotte 5 Jägerstab
Battles / wars	World War I World War II Battle of Britain Norwegian campaign
Awards	Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross
Relations	Werner Milch (brother)

Milch was an early member of theLuftstreitkräfte duringWorld War I and worked as anairline director in the Germancivil aviation industry after the war. Milch was appointed deputy ofHermann Göring in the Aviation Ministry in 1933, heading the organisation and development of theLuftwaffe from 1936. Milch ledNazi Germany'saircraft production and supply from 1941, adopting a policy ofmass production, and utilising theforced labour of foreign workers under inhumane conditions to supply theLuftwaffe. Milch was removed from his important Aviation Ministry positions after supporting a failed attempt to remove Göring in June 1944 and sidelined until his capture byAllied forces in May 1945.

Milch was tried at theMilch Trial in 1947, convicted ofwar crimes andcrimes against humanity for his exploitation of forced labour for theLuftwaffe, and sentenced tolife imprisonment. Milch's sentence wascommuted to 15 years byJohn J. McCloy, the U. S. High Commissioner for Germany, in 1951. Milch wasparoled in 1954 and died inWest Germany in 1972.

Erhard Milch was born on 30 March 1892 inWilhelmshaven, the son of Anton Milch, apharmacist in theImperial German Navy, and his wife Clara Wilhelmine (née Vetter). Anton had converted fromJudaism which made Milch aMischling (mixed-race) under theNuremberg Laws.^[1] However, he would not have been considered Jewish according toJewish orthodoxy (orhalakha), which states that a person’s Jewish status is passed downthrough the mother. TheGestapo began to investigate Milch's alledged Jewish heritage in 1935 after rumours began to circulate. The investigation was halted byHermann Göring, thecommander-in-chief of theLuftwaffe, who produced anaffidavit by Milch's mother stating that his biological father was her uncle, Karl Brauer, meaning he was a product ofincest but not aMischling. Milch was then issued with aGerman Blood Certificate though his legal paternity was never changed.^[2] Those events and the later extension of the "Certificate of German Blood" were the background to Göring's statement, "I decide who is a Jew in the air force".

Author andHolocaust denierDavid Irving claimed in his bookThe Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe: The Life of Field Marshal Erhard Milch, that Milch asked him not to reveal the truth about his parentage, so although Irving states that Erhard's father was not Anton Milch and concentrates on his wealthy great-uncle Karl Brauer (who died in 1906), he does not actually name Brauer as his father.^[3] However, Irving, who claimed to have had access to the Field Marshal's privatediary and papers, says the rumours about Milch's parentage began to spread in the autumn of 1933, and that Erhard Milch personally obtained a signed statement by his putative father Anton that he was not the father of Clara's children. Furthermore, Irving claimed that Clara Milch had already written to her son-in-law Fritz Herrmann in March 1933 explaining the circumstances of her marriage, and that Göring had initiated his own investigation that identified his real father.^[4] During theNuremberg trials in 1946, Milch was again questioned about his alleged Jewish father and Göring's role in the matter by Chief United States Prosecutor,Robert H. Jackson.^[5]

Milch enlisted in theImperial German Army in 1910, where he rose to the rank ofLeutnant and commanded an artillery unit inEast Prussia at the beginning ofWorld War I. In September 1914, he saw action against theImperial Russian Army on theRiver Deime and in February 1915 on the Angerapp Line. In July 1915, he was transferred to theFliegertruppe and trained as anaerial observer on theWestern Front, seeing action on theSomme in 1916 (through the period of it becoming theLuftstreitkräfte in October that year) and later inFlanders during 1917. After a spell as acompany commander in thetrenches in the spring and summer of 1918, in the waning days of the war, he was promoted toHauptmann and appointed to command afighter wing,Jagdgruppe 6, even though he had never trained as apilot and could not fly himself.^[6]

Milch resigned from theReichswehr in 1920 to pursue a career incivil aviation as a result of Germany being forbidden from maintaining an air force in theTreaty of Versailles. Milch formed a small airlineLloyd Luftdienst, under the banner ofNorddeutscher Lloyd's union of regional German airlines, with squadron colleagueGotthard Sachsenberg inDanzig. The airline linked Danzig to theBaltic States. In 1923, Milch became the managing director of its successor company. From there, Milch and Sachsenberg went to work for rivalJunkers Luftverkehr, where Milch was appointed a managing director in 1925. Milch was named a managing director (one of three) of the newly-formed airlineDeutsche Luft Hansa in 1926.^[7][8] Milch joined theNazi Party (membership number 123,885) on 1 April 1929, but his membership was not officially acknowledged until March 1933, becauseAdolf Hitler deemed it desirable to keep the fact hidden for political reasons.^[9][10]

On 5 May 1933, Milch took up a position asState Secretary of the newly formedReich Ministry of Aviation (RLM), answering directly to Göring. In this capacity, he was instrumental in establishing theLuftwaffe, the air force ofNazi Germany. Milch quickly used his position to settle personal scores with otheraviation industry personalities, includingHugo Junkers andWilly Messerschmitt. Specifically, Milch banned Messerschmitt from submitting a design in the competition for a newfighter aircraft for theLuftwaffe. However, Messerschmitt outmanoeuvred Milch, circumventing the ban and successfully submitting theBf 109 design under the corporate nameBayerische Flugzeugwerke, which proved to be the winner. Messerschmitt maintained its leading position within the German aircraft industry until the failure of theMe 210 aircraft. Even after that, Milch did not depose him, but put him in an inferior position.^[11]

In a reorganization of 1 February 1939, Milch with the rank ofGeneraloberst was given the additional job ofInspector-General of theLuftwaffe.^[12] After the outbreak ofWorld War II in September, Milch commandedLuftflotte 5 duringOperation Weserübung inNorway. Following thedefeat of France, Milch was promoted toGeneralfeldmarschall (field marshal) during the1940 Field Marshal Ceremony.^[13] Following the suicide of theLuftwaffe'sresearch and development chiefErnst Udet in November 1941, Milch succeeded him asGeneralluftzeugmeister, in charge of allLuftwaffe aircraft production, armament and supply. In April 1942, he was named to theCentral Planning Board along withAlbert Speer (Reich Minister of Armaments and War Production),Paul Körner (State Secretary of theFour Year Plan), andWalther Funk (Reich Minister for the Economy) in an effort to coordinate control over all industrial war production.^[14]

Milch cancelled production of the ineffective and dangerous Messerschmitt Me 210 andHeinkel He 177, and put them back in development. Under his direction, theLuftwaffe's aircraft production focused onmass production of the tested and tried models. Output doubled in the summer of 1943 in comparison with the winter of 1941–1942.Adam Tooze wrote "For the first time, the German aircraft industry was able to achieve substantialeconomies of scale. The resources pumped into the Luftwaffe in 1940–41 were now concentrated in mass assembly".^[15] To achieve this level of mass production, the Armaments Ministries and the industry cooperated with theSS to procureforced labour from theNazi concentration camps. Due to Milch's connections with the SS, theLuftwaffe had an advantage in obtaining forced labour over the other armed forces.^[15] To increase the quantity, Milch also made some sacrifices in quality, notable in the case of the Messerschmitt Bf 109. When theUnited States Army Air Forces began to directly challenge the fighter forces of theLuftwaffe, the cost of Milch's decisions was shown as the handling of the Bf 109 G was so bad that they became, in the words of Tooze, "little more than death traps".^[16]

In January 1943, Milch was tasked by Hitler with ensuring theair supply of the6th Army, which wasencircled at theBattle of Stalingrad. Hitler valued Milch's organizational talent and the task required him to travel to thefront line for the first time in the war. He found the situation to be impossible: there were too fewaircrew, too little fuel and, in particular, no suitableairfields or landing sites within reach ofStalingrad. By this time, Milch had passed the peak of his career with the increasingly intenseAllied air raids on German territory from the summer of 1943 onward, and the resulting loss ofair supremacy ultimately led to a loss of confidence from Göring and Hitler.

On 10 August 1943, Milch finally addressed Germany's lack of a truly "four-engined"heavy bomber to carry out raids against theUnited Kingdom. He endorsedArado Flugzeugwerke to be the subcontractor for theHeinkel He 177B separately engined heavy bomber design. Only three flyableprototypes were completed by early 1944.^[17] From March 1944, Milch, together with Speer, oversaw the activities of theJägerstab ("Fighter Staff"), a governmental task force whose aim was to increase the production of fighter aircraft, in part by moving the production facilities underground. In cooperation with the SS, the task force played a key role in the exploitation of forced labour for the benefit of the German aircraft industry and theLuftwaffe.^[18]

When the agitation among the legions of foreign workers in his factories threatened production, Milch was able to refer to his association withReichsführer-SSHeinrich Himmler:

I spoke to Himmler recently about this, and told him his main task must be to see to the protection of German industry if unrest breaks out among this foreign scum.

If, for instance, there is amutiny at X, an officer with a couple of men, or a lieutenant with thirty troops, must appear in the factory and let fly with their machine-guns into the mob. The object is to lay out as many people as possible, if mutinies break out. This is the order I have issued, even if the people are our own foreign workers.

Every tenth man is to be picked out, and every tenth man will be shot in front of the rest.^[19]

Milch's loss of power within the Aviation Ministry intensified when, in early 1944, Milch was forced to hand over fighter production, the bulk of German air armament, to theJägerstab after the devastatingBig Week on German cities and military targets.

In June 1944, Milch sided with Himmler andJoseph Goebbels, the propaganda minister, in attempting to convince Hitler to remove Göring from command of theLuftwaffe. When Hitler refused, Göring retaliated by forcing Milch out of his positions as State Secretary andGeneralluftzeugmeister on 20 June, and eventually asLuftwaffe Inspector General in January 1945.^[20] From August 1944, Milch worked under Speer in theRüstungsstab (Armaments Staff) as his deputy, but was sidelined and achieved little. He was injured in a car accident in the fall of 1944 and hospitalized for several weeks. Finally placed into theFührerreserve in March 1945, he was not reassigned for the remainder of the war.^[21]

On 4 May 1945, Milch was apprehended by the BritishNo. 6 Commando on theBaltic Sea coast and taken to the unit's command post of BrigadierDerek Mills-Roberts inNeustadt in Holstein, a man who was known to have a short temper. When Milch arrived, Mills-Roberts was said to be still seething from the suffering and atrocities he had seen during the liberation ofBergen-Belsen concentration camp. Milch reportedly addressed Mills-Roberts in a haughty manner, demanding good treatment, waving hisGeneralfeldmarschall'scampaign baton around, and dismissing concerns about the inmates of several satelliteArbeitslager ofNeuengamme concentration camp in the area.^[22] Mills-Roberts became so incensed with Milch's tone, the British officer snatched the field-marshal's baton from him and began beating Milch over the head with it until it broke. He then grabbed achampagne bottle and continued, fracturing Milch'sskull. The bloodied field-marshal was then pulled up from the floor and driven back toSierhagen Castle where he had been staying, and robbed at gunpoint by British soldiers (which included his ceremonial jewel-encrusted Generalfeldmarschall baton). He was then sent to a holding camp for Nazi prisoners atLüneburg near thefield HQ of British Field MarshalBernard Montgomery.^[23]

A few days later Mills-Roberts went to the British HQ and, upon entering the commander's ten, Montgomery is said to have covered his head with his hands, quipping "I hear you've got a thing about Field Marshals". Mills-Roberts apologised for his actions but no further action was taken against him.^[24]

Milch was tried as awar criminal in 1947 by a United StatesMilitary Tribunal in Nuremberg for his widespread use of forced labour in theLuftwaffe's production. Hisdefence was represented by his brother Werner Milch. He was convicted on two counts:

1. War crimes, by participating in the ill treatment and use of the forced labour ofprisoners of war (POWs) and the deportation of civilians to the same ends.
2. Crimes against humanity, by participating in the murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, imprisonment,torture, and the use ofslave labour of civilians who came under German control, German nationals and prisoners of war.

Milch was sentenced tolife imprisonment and sent to Rebdorf Prison nearMunich. Unlike the vast majority of other Nazi war criminals who were tried under U.S. military law, Milch was not immediately sent toLandsberg Prison to serve his sentence, but was eventually transferred to Landsberg. Milch's sentence wascommuted to 15 years imprisonment in 1951, and he wasparoled in June 1954. He lived out the remainder of his life inDüsseldorf, where he died in 1972 as the last livingGeneralfeldmarschall of theLuftwaffe.

In the 1969 filmBattle of Britain, Milch was portrayed by German actor Dietrich Frauboes.

American actorRobert Vaughn portrayed Milch in the 1982 television film,Inside the Third Reich.

• Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on 4 May 1940 asGeneraloberst and chief ofLuftflotte 5 andBefehlshaber Nord (commander-in-chief north).^[25]
• Grand Cross with Swords of theOrder of the White Rose of Finland on 30 March 1942 asGeneralfeldmarschall.^[26]

Citations

• Angolia, John R. (1976).For Führer and Fatherland: Military Awards of the Third Reich. R. James Bender. pp. 351–7.ISBN 978-0912138145.
• Boog, Horst (1994). "Milch, Erhard".Neue Deutsche Biographie (in German). Vol. 17. pp. 499–503.
• Brett-Smith, Richard (1976).Hitler's Generals. San Rafael, CA: Presidio Press.ISBN 0-89141-044-9.
• Buggeln, Marc (2014).Slave Labor in Nazi Concentration Camps.Oxford University Press.ISBN 9780198707974.
• Faber, Harold (1977).Luftwaffe: A History. New York: Times Books.ISBN 0-8129-0725-6.
• Franks, Norman L. R.; Bailey, Frank W.; Guest, Russell (1993).Above the Lines: The Aces and Fighter Units of the German Air Service, Naval Air Service and Flanders Marine Corps, 1914–1918. London: Grub Street.ISBN 0948817739.
• Griehl, Manfred; Dressel, Joachim (1998).Heinkel He 177-277-274. Shrewsbury, UK: Airlife Publishing.ISBN 1-85310-364-0.
• Matikkala, Antti (2017).Kunnian ruletti: Korkeimmat ulkomaalaisille 1941–1944 annetut suomalaiset kunniamerkit [The Roulette of Honour: The Highest Finnish Orders to Foreigners 1941–1944] (in Finnish). Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura.ISBN 978-952-222-847-5.
• Rigg, Bryan Mark (2002).Hitler's Jewish Soldiers: The Untold Story of Nazi Racial Laws and Men of Jewish Descent in the German Military. Lawrence:University Press of Kansas.ISBN 978-0700613588.
• Scherzer, Veit (2007).Die Ritterkreuzträger 1939–1945 Die Inhaber des Ritterkreuzes des Eisernen Kreuzes 1939 von Heer, Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine, Waffen-SS, Volkssturm sowie mit Deutschland verbündeter Streitkräfte nach den Unterlagen des Bundesarchives [The Knight's Cross Bearers 1939–1945 The Holders of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross 1939 by Army, Air Force, Navy, Waffen-SS, Volkssturm and Allied Forces with Germany According to the Documents of the Federal Archives] (in German). Jena, Germany: Scherzers Militaer-Verlag.ISBN 978-3-938845-17-2.

• Newspaper clippings about Erhard Milch in the20th Century Press Archives of theZBW