Erhard Milch

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Erhard Milch
Milch in March 1942
Born(1892-03-30)30 March 1892
Wilhelmshaven, Grand Duchy of Oldenburg, German Empire
Died25 January 1972(1972-01-25) (aged 79)
Düsseldorf, North Rhine-Westphalia, West Germany
Allegiance German Empire
 Weimar Republic
 Nazi Germany
BranchImperial German Army
Luftstreitkräfte
Luftwaffe
Years of service1910–1922
1933–1945
RankGeneralfeldmarschall
CommandsLuftflotte 5
Jägerstab
Battles / warsWorld War I

World War II

AwardsKnight's Cross of the Iron Cross
RelationsWerner Milch (brother)

Erhard Milch (30 March 1892 – 25 January 1972) was a German

Inspector General
of the Luftwaffe from February 1939 to January 1945.

Milch was an early member of the

Allied
forces in May 1945.

Milch was tried at the

war crimes and crimes against humanity for his exploitation of forced labour for the Luftwaffe, and sentenced to life imprisonment. Milch's sentence was commuted to 15 years by John J. McCloy, the U. S. High Commissioner for Germany, in 1951. Milch was paroled in 1954 and died in West Germany
in 1972.

Early life

Erhard Milch was born on 30 March 1892 in

née Vetter). Anton had converted from Judaism which made Milch a Mischling (mixed-race) under the Nuremberg Laws.[1] However, he would not have been considered Jewish according to Jewish orthodoxy (or halakha), which states that a person’s Jewish status is passed down through the mother. The Gestapo began to investigate Milch's alledged Jewish heritage in 1935 after rumours began to circulate. The investigation was halted by Hermann Göring, the commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe, who produced an affidavit by Milch's mother stating that his biological father was her uncle, Karl Brauer, meaning he was a product of incest but not a Mischling. Milch was then issued with a German 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 and Holocaust denier David Irving claimed in his book The 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 private diary 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 the Nuremberg 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]

World War I and interwar career

Milch enlisted in the

fighter wing, Jagdgruppe 6, even though he had never trained as a pilot and could not fly himself.[6]

Milch resigned from the

Junkers Luftverkehr, where Milch was appointed a managing director in 1925. Milch was named a managing director (one of three) of the newly-formed airline Deutsche Luft Hansa in 1926.[7][8] Milch joined the Nazi Party (membership number 123,885) on 1 April 1929, but his membership was not officially acknowledged until March 1933, because Adolf Hitler deemed it desirable to keep the fact hidden for political reasons.[9][10]

Milch with Wolfram von Richthofen in 1940.

On 5 May 1933, Milch took up a position as

Me 210 aircraft. Even after that, Milch did not depose him, but put him in an inferior position.[11]

World War II

Albert Speer (front) and Erhard Milch (back) during a visit to an armaments factory.

In a reorganization of 1 February 1939, Milch with the rank of

Paul Körner (State Secretary of the Four Year Plan), and Walther Funk (Reich Minister for the Economy) in an effort to coordinate control over all industrial war production.[14]

Milch (centre) with Minister of Armaments Albert Speer (left) and aircraft designer Willy Messerschmitt (right)

Milch cancelled production of the ineffective and dangerous Messerschmitt Me 210 and

Heinkel He 177, and put them back in development. Under his direction, the Luftwaffe's aircraft production focused on mass 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 substantial economies 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 the SS to procure forced labour from the Nazi concentration camps. Due to Milch's connections with the SS, the Luftwaffe 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 the United States Army Air Forces began to directly challenge the fighter forces of the Luftwaffe, 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 the air supply of the 6th Army, which was encircled at the Battle of Stalingrad. Hitler valued Milch's organizational talent and the task required him to travel to the front line for the first time in the war. He found the situation to be impossible: there were too few aircrew, too little fuel and, in particular, no suitable airfields or landing sites within reach of Stalingrad. By this time, Milch had passed the peak of his career with the increasingly intense Allied air raids on German territory from the summer of 1943 onward, and the resulting loss of air 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"

Heinkel He 177B separately engined heavy bomber design. Only three flyable prototypes were completed by early 1944.[17] From March 1944, Milch, together with Speer, oversaw the activities of the Jägerstab ("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 the Luftwaffe.[18]

When the agitation among the legions of foreign workers in his factories threatened production, Milch was able to refer to his association with Reichsführer-SS Heinrich 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 a mutiny 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 the Jägerstab after the devastating Big Week on German cities and military targets.

In June 1944, Milch sided with Himmler and Joseph Goebbels, the propaganda minister, in attempting to convince Hitler to remove Göring from command of the Luftwaffe. When Hitler refused, Göring retaliated by forcing Milch out of his positions as State Secretary and Generalluftzeugmeister on 20 June, and eventually as Luftwaffe Inspector General in January 1945.[20] From August 1944, Milch worked under Speer in the Rüstungsstab (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 the Führerreserve in March 1945, he was not reassigned for the remainder of the war.[21]

Capture and assault

On 4 May 1945, Milch was apprehended by the British No. 6 Commando on the Baltic Sea coast and taken to the unit's command post of Brigadier Derek Mills-Roberts in Neustadt 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 of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Milch reportedly addressed Mills-Roberts in a haughty manner, demanding good treatment, waving his Generalfeldmarschall's campaign baton around, and dismissing concerns about the inmates of several satellite Arbeitslager of Neuengamme 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 a champagne bottle and continued, fracturing Milch's skull. The bloodied field-marshal was then pulled up from the floor and driven back to Sierhagen 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 at Lüneburg near the field HQ of British Field Marshal Bernard 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]

Trial and conviction at Nuremberg

Main article: Milch Trial
Erhard Milch, facing camera, confers with his brother and defence lawyer, Dr. Werner Milch, in the special consulting room provided for defendants on trial at Nuremberg.

Milch was tried as a

Military Tribunal in Nuremberg for his widespread use of forced labour in the Luftwaffe's production. His defence
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 of prisoners of war
    (POWs) and the deportation of civilians to the same ends.
  2. slave labour
    of civilians who came under German control, German nationals and prisoners of war.

Milch was sentenced to

commuted to 15 years imprisonment in 1951, and he was paroled in June 1954. He lived out the remainder of his life in Düsseldorf
, where he died in 1972 as the last living Generalfeldmarschall of the Luftwaffe.

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

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

Awards

References

Citations

  1. ^ Bunyan, Anita (21 March 2003). "Half-shadows of the Reich". Times Higher Education. A review of Rigg 2002.
  2. ^ P. Kaplan, Fighter Aces of the RAF in the Battle of Britain, p132.
  3. ^ The Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe. The Life of Field Marshal Erhard Milch p.VII & p2-3
  4. ^ Irving p340.
  5. ^ "Testimony of Field Marshal Erhard Milch". Nuremberg Trial Proceedings Vol. 9: Seventy-eighth day. Avalon Project: Lillian Goldman Law Library. 11 March 1946. pp. 93–94.
  6. ^ Franks, Bailey & Guest 1993, p. 32, Irving Milch p7-10.
  7. ISBN 9781787206755
    .
  8. ISSN 0362-4331
    . Retrieved 10 August 2019.
  9. ^ Boog 1994, p. 499–503.
  10. ^ Angolia 1976, p. 351–7.
  11. ISBN 978-0670038268
    .
  12. ^ Suchenwirth 2017, p. 65.
  13. ^ "Erhard Milch". HistoryLearningSite.co.uk. 2014.
  14. ^ "Trials of the War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals, Volume II: The Milch Case, p. 374" (PDF). United States Printing Office. 1950. Retrieved 13 June 2021.
  15. ^ a b Tooze 2007, p. 715.
  16. ^ Tooze 2007, p. 584.
  17. ^ Griehl & Dressel 1998, p. 162.
  18. ^ Buggeln 2014, p. 46.
  19. ISBN 9780316432382
    .
  20. ^ Brett-Smith 1976, p. 122.
  21. ^ Faber 1977, p. 58.
  22. ISBN 9781844139194
    .
  23. ISBN 1593600127
    .
  24. ISBN 9781472838957
    .
  25. ^ Scherzer 2007, p. 545.
  26. ^ Matikkala 2017, p. 516.

Bibliography
Military offices
Preceded by
none
 Commander of Luftflotte 5
12 April 1940 – 10 May 1940 		Succeeded by
Generaloberst Hans-Jürgen Stumpff
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