He served as State Secretary in the Reich Ministry of Aviation from May 1933 until June 1944 and as Inspector General of the air force from February 1939 to January 1945.

The Gestapo began an investigation which was halted by Hermann Göring, the commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe, who produced an affidavit by Milch's mother that his true father was her uncle, Karl Brauer.

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 1946, Milch was again questioned about his alleged Jewish father and Göring's role in the matter by Chief United States Prosecutor, Robert H.

[5] Milch enlisted in the Imperial German Army in 1910, where he rose to the rank of Leutnant and commanded an artillery unit in East Prussia at the beginning of the First World War.

In July 1915, he was transferred to the Fliegertruppe (Imperial Air Force) and trained as an aerial observer on the Western front, seeing action on the Somme in 1916 (through the period of it becoming the Luftstreitkräfte in October that year) and later in Flanders during 1917.

[7][8] Milch joined the Nazi Party (number 123,885) on 1 April 1929, but his membership was not officially acknowledged until March 1933, because Hitler deemed it desirable to keep the fact hidden for political reasons.

[9][10] On 5 May 1933, Milch took up a position as State Secretary of the newly formed Reich Ministry of Aviation (RLM), answering directly to Hermann Göring.

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".

[13] Following the suicide of Generaloberst Ernst Udet in November 1941, Milch succeeded him as Generalluftzeugmeister, in charge of all Luftwaffe aircraft production, armament and supply.

[15] To achieve this level of mass production, the Armaments Ministries and the industry cooperated with the SS to procure labour from concentration camps.

[16] On 10 August 1943, Milch finally addressed Germany's lack of a truly "four-engined" heavy bomber to carry out raids against Great Britain.

In cooperation with the SS, the task force played a key role in the exploitation of slave labour for the benefit of the German aircraft industry and the Luftwaffe.

[19]In 1944 Milch sided with Joseph Goebbels, the propaganda minister and Heinrich Himmler, the Reichsführer-SS, in attempting to convince Adolf 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 1944, and as Luftwaffe Inspector General in January 1945.

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.

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).

Unlike the vast majority of other Nazi war criminals who were tried under U.S. military law, Milch was not immediately sent to Landsberg Prison to serve his sentence.