Josef "Seppl" Veltjens (2 June 1894 – 6 October 1943) was a German World War I fighter ace credited with 35 victories.

In later years, he served as an international arms dealer, as well as a personal emissary from Hermann Göring to Benito Mussolini.

He attended the Humanistic High School in Berlin, then the Technical University in Charlottenburg, where he read mechanical engineering.

[1] He was flying an Albatros D.III at the time, with his own personal aircraft marking of a white barbed arrow pointed back from the scarlet nose down the length of the royal blue fuselage.

[1] He was appointed to replace an officer suspected of conspiring to have the wounded Berthold removed as JG II commander.

[1] It also marked the day Berthold collided with a British DH.4 and crashed into a house; he survived, but his injuries hospitalized him to the war's end.

[citation needed] Another Hauptmann (captain) was appointed to his command, but Veltjens was chosen to lead JG II into aerial combat.

He was wounded three times while commanding an armoured car in a January 1919 assault on Spartakists (German communists) in Bremen.

He supplied Mustafa Kemal Atatürk for the establishment of the Turkish Republic and Chiang Kai-shek for the unification of a nationalist China.

[citation needed] In 1935, Mussolini requested arms from Germany to support him in the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, and Göring delegated the task of supply to Veltjens.

He asked Veltjens to assist with the supply of arms to the generals, who planned a coup d'état against the newly elected leftist alliance.

His shipments could be as large as ten million rounds of ammunition at a time, or half a dozen fighter planes.

When Hitler later decided to support Franco, he did so in secrecy at first, but Veltjens was allowed by Göring to continue his private dealings, mainly because of his possession of tungsten and molybdenum necessary for the prompt production of his orders.

He later received a Finnish decoration, the Commander Cross First Class with Swords of the Order of the White Rose of Finland.

[5] In August 1940, Veltjens, with the rank of Oberstleutnant (lieutenant colonel), served as Göring's personal emissary in negotiations with Finland just before the Continuation War.

These negotiations resulted in a trade-off; German troops would have unhindered transit through Finnish territory in exchange for arms that the Finns could use against a threatened Russian encroachment.

He was to negotiate the distribution of the Italian National Reserves of gold bullion that had been removed from Rome to Milan by the SS.

Before his subsequent flight from Milan to Rome to finalise aspects of his negotiations, Veltjens' pilot had been warned of the possibility of Allied fighters in the area, and elected to fly low across the Apennine Mountains.