The Battle of Britain Five Months That Changed History, May—October 1940 by James Holland (z-lib.org).epub

Siegfried Bethke, for example, and the rest of I/JG 2 had moved twice
already by 16 May and would move forward again on 21 May. This ensured
there were always plenty of aircraft operating over the front in support of
the troops.
On 16 May, with Göring in his train now next to the Polch Tunnel, there
was an 11 a.m. conference with the C-in-C, and then he was off again,
visiting no fewer than six front-line units. Dynamic, untiring and deeply
efficient, Milch liked to see what was going on for himself.
Milch was born in Wilhelmshaven on the North Sea coast in 1892. His
father, Anton Milch, was a Chief Staff Pharmacist in the German navy. He
was also a Jew. His mother, however, was a Protestant and that was what
went on young Erhard’s birth certificate. Göring was supposedly aware of
Milch’s Jewish blood and, although not much bothered, recognized that it
could prove awkward, so a solution had been found. Milch’s mother made a
solemn declaration that her son was a product of an illegitimate affair with a
minor German aristocrat, and the original birth certificate was withdrawn
and a new one issued. Milch’s origins were never to trouble him further.
He had joined the army, being commissioned in 1911 and serving on the
Eastern Front until transferring to the Imperial Flying Service as an aerial
observer and photographer, where he saw action over the Western Front. He
ended the war a Hauptmann, left the army in 1920, and after a brief career
with a police air unit in East Prussia joined the civil aviation company,
Lloyd Eastern Flying Company. Two years later, he joined Junkers Airways
Ltd, which took him all around the world, including to the United States,
where the size of the Ford automobile works at Detroit left a lasting
impression upon him of American industrial might.
He was a director of Junkers when, in January 1926, Junkers and Aero-
Lloyd merged to become a single national airline, Deutsche Lufthansa.
Milch, at just thirty-four, became one of its three directors, and was to
become the driving force in ensuring that Lufthansa spread its wings
throughout not only Germany but the rest of Europe too. By 1930,
Lufthansa had established an air link to China and by the time of Hitler’s
ascent to power, had flights throughout the Baltic States and even into the
Soviet Union – and Milch was its most senior figure, now one of only two
directors.
These talents did not go unnoticed, and on 22 February 1933 he was
invited by Göring to become the new State Secretary of Aviation. The two