. NMT02-T0366
Volume II · Page 366
MR. DENNEY: May it please your Honors, this defendant is Erhard Milch, Field Marshal in the Luftwaffe, Inspector General of the Luftwaffe, State Secretary in the Air Ministry, Generalluftzeugmeister, sole representative of the Wehrmacht on the Central Planning Board, Chief of the Jaegerstab, ² and member of the Nazi Party.
This man is accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity in that he took part in the program for the enslavement and ill-treatment of the civilian population of vast territories conquered by the armed forces of Germany and in the employment of prisoners of war in tasks forbidden by the laws and customs of war. He is also accused of the torture and murder of concentration camp inmates and prisoners of war who were made the unwilling subjects of savage and fatal medical experiments.
The life of Erhard Milch is a story of personal and professional betrayal. A man of high intelligence, of great executive ability, he misused these talents to dedicate them to a scheme for conquest and a plan for the enslavement of the world. The 10 years of military service of the defendant from the age of 18 to 28 which took him through the First World War were a perfect preparation for the tasks to come. From 1915 to 1919, Milch was a scout, observer, adjutant and squadron leader in the German Air Force. At the very infancy of military aviation, the defendant began an association which was to last through his entire public career. It was at this time that he learned the needs and the problems of flying men, a knowledge which was to stand him in such good stead in his work as the founder of the Luftwaffe.
The defendant never dissociated himself from the aims and ideals of German militarism. He became one of the silent army of men who remembered, hated, and hoped; but unlike many others, this man did not sit idly by. He did not wait passively for Germany to rise again, he devoted his best efforts towards that end. In 1921, only 1 year after his discharge from the army, we find him working as chief of air operations [flights] in the new business of commercial aviation.
There is no necessity to fill out in detail the successive steps in the defendant's rise in civilian air transportation — a few broad strokes suffice. The next significant event in his career came in 1925 when he joined the state-sponsored Lufthansa which within 3 years he was to form into the nucleus of a new air force. It is
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¹ Opening statement is recorded in mimeographed transcript.
² See section IV A3, p. 524 ff.
