ist training in navigation, air-to-air combat, gunnery, flight en-
gineering, and naval aviation. When he took the dates and
deadlines in to his minister, Göring just roared with laughter.
“You’re planning to do all this over the next five years?” he bel-
lowed. “You’ve got six months.”
Among the very highest air-force officers, there were pow-
erful and often unusual forces of cohesion. Each had something
on the other.
But deadliest of all was the file being built up on Milch by
rivals like SA Brigadier (Oberführer) Theo Croneiss in Bavaria.
Milch had bankrupted his little airline in the twenties, and now
Croneiss put it about that the Staatssekretär’s father, Anton
Milch, was really a Jew. The words flew around the Nazi hierar-
chy. Gauleiter Joseph Terboven told his friend Göring, who
tackled Milch that August as they were driving back from the
Obersalzberg, where they had just inspected the site for Göring’s
new luxury villa. Milch was shocked and investigated his own
blood ancestry. By October , when they met again to inspect
the secret uniform being designed for the new air force, he had
established the truth which Milch saw as a vindication. Milch
handed to Göring a letter written by his mother, establishing
beyond doubt that his biological father was not Anton Milch,
but in fact her own uncle. That he was the product of incest was
not a pleasant discovery, but for a Staatssekretär in Nazi Ger-
many, it was preferable to being a half-Jew. On October ,
Göring reprimanded Croneiss for the slander. Two weeks later
he discussed the letter with Hitler, Blomberg, and Hess. “It’s all
okay,” Milch noted in his diary on November .
Versions of the story percolated around the air force for
the next twelve years. Lieutenant Colonel Erich Killinger told
fellow officers that Milch’s brother was still a Jew. “Milch,” added
Killinger, “proved or claimed and his mother, who’s still