The Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe; The Life of Field Marshal Erhard Milch

Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1973. First American Edition [stated], presumed first printing. Hardcover. Good/Fair. xx, 443, [1] pages. Illustrations. Bibliography. Notes and sources. Index. DJ soiled and several tears, piece missing in front DJ. David John Cawdell Irving (born 24 March 1938) is an English author who has written on the military and political history of World War II, with a focus on Nazi Germany. His works include The Destruction of Dresden (1963), Hitler's War (1977), Churchill's War (1987) and Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich (1996). He was recognized for his knowledge of Nazi Germany and his ability to unearth new historical documents. After the success of the Dresden book, Irving continued writing. His 1964 work The Mare's Nest - an account of the German V-weapons program and the Allied intelligence countermeasures against it - was widely praised when published and continues to be well regarded. Michael J. Neufeld of the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum has described The Mare's Nest as "the most complete account on both Allied and German sides of the V-weapons campaign in the last two years of the war." In 1971, Irving translated the memoirs of General Reinhard Gehlen, and in 1973 published The Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe, a biography of Field Marshal Milch. He spent the remainder of the 1970s working on Hitler's War and The War Path, his two-part biography of Adolf Hitler. Erhard Milch (30 March 1892 - 25 January 1972) was a German Field Marshal who oversaw the development of the Luftwaffe as part of the re-armament of Nazi Germany following World War I. He was State Secretary in the Reich Ministry of Aviation and Inspector General of the Luftwaffe. During most of World War II, he was in charge of all aircraft production and supply. He was convicted of war crimes during the Milch Trial held before the U.S. military court in 1947 and sentenced to life imprisonment; he was released in 1954. In a reorganization of 1 February 1939, Milch, now with the rank of Generaloberst, was given the additional job of Inspector-General of the Luftwaffe. After the outbreak of World War II, Milch commanded Luftflotte 5 during the Operation Weserübung in Norway. Following the defeat of France, Milch was promoted to Generalfeldmarschall (field marshal) during the 1940 Field Marshal Ceremony. 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. In addition, in April 1942 he was named to the Central Planning Board along with Albert Speer, Reich Minister of Armaments and War Production, and Paul Körner, State Secretary of the Four Year Plan, in an effort to coordinate control over all industrial war production. Milch canceled production of the ineffective and dangerous Me 210 and He 177 and put them back in development. Under his direction, aircraft production focused on mass production of the tested and tried models. Production levels doubled in the summer of 1943 in comparison with the winter of 1941-1942. To achieve this level of mass production, the Armaments Ministries and the industry cooperated with the SS to procure labor from the concentration camps. Due to Milch's connections with the SS, the Luftwaffe had an advantage in obtaining slave labor.[15] In order to increase the quantity, Milch also made some sacrifices in quality, notable in the case of the Bf 109. Milch was intended by the Allies to be a witness for the prosecution at Nuremberg. However, seeing the conditions in which the defendants were held, Milch changed his mind and refused to cooperate. He was then tried as a war criminal in 1947 by a United States Military Tribunal in Nuremberg.