7228 - Erhard Milch (2) Typed Letters Signed at Nuremberg, Defending the Luftwaffe High Command Against War Crimes Charges

Erhard Milch (2) Typed Letters Signed at Nuremberg, Defending the Luftwaffe High Command Against War Crimes Charges Two TLSs in German by Generalfeldmarschall Erhard Milch, former State Secretary of the Reich Aviation Ministry and second-in-command of the Luftwaffe under Hermann Göring, wrote from his cell at Nuremberg to the International Military Tribunal. In the first letter, dated December 20, 1945, and addressed to the Tribunal's Secretary General, Milch petitions on behalf of the senior surviving Luftwaffe commanders held at Nuremberg as witnesses, Generalfeldmarschalls Albert Kesselring and Hugo Sperrle, and Generaloberst Hans-Jürgen Stumpff, requesting that a chief defense counsel be recognized, that the officers be permitted to testify personally before the Tribunal, and that the charges against them be made known so a defense could be prepared. In the second letter, dated January 4, 1946, one day after Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch submitted his own defense memorandum to Lord Justice Geoffrey Lawrence, Milch writes directly to Lawrence to formally join the Luftwaffe's senior leadership to Brauchitsch's petition, writing as a British prisoner of war on behalf of the former Luftwaffe's highest-ranking officers present in Nuremberg. Both backed by lightweight cardstock and in overall fine condition. Accompanied by contemporary English translations of both (one affixed to the reverse of the December 20th letter). These letters date to a critical phase of the Nuremberg trials, when Allied prosecutors sought to have the German General Staff and High Command declared a criminal organization, potentially exposing its senior officers to subsequent prosecution on the basis of their membership. Milch's appeals formed part of a broader effort by Germany's surviving military leadership to challenge the collective criminality charge and secure the opportunity to defend their wartime conduct. The effort ultimately succeeded on a narrow legal point: on September 30, 1946, the International Military Tribunal declined to declare the General Staff and High Command a criminal organization, finding that the loosely defined collection of senior officers did not constitute an organization within the meaning of its charter. The Tribunal nevertheless condemned the complicity of many German military leaders in Nazi aggression and atrocities, leaving them vulnerable to individual prosecution. Milch himself would face a subsequent Nuremberg trial in 1947, where he was convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity involving the exploitation of forced labor and sentenced to life imprisonment. These letters thus capture a remarkable moment when one of Göring's highest-ranking deputies sought to shield the Luftwaffe's leadership from collective condemnation, even as his own reckoning with Allied justice lay ahead.