Erhard Milch in the Nuremberg Trials (1945)

The Nuremberg trial of German Luftwaffe Generalfeldmarschall Erhard Milch in 1945. Milch (30 March 1892 – 25 January 1972) served as State Secretary in the Reichsluftfahrtministerium from 1933 to 1944 and Inspector General of the Luftwaffe from 1939 to 1945, playing a central role in the rearmament and wartime expansion of German air power through mass production of aircraft such as the Messerschmitt Bf 109 and oversight of the Jägerstab (Fighter Staff) initiative launched in March 1944 alongside Albert Speer to dramatically increase fighter output amid mounting Allied bombing. Captured by British forces on 4 May 1945 near the Baltic coast, Milch was indicted on 14 November 1946 and tried before United States Military Tribunal II in the Milch Trial (officially United States of America v. Erhard Milch), the second of the twelve Subsequent Nuremberg Trials held at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg from 2 January to 17 April 1947. The three-count indictment charged him with war crimes for participating in the planning and execution of the ill-treatment, enslavement, and use of forced labor involving prisoners of war and deported foreign civilians to support Luftwaffe production (often sourced from concentration camps via SS cooperation under inhumane conditions); with crimes against humanity encompassing similar acts against civilians and German nationals; and specifically with involvement in fatal high-altitude and freezing medical experiments on unwilling subjects (Count II). Defended by his brother Werner Milch and other counsel, with the prosecution presenting 34 witnesses and 212 exhibits over 39 trial days, Milch was acquitted on the medical experiments charge but found guilty on the war crimes and crimes against humanity counts related to slave labor exploitation; he was sentenced to life imprisonment on 17 April 1947 and initially held at Rebdorf Prison near Munich (later transferred to Landsberg). In 1951 U.S. High Commissioner John J. McCloy commuted the sentence to fifteen years, leading to Milch’s parole in June 1954; he lived out his remaining years quietly in Düsseldorf as the last surviving Generalfeldmarschall of the Luftwaffe, having been central to the Nazi regime’s aircraft production efforts that relied heavily on the systematic exploitation of forced labor.

Source :
https://pixpast.wordpress.com/?query-10-page=3&cst&str=428&id_parent=7898&items=12&vd=downloaded&category=7902&flow=1

Bio of SS-Obergruppenführer Leonardo Conti (1900-1945)

SS-Brigadeführer Leonardo Conti (left)

Leonardo Conti (24 August 1900 – 6 October 1945) was the Reich Health Leader and an SS-Obergruppenführer in Nazi Germany. He was involved in the planning and execution of Action T4 that murdered hundreds of thousands adults and children with severe mental and physical handicaps. On 19 May 1945, after Germany's surrender, Conti was imprisoned and in October hanged himself to avoid trial.

Conti was born to a Swiss Italian father, Silvio, and a German mother, Nanna Pauli; his mother later became the Reich Midwifery Leader in Nazi Germany. He attended elementary school in Switzerland and the Friedrich Wilhelm Gymnasium in Berlin. In the summer of 1918, he volunteered for military service in the First World War with the Imperial German Army's 54th Field Artillery Regiment in Küstrin (today, Kostrzyn nad Odrą). However, he did not see any combat before the war ended in November.

Returning to school, Conti then studied medicine at the Humboldt University of Berlin and the University of Erlangen–Nuremberg. He was active in the national student movement and in right wing politics. He became involved in the völkisch movement and co-founded the antisemitic combat association, Deutscher Volksbund. He took part in the Kapp Putsch in 1920 as a member of the Marinebrigade Ehrhardt. After it was disbanded in May 1922, he followed its leader Hermann Ehrhardt into the ultra-nationalist and antisemitic terrorist organization Organisation Consul. After this organization was banned by the government in July 1922, Conti enrolled in the Viking League, another right wing group committed to the overthrow of the Weimar Republic. He was also involved with the Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund, the largest and most active antisemitic organization in Germany. He passed his state medical examinations in November 1923 and joined the Sturmabteilung (SA) in Erlangen that year, becoming their first physician in Berlin. He obtained his license to practice medicine in 1925 and moved to Munich where he worked as a general practitioner and a pediatrician.

In 1927, Conti moved back to Berlin and joined the Nazi Party on 20 December (membership number 72,225). He was appointed the SA physician for Standarte V and was placed in charge of organizing the SA medical services in Berlin. From 1929 to 1930 he was the senior physician in SA-Gruppe Ost. He also founded the Berlin branch of the National Socialist German Doctors' League, (NSDÄB). In February 1930, he was called upon to treat Horst Wessel, an SA member who was shot by members of the Communist Party of Germany and whose death was exploited by Joseph Goebbels in a propaganda campaign to elevate him into a martyr of the Nazi movement. However in September 1930, Conti, who had reached the rank of SA-Oberführer, was expelled from the SA when he came into conflict with Walter Stennes, at that time the commander of SA-Gruppe Ost.

Conti joined the SS on 16 November 1930 (member number 3982) and became the senior doctor for SS-Gruppe Ost. In May 1932, Conti was elected as a Nazi deputy to the Landtag of Prussia where he served until it was dissolved on 14 October 1933. After the Nazi seizure of power, Conti was given a number of official positions in the German government, mostly in the areas of medicine and health. On 12 April 1934 he was appointed by Hermann Göring to the Prussian State Council. He was placed in charge of all medical arrangements for the 1936 Berlin Olympics. On 1 April 1936, he was assigned to the personal staff of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. In 1937 Conti was elected to the presidency of the FIMS, the International Federation of Sports Medicine. The FIMS today considers this to have been "a black page" in their history. Conti also played a role in the banning of Jewish physicians from medical practice. In an interview in 1938, he declared: "It is only the elimination of the Jewish element which provides for the German doctor the living space due to him."

On 20 April 1939, Conti was appointed Reich Health Leader, President of the NSDÄB and head of the Main Office of Public Health; he was granted the Party rank of Hauptdienstleiter. This was followed on 28 August by Adolf Hitler appointing him State Secretary for Public Health and Nursing in the Reich and Prussian Ministry of the Interior. Conti attempted to have the use of the methamphetamine Pervitin restricted by the Wehrmacht, which had been issuing millions of tablets to their soldiers and airmen. In July 1941 Conti succeeded in having Pervitin added to the list of restricted substances but only a warning was issued to the military. In August 1941, Conti was elected to the Reichstag. On 1 October 1941 he was promoted to SS-Gruppenführer and attained the rank of SS-Obergruppenführer on 20 April 1944.

Conti was a staunch promoter of a public medical administration strongly controlled by the Nazi state. Under his leadership, local health offices were further expanded to allow for a genetic control and selection of the population in order to remove "weak" elements for the improvement of the German race, a doctrine known as eugenics. The various programmes were the basis for "racial hygiene" a lethal part of the Nazi philosophy. Conti worked with Dr. Karl Brandt to draft plans for the extermination of all Germany's mental patients along with those suffering from severe physical handicaps. This program, known euphemistically as Action T4, is estimated to have killed over 200,000 adults and children between 1939 and 1945. Conti was initially placed in charge of this initiative but soon was replaced by Philip Bouhler.

Accordingly, he was co-responsible for the forced sterilization program, the racially motivated forced pregnancy interruptions, and ultimately the Action T4 euthanasia program. It is also undisputed that Conti participated in human experiments. Conti was also involved in the forensic investigation into the Katyn massacre, and received a detailed report, known as the Katyn Commission on the discovery from an international team of experts.

On 19 May 1945, after Germany's surrender, Conti was arrested by the British in Flensburg and was imprisoned and held as a witness for the Nuremberg trials. He would have been brought to the Doctors' Trial for his involvement in Action T4. However, on 6 October 1945, Conti hanged himself in his Nuremberg cell. On 1 May 1959, his estate was fined 3000 Deutsche Marks by the Berlin denazification tribunal.

Source :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_Conti
https://index.hu/fortepan/2015/05/30/usznak_el_a_felmalhazott_nepek/
https://milosvojinovic.substack.com/p/11-nacisticki-kamp-u-beogradu-1940

Bio of General der Panzertruppe Traugott Herr

Traugott Herr (16 September 1890 – 13 April 1976) was a German general during World War II who commanded the 14th Army and the 10th Army of the Wehrmacht. He was a recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords.

Born in 1890, Herr joined the army of Imperial Germany in 1911 as an Fahnen-junker (officer cadet) in the infantry. Serving in the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany in the late 1930s, he commanded the 3rd Battalion of the 33rd Infantry Regiment.

Herr commanded an infantry regiment, part of the 13th Motorized Infantry Division, from 8 September 1939 to 14 October 1940, taking part in the Invasion of Poland (September 1939) and France (May 1940 to October 1940). In October 1940, the division was reformed in Vienna as 13th Panzer Division. Herr was given command of 13th Rifle Brigade, which controlled the division's two infantry regiments, on 14 October 1940.

In the invasion of Poland, the division used civilians as human shields in the battle with the retreating Polish Prusy Army and on 8 September 1939 attacked a medical column marked with the Red Cross signs near Odrzywół. A day later, soldiers from the division took part in the revenge killing of 11 civilians and two Polish priests including Dean Stanisław Klimecki in the nearby town of Drzewica in retaliation for their own military losses. Killings have also been reported in nearby settlements of Gielniów, Kamienna Wola, Klwów, Ossa, Przysucha, Potok, Rozwady and Zarzęcin.

In May 1941 the regiment returned to Germany to take part in Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union, as part of 1st Panzergruppe under Paul Ludwig Ewald von Kleist in Army Group South. In December 1941, Herr was given acting command of 13th Panzer Division.

On 31 October 1942, on the Terek River deep in the Caucasus, Herr suffered a serious head wound, being struck by shrapnel, and was repatriated to Germany to recuperate. He was later appointed commander of the LXXVI Panzer Corps stationed in France; in August 1943 it was sent to Italy. In Italy, his unit faced the British Eighth Army in Calabria, and the U.S. Fifth Army in Salerno.

Herr commanded the corps in the Italian Campaign until 24 November 1944. He also temporarily took command of 14th Army for a brief period from late November to mid-December 1944. On 18 December 1944, he was awarded the Swords to the Knight's Cross. On 15 February 1945 he took command of 10th Army. The Allies final and decisive spring 1945 offensive in Italy opened in early April, Herr was defending the Adriatic sector with orders to hold the lines. On 2 May 1945 the 14th army was overrun by British forces, and Herr was taken prisoner. He was never charged for the war crimes committed in the east and was released in April 1948.

Awards and Decorations:
Wound Badge in Black
Iron Cross (1914) 2nd Class (14 September 1914) & 1st Class (21 October 1915)
House Order of Hohenzollern with Swords
Bavarian Military Merit Cross (3rd Class)
Panzer Badge in Silver
Clasp to the Iron Cross (1939) 2nd Class (24 September 1939) 1st Class (12 May 1940)
Knight's Cross on 2 October 1941 as Oberst and commander of 13. Schützen-Brigade
110th Oak Leaves on 9 August 1942 as Generalmajor and commander of 13. Panzer-Division
117th Swords on 18 December 1944 as General der Panzertruppe and commanding general of LXXVI Panzer Corps (LXXVI. Panzerkorps)

Source :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traugott_Herr

French Colonial Soldiers in 1940

French colonial soldiers as a prisoners of war on the march through a city guarded by Wehrmacht soldiers on bicycles. The picture was taken somewhere in France, June-July 1940.

In 1940, the French army included more than 100,000 black French soldiers from France’s African colonies, mainly Senegal, Mauritania,and Niger. More than 75,000 of them served in France before and during the German invasion; the rest of them served guard duty in the various colonies. As the Wehrmacht panzer divisions swept across France in May-June 1940, some of those black French soldiers (about 40,000 of them), mainly organized in black regiments or mixed units, were engaged in fierce combat against German soldiers. About 10,000 black soldiers were killed, some wounded, and others taken prisoner during the French debacle. Between 1,500 to 3,000 black French prisoners of war were massacred throughout the campaign, either during or after combat. Generally speaking, Tirailleurs Sénégalais were treated differently from other war prisoners by the victorious army. The existence of a well-implanted anti-black racism and stereotypes among the German soldiers frequently resulted in the black French troops being separated from other prisoners of war. Fear of coupes-coupes (a hand-to-hand weapon used by the Tirailleurs Sénégalais that German soldiers considered a treacherous weapon), latent desire for revenge because of German losses, or simple racism, resulted in random massacres of black French war prisoners by members of the Wehrmacht.

Source :
https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=24173