Erhard Milch conflict World War I
World War I and interwar career
Milch enlisted in the German Army in 1910, where he rose to the rank of lieutenant and commanded an artillery unit in East Prussia at the beginning of the First World War. He saw action against the Russian Army on the River Deime in September 1914 and later on the Angerapp Line in February 1915. In July 1915, he was transferred to the Fliegertruppe (Imperial Air Force) and trained as an aerial observer on the Western front, seeing action on the Somme in 1916 (through the period of it becoming the Luftstreitkräfte in October that year) and later in Flanders during 1917. After a spell as a company commander in the trenches in the spring and summer of 1918, in the waning days of the war, he was promoted to captain and appointed to command a fighter wing, Jagdgruppe 6, even though he had never trained as a pilot and could not fly himself.Milch resigned from the military in 1920 to pursue a career in civil aviation. With squadron colleague Gotthard Sachsenberg, Milch formed a small airline in Danzig under the banner of Lloyd Luftdienst, Norddeutscher Lloyd's union of regional German airlines. The airline linked Danzig to the Baltic States. In 1923, Milch became the managing director of its successor company. From there, Milch and Sachsenberg went to work for rival Junkers Luftverkehr, where Milch was appointed a managing director in 1925. In 1926, Milch was named a managing director (one of three) of the newly-formed airline Deutsche Luft Hansa. Milch joined the Nazi Party (number 123885) on 1 April 1929, but his membership was not officially acknowledged until March 1933, because Hitler deemed it desirable to keep the fact hidden for political reasons.
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