ARYAN AT ANY COST

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 73, 18 December 1937, Page 15

ARYAN AT ANY COST

Lieutenant-Genera'i Erhard Mileh, brains of modern Germany's military and civilian aviation, is first aide aud sole cpnfidant in aeronauties of General tlermann Goering, who is supreme head of all thq aviation forces, says the American Hebrew. However, some enterprising member of the Gestapo discovered one day that Geneial Milch stems from mixed patents: that his father was a Jew. Immediately thereupon maehinery was set in motion to oust Milch from his highly responsible ' position. But Goering — partly because Milch is his right-hand and tlius incilspensable, partly because under the circumstances he has no" fear of being eclipsed by his brilliant subordinate — consistently refused to part with Milch. Again and again he witkstood the wrath of rival Nazi leaders like Goebbels, Himmler, Frick and others of the' inner cirele. Apparently even Hitler recognised that, though of Jewish paternitv, Milcb was too valuable a man to be dropped. Yet there remained the problem of

* appeasing those xabid members of the ruling clique that see red at sight of the word Jew. A solution had to be found — and a. solution was found Pressure was brought to bear upon General Milch 's mother, who was confront-1 ed with one of two alternatives: either to suffer personal humiliation or to see her son incarcerated in a concentration camp. As a true and heroic mother, she chose the former. The other day an inconspicuous brief item, appearing in two official Nazi newspapers (Voelkischer Beobachter and Schwartze Korps), bluntly reported: "General Erhard Milch, of the avia« tion corps, has submitted to the proper authorities a sworn and certified statement by his mother, declaring that he is not the son of Mileh, the Jew. She .vows that General Milch was conceived and born out of wedlock, being the' son of an unamed Aryan man." Thus a mother 's prostrate honour wipes away one sticrma and begets anothert