Early life and World War I Steiner was born on 23 May 1896 in
Stallupönen in
Prussia, (in
East Prussia)
German Empire. He joined the
Royal Prussian Army as an infantry cadet. During
World War I, he was awarded the
Iron Cross 1st and 2nd class. In 1919, Steiner joined the paramilitary
Freikorps in the East Prussian city of
Memel during the
German Revolution and was later incorporated into the
Reichswehr in 1921. In 1933, he left the army having attained the rank of major.
SS career Steiner first joined the
Nazi Party (NSDAP) (membership number: 4,264,295) and the
Sturmabteilung (SA). In 1935 he enlisted in the
SS. He took command of a battalion of
SS-Verfügungstruppen (SS-VT) troops, and within a year had been promoted to SS-
Standartenführer; and later was put in command of the SS-
Deutschland Regiment. At the outbreak of
World War II, he was
SS-Oberführer (senior leader) in charge of the Waffen-SS regiment SS-
Deutschland. He led this regiment through the
Invasion of Poland and the
Battle of France, for which he was awarded the
Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on 15 August 1940. Steiner was introduced to
Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, to oversee the creation of, and then command the new
SS Division Wiking. This division was militarily successful but also very barbaric in the
invasion of the Soviet Union, for example killing 600 Jews in
Zboriv, Ukraine. At the time of its creation, the division consisted mostly of German volunteers, with only around 1,141 non-German volunteers (roughly 6%) when it entered
Operation Barbarossa. In April 1943, he was placed in command of a newly formed
III SS Panzer Corps. The unit participated in
anti-partisan actions in Yugoslavia. In November/December 1943 his corps was transferred to the Eastern Front and positioned in the northern sector at
Leningrad under
Army Group North. Steiner's Panzer Corps played a leading role during the
Battle of Narva and the
Battle of Tannenberg Line. His unit then withdrew with the rest of
Army Group North to the
Courland Peninsula.
Battle of Berlin In January 1945, Steiner along with the
III SS Panzer Corps was transferred by ship from the
Courland Pocket to help with the defence of the German homeland. The corps was assigned to
Army Group Vistula under the new
Eleventh SS Panzer Army although the army really existed only on paper. Once the Soviet Army had reached the
Oder River, the
Eleventh SS Panzer Army became inactive, and the III SS Panzer Corps was reassigned to the
German Third Panzer Army as a reserve during the Soviets'
Berlin Offensive Operation. During the
Battle of Seelow Heights, the first major battle of the offensive, General
Gotthard Heinrici, the commander of Army Group Vistula, transferred most of the III SS Panzer Corps' divisions to General
Theodor Busse's
Ninth Army. By 21 April,
Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov's
1st Belorussian Front had broken through the German lines on the
Seelow Heights. Hitler, ignoring the facts, started to call the ragtag units that came under Steiner's command, the
Army Detachment Steiner (
Armeeabteilung Steiner). Hitler ordered Steiner to attack the northern flank of the huge
salient that had been created by the
1st Belorussian Front's breakout. Steiner's attack was supposed to coincide with General
Theodor Busse's
Ninth Army attacking from the south in a
pincer attack. The Ninth Army had been pushed to south of the 1st Belorussian Front's salient. To facilitate the attack, Steiner was assigned the three divisions of the Ninth Army's
CI Army Corps: the
4th SS Panzergrenadier Division Polizei, the
5th Jäger Division and the
25th Panzergrenadier Division. All three divisions were north of the
Finow Canal on the Northern flank of Zhukov's salient.
General Helmuth Weidling's
LVI Panzer Corps, which was still east of Berlin with its northern flank just below
Werneuchen, was also ordered to participate in the attack. The three divisions from
CI Army Corps planned to attack south from
Eberswalde on the Finow Canal towards the
LVI Panzer Corps. The three divisions from CI Army Corps were 24 kilometres (about 15 miles) east of Berlin, and the attack to the south would cut the 1st Belorussian Front's salient into two. Steiner called Heinrici and informed him that the plan could not be implemented because the
5th Jäger Division and the
25th Panzergrenadier Division were deployed defensively and could not be redeployed until the
2nd Naval Division arrived from the coast to relieve them. That left only two battalions of the
4th SS Panzergrenadier Division available, and they had no combat weapons. Based on Steiner's assessment, Heinrici called General
Hans Krebs,
Chief of Staff of the
German General Staff of the
Army High Command (
Oberkommando des Heeres or OKH), and told him that the plan could not be implemented. Heinrici asked to speak to Hitler but was told Hitler was too busy to take his call. On 22 April 1945, at his afternoon conference, Hitler, becoming aware that Steiner was not going to attack, fell into a tearful rage. Hitler finally declared that the war was lost, blamed the generals for the Reich's defeat and announced that he would remain in Berlin until the end and
then kill himself. On the same day, General
Rudolf Holste was given the few mobile forces that Steiner commanded so that he could participate in a new plan to relieve Berlin. Holste was to attack from the north while General
Walther Wenck attacked from the west and General
Theodor Busse attacked from the south. The attacks amounted to little, and on 25 April, the Soviet forces attacking to the north and the south of Berlin linked up to the west of the city.
Post-war (l) and Aarne Roiha (r). After the surrender, Steiner was incarcerated until 1948. He faced charges at the
Nuremberg Trials, but they were dropped and he was released. In 1953, Steiner was recruited by the U.S.
Central Intelligence Agency to found the
Gesellschaft für Wehrkunde ("Society for Defense Studies"), composed of former German military officers, as a propaganda tool and a military think tank for
West German rearmament. With
Paul Hausser,
Herbert Gille, and
Otto Kumm, Steiner became a founding member of
HIAG, the lobby group founded by former high-ranking Waffen-SS officers in West Germany in 1951. Despite being an ardent German nationalist and veteran, he was not fanatical like
Hermann-Bernhard Ramcke. In fact, when Ramcke began making truly odious comments to HIAG rallies, Steiner distanced himself from Ramcke. From his home in West Germany he published
Die Freiwilligen der Waffen-SS: Idee und Opfergang ("The Volunteers of Waffen-SS: Idea and Sacrifice") in 1958. Steiner's books and memoirs have been characterised by historian
Charles Sydnor as one of the "most important works of apologist literature", together with warfare analyses
Grenadiere by
Kurt Meyer and
Waffen-SS im Einsatz by Paul Hausser. These works demanded rehabilitation of the military branch of the NSDAP, with Steiner's works being important in stressing the theme of the purely military Waffen-SS. A second book was published in 1963 under the title
Die Armee der Geächteten (English: "The Army of the Outlaws") and was also tendentious. Steiner died on 12 May 1966, 11 days before his 70th birthday. ==Summary of SS career==