Felix Steiner

Schutzstaffel (SS) Fascism and National Socialism Counter-revolution Germany Germany 1896–1966 ○ Died

Waffen-SS general who did not carry out Hitler's order to counter-attack north of Berlin

Ordered in April 1945 to strike the Soviet armies north of Berlin in a pincer, he made it clear, outnumbered ten to one, that he did not have the capacity for a counter-attack.

Born in Stallupönen in East Prussia, he served in the First World War, joined a Freikorps and the Reichswehr, and left the army as a major in 1933. He joined the SA in 1934 and the SS in 1935, and became a Nazi Party member. Commanding the SS-Standarte Deutschland, he shaped the training and structure of the force that became the Waffen-SS. From late 1940 he led the SS Division Wiking, whose men shot 600 Jews at Zboriv in July 1941, and from 1943 the III SS Panzer Corps. On 21 April 1945 Hitler ordered his Army Detachment Steiner to strike the Soviet forces encircling Berlin from the north; outnumbered and short of troops, Steiner did not attack, and on 22 April Hitler, learning this, declared the war lost. Charges at Nuremberg were dropped and he was released in 1948; he then helped found HIAG, the Waffen-SS veterans' lobby, and wrote books that historians class as apologist literature.

Also known as: Felix Martin Julius Steiner

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