Bio of SS-Obergruppenführer Felix Steiner (1896-1966)

Full name: Felix Martin Julius Steiner
Nickname: No information

Date of Birth: 23.05.1896 - Stallupönen, East Prussia (German Empire)
Date of Death: 12.05.1966 - München, Bavaria (West Germany)

Battles and Operations: Invasion of Poland (1939), Battle of France (1940), Operation Barbarossa (Tarnopol, Zhytomyr, Cherkasy 1941), Caucasus and Terek River campaign (1942), Don River and Mius River battles (1942-1943), Battle of Narva and Tannenberg Line (1944), Pomeranian Offensive (Operation Sonnenwende 1945), Battle of Berlin (Army Detachment Steiner 1945)

NSDAP-Number: 4.264.295 (01.01.1934)
SS-Number: 253.351 (16.03.1935)
Religion: Evangelical
Parents: Father (grammar school teacher, died December 1916) and unknown mother
Siblings: No information
Spouse: Never married
Children: No information

Promotions:
16.03.1914 Fahnenjunker
01.06.1914 Fahnenjunker-Gefreiter
01.08.1914 Fahnenjunker-Unteroffizier
11.11.1914 Fähnrich
27.01.1915 Leutnant
18.10.1918 Oberleutnant
01.12.1927 Hauptmann i.G.
00.12.1933 Major i.G.
00.01.1934 Major der Landespolizei
01.01.1934 SA-Anwärter
01.02.1934 SA-Sturmführer
00.01.1935 SS-Sturmbannführer
24.04.1935 SS-Obersturmbannführer
01.06.1936 SS-Standartenführer
24.01.1940 SS-Oberführer
09.11.1940 SS-Brigadeführer und Generalmajor der Waffen-SS
01.01.1942 SS-Gruppenführer und Generalleutnant der Waffen-SS
01.07.1943 SS-Obergruppenführer und General der Waffen-SS

Career:
00.03.1914 Fahnenjunker, 5. Ostpreussisches Infanterie-Regiment "von Boyen" Nr. 41, Tilsit
00.01.1916-00.05.1916 Leutnant, Ersatz Bataillon, Infanterie-Regiment 41 "von Boyen"
00.06.1916-00.08.1916 Leutnant, Infanterie-Regiment 376
00.09.1916 Leutnant, Kommandeur, MG/Scharfschützetruppen Nr. 97
00.11.1918 Oberleutnant, Kommandeur, 3. Ersatz MG-Kompanie, 17. Armee-Korps
00.00.1919 Oberleutnant, Kompanie-Führer, Freikorps "von Weiss", Memel
15.03.1919 Freikorps integrated into Reichswehr as Oberleutnant, Kommandeur, 2. (MG) Kompanie, Schützen-Regiment 2
00.10.1929 Hauptmann, Adjutant, Infanterie-Regiment 1
00.00.1933 Retired as Major - Landespolizei
01.01.1934 Referent, Chef Ausbildungswesen
12.06.1935 SS-Obersturmbannführer, Kommandeur, III. Sturmbann, SS-Standarte "Deutschland", SS-VT, Ellwangen
01.07.1936 SS-Standartenführer, Kommandeur, SS-Standarte "Deutschland", SS-VT
15.03.1939 SS-Oberführer, Kommandeur, SS-Standarte "Deutschland", SS-VT
01.12.1940 SS-Brigadeführer, Kommandeur, SS-Division "Wiking"
10.05.1943-30.10.1944 SS-Gruppenführer, Kommandeur, III. (germanischen) SS-Panzer-Korps
26.11.1944 SS-Obergruppenführer, Oberbefehlshaber, SS-Panzer-Armee-Oberkommando 11 (11. SS-Panzer-Armee), Heeresgruppe Weichsel
05.03.1945-08.05.1945 SS-Obergruppenführer, Kommandeur, III. (germanischen) SS-Panzer-Korps and Armee-Abteilung "Steiner"
27.04.1948 Released from British POW camp
00.00.1951 Founding member of HIAG (Hilfsgemeinschaft auf Gegenseitigkeit der Angehörigen der ehemaligen Waffen-SS)
00.00.1958 Author of "Die Freiwilligen der Waffen-SS: Idee und Opfergang"
00.00.1963 Author of "Die Armee der Geächteten"

Awards and Decorations:
09.10.1914 1914 Eisernes Kreuz II.Klasse
03.11.1917 1914 Eisernes Kreuz I.Klasse
03.09.1917 Verwundetenabzeichen 1918 in Schwarz
00.00.193_ Ehrenkreuz fur Frontkämpfer 1914/18
00.00.193_ Ehrendegen des Reichsführer-SS
00.00.193_ Totenkopfring der SS
00.00.193_ Medaille zur Erinnerung an den 13. März 1938
00.00.193_ Medaille zur Erinnerung an den 1. Oktober 1938
17.09.1939 1939 spange zum 1914 Eisernes Kreuz II.Klasse
26.09.1939 1939 spange zum 1914 Eisernes Kreuz I.Klasse
15.08.1940 Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes, as SS-Oberführer and Kommandeur SS-Standarte "Deutschland" / SS-Verfügungstruppe-Division. The official award citation reads: “SS-Oberführer Steiner’s regiment ‘Deutschland’ was the only infantry regiment of Kampfgruppe Hausser that took part in capturing the island group Seeland from French troops. SS-Oberführer Steiner’s superior leadership was instrumental in the Regiment’s swift, three-day thrust to Vlissingen and the storming of two powerful defensive positions. He distinguished himself personally throughout this endeavor and employed his Battalions and Stuka support against heavy enemy fire at the Beveland Canal and the causeway to…”
In the opening days of the Western Campaign, Steiner’s regiment spearheaded the drive through the Netherlands. After breaching Dutch defenses along the Wilhelmina Canal on 10 May 1940, the men pushed relentlessly westward under constant pressure. The decisive action came in the assault on the Zeeland islands. Steiner personally directed the battalions in a lightning three-day advance to Vlissingen, coordinating infantry assaults with precise Stuka dive-bomber strikes. At the Beveland Canal and the narrow causeway, French defenders poured heavy fire onto the exposed German columns. Steiner threw his battalions forward in wave after wave; soldiers waded through waist-deep water under shellfire, while Stukas screamed down to blast enemy strongpoints. The regiment stormed two major fortified positions in hand-to-hand fighting, clearing the islands and securing the vital bridgeheads. This lightning thrust isolated large French forces and opened the path for the wider collapse of resistance in the region. Steiner’s personal example — often seen at the front directing fire and repositioning companies under fire — turned what could have been a costly stalemate into a swift victory.
Later in the same campaign, after the Dunkirk evacuation, Steiner’s regiment again proved decisive. From 5 June it smashed through the Weygand Line, crossed the Aisne and Marne rivers in bitter fighting, and swept east of Paris. In the fierce engagement near Châtillon-sur-Seine (16–18 June), Deutschland took approximately 5 000 prisoners while overcoming stubborn French rearguards. These combined actions in the Low Countries and northern France earned him one of the first three Ritterkreuz awarded to the Waffen-SS.
22.04.1942 Deutsches Kreuz in Gold
16.06.1942 Vapaudenristin Ritarikunta (Finlandia), 1st Class with Swords
00.00.1942 Medaille Winterschlacht im Osten 1941/42 (Ostmedaille)
23.12.1942 Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes mit Eichenlaub #159, as SS-Gruppenführer und Generalleutnant der Waffen-SS and Kommandeur SS-Panzergrenadier-Division "Wiking". No verbatim citation survives in open records, but the award recognized his outstanding leadership of the multinational volunteer division during the 1941–1942 Eastern Front campaigns, culminating in the Caucasus offensive.
After crossing into the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, Wiking fought its way to Tarnopol by early July, earning praise from Generaloberst Ewald von Kleist for its fighting spirit and from captured Soviet commanders who admitted the division’s ferocity. Steiner kept the formation moving across the Dnieper toward Dnepropetrovsk despite mounting losses and savage counterattacks. When autumn rains turned the steppes into a quagmire, he shifted to defense on the Mius River. Through the brutal winter of 1941/42 his men repulsed repeated major Soviet assaults, bleeding the Red Army white; one regiment (Westland) alone suffered 50 % casualties yet held firm.
In July 1942 the division stormed Rostov-on-Don and raced across the open steppes toward the Caucasus. By late September it reached the southernmost point of the German advance — the European land bridge to Asia. Steiner then ordered the critical crossing of the Terek River. Under intense Soviet artillery and infantry fire, Wiking’s panzergrenadiers and the newly attached tank detachment fought their way across the water barrier and into the rugged foothills. For weeks they battled for every mountain ridge and village around Mosdok and Alagir in savage close-quarter combat amid rocky terrain and freezing nights. Soviet counterattacks came in wave after wave; Steiner’s troops, often outnumbered and short of supplies, held the line through personal leadership and aggressive small-unit counterthrusts. Only in late December, after exhausting the Soviet momentum, was the division finally pulled back for rest. These actions — the deep penetration into the Caucasus and the tenacious defense of the Terek bridgehead — sealed the Eichenlaub award.
06.07.1943 Vapaudenristin Ritarikunta (Finland), 1st Class with Star and Swords
01.08.1944 Mentioned in the Wehrmachtbericht
10.08.1944 Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes mit Eichenlaub und Schwerter #86, as SS-Obergruppenführer und General der Waffen-SS and Kommandierender General III. SS-Panzerkorps (germanische). The award recognized his masterful defensive leadership during the retreat from the Leningrad front and the six-month-long Battle of Narva / Tannenberg Line in 1944.
In late 1943 Steiner’s multinational corps (Nordland, Nederland, Wallonien, Langemarck and Estonian units) faced the Soviet 2nd Shock Army around the Oranienbaum pocket. On 13 January 1944 the Red Army unleashed a hurricane of over 100 000 artillery shells, followed by massive infantry and tank assaults. Several Luftwaffe field divisions disintegrated, but Steiner’s SS troops conducted a fighting withdrawal over 150 miles westward. In a dramatic race against time, the corps reached the Narva River just ahead of the pursuers. Steiner immediately ordered a bridgehead on the eastern bank while placing artillery on the western bank inside the city of Narva itself.
For months the narrow bridgehead and the subsequent Tannenberg Line (the Blue Hills of Sinimäe) became a fortress. Soviet attacks came daily — sometimes hourly — supported by hundreds of tanks and endless infantry waves. Steiner moved his battalions like a chess master: shifting Nordic and Estonian regiments to plug breaches, launching local counterattacks to retake lost heights, and using every inch of the marshy, forested terrain to channel the enemy into killing zones. At one point Nordland’s reconnaissance company destroyed 48 of 54 Soviet tanks in a single engagement. The defenders held against overwhelming odds, turning the Estonian border into a graveyard for Soviet assault divisions. Only after the Soviet summer offensive of 1944 finally unhinged the entire northern front did Steiner conduct an orderly fighting withdrawal through the Baltic states. His preservation of the corps’ fighting strength and the epic stand at Narva — which stalled the Red Army’s drive on the Baltic for half a year — earned him the Swords, the 86th recipient overall.

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Felix Martin Julius Steiner was a German SS commander during the Second World War who rose to the rank of SS-Obergruppenführer und General der Waffen-SS and became one of the most prominent leaders in the multinational volunteer formations of the Waffen-SS. Born on 23 May 1896 in Stallupönen in East Prussia, a region now part of modern Russia, he grew up immersed in the Prussian military tradition and entered the Royal Prussian Army as an infantry cadet in March 1914. His early service in the First World War took him through the brutal fighting on the Western Front where he distinguished himself repeatedly, earning the Iron Cross Second Class in October 1914 and the First Class in November 1917 while also receiving the Wound Badge in Black for injuries sustained in 1918. After the armistice Steiner joined the Freikorps in Memel and participated in the suppression of communist uprisings during the German Revolution of 1919 before being integrated into the Reichswehr in 1921. He advanced steadily through the ranks of the small professional army of the Weimar Republic, reaching the position of major by 1933 when he retired from regular service and briefly served in the Landespolizei. In January 1934 he joined the Nazi Party with membership number 4,264,295 and shortly afterward transferred to the SS with the number 253,351, beginning a new phase of his career that would see him shape some of the most elite and controversial units of the Third Reich. A devout Evangelical by upbringing, Steiner remained unmarried throughout his life and had no children, devoting himself entirely to his military vocation.

Steiner’s entry into the SS-Verfügungstruppe in 1935 quickly propelled him through the ranks as he demonstrated exceptional organizational talent and a modern approach to training. By June 1936 he commanded the SS-Standarte Deutschland, transforming it into a highly disciplined motorized regiment known for its aggressive tactics and esprit de corps. When the Second World War erupted in September 1939 his regiment spearheaded the SS-Verfügungs-Division through the Invasion of Poland, earning him the Clasps to both classes of the Iron Cross within weeks. The real test came during the Battle of France in 1940 when Steiner’s men were tasked with the rapid capture of the Zeeland islands in the Netherlands. Under constant enemy fire he personally directed a lightning three-day thrust westward to Vlissingen, coordinating infantry assaults with Stuka dive-bomber support while his soldiers waded through waist-deep water at the Beveland Canal and stormed fortified French positions in savage hand-to-hand combat along the narrow causeway. The regiment cleared two major defensive lines and took thousands of prisoners, isolating Allied forces and contributing decisively to the collapse of resistance in the region. For this masterful leadership and personal bravery at the front Steiner was awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross on 15 August 1940, one of the earliest such decorations granted to a Waffen-SS officer, cementing his reputation as a bold and innovative commander who could achieve rapid victories even against determined opposition.

Following the French campaign Heinrich Himmler personally selected Steiner to form and lead a new division that would embody the Waffen-SS ideal of a multinational elite force. On 1 December 1940 he assumed command of what became the SS-Division Wiking, a motorized formation initially built around the Germania regiment and later reinforced with Scandinavian, Dutch, Flemish and Baltic volunteers. The division crossed into the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 as part of Army Group South and fought its way through Tarnopol and across the Dnieper River toward Dnepropetrovsk amid ferocious Soviet counterattacks. Through the muddy autumn and the brutal winter of 1941-1942 Steiner kept the formation cohesive despite heavy losses, repulsing repeated Red Army assaults on the Mius River line where one regiment alone suffered fifty percent casualties yet held its ground. In the summer of 1942 Wiking participated in the capture of Rostov-on-Don and then raced across the steppes into the Caucasus, reaching the Terek River in September. There Steiner ordered a daring river crossing under intense artillery fire, after which his panzergrenadiers and attached tanks battled for weeks in the rugged foothills around Mosdok and Alagir, holding mountain ridges against wave after wave of Soviet infantry in freezing nights and close-quarter fighting. The division’s deep penetration to the southernmost point of the German advance and its tenacious defense of the Terek bridgehead earned Steiner the German Cross in Gold in April 1942 and ultimately the Oak Leaves to the Knight’s Cross on 23 December 1942 while he was still commanding the now redesignated 5th SS-Panzergrenadier Division Wiking.

In April 1943 Steiner relinquished direct command of Wiking to take charge of the newly formed III (Germanic) SS Panzer Corps, a larger combined-arms formation that incorporated Nordic and Western European volunteer units including Nordland, Nederland, Wallonien and Langemarck. After initial anti-partisan operations in Yugoslavia the corps was rushed to the Leningrad front in late 1943 where it faced the Soviet 2nd Shock Army. On 13 January 1944 the Red Army unleashed a massive artillery barrage followed by overwhelming infantry and tank assaults that shattered several Luftwaffe field divisions, yet Steiner’s SS troops conducted a disciplined fighting withdrawal over 150 miles westward, reaching the Narva River just ahead of the pursuers. He immediately established a bridgehead on the eastern bank while positioning artillery inside the city itself on the western side, turning the narrow strip of land and the subsequent Tannenberg Line in the Blue Hills of Sinimäe into a formidable fortress. For six months Soviet attacks came daily, often hourly, supported by hundreds of tanks and endless waves of infantry; Steiner shifted his multinational battalions like a chess master, launching precise counterattacks to retake lost heights and channeling the enemy into killing zones in the marshy forested terrain. At one critical point a single reconnaissance company of Nordland destroyed forty-eight Soviet tanks in a single engagement while the defenders held against overwhelming odds, stalling the Red Army’s drive on the Baltic for half a year. These epic defensive battles earned Steiner promotion to SS-Obergruppenführer und General der Waffen-SS in July 1943 and the Swords to the Knight’s Cross on 10 August 1944, the eighty-sixth recipient of this highest grade.

By late 1944 Steiner’s corps was withdrawn from the Baltic and reassigned to the Eleventh SS Panzer Army under Army Group Vistula, though the army existed largely on paper and his forces were soon placed in reserve with the Third Panzer Army. In January 1945 he briefly commanded the Eleventh SS Panzer Army before it was inactivated near the Oder River. During the final Soviet Berlin Offensive in April 1945 Adolf Hitler personally designated the remnants of Steiner’s units as Army Detachment Steiner and ordered an ambitious pincer attack northward from Eberswalde against the flank of Marshal Zhukov’s 1st Belorussian Front. Assembling a motley force that included the 4th SS Panzergrenadier Division Polizei, the 5th Jäger Division and the 25th Panzergrenadier Division, Steiner assessed the situation with brutal realism during a conference at the Führerbunker on 22 April. With only two understrength battalions available, virtually no heavy weapons and no prospect of adequate support, he informed his superiors that the planned counterattack was militarily impossible and refused to launch what he viewed as a suicidal operation. Hitler’s subsequent outburst, declaring the war lost and his intention to remain in Berlin, marked a dramatic turning point, yet Steiner’s pragmatic stance preserved what little remained of his command and prevented further pointless slaughter in the final days of the Reich.

After Germany’s capitulation on 8 May 1945 Steiner was taken into British captivity and held until his release in 1948 following investigations that ultimately dropped any war-crimes charges against him at the Nuremberg proceedings. In the postwar years he became a founding member of the HIAG veterans’ organization and emerged as one of its most influential figures, advocating for the rehabilitation of former Waffen-SS soldiers while distancing himself from the most fanatical elements of the Nazi regime. He authored two widely read memoirs, Die Freiwilligen der Waffen-SS: Idee und Opfergang in 1958 and Die Armee der Geächteten in 1963, in which he defended the combat record of the multinational SS divisions and portrayed their soldiers as idealistic volunteers rather than ideological fanatics. Living quietly in Munich, Steiner suffered from declining health and died of heart failure on 12 May 1966 at the age of seventy. His legacy remains complex: revered by some as a brilliant tactician who forged effective multinational units under extreme conditions, yet condemned by others for his senior role in an organization deeply implicated in the crimes of the Nazi regime.

 

Autumn 1941: SS-Brigadeführer Felix Steiner in Russia, with two officers of Wiking Division: Hans Köller and Christian Frederik von Schalburg. Giorgio Bussano collection.

























SS-Brigadeführer Felix Steinerin Russia, 1941, with other officers of the Wiking Division.

Source:
Akira Takiguchi photo collection
https://www.lexikon-der-wehrmacht.de/
https://en.wikipedia.org/
https://www.tracesofwar.com/
https://grokipedia.com/
https://rk.balsi.de/index.php?action=list&cat=300
https://www.unithistories.com/units_index/index.php?file=/officers/personsx.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20091027052912fw_/http://geocities.com/orion47.geo/index2.html
https://forum.axishistory.com/
https://www.wehrmacht-awards.com/forums/
https://www.bundesarchiv.de/en/
https://www.geni.com/
https://books.google.com/
https://ww2gravestone.com/people/steiner-felix-martin/
Felix Steiner, Die Armee der Geächteten (1963)
Felix Steiner, Die Freiwilligen der Waffen-SS: Idee und Opfergang (1958)