Post by pieter on Jun 17, 2024 16:37:01 GMT -7
Felix Steiner
![https://vcdns.valka.cz/files/thumbs/t_felix_steiner.jpg](https://vcdns.valka.cz/files/thumbs/t_felix_steiner.jpg)
Felix Martin Julius Steiner (23 May 1896 – 12 May 1966) was a German SS commander during the Nazi era. During World War II, he served in the Waffen-SS, the combat branch of the SS, and commanded several SS divisions and corps. He was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords. Together with Paul Hausser, he contributed significantly to the development and transformation of the Waffen-SS into a combat force made up of volunteers and conscripts from both occupied and un-occupied lands.
![https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Bundesarchiv_Bild_146-1973-138-14A%2C_Felix_Steiner.jpg](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Bundesarchiv_Bild_146-1973-138-14A%2C_Felix_Steiner.jpg)
SS-Obergruppenführer Felix 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 III SS Panzer 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.
Steiner was chosen by Heinrich Himmler to oversee the creation of and then command the SS Division Wiking. In 1943, he was promoted to the command of the III SS Panzer Corps. On 28 January 1945, Steiner was placed in command of the 11th SS Panzer Army, which formed part of a new Army Group Vistula, an ad-hoc formation to defend Berlin from the Soviet armies advancing from the Vistula River.
SS Reichsführer and SS-Obergruppenführer Felix Steiner in the Ukrainian village Kriwoj Rog
On 21 April 1945, during the Battle for Berlin, Steiner was placed in command of Army Detachment Steiner, with which Adolf Hitler ordered Steiner to envelop the 1st Belorussian Front through a pincer movement, advancing from the north of the city. However, as his unit was outnumbered ten to one, Steiner made it clear that he did not have the capacity for a counter-attack on 22 April during the daily situation conference in the Führerbunker.
After the capitulation of Germany, Steiner was imprisoned and investigated for war crimes. He faced charges at the Nuremberg Trials, but they were dropped and he was released in 1948. 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 the rearmament of West Germany.
Along with other former high-ranking Waffen-SS personnel, Steiner was a founding member of HIAG, a lobby group of negationistic apologists formed in 1951 to campaign for the legal, economic and historical rehabilitation of the Waffen-SS. He died in 1966.