Felix Martin

Felix Martin Julius Steiner, born on 23-05-1896 in Stallupönen, East Prussia. In 1914, on the eve of war, joined the Prussian Officer Corps as a cadet. During the course of the war, he earned the Iron Cross first and second class and finished the war as an Oberleutnant. After the war, Steiner led a unit of Freikorps in the East Prussian city of Memel. He rejoined the army in 1922 and by 1933 had attained the rank of Major. After the NSDAP takeover, Steiner joined the Reichswehr staff and began work developing new training techniques and tactics. The outbreak of war saw Steiner as an SS-Oberführer and still in charge of the SS-Deutschland. He led his regiment well through Invasion of Poland and the Battle of France, earning the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on 15-08-1940.  After the early war campaigns, Steiner was chosen by SS-Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler (see Himmler) to oversee the creation of, and then command the new volunteer SS Division, SS-Division Wiking. The Wiking was made up of Non-German volunteers, and at the time of its creation consisted mostly of Dutch, Walloons, and Scandinavians including the Danish regiment Frikorps Danmark.

 In January 1945, Steiner along with the III SS Panzer Corps was transferred from the Courland Pocket to help with the defence of the German homeland. Steiner received the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords on 23-12-1942.  His successor ws Herbert Gille (see Gille) The III SS Panzer Corps was assigned to Army Group Vistula and put under the new Eleventh SS Panzer Army, although this army really only existed on paper. Once the Soviets reached the Oder, Eleventh SS Panzer Army became inactive and the III SS Panzer Corps was re-assigned to the German Third Panzer Army as a reserve during the Soviets' Berlin Offensive Operation. During the Battle of Halbe, the first major battle of the offensive, General Gotthard Heinrici, he died age 84, on 13-12-1971, (see Heinrici)   the commander of Army Group Vistula, transferred most of the III SS Panzer Corps's divisions to General Theodor Busse's (see Busse) German Ninth Army. Steiner had always been one of Hitler's favourite commanders, who admired his 'get the job done' attitude and the fact that he owed his allegiance to the Waffen SS, not the Prussian Officer Corps. Joseph Goebbels (see Joseph Goebbels) (did you know) also praised Steiner. "He is energetic and purposeful and is attacking his job with great verve," Goebbels wrote on 01-03-1945. By 21 April, Soviet Marshal Zhukov's (see Zhukov) 1^st Belorussian Front had broken through the German lines on the Seelow Heights. Adolf Hitler, ignoring the facts, started to call the ragtag units that came under Steiner's command Army Detachment Steiner. An army detachment was something more than a corps but less than an army. Hitler ordered Steiner to attack the northern flank of the huge salient created by the 1st Belorussian Front's breakout. In conjunction with Steiner's attack, the Ninth Army under General Theodor Busse, was to attack from the south in a pincer attack. The Ninth Army had been pushed to south of the 1^st  Belorussian Front's salient. To facilitate this attack, Steiner was assigned the three divisions of the Ninth Army's CI Army Corps: the 4^th SS Polizei Division, the 5^th Jäger Division, and the 25^th Panzergrenadier Division. All three divisions were north of the Finow Canal on the Northern flank of Zhukov's salient. Weidling's LVI Panzer Corps, which was still east of Berlin with its northern flank just below Werneuchen, was also to participate in the attack. The three divisions from CI Army Corps were 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 fifteen miles, east of Berlin and the attack to the south would cut the 1^st Belorussian Front's salient in two. Steiner called Heinrici and informed him that the plan could not be implemented because the 5^th Jäger Division and the 25^th Panzer Grenadier Division were deployed defensively and could not be redeployed until the II Naval Division arrived from the coast to relieve them. This left only two battalions of the 4^th  SS Police Division available and they had no combat weapons. Based on Steiner's assessment, Heinrici called Hans Krebs (see Krebs), suicide age 57, on 01-05-1944, Chief of Staff of the German General Staff of the High Command of the Army, 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 22-04-1945, at his afternoon conference, Hitler (see Adolf Hitler) (did you know) became aware that Steiner was not going to attack and he fell into a tearful rage. Hitler declared that the war was lost, he blamed the Generals, and announced that he would stay on in Berlin until the end and then kill himself. On the same day, General Rudolf Holste (see Holste) was given what few mobile forces 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, (see Wenck)   attacked from the west and General Theodor Busse (see Busse) attacked from the south. These attacks amounted to little and, on 27 April, the Soviet forces attacking to the north and to the south of Berlin linked up to the west of the city. After the surrender, Steiner was incarcerated until 1948. He faced charges at the Nuremberg Trials, but they were all dropped and he was released. He dedicated the last decades of his life to writing his memoirs and several books about the war. He died on 12-05-1966, age 69 and is buried on the cemetery Perlacher Forst in Munich, next to the war victims Hans and Sophie Scholl (see Scholl), the "Weissen Rose" resistance group, condemned, to death on the guillotine, by Ronald Freisler (see Freisler).