Rolf Steiner (born 3 January 1933) is a German retired mercenary. He began his military career as a French Foreign Legion paratrooper and saw combat in Vietnam, Egypt, and Algeria. Steiner rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel commanding the 4th Commando Brigade in the Biafran Army during the Nigerian Civil War, and later fought with the Anyanya rebels in southern Sudan.
Early life Rolf Steiner is the son of a Protestant father and Catholic mother. As a youth in Nazi Germany, Steiner was, according to his 1976 memoirs, a member of the Nazi Deutsches Jungvolk (German Young Folk), and he looked forward to joining the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth). However, the Second World War ended before he could join the Hitler Youth. Steiner later claimed to have fought as a Jungvolk volunteer in the Volkssturm militia in the final days of the Second World War, but no evidence exists to support this claim outside of his own memoirs. A 1968 article in Time stated: "In the final days of World War II, he fought as a Hitler Youth in Germany’s last-ditch defense against the advancing U.S. Army."
In a 2013 interview, Steiner called his memoirs a "fable". He stated that his father who had served in the Luftwaffe committed suicide in 1937 after failing a "racial hygiene test" as it was discovered that one of his ancestors was a Jewish woman who converted to Lutheranism in the 18th century to marry a Gentile. Steiner also stated that his mother abandoned him in 1944 when he was 11, leaving him to be brought up at a nunnery in Lower Bavaria. In the interview, Steiner described a lonely, miserable childhood as a Mischling ("half-breed") under the Third Reich and denied being a member of the Jungvolk or having fought in World War Two. Steiner maintains his teachers called him a "filthy Jew" and he was thrown into the Ganacker concentration camp in February 1945 after he was caught throwing food to the inmates.
In 1948, at the age of 16, Steiner decided to study for the priesthood. He intended to become a Catholic missionary in Africa. Following an affair with a nun at school, however, he decided that the military offered a more interesting life. When he was 17, Steiner enlisted in the French Foreign Legion at Offenburg, and was sent to Sidi Bel Abbès in Algeria. Steiner intensely wanted to be a soldier, and since the Wehrmacht had been abolished together with the German state in 1945, joining the Foreign Legion was the best way to satisfy his martial ambitions. In 2013, he claimed that he enlisted in the Foreign Legion because he was "at war with Germany" and because he had read romantic accounts of the Legion's role in the Rif War in Morocco.
French Foreign Legion As a legionnaire, Steiner fought in Vietnam. Steiner stated in his memoirs The Last Adventurer he joined the Foreign Legion because he believed in "the protection of the weak and the defense of just causes." The American journalist Ted Morgan ridiculed him for this claim, stating: "Choosing the Foreign Legion to carry out such noble goals was like becoming a loan shark in the interests of philanthropy. Stripped of its mythology, the Foreign Legion is a corps of misfits who are trained to become efficient killers. Anyone who has been on an operation with the Legionnaires knows that they are gangsters in uniform".
After completing his training in France, he boarded a ship in Marseille that took him to Vietnam and discovered many of the Germans serving in the French Foreign Legion were veterans of the Waffen-SS while many of the Eastern Europeans serving in the Legion were veterans of either the SS or the Ostlegionen. Others serving in the Legion were Poles, Hungarians, Italians and Russians, which impressed him as an example of men coming together united by a common love of war. One source stated about the Legionnaires during this period: "The Legionnaires did not sacrifice themselves for France, but for an abstract concept of honor, for vague ideas of a purposeless [non-ideological] soldiery, and for the Legion, which had meanwhile replaced homeland and family". The voyage to Vietnam took 17 days with stops at Port Said and Singapore before landing at Haiphong.
Steiner first saw action in 1951, loading a machine gun that he was forced to take over after the Hungarian operator was wounded and then bled to death. Steiner stated: "I saw four Vietnamese in sight, opened the fire and saw them fall. Nothing triggered me, that was the war... I had lost my childhood." Steiner was wounded in the leg, but described himself as enjoying the war in Vietnam, saying "the cruelties of the day, the warm evenings in the tropics, the camaraderie, the good wages of the Legion" were his "home". In Vietnam, he lost one of his lungs in circumstances that have never been satisfactorily explained. Steiner claimed to have lost one of his lungs due to a Viet Minh bullet at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954, but the British journalist Frederick Forsyth denied this claim, stating that Steiner's lung was removed by doctors after he was infected with tuberculosis in 1959. In an interview with the German journalist Ulii Kulke, Steiner denied having fought at Dien Bien Phu, saying he was with the Legion's garrison in Hanoi at the time. However, Steiner expressed much regret that he did not fight in the legendary Battle of Dien Bien Phu where the French paratroopers and Foreign Legionaries fought ferociously against overwhelming odds for four months, saying he would have very much enjoyed the carnage of Dien Bien Phu. During his time in the Legion, Steiner was twice demoted down from sergeant to private for insubordination, and twice promoted back up.
Having first served in the 1st Foreign Parachute Battalion (1e BEP) in northern Vietnam against the Viet Minh, he was in the detachment that parachuted into Suez in the 1956 Suez Crisis. He was later posted to Algeria where he met his future wife Odette, a Pied-Noir. The Legion hardened Steiner, and he was taken by the bravery, the loyalty and the cosmopolitanism of the Legion, a collection of men from all round the world who despite being adversaries only a few years before, were now steadfast comrades. Steiner spent five years from 1956 to 1961 fighting in Algeria. The British journalist John St. Jorre described Steiner as a "first-class soldier" with an outstanding record in both Vietnam and Algeria. In his letters to the British journalist Peter Martell, Steiner always ended them by quoting the Legion's motto Legio Patria Nostra ("The Legion is our fatherland"). Steiner was promoted up from a private to sergeant.
While fighting the FLN (Front de Libération Nationale) uprising in Algeria, Steiner became active in the anti-De Gaulle Organisation armée secrète (OAS) through his wife. Many in the Foreign Legion came to intensely identify with the pied-noirs of Algeria, and when the French President Charles de Gaulle proposed independence for Algeria, a number of Foreign Legionnaires became involved in the OAS, which attempted to overthrow de Gaulle. In 1961, Steiner took part in the attempted military coup d'état against de Gaulle.
Steiner joined the OAS less because of politics because of "a spirit of camaraderie". As an OAS operative, Steiner specialized in setting off plastic bombs as part of the terrorist campaign to overthrow de Gaulle. He was eventually arrested, sentenced to nine months in prison, and then released into civilian life. Being discharged from the Legion left Steiner immensely bored with life as by his own admission he was only suitable for a military life and he found civilian life unbearably dull. In 1962, de Gaulle pardoned all Frenchmen for any war crimes committed in Algeria while also pardoning most of those involved in the OAS as a part of the process of national reconciliation. Steiner lived in France working at an aircraft factory.
Biafra In 1967, while living in Paris, he made contact with former colleague Roger Faulques, who was organizing a mercenary unit for the newly independent Republic of Biafra. France supported Biafra, which possessed much of Nigeria's oil and had the capacity to produce 1 million barrels of oil per day. By 1967 estimates, Biafra possessed oil reserves equal to about one-third of Kuwait's. French President Charles de Gaulle believed that backing Biafra's secession from Nigeria would result in the French oil companies receiving the concessions to pump Biafra's oil. The French secret service, the Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage was sponsoring mercenaries to fight for Biafra, and Steiner was one of the mercenaries recruited. French documents declassified in 2017 confirmed what had long been suspected; the recruitment of mercenaries such as Steiner to fight for Biafra, together with the supply of arms, were orchestrated by the "Africa cell" within the French government headed by the controversial French civil servant Jacques Foccart. The air field at Uli became “Africa’s busiest airport” as French arms were flown in from Libreville, Gabon. Gabon, a former French colony and a member of Françafrique had under French instructions recognized Biafra. French arms were shipped to Libreville and from there were flown into Uli. Besides France, Biafra's main foreign supporter was South Africa as the apartheid government wanted to see the failure of oil-rich Nigeria, which was viewed as pro-British and pro-Soviet
Steiner flew to Port Harcourt via Lisbon, Portugal and Libreville and enlisted into the Biafran army. Faulques and most of his 53 mercenaries soon left Biafra after leading his men in an unauthorized attack to retake the city of Calabar, which ended in disaster in October 1967. Steiner was one of the few who chose to stay on, becoming their leader due to his seniority as a former sergeant in the French Foreign Legion. Faulques and most of the mercenaries he had recruited had expected a repeat of the Congo crisis when they had, with the exception of the Irish, encountered undisciplined and poorly trained Swedish and Indian United Nations peacekeepers. The discovery that the Nigerians were more disciplined than the Congolese led most of the mercenaries to depart Biafra as the possibility that they might be killed was too unnerving for them. Furthermore, prisoners were rarely taken in the Nigerian Civil War, and the Nigerian Federal Army especially hated the white mercenaries who were seen as outsiders who had come to break up Nigeria. As late as 2012, the Nigerian author Ayuba Mshelia called Steiner and the rest of the white mercenaries some of the "most hated and hideous mercenaries on this planet".
British historian Peter Baxter wrote that white mercenaries had an over-sized impact during the Congo crisis of 1960-65 mostly because the Congolese Army had almost disintegrated, and the badly trained Congolese militias were outclassed by the mercenaries. It was hoped that white mercenaries would have a similar impact in Nigeria. However, Baxter notes that while much of the Nigerian Army's leadership had been killed in two coups in 1966, there was still a sufficient number of Sandhurst-trained Nigerian Army officers left to provide just enough professional leadership to hold the Nigerian Army together. These Sandhurst-trained Nigerian officers were of "altogether higher caliber" than the Congolese militia leaders, and generally speaking, the Nigerians tended to get the better of the mercenaries.