Felix Steiner

Felix Steiner joined the SS and by 1940 was handpicked by Himmler to create and lead the SS Division Wiking, helping transform the Waffen-SS into a force drawing volunteers and conscripts from occupied and unoccupied territories alike. By 1943 he commanded the III SS Panzer Corps, and in January 1945 took charge of the 11th SS Panzer Army as part of the hastily assembled Army Group Vistula meant to shield Berlin from Soviet advance. On 21 April, with the capital under siege, Hitler placed him at the head of Army Detachment Steiner and ordered a pincer counterattack from the north - but Steiner's unit was outnumbered ten to one, and the next day he reported in the Führerbunker that no such offensive was possible. After Germany's surrender he faced war crimes charges at Nuremberg; they were dropped and he was released in 1948. Five years later the CIA recruited him to establish a West German military think tank, and in 1951 he co-founded HIAG, a lobby group seeking legal and historical rehabilitation of the Waffen-SS.