Rolf Steiner

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.

Rolf Steiner was the son of a Protestant father and Catholic mother.

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.

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 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-Abbes in Algeria.

He 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 overwhelmingly 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").

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."

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, World War Two ended before he could join the Hitler Youth.

Steiner later claimed to have fought as a Jungvolk volunteer in the Volkssturm (militia) in the last days of World War Two, but no evidence exists to support this claim outside of his own memoirs.

In a 2013 interview, Steiner called his memoirs a "fable".

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.

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 Marseilles 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.