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.

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.

Steiner joined the OAS less because of politics because of "a spirit of camaraderie". The air field at Uli became “Africa’s busiest airport” as French arms were flown in from Libreville, Gabon.

Steiner was given the command 4th Biafran Commando Brigade, composed of 3,000 men, as a lieutenant colonel. The 4th Commando Brigade was intended for irregular operations and existed outside of the regular chain of command in the Biafran Army at the time of its creation. The notional first three Commando brigades did not exist; the Biafran army created this bit of disinformation to confuse the Nigerian Federal forces. The 4th Brigade was also known as the "S" brigade as it was intended for special tasks. Steiner chose a skull and crossbones as his regimental symbol, which he thought would constantly remind his troops of the risks inherent to war rather than any reference to the pirates' Jolly Roger or the Nazi SS, and adopted the slogan "Long Live Death! Long Live War!" Steiner found the Biafrans to be quick learners and highly motivated, and the 4th Commando Brigade saw themselves as an elite force and were proud of their skull and crossbones symbol.

Steiner's subordinates were a mixture of adventurers consisting of the Italian Giorgio Norbiato; the Rhodesian explosive expert Johnny Erasmus; the Welshman Taffy Williams; the Scotsman Alexander "Alec" Gay; the Irishman Louis "Paddy" Malrooney; the Corsican Armand Iaranelli who had been able to enlist in the Foreign Legion by pretending to be Italian; and a Jamaican bartender turned mercenary who called himself "Johnny Korea". Norbiato, Erasmus, and Gay had all previously served as mercenaries fighting for Katanga in the Congo. Of Steiner's subordinates, Williams was known for his short temper and was considered to be "bullet proof" owing to his ability to survive multiple wounds. Much of Steiner's notoriety seemed to stem from confusion in the public mind with another German mercenary, Siegfried "Congo Killer" Müller, a Wehrmacht veteran who always wore an Iron Cross around his neck and was notorious in the Congo for his brutality towards blacks. In 2013, he was living in Munich and was described by the journalist Ulli Kulke as haunting the beerhalls, where he maintained a belligerent attitude, still insisting that he was idealist who fought only to protect the peoples of Africa.